There may be no town in the American West with a name better suited to becoming haunted.

Tombstone, Arizona.

The name conjures images of gunfighters walking dusty streets, saloon doors swinging open, undertakers preparing coffins, and men settling arguments with revolvers.

Then there is the cemetery.

Boot Hill.

It almost sounds too perfect.

Yet Tombstone wasn’t named because of the people who died there.

The name came first.

According to the familiar story, prospector Ed Schieffelin ventured into the Arizona wilderness in 1877 despite warnings that the country was dangerous. Friends told him that instead of finding silver, the only thing he was likely to find was his own tombstone.

Schieffelin went anyway.

He found silver.

And with a sense of humor that helped create one of the most memorable place names in American history, he called his mining claim:

Tombstone.

Ed Schieffelin Finds Silver

Schieffelin had entered a desolate region where few people expected him to find anything worth the danger.

Then he discovered silver-bearing rock.

He staked his claim.

Word spread.

And suddenly, the empty Arizona landscape wasn’t empty anymore.

Prospectors arrived hoping to duplicate Schieffelin’s success. Mines appeared throughout the region. Businesses followed the miners.

Eventually, a suitable flat area was selected for a settlement.

It became known as Goose Flats.

From those beginnings grew the town that would become Tombstone.

Tombstone Becomes a Boomtown

The Tombstone remembered by popular culture sometimes resembles a tiny collection of wooden buildings surrounded by desert.

The reality was considerably more impressive.

By the early 1880s, population estimates placed Tombstone somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 residents.

There were newspapers.

Schools.

Restaurants.

Two theaters.

And approximately 100 saloons.

Tombstone even eventually possessed what was described as Arizona’s first public swimming pool.

This wasn’t merely an isolated mining camp.

For a brief period, Tombstone became a thriving Western city.

And where large numbers of people gathered around enormous amounts of newly discovered money, trouble inevitably followed.

The Tombstone of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday

Today, Tombstone is inseparable from the names of Wyatt Earp, his brothers, and Doc Holliday.

Above all, it is remembered for the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

The confrontation became one of the defining events of the American West, endlessly reconstructed in books, films, television programs, documentaries, and folklore.

But the gunfight was only a tiny piece of Tombstone’s history.

The town contained miners, merchants, gamblers, prostitutes, lawyers, physicians, newspapermen, theater performers, businessmen, laborers, and families.

Most residents weren’t gunfighters.

They were simply people attempting to make a life in a booming mining town.

Yet violence was unquestionably part of that world.

And Tombstone accumulated plenty of dead.

Boot Hill

The cemetery that became known as Boot Hill helped cement Tombstone’s macabre reputation.

Its graves include people associated with some of the town’s most famous episodes.

Some died naturally.

Others died violently.

Gunfights, accidents, disease, murder, and the hazards of frontier life all contributed to the cemetery’s population.

For later generations, Boot Hill became almost as famous as Tombstone itself.

Visitors could walk among graves belonging to people whose names had become part of Western legend.

And with so many violent deaths associated with one small area, ghost stories were almost inevitable.

But gunfighters weren’t Tombstone’s only enemy.

Fire nearly destroyed the town more than once.

Tombstone Burns

In 1881, a devastating fire swept through Tombstone.

Approximately 60 businesses were destroyed.

The town rebuilt.

Then, in 1882, another major fire tore through the business district.

Again, Tombstone rebuilt.

The repeated destruction contributed to the town’s legendary resilience.

Mining fortunes could disappear.

Buildings could burn.

People could leave.

But Tombstone remained.

Eventually, the community acquired a nickname that suited it perfectly:

The Town Too Tough to Die.

When the Silver Began to Disappear

Like many mining communities, Tombstone’s spectacular growth couldn’t continue forever.

The prosperity depended heavily upon what was beneath the ground.

When mining became increasingly difficult and fortunes became harder to extract, the great boom began fading.

People left.

Businesses closed.

The enormous population dwindled.

But Tombstone did something many Western boomtowns failed to accomplish.

It survived.

The settlement didn’t become another collection of abandoned buildings slowly disappearing into the desert.

People continued living there.

And eventually, the very history that had once threatened to disappear became one of Tombstone’s greatest assets.

Visitors came looking for the Old West.

Some found ghosts as well.

Haunted Tombstone

With its gunfights, murders, mining accidents, fires, saloons, and cemetery, Tombstone accumulated the sort of history practically guaranteed to produce supernatural stories.

Reports of paranormal activity became associated with locations throughout the old town.

People reported apparitions.

Others described unexplained voices, footsteps, and sounds.

Historic buildings acquired their own resident spirits.

And one Tombstone establishment developed a particularly strong paranormal reputation.

The Bird Cage Theatre

The Bird Cage Theatre remains one of Tombstone’s best-known historic buildings.

During Tombstone’s boom years, establishments like the Bird Cage provided entertainment in a town filled with miners and men carrying newly acquired money.

Its later reputation became considerably darker.

Stories of violence and death became attached to the building, and paranormal investigators eventually began treating the old Bird Cage as one of Tombstone’s most haunted locations. The original article notes that paranormal groups continued investigating the building long after its frontier days ended.

But the ghost stories aren’t confined to one building.

Tombstone itself has become the haunted location.

Ghosts Throughout the Town

Paranormal reports have been associated with streets, buildings, saloons, and the cemetery.

That makes Tombstone somewhat unusual among famous haunted locations.

There isn’t necessarily one definitive ghost story.

Instead, the entire historic district seems to have accumulated supernatural folklore.

A person can walk from one supposedly haunted location to another without ever really leaving the old town.

But Tombstone folklore includes something stranger than apparitions.

According to one tradition, pieces of the town itself can bring terrible luck.

The Curse of Stolen Tombstone Souvenirs

Historic places frequently have a problem with visitors taking souvenirs.

A nail.

A fragment of wood.

A stone.

Some tiny object that seems insignificant enough to slip into a pocket.

Tombstone developed an unusual solution to that problem.

According to local stories, taking pieces of the historic town can bring bad luck.

Visitors supposedly discover this only after returning home.

Things begin going wrong.

Bad luck follows.

Eventually, the stolen souvenir becomes the obvious suspect.

So the person sends it back.

The Pieces Come Home

Over the years, Tombstone reportedly received pieces of its own history in the mail.

Nails.

Bits of wood.

Small objects removed by enthusiastic tourists.

Some were supposedly returned only a week or two after the visitor left town.

The implication was obvious.

Whatever happened after the tourist returned home was unpleasant enough to make keeping the souvenir seem like a bad idea.

Whether the objects were actually cursed is another matter.

But the tradition belongs to a fascinating category of folklore in which taking something from a historic or sacred place transfers its misfortune to the thief.

The only solution is to put it back.

And apparently, some visitors to Tombstone weren’t willing to take chances.

A Living Town

Perhaps the most important thing to remember about Tombstone is that it never became merely an abandoned relic of the Old West.

People still live there.

Visitors can walk through the historic district, read plaques, visit surviving structures, and explore the places associated with the town’s legendary past.

That creates an unusual overlap.

The Tombstone of history exists alongside the Tombstone of legend.

Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday belong to the past.

The modern residents belong to the present.

And somewhere between them walk the ghosts.

Tombstone, Arizona

It would be easy to reduce Tombstone to a handful of familiar images.

The O.K. Corral.

Wyatt Earp.

Doc Holliday.

Boot Hill.

But the real story is larger.

Tombstone began because one stubborn prospector ignored people who told him that searching the Arizona wilderness would accomplish nothing except providing him with a grave.

Instead, Ed Schieffelin found silver.

People followed.

A town appeared.

Within only a few years, thousands of people were living in a place that had scarcely existed before. There were theaters, newspapers, schools, restaurants, mines, and enough saloons to guarantee that nobody went thirsty for very long.

Then came violence.

Fire.

Death.

Declining mines.

And the slow fading of the great silver boom.

Tombstone survived all of it.

Perhaps that is why the ghost stories seem so appropriate.

The town itself has always been reluctant to disappear.

Even pieces removed by tourists supposedly have a habit of finding their way back.

More than a century after its glory days, Tombstone remains inhabited, visited, remembered, and thoroughly entangled with the mythology of the American West.

Ed Schieffelin’s friends had warned him that if he ventured into the wilderness, all anyone would find would be his tombstone.

They were almost right.

He found Tombstone.

And against considerable odds, it refused to die.