Downtown Clovis: Home for ghosts

It's been decades since reports have been widespread. But for half a century, downtown Clovis was haunted by ghostly apparitions, heart-stopping screams and midnight mysteries.

Hundreds -- sometimes thousands -- of ordinary, working people reported witnessing the frightening events. Newspapers documented much of them as well.

A 1935 Clovis Evening News-Journal report warned of "table raising ... ghostly spirit slate writing ... talking skulls." The ghosts, the newspaper claimed, "sometimes ... sit with you."

Most of the scares were reported between the 200 block of Clovis' Main Street and its 500 block. As with most ghost stories, the majority originated well after dark.

The earliest documented report of ghost activity that was witnessed by multitudes of people in the city occurred in the summer of 1929. The scares continued well into the 1970s. Sometimes, officials were so concerned for public safety, children were banned from certain locations. "It's too scary," the kids were told in printed announcements.

Not every spirit was the real thing, of course.

Those first widespread ghostly reports, which occurred just after midnight on June 15, 1929, were quickly discredited.

"In true 'Scooby Doo' fashion, our hero proves that the villain is of the Live Human variety," one anonymous scribe reported in a recent recap of the event online, which received prominent coverage in the Evening News-Journal. That hero was a man named Franklin Green, a private detective hired to help explain the odd "ghost talks" residents claimed they heard.

Patrons at the Busy Bee Café – where the "merchants lunch" cost 40 cents in 1929 – were believed to have discussed the strange event for weeks.

Other spooks haven't been so lighthearted.

Psychotic man wore woman's clothes to kill

In 1960, Clovis citizens downtown reported seeing a woman in a residence. They assumed she was the mother of a man known to live there. But it was soon learned the man's mother had died 10 years earlier, supposedly a victim of a murder-suicide.

While some debated the woman's true identity, police became curious about the sighting and began to investigate. It all ended in a tragedy some of Clovis' senior citizens today still talk about.

Turns out, there was no ghost and no mysterious woman. Police discovered the man Clovis knew as "Norman" actually killed his mother and her lover 10 years earlier. Unable to bear the guilt, Norman mummified his mother's body and began pretending she were still alive.

A psychiatrist theorized Norman recreated his mother as his own alternate personality. When Norman would become attracted to a woman, he would put on women's clothes and become his mother.

Norman is believed to have committed multiple murders while struggling with his multiple personalities.

More murder, ghostly activity downtown

In 1966, much of Clovis witnessed the fallout from another murder-suicide.

A dispute over property resulting from the couple's death led to other crimes as well as a true ghost story.

Hundreds of local residents, over several days, said they witnessed a blood-stained organ that appeared to play all by itself.

Another ghost was reported in 1941 after a gangster was killed in a shootout with police. At least that one had a happy ending.

Clovis was pleased to learn the kind-hearted gas station attendants who, in a quirk of fate, inherited the gangster's estate did not inherit haunted property as first believed.

The gangster's friends were trying to scare off the lucky men before they could find a stash of cash hidden in a moose head. The men found the money and benefited from other fortunate events and were able to achieve lifelong goals of owning their own business.

(The gangster had been telling people for years that his money was hidden in his head. Nobody knew it was his moose head. Truth is often stranger than fiction.)

Main Street ghosts are all gone now

We don't hear much about those strange goings on in downtown Clovis anymore. They pretty much stopped in the late 1970s -- about the same time the Lyceum, State, Mesa and Sunshine theaters had all closed and area residents started watching their scary ghost movies at Hilltop Plaza, and then at the cinema at the mall.

Sorry. Did you really think all that stuff actually happened on our quiet little Main Street?

But those were some exciting times, if you believe the newspaper ads that began with "Ghost Talks" in 1929 at the Lyceum, continued with Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho" in 1960 at the State theater, "The Ghost and Mr. Chicken" in 1966, also at the State, and Abbott and Costello's "Hold That Ghost" at the Sunshine theater in 1941.

Oh, and there was the "Spook Busters" that played at the Mesa theater in 1949, which sounds a lot like the more recent "Ghost Busters."

In the "Spook Busters," a group of friends set about trying to remove ghosts from an old abandoned mansion. Clovis watched as those fictional characters soon learned the "ghost" activities were actually the work of a mad scientist conducting illegal experiments.

The "table raising" and "talking skulls?" That was in a 1935 Clovis Evening News-Journal advertisement promoting a "Spook Party" at the Lyceum.

Children were not allowed.

"No children's tickets sold ... It's too scary," the newspaper ad reported.