A Bedside Visitor: The Update

Pancho Villa did not break these stairs

Pancho Villa did not break these stairs

Yesterday I wrote about awaiting an otherworldly visitor at the haunted Gadsden Hotel in Douglas, Arizona, and thought it only right to give an update.

The ghost never arrived. She was, according to legend, going to come sit at my bedside. She did not. At least not while I was awake.

When I went down for chorizo and coffee in the morning (gotta love breakfast on the border), I passed a little plaque at the bottom of the stairs that told the story of how Pancho Villa once rode his horse up the marble staircase, breaking off a piece of one of the stairs. It was, like the ghost stories, a bit of a fiction (Pancho Villa died before the hotel was built, for starters). But it is a GREAT way to make an excuse for a broken stair. Just as the haunted hotel story is a great way to add charm and a backstory to the dripping faucets, rattling windows, creaky floors and peeling paint that would otherwise simply mean Shitty Hotel. As one former guest wrote in the Ghost Book at the front desk: “The only thing haunted about my room was the toilet, which didn’t stop running all night.”

I think I’m going to use this in my apartment when I get back home. Blown fuse? A ghost did it. Dishwasher on the fritz? Same thing. That ghost also, if you must know, keeps leaving my jeans on the floor.

I guess I’ll have to hire Father Merrin to pick up my clothes when I get back to New York.

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About Nathan

Nathan Thornburgh is a contributing writer and former senior editor at TIME Magazine who has also written for the New York Times, newyorker.com and, of course, the Phnom Penh Post. He suspects that he is messing up his kids, but just isn’t sure exactly how.

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