We visited the site of the former Holy
Cross Sanitarium on the north side of Interstate 10. Not much remains
of the complex where patients with tuberculosis were treated in the
1920s-1930s. We found what we believe to be the brick boiler or
chimney mentioned in several online forums dealing with "strange"
America. There were also a few concrete remnants of buildings
scattered about and a fenced-in area that may have been the cemetery.
 |
| Holy Cross Sanitarium. |
Ghost-hunters and the like write about
the tunnels that reportedly once extended from there to the southeast
end of Deming, a distance of ten miles. It's rumored these were used
to transport patients who had died to the municipal airport to avoid
contamination in the town. These tunnels have apparently caved in all
along the line and, in town at least, been filled in.
Several current and former residents
talk about visiting the tunnels as children and having encounters
with dreadful and mysterious spirits. Three teens who vandalized the
cemetery, it's said, all died in the same year. Legend has it that if
you wrote your name on the walls of the boiler room you would also
die. The boiler room is gone, but it was covered with names
and graffiti. Many young people disregarded the warnings, daring to
scribble their names as a write (!) of passage.
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| The boiler room. Photo: Ernest Aquirre, Luna Explorer |
Before the sanitarium was built, this
scrubby and bleak stretch of desert was the site of Camp Cody (named
after Wild Bill), set up by General John J. Pershing to deal with the
Villistas should they dare reenter the US after their raid into
Columbus on March 9, 1916. The camp also was intended to train troops
for pending action in the World War.
In 1923, after military uses were
deemed obsolete, it was transferred to the Catholic Sisters of the
Holy Cross who continued to treat civilians with TB in the base's
800-bed hospital. The 32-building complex included a kitchen, bake
shop, amusement hall, and chapel, and was self-supported through an
attached 300-acre farm with vegetable garden, dairy, and poultry
yard. In 1938, the sanitarium closed for lack of patients and,
through a grounds keeper's carelessness with a cigarette, burned down
in 1939
Visitors to the place have reported
hearing noises and voices and seeing apparitions. People have been
said to have been murdered there in ritual sacrifice. The ghost of a
nun has been seen at the entrance of the site. Lights have been seen
at night near the former location of the fountain. Paranormal
activities have also been reported in residences and businesses
underneath which the suspected tunnels passed through town.
Interestingly
enough Deming was home for awhile to group called the International Ghost Hunters Society,
boasting a membership of over 14,000 in 87 countries. The couple that
founded this group moved to Deming in 2004. Identified on their web
site as only Dave and Sharon, they researched and investigated the
Holy Cross site in person and were open-minded enough to dispel a few
urban legends about the place:
First
of all, that the cables hanging in the boiler room were not used to
shackle and torture patients. Next, that the now-caved-in tunnels
only extended as far the other buildings of the sanitarium, for these
were merely steam tunnels supplying heat from the boilers. Third, that the
graffiti-covered chimney was not once part of a crematorium but was
used to burn garbage. Lastly, that the cemetery was used only to inter
nuns and the lone priest-administrator of the sanitarium; their
bodies, however, were removed in later years and buried elsewhere.
So, reason Bob and Sharon, there can be no ghosts at the cemetery.
Having
dispensed with the urban legends, Bob and Sharon then did go out to the
site and in the barren dust of the former of hospital wards proceeded
to record 15 tracks on their digital recorder of about a dozen spirit
voices -- right where they expected they would find them.
(!)
And now for an unsolicited ad for a worthy project. A local writers group has put together a collection of stories based on the Deming tunnels. I can't say I recommend it, not having dished out the $12 yet for the book. (It costs slightly less on Amazon I think.)
Local writers groups should be supported. So say I.
- Down Under Deming
- Deming Writing Group
- Desert Wind Books
- December 3, 2012
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