Real Haunted Houses

Real Haunted House

The Witch’s Grave

Old Mesilla, New Mexico
By Robin Wright

Old Mesilla and the area around it has had a dubious history, even before anyone officially settled there. The city of Las Cruces, the second largest city in New Mexico and a mere 6 miles from the quaint town of Old Mesilla was so named because of an 1830 massacre of a wagon train headed west along the trail known as El Camino Real. When the survivors buried their dead, they put up the requisite markings of crosses. Those following used it as a landmark, calling it “La Placita De Las Cruces”–the place of the crosses. Those who settled along the trail shortened it to Las Cruces. Las Cruces is now a bustling modern metropolitan, but enter Mesilla, New Mexico and you step back two hundred years.

Mesilla still has the thick adobe walled buildings that kept out both heat and dust. This was where Billy the Kid was caught, jailed, and allowed to escape. This is also the home of San Albino’s cemetery, home of the Witch’s Grave.

At the end of Calle De Lupe is the dirt packed ground that composes the cemetery. Tumbleweeds skitter across the graves, but your eyes will be drawn from the beautiful sculptures that serve as tombstones to a 4’x4’ cinderblock and cement tomb decorated with a 2‘ black cross that someone has carved with the number “666.” This, legend says, is the Witch’s tomb. It is the only headstone in the cemetery that has no name inscribed on it. There is no record of who she is or what she had done to get such a fortified grave, but it has been said that when she was buried there, her ghost kept trying to get out from its supposed final resting place. She has spent decades trying to find a crack that will set her free, and those who live near the cemetery have spent just as many years repairing the cracks that do appear.

Local lore claims a girl once slept on the tomb in response to a dare. She walked away alive, but was afterwards afflicted with incurable epilepsy. Further caution to those who feel the need to visit– in case escaping witches and mysterious illnesses aren’t enough, the fine folk who live near the cemetery do not appreciate late night visitors, and strongly discourage entering the cemetery after dark.

191 comments on this haunted house. Share your story »

191 Comments

Leave a comment

« · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · [8] · 9 · 10 · Next » ·

Show All Comments

Katie says:

September 18, 2007, 12:06 am

Where is it located at?

chicana says:

October 12, 2007, 7:08 pm

okay this is very childish! Al of you raciest jerks just need to go to hell! america is supposed to be free! not to mention that if it was not for all the races we do have here in the U.S, it would never be what it is today! The U.S.A is not perfect but niether is the rest of the world. Many people come to the U.S in search for a better life for themselves and thier family.yes there are bad mexicans but no different then any other race. I am mexican blood but born and raised in the U.S which makes me Chicana… if you don’t understand look it up! and that will give proof to our existance of mexicans before “white” people came and took over. This really bothers me because if this is supposed to be a free country then we should always be accepting to everybody! If so many americans don’t want people from other countries here including from Mexico then why should americans be able to go anywhere they please? i do not say that Mexicans are the “****” but we know our true history! not lies!!

so back to what we should be discussing… **** is scary stuff! i do believe in all of this! i have had to many run-ins with the paranormal my whole life. My mom has always been a freak about believing in all this stuff. but i have seen spirts. My mother has witnessed evil spirits herself. and when anything bad is going to happen to me, i get a vibe about 5 minutes before it happens! i appreciate everybody sharing thier stories and hope to hear more. trust me when i say that you will never catch me trying to investigate any of this! Now if i stumble accross it without knowing thats different

Dawn says:

October 24, 2007, 9:08 am

So wow this is really cool i love **** like this!!

Proxymom says:

October 28, 2007, 2:28 am

ok folks,lets settle down and think about a few things. First of all it does not matter where a person is from, what color their skin is or how old they may be. the truth of the matter is very simple. we are all born and we will all die. when a person dies the ONLY thing they will take with them is accountability for their actions while they were alive. secondly, people are getting all riled up over printed words of people they dont even know. printed words and nothing more than something we CHOOSE to look at. it is not anything to be getting upset about because that just hurts and weakens the anger carrier. whats the point?? thirdly, many people who read this understand that their are “very old souls” in six year old children as well as “very young souls” in people who can claim senior citizen discounts. i am seeing comments from a wide range of spiratual maturity, young and old alike. people need to stop,think for themselves and above all else have patience with those that need it. last of all…is it possible to get the directions off of this site? lives can easily be both directly and indirectly messed up by certain people toying with things they dont understand.

Proxymom says:

October 28, 2007, 2:46 am

here are a couple of things people might find interesting to try. when you are around a young child who is just starting to talk in short sentences ask them a few simple questions they will instantly know the answers to. then you ask them if they remember their “other” mommy and/or daddy. do NOT freak out if they tell you because many will, and if you freak out it will frighten the child and they will not tell you anything else. secondly when a child very first starts speaking well enough to use names, wait until they are contentedly playing alone, but jabbering to themselves and ask them who they are talking to. same rule about not freaking out applies!!! responses by the people who do this would be interesting to hear in this forum!!!!

carla says:

November 2, 2007, 3:36 pm

first of all all ya lil white motha fuckers need to stop talkin **** bout mexicanz cuz if it wasnt for mexican ya lil fuckers wouldnt be in ur ****** rooms right now writing all this **** yes ***** WE made ur motha ****** house cuz ya white people are to motha ****** lazy thatz y most of ya are all ****** obease and **** well let me tell you something get off ur lazy asses and do all the work we do and i want to c this stupid *** country go a day wit out us oh and ya tell us to go back to where we came from well let me tell you something ya motha fuckers aint from here either **** ya might as well go back to england in that mi=otha ****** case yes ***** a mexican just motha ****** told all ya waz up!!!!!!!!!! **** ALL YA *******

ANGELICA says:

November 7, 2007, 1:00 pm

F*** ALL THE HATERS IN THERE. THAT ARE HATEING ON MEXICANS.

Proxymom says:

November 9, 2007, 2:03 am

To understand this story you need to know that my skin is white but my bloodlines stem from the onadaga indians in the northeastern United States. Back in 1981 I was attending the Albuquerque Job Corps center with 2 roomates. We lived in what was called dorm W at that time. I did not know it until later that night but one of the girls was a full blooded indian that went by the nickname of “Cat”. Late one night, in the middle of summer and too hot to sleep, Cat and I were sitting on the floor in front of the window talking. The room lights were off because the third girl was sleeping, but we had enough light to see from one of the campus lights outside the dorm. The first thing I noticed was that the room was suddenly getting cold. I kept watching Cat to see if she had noticed the drop in temperature but she didnt seem to notice anything strange, so i kept quiet about it . My entire family is sensitive to certain things other people seem not to notice and I just assumed this was one of those times. From past expierence I knew the temperature drop meant we “had company” from the spirit world, and just assumed cat was unaware of it like most people seem to be. Well that assumption was a mistake.. a BIG mistake !!!! The temperature continued to drop and was lower than anything I had ever expierenced due to having “company” but Cat still didn’t say anything so I remained silent as well. We all had our individual lockers in the rooms and if my locker doors were not latched shut, one of the doors would swing wide open and that is the way it was that night. By this time the room was so unbearably cold that I had chill bumps and was shivering. It was at least 80 degrees outside with no wind at all to account for what happened next. My uneven locker door, that always hung open unless it was latched, started to VERY SLOWLY close all by itself! I knew something new and strange was happening as we BOTH sat there and watched it close. On some level I was scared but my main concern was how to explain what was going on to Cat. It was as tho my mind was going a million miles an hour on one level and frozen with fear and utter fascination on another level. When the door reached the center of the locker, we watched the handle slowly turn until the door settle into its frame. I heard the door settle into position but did not see the handle turn back down to latch itself shut because when the door slipped into place cat jumped up and screamed “YOU KNOW IT”S HERE!!” I jumped up and screamed “YES!!!! WHAT THE HELL IS IT?? !!! In a quieter tone of voice..almost as tho she was talking to herself, she said “Thats Not Possible… Your WHITE !!!!” I said “So What?!!, and asked her again “what in the hell is it?!!” She just stood there, frozen in place,looking at me with an expression on her face that was beyond description. I just couldn’t stand it anymore and bolted from the room. My movement seemed to unfreeze her and she was right behind me when I got to the living room area of the dorm. Once we were out of the room and got settled down a little bit, she explained what was happening. She told me that she was a full blooded cherokee indian and that her grandfather had been a very powerful shamin/medicine man within the tribe. Something had happened and a feud got started between her family and a shamin family from another tribe. The other shamin turned some very mean spirits/demons loose upon her family to do as much harm as possible, for all eternity!!!
Her grandfather was not able to undo what the other shamin had done but he was able to put some kind of protective force around his family which prevented the demons from hurting “THEM”. She explained that because the demons only purpose was to hurt them, and they couldnt touch HER family directly, that they would attack people her family cared about as a way of tormenting her family indirectly. Up until that night the demons presence had only been felt by other full blooded indians and that is why cat was so shocked i knew anything at all. I then found out she had transferred into my room because a navajo girl had been attacked in the other dorm. When I say “attacked”, i mean a busted lip,broken nose and two black eyes! The RA was a very smart, open-minded lady who thought it would be safe for cat to stay in a room with girls who were not native american. SHE WAS WRONG !!! She did not know about my bloodlines and I wound up getting “physically” hurt that night myself!! I am not a full blooded indian, not even close, but i think being at a place as spiritually active as the AJCC, helped allow things to happen that wouldn’t normally have occured. By this time it was about 2 AM and Cat was totally exhausted so we cautousley went back to the room. Everything seemed back to normal, so Cat crawled into bed and went to sleep. I was still wide awake and decided to wash my bedding because as every job corps resident knows, doing laundry is most easily accomplished when nobody else wants the washers!! I got things washed and had put them in the dryer when i started getting sleepy myself. I went back to the room and was laying on my mattress waiting for the dryer to get done and fell asleep. At some point i snapped INSTANTLY awake and found myself partly pushed up on my arms as tho I was just beginning to get up…BUT I WASN’T MOVING ! I COULDN’T MOVE AT ALL!!!!
I was frozen in place watching a greyish, smokey looking, cloud thing moving from the foot of Cat’s bed over her body but underneath of the top bunk!!! The main mass was becoming more transparent as it moved over her body and the part going over her was looking more dense and solid by the second! I still could not move and was barely able to breath. It felt like I had steel bands around my chest that would not expand when i tried to pull the air into my lungs. In the meantime nearly all of the mass had gone over her body, with a segment, within the mass, that looked solid,moving slowly from her head towards her feet!! It is impossible to say how long this went on, but at some point i was able to scream her name even tho my body still would not move. when i screamed, she started to get up and the mass VERY QUICKLY retreated back to the foot of her bed and away from her body. In a split second it just gathered itself all together and evaporated. In the next moment i tried again to move but STILL couldn’t do it. Just as sheer panic was hitting me something grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me backwards down my bed and slammed both my feet against the foot board SOOO hard it bruised the ENTIRE BOTTOMS OF BOTH FEET!!!! I also had sore back and neck muscles along with chaffing on my face from scrubbing across the mattress!!!!
I dont know what happened with Cat after that because I was gone out of that room like a SHOT!! The next morning the RA came in to see what was wrong because the 5:00 AM bed check person found me wide awake in the living room and refusing to go back to my room and not giving them an explanation for it either! I would not go back until Cat was OUT!! I never did figure out why the third girl did not wake up because she SHOULD have. I screamed loud enough to wake the dead,but the only indication she gave to what was going on was to curl up tighter in her covers when the room got cold!! There were ALOT of strange things happening at that center 25 yrs ago and according to what i have found on the net recently, there is still alot of activity today!!! I would love to hear from current or recent residents of AJCC !! I would also like to know more about the Indian ways that makes what happened that night possible!! you can email me proxymomm atyahoo dotcom please put JOB CORPS in subject line so i know to keep it when it goes to my bulk mail!!

itz giggles bitch says:

November 11, 2007, 7:46 pm

ok first of all you do not no how fake that sounded seriously stop watching those types of movies!!! and second of all to all those ******* crackers out there talkin **** bout mexicans ALL ya can go suck a ****!you heard me dont act stupid thats all ya good for newayz

Proxymom says:

November 18, 2007, 1:16 am

sooooo easy to disclaim things because you dont understand how they could possibly be true…. the irony is that before that night i probably would have responded in much the same way you did. based on the way you write things and what you have said, im guessing your fairly young. i got pretty lucky in the respect that i had some wiser and older people around me at time this, and other things happened. if you are so very sure that i have been watching to many movies and can totally close this topic off in your brain….then i honestly envy you. i unfortunatly did not have that privledge due to fact that i was there and i knew what happened. to make it even worse, because i was born into a “sensitive” family and my parents knew children were more sensitive than adults, us kids had been told that spirits might scare us but they could not hurt us. part of what happened the next morning was a panic call to my mom with me screaming at her that she had lied. it makes sense that you would put my story in the context of a movie tho. in fact i almost think its funny because nearly all of the horror stories and monsters in our culture were born from a grain of truth somewheres. i am assuming that you probably know how to use a computer and get around on the net alot better than i do. if that is true then i challenge you to do 2 things which while relativly harmless, you will have a hard time explaining away so easily with your movie theory. first, using the net in places like myspace and facebook find people who are now in, or have gone to the albuquerque job corps center. do not tell them anything about what has been written here until after you have asked them wether or not they know anything about the center being haunted. secondly, find some little children who are at an age where they are starting to talk in 3 or 4 word sentences and ask them a few simple questions they will INSTANTLY know the answers to. questions like .. do you like ice cream? [or anything you know they like], what color are your shoes?,whats your mommies/daddys/ puppies…whatevers name. then you ask them if they remember their “OTHER mommy and/or daddy. not all but most kids around the age of four will tell you about things that they have not seen on tv. quite a few kids as old as five and six can remember and tell you about past lives as well. if you decide to check these things out, and a child starts telling you about another life and family….PLEASE dont freak out, just act like its the most normal thing in the world and keep asking questions. next question could be how they died……DO NOT ask IF they remember how they died, just ask them HOW they died. you must remember that what the kids are telling you is the most natural thing in the world to them and they will not freak out or get frightened talking about how they died. they will only get upset if you start acting strange or nervous in some way. then you can ask them if they remember playing with their ghosty or special friends when they were REALLY little. i would be curious to know what you and others who will read this find out. i personally have done this with many different kids from different backgrounds and i started doing it after my own son, not quite 3 yrs old started talking about how he died and where he was buried. after he started talking and answering questions he couldn’t possibly know the answers to, i went to the library and did some research. anyways, the little children can and will tell you about the spirit world being so alive and well and around us all the time. not all things in the spirit world are bad or evil in fact what i dealt with is very rare. most things are harmless and many MANY of the things in this world are with us to protect and guide us. if anybody has questions about what the children say when asked these type of questions, ask me in here and i will do my best to answer them. as for you giggle ?? there is another reason, you PERSONALLY might want to check this out. if you try asking the little children these questions and find out i am telling you the truth… THEN you can tell religous people about what that crazy lady on the net was saying,and ask their OWN kids same questions in front of them. when THEIR OWN kids/grandkids start talking about this stuff….IT BLOWS THEIR MINDS!!!!

magicgee24 says:

December 5, 2007, 1:58 pm

Wow- How old are these people on this site?

I live here in New Mexico and if you want really scary stories the reservation is the place that has them.

sara says:

December 16, 2007, 2:02 pm

man yall crazy and there is no such thing as a witch if there is conatc me @ gypsy-girl-28@hotmail.com cause WITCHES ARENT REAL SO that stroy is fake and f*** yall who are making fun of mexicans )(*&^%$#$%^&*()(&^%$#@#$#@#@#$%^&*()(*&^%$%^&*()(*&^%$#@#$%^&*()_(*&^%$#@!@#$%^_)(********&^%$#%^&*()_(*&^%$#@#$%^&*()(*&^%$#$#@#@!@!@!#$%$^%^%$#$@#@@ thats what i gota say

Pae says:

December 31, 2007, 8:39 pm

Yeah, it’s in the really run down down town mall, What happened was there was a woman who practiced Witchcraft here back in the old days, and she was roaming the city while invisible, and got stuck in the concrete wall, as it was drying. the workers saw the black fabric sticking out of the wall, and decided to cover it with a painting, the next day a man, a worker, was found dead, with the painting sticking out of his stomach. Creepy Stuff Happens Here, Man!!!

niksof says:

January 1, 2008, 10:16 am

these people really should get a life. if i was there i’d just pee on her grave.

Deeee says:

January 6, 2008, 5:13 pm

Does anybody know of any other haunted sites here in New Mexico??…

laSmileyIII says:

February 9, 2008, 1:49 pm

I know of this cemetary that is a ways out of the town of Jal NM, I ve been there in the day time, and it is spooky, but if you go there at night watch out, because the place gets all lit up like a spotlight and you start to hear chanting. We made sure that no one was around.

Rosa Maria says:

March 8, 2008, 9:48 am

I think this site is intended for those who are interested on ghost stories, haunted houses, etc. and not for dirty uncivilized talks. Don’t visit websites that are not of your interest.

Gareth Gobulcoque says:

March 8, 2008, 10:18 am

Heh, sounds interesting. I would love to go there and crack the walls nice and big, setting the spirit free to prove she exsists :D

New Mexican says:

March 21, 2008, 10:24 pm

“Please use correct grammar, capitalization, and punctuation. Let’s try to keep this place looking classy. Real Haunts reserves the right to remove any comment that does not adhere to this requirement or is otherwise inappropriate.”

I’d say there needs to be some clean-up here. And by the way, hasn’t anyone here heard of spell check? Just wondering…

felicia says:

March 29, 2008, 4:13 pm

o haha i have been to the grave uits creepy!and i have been trying to go to the double eagle restuarant.its cool!

« · 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · [8] · 9 · 10 · Next » ·

Show All Comments

Leave a Comment

Name (required)

Email (will not be published) (required)

Website

Please use correct grammar, capitalization, and punctuation. Let's try to keep this place looking classy.
Real Haunts reserves the right to remove any comment that does not adhere to this requirement or is otherwise
inappropriate. Any post containing a link will be flagged for moderation due to recent comment spam. Feel free
to include relevant links, but please know that it will delay your post.

About Real Haunts

Do you believe in the supernatural?

This is the best resource for haunted houses, spooky stories, ghostly tales and all things paranormal.

 

We have mountains of stories about ghosts, ghouls, and specters.

Sitemap

HomeStatesSubmit a Haunt

 

Copyright © 1998-2010

i85media Networks LLC

Privacy Policy