G-g-g-g-hosts among us

He didn't kill anybody. He didn't even steal any money.

But they hung him anyway.

They hung Black Jack Ketchum so hard his head came off.

Any search for scary stories around eastern New Mexico always begins with the day the former Tucumcari ranch hand was executed outside the courthouse in Clayton on April 26, 1901.

Oh, there's no question Thomas Ketchum intended to rob the Colorado and Southern Railway near Folsom in northeast New Mexico on Aug. 16, 1899. He had a gun, a well-known propensity for violence and a self-confessed history of train robbing.

But his plans went awry when railway workers responded to his threat.

Newspapers of the day reported a railroad employee's bullet hit Ketchum in the right elbow, knocking him backward off the train. Law officers found him nearly unconscious beside the tracks the next day; they transported him to a hospital where his injured arm was amputated.

Things got worse for Ketchum after that. He was jailed and charged with train robbery. He pleaded innocent - he was not successful, no matter his intention - but a judge in Clayton found him guilty and sentenced him to die.

Today is an especially good day to remember Black Jack Ketchum because he was born on Halloween day in 1863. If his birth was a prelude to a scary life, his death was even more frightening for the 150 cowboys who came out to watch his execution.

Twenty months after he didn't rob that train, "His head was severed from his body by the rope, as if by a guillotine," The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

"The headless trunk pitched forward toward the spectators and blood spurted upon those nearest the scaffold."

Ketchum's head remained in the black sack that had been pulled over his face just prior to the hanging. It was sewn back on his body before he was buried.

The reason for the decapitation remains unclear more than a century later, but all sources from the time agreed the hangmen were inexperienced.

Justine Ritter, a great-great niece of Ketchum, said that "the rope was probably stretched while testing and they probably misjudged Tom's weight."

The website annalsofcrime.com reported, "The hangman had improperly fixed the rope around the outlaw's neck and put too much weight on his legs, such that the outlaw went through the trap with terrific force and was decapitated."

VISIT FROM A MUSIC MAN

Eastern New Mexico has its fair share of odd stories appropriate for telling at Halloween, though most are not nearly so gruesome as Ketchum's.

John Randal's first job was at KWKA/KTQM radio in Clovis.

"I was the morning man on AM radio. My day started about 4 a.m. and in those days I was alone until about 6," he wrote in an email responding to calls for Halloween stories.

"One morning while doing my show prep in the studio, I saw a shadow through the glass between the studio and the control room where all the transmitter equipment was. I looked up and saw a male figure walk away from where I was and go through a door on the other end.

"My first thought was it was Gary, our engineer who was known to come in at odd times."

But it wasn't Gary.

"I went outside to see if his truck was there, but the only vehicle was mine," Randal recalled. "Feeling slightly perplexed, I went back to work like normal and reported the story to my manager Bob Coker later that morning."

Coker knew immediately what had happened.

"You got a visit from Norm," Coker told Randal.

That's Norm as in Norm Petty, the music producer who made Buddy Holly and others famous. Petty was the founder of the radio station.

It seemed Petty liked to hang around the station even in retirement. "And since his death, he still visited the station and its employees from beyond the grave," Randal was told.

STRANGE THING HAPPENED AT A BAR

Most of the local ghosts are not so famous as Petty and Ketchum.

This report comes from Amiee Constantopoulos. In her own words:

"A few years ago on Hallows Eve, my husband and I dressed up as a saloon girl and bartender and headed to downtown Portales for a dinner date at the Vines restaurant. They have a very old bar that was moved there from Raton and I thought this would be a perfect setting for us to take some pictures.

"One of my husband's students was a chef there and since the place was empty, we had the whole back room, including the bar, to ourselves.

"We took our pictures and then were seated to eat at a booth across from the bar. Everything seemed normal, but as I was eating, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye moving around the bar. There was nobody in the room but us.

"Feeling unsettled, I excused myself to the restroom to freshen up. As I turned the corner to re-enter the room I felt a breeze pass in front of me, as if someone was moving quickly back toward the bar. I giggled off the anxious feeling for a moment, knowing I do love Halloween and my mind was certainly playing tricks on me.

"We finished our meal and were getting ready to leave. As I turned back to grab my purse from the booth, I caught a glimpse of something in the bar's mirror. It was a refection of someone who was sitting at the bar; a middle-aged man with a thick mustache who just smiled."

Constantopoulos remains certain she and her husband Jim were the only ones in that room that night.

This is her best explanation for what happened:

"They say the dead return as the veil thins between the spirit world and earthly realm on Hallows Eve. ... Who would blame an old ghost for coming back to enjoy a drink at his favorite bar."

A TRIP BACK TO SCHOOL DAYS

Sometimes ghosts appear in broad daylight. Gwyn Del Toro can testify to that.

"I had what I can only describe as a ghostly encounter at the Taiban school," she wrote.

"I was taking pictures there one day and was standing on the playground looking at the school. The breeze caught one of the swings and it started swaying and it was like something out of a movie."

Suddenly, Del Toro said, she saw "ghostly type images of kids running and playing on the playground. And I could hear their screams of joy.

"And just like that it stopped."

Del Toro said the incident wasn't threatening. More like, "I had been transported back in time."

BLACK JACK: READY FOR HIS FUTURE

Most ghost encounters don't involve a lot of witnesses and there's seldom evidence to back up the reports.

Perhaps that's why the Black Jack Ketchum story is our scariest. In addition to the dozens who saw his demise, it was captured in print and on film.

A ranch hand in Tucumcari and throughout eastern New Mexico and west Texas when he wasn't robbing trains, the 37-year-old was widely known as a gang-affiliated, dangerous outlaw near the end of his life.

So news of his execution was covered by newspapers across the country.

By all accounts, he was chatty to the end.

He talked with visitors, including reporters, for an hour while awaiting the noose, according to The Galveston Daily News in Texas.

"He ate a hearty breakfast, took a bath, and said he was ready to die at any hour," the paper reported under the headlines "End of Black Jack" and "Head Was Jerked Off."

"At 11:30 a.m. he called for music. A violin and a guitar were sent for."

During his final hours, Ketchum confessed to robbing trains, but insisted he'd never killed anyone and only shot three.

Newspapers reported he sent a letter that morning to President William McKinley, claiming responsibility for crimes in which innocent men had been accused.

The Post-Standard newspaper in Syracuse, New York, reported Ketchum was "cooler than any who met him," in his final hours. "He declared death preferable to imprisonment."

He mounted the hanging scaffold at 1:17 p.m. His last words were "Goodbye. Please dig my grave very deep," and he shouted, "Let her go," as the black sack was pulled over his head.

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