Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.

DELVING INTO THE EERIE HISTORY OF OLD TOWN ALBUQUERQUE, GHOST HUNTER CODY POLSTON REVEALS THE SPIRITS THAT STILL HAUNT ITS STREETS DIRECTED BY SIMANTINI CHAKRABORTY AND GODFREY REGGIO, "THE ORIGINAL BADASS" CELEBRATES AMERICA.

A FILM TO INSPIRE HOPE AND BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER.

IT'S ALL AHEAD ON COLORES GHOST STORIES KEEP HISTORY ALIVE [owl hooting] >>Faith: Why do you think that there's so many ghost stories surrounding Old Town?

>>Cody: There's a lot of sanitized history in Old Town.

We have so much ghost stories and the mixing of cultures and the age of the state.

It just makes, this is like ghost hunting mecca, I think.

I have not found it in any other state that I've done paranormal investigations.

[eerie music] >>Faith: Can you share some of the spooky history of the Old Town Cafe and the spirits that are said to haunt it?

>>Cody: So the fascinating parts about it is, first of all, that it survived to present times.

When you go and you look at the old Sanborn maps, that building has changed its configuration so many times over the years.

Originally it had a big white false front on it and when it was a big merchant store.

But then there's also a lot of the ghost stories as well, which are based upon tragedies that have happened in the building over the years.

>>Faith: And it was Casa De Armijo, right?

>>Cody: Right.

The thing I think that's kind of interesting about the Armijo family, my interest in that it really evolves around one person, and that's Victorana Armijo, and she passed away at 18 years old during childbirth.

So one of the things that also happens in La Placita, you can see stuff from outside and one of the stories that I got was from a security guard.

So if you're driving down South Plaza Street, your car aligns with that big window in La Placita.

So he is coming down and his lights were shining in the hallway and he saw a woman holding a baby.

So he pulled up and stopped and he said it's like she looked toward him and then just moved off into another hall, but he hadn't gotten an alarm.

So he is like, well, she must belong in there.

Didn't think anything about it.

But the next morning he decided to talk to the manager just to make sure.

So he goes inside and he asks the manager, "Hey, I saw a woman in your building last night and I came up, the alarms weren't on.

I know she was in here.

Is there anybody living in here?"

And he goes, "No, it's a restaurant.

We don't got anybody living in here."

>>Faith: What's the story behind the little girl?

Like what's her name?

>>Cody: No one really knows.

We don't even know her name.

Elizabeth is the moniker that the Ghost Hunters gave to that ghost so they can just identify her.

We don't know who she is.

The rumor is she died of tuberculosis, but it's just a rumor.

Her appearance is very distinctive.

So she wears a really pretty white dress.

It's like a communion dress.

Her favorite place is the bathroom.

Women will be in there looking at their makeup and they see the image of the little girl in the bathroom.

Now the image itself isn't that spooky except when you look over and there's nobody there.

The general belief is that was her bedroom back during her time.

The same thing.

Victoriana's bedroom is the bedroom right after the stairs.

So they would've been right next to each other.

[eerie music] >>Faith: So I've heard there's a curandera who's haunting the Church Street Cafe, Can you tell me a little more about this spirit?

>>Cody: So there's not a lot known.

What we do know is of course she was a curandera and we know that Rufina, her daughter, was the last living member of the house, last living family member.

After her death, that's when the building went for sale.

That's when Marie Coleman bought it and turned it into the restaurant.

One of the first places we investigated when I got settled in New Mexico.

At that time it was just the house, now, they have that beautiful patio in addition.

When Marie Coleman, who is still the owner of the place, was building it, she had a guy named Charlie who was doing work for her, and he would tell her, you need to talk to that woman.

She keeps moving my tools.

You tell her to stop.

She's like, who?

The ghost?

So there became an interesting relationship between the two of them.

They get along and as long as you say goodnight to Sarah in the evening, it's fine.

You don't, you get in your car, the lights come back on, you got to get out, go back in, turn out the light.

Sometimes when Sarah wants to get Marie's attention, she chucks little pebbles across the floor.

So they go skipping around and Marie goes and picks 'em up and like, okay, what do you want?

You know.

One of the strangest things about the pebble chucking is we asked Marie if she could save some of these pebbles for us.

And my friend Bob, who was also into geology, took the pebbles and the next day he came back and said, "Dude, this is so crazy!"

And I said, "What?"

These come from rocks that are on top of the Sandia Mountains, not down here in the valley.

How'd they get down here?

Also, the nativity scene inside, when you go inside, there's a display cabinet and she used to have a nativity scene for sale, and Sarah would move the figures and she says they move around.

I'm the only one that has a key, but they move.

They change positions almost nightly.

So that's another interesting phenomenon that seems to happen in that building.

For the most part, the ghost just likes the house, and I think it's because there's been care taken in preserving the house, part of it, is why it's tolerable, but there's a lot of ideas among ghost hunting that when you take a building and you renovate it and you do stuff, that's what disturbs things and you start having hauntings, so.

But again, that's an unproven theory, but Ghost Hunters commonly believe that.

So still very much in love with her property.

Sometimes it's like she cares about what the diners are experiencing because some of the staff members have told me, if someone doesn't have silverware or something, they'll be in the back and silverware and will fly off.

So it's little tiny things like that and by themselves, they're not spooky, but when you look at it as a whole and it's going on through time, then you kind of get more of that kind of connection.

[music] >>Faith: I was really surprised to learn that part of Old Town used to be the Red Light District.

Right?

>>Cody: Right.

>>Faith: And that there is a ghost that's haunting that part of the town that was associated with the Red Light District.

I believe her name is like Scarlet?

Can you tell me about her?

>>Cody: So Scarlet is a moniker again that we gave for the Ghost to identify her.

I did a lot of work to find out who actually died there because obviously there's lots of suicides in the Red Light District, there's murders and all of this.

The backstory is way strange.

So if you look at the plaza today, you've got Old Town Road in the back, and then up front we have South Plaza Street.

That building on the corner used to be called Davis Armstrong Saloon.

Okay, so the Armstrong Saloon behind it, there were two cribs.

One had a prostitute named Belle the other one had a prostitute named Maude.

They loved reading the little dime novels and their reading about how great life is up in the east, and they totally get bummed out, and so they make a promise that they're going to commit suicide together.

So they leave their little cribs, they go across the street to the drugstore, they get a drug to do the deed with.

When they come back, Maudes' lover shows up.

So she's quickly all over him, not paying attention to Belle.

Well, Belle defiantly stands up undoes the lid, takes it, and then ended her life.

The reason we think it's that particular brothel, is that's the predominant place where she's seen.

So that would be the alley behind South Plaza Street.

The way I found out about this, I was doing a show on 94 Rock many, many, many, many years ago, and we put our email address and all of that, and somebody emailed me this guy named Eddie, and he said, "I think I saw what you guys were talking about."

And he goes, "Well, we were eating me and my girlfriend in La Placita and we came out and she went into the Old Town Euporum to shop, and so I'm a smoker, so I went to have my cigarette.

Got my cigarette out and the lighter, tch, tch, tch, and the lighter wouldn't light."

So he's like, "Oh no, it's going to be like an hour before I can get one because I have to go all the way back to the house."

He looked down the alley and he saw a woman in the alley smoking, dark purple dress on.

He goes, "Light!

So he goes walking down the alley to get a light from her.

He gets about 20 feet away from this lady when his girlfriend's yelling back at him, "Eddie, what are you doing!?"

He's like, "I'm going to go get a light."

When he turned around, the girl was gone.

Now the cool thing is he was an artist and he drew what he saw, and so we now kind of have an idea of what this particular ghost looks like.

But over the years, lots of stories.

She's very flirtatious.

But here's the weird part, she only appears to smokers.

So unless you're a smoker, she doesn't show up to you.

Another thing, the sightings appear mostly in springtime, usually before dusk so she's a daylight ghost.

I think the one people know about the most is where she's seen on the balcony of the Old Springer House.

Here's the strange part about that.

That part of the building was built in the 1960s.

So why would a ghost from the late 18 hundreds be walking on a newer piece of the building but don't know?

So again, there's those questions and part of the history is not really understood a lot.

If you stand where the church is, put your back to the church in Old Town and point, everywhere you point, at one point, would've been a brothel or a bar.

That's how rowdy it was at one time.

>>Faith: What role do you think all of these ghost stories play in society?

>>Cody: They do a lot of things, and first of all, it's... they do preserve history, pockets of history because there has to be a reason why the ghost is haunting.

Secondly, it is a way for us humans to deal with death.

There's ghosts that warn people, there's ghosts that will give beneficial type things like healing.

You've heard about the Virgin Mary type apparitions kind of thing.

So it's just, it's so tied into our culture.

Ghost stories are old.

They've been told for centuries and centuries and centuries.

They've changed over the years of what we see and how we experience them, but ultimately it means something.

And they do evolve from storyteller to storyteller over time.

They change a little, but they will exist as long as people are telling the stories.

THE ORIGINAL BADASS [gentle upbeat music] [fireworks exploding] [gentle upbeat music] [morse code tapping] [baseball game] [mining equipment] [potatoes frying] [factory sounds] [horses trotting] [trolly bell ringing] [typewriter clicking] [train passing over bridge] [speaking] [electrical zap] [city ambience] [camera shutter click] [basketball bouncing] [upbeat music] [car factory ambience] [airplace propeller] [upbeat music] [film camera cranck] [upbeat country music] [distant rocket] Al Jolson - "Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't heard nothing yet."

[upbeat country music] [jazz music] [country music] [crowd cheering] [country music] [helicopter rotor blades] "In the Mood" [swing music] Announcer - "America runs on Bulova time."

[mysterious music] [acoustic slide guitar] [skateboard on pavement] "What do we want?

Justice!

When do we want it?

Now!"

[acoustic slide guitar] [theme park ambience] [mysterious music] [robotic motor noises] [shopping mall ambience] Elvis Presley - Everybody in the whole cell block was dancin' to to the Jailhouse Rock.

[clicking] [Twilight Zone theme] Ray Charles - Oh, It's alright Raylettes - Baby, it's alight Martin Luther King Jr - "I have a dream.

I have a dream today."

[crowd applause] [cheerful acoustic guitar] James Brown - Oh, I feel good.

William Shatner - To boldly go where no man has gone before.

[guitar pickin' music] Ray Tomlinson - I do feel proud of this accomplishment.

[guitar pickin' music] [video game beep] [guitar pickin' music] Dolly Parton - Jolene.

Jolene.

Jolene.

Jolene.

[truck motor and crowd applause] KISS - Hey yeah, hey yeah, hey yeah, hey yeah.

[orchestral music] [lightsabor whoosh] Sugar Hill Gang - Rappers Delight [news station ambience] [rocket engine roar] Pat Benatar - America demands your MTV.

I want my MTV.

[dramatic music] Michael Jackson - Billie Jean [audience cheering] [dramatic music] Run DMC - Walk this way [electronic music] Nirvana - Smells like Teen Spirit [X-files theme] [dramatic music] Charles Lindbergh - I want to express my appreciation for the reception in America and the welcome I received tonight.

[crowd applause] Peter MacDonald - In the early part of World War Two, the enemy was breaking every military code that was being used in the Pacific.

General Vandegrift, commander of the first Marine Division, sent word back to United States, saying, This Navajo code is terrific.

The enemy never understood it, he said.

We don't understand it either, but it works!

Send us some more Navajos!

John F. Kennedy - We choose to go to the moon.

Neil Armstrong - That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

Walt Disney - It all started from a daddy with two daughters, wondering where he could take him, where he could have a little fun with them, too.

There should be something big, some kind of a amusement enterprise built where the parents and the children could have fun together.

So that's how Disneyland started.

Ronald Reagan - Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.

Sportscaster - 23 gold medals.

28 total is the final tally Whoopie Goldberg - It wasn't until Lieutenant Ohora, did I realize that I was in the future.

If you look at science fiction movies that predate Star Trek, there are no people of color anywhere.

Oprah Winfrey - What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we all have.

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation.

.New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts.

and Viewers Like You.