Touched by ghosts in St. James Hotel

With Halloween coming up Saturday, I am reminded of my ghost story.

It was 2015 and we were invited to do a paranormal investigation at the St. James Hotel in Cimarron. Me, my husband Steve and our friend Paula Garcia were so excited for this adventure.

The investigation was led by the Albuquerque paranormal team of Mark and Debby Constantino, who we knew from doing investigations on Ghost Adventures.

We arrived and were assigned to the Bat Masterson room, which was also known as one of the haunted rooms. After dinner the investigation on the second floor started. It was awesome with different things going on. Afterward, I was exhausted so I went ahead and went to the room and went to bed.

I was sleeping really good, but was awoken by a rustling sound in the room. We had put a big bag of M&Ms and a bag of Doritos on the mantle of the fireplace. I heard it rustle again. So I told it to “go away,” I was trying to sleep. It was quiet for a couple of minutes and then the Doritos started to go crazy.

Since Garcia’s bed was in a small room off of ours, I grabbed the bags and put them in her room and closed the door. I was able to go back to sleep.

Sometime later in the night I woke up again, but this time I was being touched. I felt my tummy was being rubbed and looked down and I could actually see the bedspread moving. It was a soft touch.

I turned and my husband was in bed but turned on his side facing away from me. It was still touching me.

One of the stories we were told was about three young children who died at the hotel a long time ago. So I very nicely said, “It’s OK. You can stay if you want. But you have to curl up on the couch. Thank you for coming to say hello.”

The touching then stopped.

The next morning I told the others about what happened. Garcia said, “That’s why I couldn’t sleep at all.”

I told the manager of the St. James what had happened that night. She said it was likely the children. She said that was the kind of thing the children did.

That was probably the greatest night of my life, to have the chance to experience something such as that. I hope to be able to do that again.

Tammy Newby coordinates obituaries for The Eastern New Mexico News. Contact her at:

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