April 11, 2025 • 30 mins
While battling for his life during the height of the COVID pandemic, Damian Harris slips into a vivid dream of a forgotten Arizona ghost town—where an eerie portal seems to call to him from within a long-abandoned guesthouse.
The history of Vulture City is a haunting tale of gold and greed, and perhaps a little bit more...
Written by Diane Hope and Richard MacLean Smith
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Damien Harris lay in isolation in the hospital's emergency room,
waiting for a bed in a ward to become available.
He passed in and out of consciousness as the sounds
of the er swirled around his head. Images emerged then
disappeared in his mind's eye. Some were familiar, some strange
(00:31):
and unclear. There was cacti and brittlebush, dusty ground and
deep blue sky, rugged ridges of desert scrub stretching off
for miles, a bright sun baking down from above. One
by one, the images came and went, then finally something
(00:54):
else began to take shape. It was twenty twenty and
the COVID pandemic was at its peak. Damien, who was
sick with the virus, was fighting for his life. As
he dropped finally into a sustained unconsciousness, the desert images
returned and buildings began to spring up all around him.
(01:17):
He suddenly found himself standing at the entrance to a
building that he recognized immediately far out in the sun
baked wilderness of the Arizona Desert, where the mountains burn
red at dusk and the wind whispers through crumbling ruins sits.
What remains of vulture City. Vulture City was established in
(01:40):
the mid nineteenth century around the Vulture Mine during the
Arizona Gold Rush. Though the last of its residents left
many years before, it continues to exist today as a
kind of living museum, where visitors are invited to tour
its many restored buildings and soak up the atmosphere of
(02:00):
this once bustling frontier town. Damien first set eyes on
it while out on a motorbike ride in two thousand
and eight, and immediately fell in love with the place
and its history, so much so that in mid twenty
nineteen he began volunteering there as a tour guide. That building,
Damien found himself standing in front of, deep in his
(02:23):
subconscious was a boarding house that also doubled up as
the town brothel. As his body tossed and turned on
the gurney in his strange dream, he found himself moving
inside the boarding house and on into its living room.
Something seemed to be emerging in the middle of it.
(02:44):
Damien had the absolute conviction that he was staring at
some kind of portal. It seemed to be calling to him,
willing him to come closer and closer. You're listening to unexplained,
and I'm Richard mc lean smith. Hemry Wickenburg shielded his
(03:11):
eyes from the sun and scanned the desert spread before him.
The vista of a dry landscape dotted with ragged rocky
peaks and giants aguaro cactus couldn't have been more different
from the land he'd left behind. Born in eighteen nineteen
in Essen Holsterhausen, Wickenburg spent his early years in what
(03:34):
was then Prussia in Central Europe, though back then he
was known as Johannes Henricus. Much of the region was
covered in swedes of forest, long meandering rivers, and tranquil lakes,
but it was also an industrial powerhouse. Emricus's hometown was
pock marked with slag heaps and the spindly winding towers
(03:57):
of coal mines. The nearby zol Wolverin mine would go
on to become the largest coal mine in the world.
Mining was in the Hemricus family blood. Sometime in the
eighteen forties, Johannes and his brother began extracting coal on
the family's land. Some said was an illegal operation, others
(04:19):
that since the family owned the land, it was theirs
to mine, and that the mineral rights were unfairly seized
by the government. Either way, the property was raided by
the local authorities, and both men were forced to flee
to avoid prosecution. Johannes first joined the Prussian Army, then
later moved to the Netherlands before eventually emigrating to the
(04:43):
United States in eighteen forty seven. On arrival at the
port of New York, Johannes Henricus gave a different name.
He henceforth became known as Henry Wickenberg. The word on
the lips of almost every inmate fagrant was the discovery
of gold in California, and so, with little else but
(05:05):
wild ambition, the newly christened Wickenberg traveled west to San Francisco.
Just under twenty years later, a small group of men
are on horseback, steadily making their way through the desert
scrub of what was soon to become known as Arizona.
They have come looking for gold. The team was assembled
(05:29):
by ambitious prospector Abraham Peoples, and at its head is
famed trapper and frontiersman Pauline Weaver. Not only was Weaver
the best guide in the business, but being half Cherokee,
he was also an invaluable diplomat when it came to
navigating the local Native American communities. As the sun baked
(05:52):
down on their backs, the men stopped to make camp
by a creek not far from the Hasseampa River. Those
stories differ, as they tend to do wherever ambitious men
and gold are concerned. Most agreed that at some point
a horse loosened its ties and wandered off up and
near by hill. When one of People's assistants, a man
(06:16):
from Mexico, went to find it, he noticed something catching
the light in the dusty ground. Bending down to inspect it,
he realized he was looking at a large nugget of gold.
Though the Mexican man's name has been lost to time,
Weaver and People would go down in history as the
first men to discover gold in the region, and so
(06:39):
began the Great Arizona Gold Rush. Among the swarm of
prospectors who quickly flocked to the region to seek their
own fortune was none other than Henry Wickenburg. There are
(07:04):
numerous stories about the day Henry Wickenburg discovered gold. The
most believable account says that sometime in eighteen sixty three,
while out prospecting, he simply noticed a prominent white portz
vein projecting out of a hillside that turned out to
be a significant all bearing load. Another is that Wickenburg
(07:27):
adventured too far out into the wilderness and run out
of food. Close to starving, with carrion feeding birds circling overhead,
he noticed the shiny black feathers of a vulture carcass
lying a little further away. When he headed over to
inspect it, he was gripped by a sudden sense of fate,
(07:48):
as though the vulture was some kind of sign. Lifting
it up, he saw gold flecks glinting in the sunlight
underneath it. However, it happened Henry Winkemberg did find gold.
Sensing that he might be on to something big, he
and the two men he discovered it with immediately made
(08:11):
the sixty mile trek to the town of Prescott, soon
to become the territorial capital of Arizona. There they filed
an initial prospector's claim. The two partners then left the area,
but Wickenberg returned the following year with more men. Finding
the promising quart seem was still untouched, he began digging
(08:33):
what he later named Vulture Mine as the men began
to excavate the rock, following the vane of quartz into
the hillside. The hard white seam proved to be a
rich gold bearing load. When Wickenberg's initial partners came back
for their cut, Wickenburg successfully screwed them out of the deal,
(08:56):
and the court granted him permission to continue with the
responsibility for the mine. Mining The ore was backbreaking work.
Once it was hacked out of the unforgivingly tough bedrock,
it had to be hauled twelve miles down to the
Hasseampa River. There, the revolving system of boulders powered by
(09:18):
mules crushed the ore into a fine powder. Then water
was added to create a slurry from which the gold
was extracted. Wickenburg soon realized that he could avoid the
hard work of mining himself by selling leases to other miners.
They paid him fifteen dollars per wagonload of ore, and
(09:38):
he very quickly became a wealthy man. He eventually settled
in the Hassiampa River valley, about twelve miles from the mine,
where in eighteen sixty five a new settlement sprang up.
They named it Wickenburg. Wickenberg himself went on to hold
numerous important positions, including postmaster, judge, and justice of the peace.
(10:04):
But all was not smooth sailing with Vulture Mine. Not
least was the existential challenge of survival. The area had
long been home to the Yavapaie Native Americans, who early
settlers had misidentified as Apache. For many years, the Hassayamba
River was the life blood of the Yavapaie, who grew
(10:26):
seasonal crops on the river's floodplain. As the incoming settlers
arbitrarily asserted ownership over the land the Yavapies had occupied
for centuries, they reached havoc on the community's food gathering
and seasonal agriculture. But such as the nature of ownership
of land, it's never truly owned by anyone. It belonged
(10:50):
simply to whoever's left. When the fighting stops, a normally
peaceful people, the Avapie, became desperate and had no choice
but to fight to continue their way of life. But
keeping them away was essential to the success of Wickenberg's
Mine and its profits. Backed by the modern military might
(11:11):
of the United States and a religious seal that insisted
the earth was theirs to fill and subdue, it was
a fight the Yavapie was never going to win thousands.
Many women and children would die before they were finally
forced to accept defeat. For the most part, Vulture Mine
(11:40):
was a roaring success. But in eighteen sixty six, perhaps
believing that the mine's gold bearing load would soon be exhausted,
Henry Wickenberg decided to sell his eighty percent share for
eighty five thousand dollars, just over a million and a
half in to day's money. It was bought by a
group of investors represented by Benjamin Phelps, a co founder
(12:05):
of the mining company Phelps Dodge that still exists today.
Wickenberg was given twenty thousand dollars and a promissory note
for the remaining sum of sixty five thousand, but no
sooner had the deal been completed, the new owner disputed it.
He claimed that Wickenburg did not have clean title to
(12:25):
the property because the other two founding owners were not listed,
and so Phelps refused to pay the outstanding amount. You
might say that Wickenburg got a taste of his own medicine,
and it was an exceedingly bitter one extremely aggrieved. It
said that Wickenburg spent what money he had received from
(12:47):
Phelps on lawyer's fees in a failed attempt to get
him to honor the original agreement. To add insult to injury,
the Vulture Mine continued to produce gold with a seemingly
endless bounty. In eighteen eighty, after a pipeline was built
bringing water to the mine, a town began to develop,
(13:09):
including general stores, saloons, boarding houses, rudimentary restaurants, and even
a school. At its peak, Vulture City was home to
five thousand residents. Stamping mills were erected north of the
mine to crush the ore more effectively. Operating up to
twenty four hours a day, they created a hellish din
(13:33):
which shook the ground. They could be heard and felt
from miles away, and covered everything around them in a
fine layer of dust. Running on steam, they also required
vast quantities of wood, so the surrounding Sonoran Desert was
stripped of its abundant ironwood trees to feed them. Meanwhile,
(13:56):
the fortunes of Vulture Mine began to fluctuate wild As
miners tunneled ever deeper into the parent rocks of the mine,
the rich gold bearing load became fickle. The area was
crossed by geological faults, meaning that every now and again
the mother load would suddenly disappear abruptly. Miners would then
(14:20):
have to spend backbreaking hours and days excavating to find
out where the load reappeared. At least one miner was
killed in a cave in as a result. In eighteen
eighty eight, a wagon of supplies, including almost two thousand
pounds of dynamite, got stuck in the mud a few
miles from Wickenberg. As the explosive cargo was unloaded from
(14:45):
the wagon, a miner saw a coyote sniffing at the
boxes and took a shot at it. His shot missed
and struck the dynamite, instead, blowing it up spectacularly, and
some began to wonder if Vulture Mine was cursed. In
(15:09):
the early hours of February twenty second, eighteen ninety, heavy
rains pummeled Vulture City and the surrounding area just upstream
of Wickenburg. Nine years before, a dam had been built
to divert water for mining operations. As the rain continued
to lash down, the pressure against the dam began to
(15:32):
steadily increase. Then it began to crack. When water was
spotted spouting out of it. One man was quickly dispatched
to warn the people of Wickenburg of an impending disaster,
but the man decided to grab a drink on the
way down. One drink became two and three. He never
(15:53):
made it to Wickenburg. Finally, the dam burst, sending a
one hundred foot wall of water cascading down the river
and straight into the town. Between seventy and one hundred
and fifty people were estimated to have been killed by
the flood. Henry Wickenberg survived, but his farm, as well
(16:15):
as other farming property along the river, was destroyed, and
the rich topsoil that sustained the town's agriculture was scoured away.
In time, the town recovered, but Wickenberg had long since
become a shadow of his former self, no doubt haunted
by the unrecovered loss on his sale of the mine
(16:37):
and the devastation of the flood. In nineteen o five,
he was discovered behind his house with a single gunshot
wound to the back of his head and its gun
close to hand. It isn't known if he regretted ever
having found his gold in the first place, or indeed
saw the lorax before deciding to put an end to
(17:00):
his life. In the years that followed, the fortunes of
Vulture Mine continued to fluctuate. There was the nineteen twenty
three collapse that was said to have killed seven miners.
It's claimed that some of the mine's employees had been
working off the clock for personal gain, chipping away secretly
(17:22):
at high grade or pockets, secreting what they mined and
smuggling it out. Gold can do that to you. It
seems that too many men had chipped too often. At
one of the mine's main supporting columns, the roof fell in,
bringing one hundred feet of rock crashing down on top
(17:43):
of them. The mine struggled on for a few more
years until it was eventually closed by the federal government
to conserve resources for the US military during the Second
World War. Over time, people packed up and left, leaving
Vulture City to steadily rust and decay in the hot,
(18:04):
arid air. In nineteen seventy, the mine and the town's
remains were bought and loosely kept as an open museum,
paving the way for its current owners, Robin Moriarty and
Rob Pratt, to take it on as a more formal venture.
Since twenty thirteen, they have run tours through the vacant
(18:25):
city and surrounding areas, and ever since then, strange things
began to happen. There had been whispers for some time
that something weird was going on in Vulture City. On
(18:49):
one occasion, having heard rumors that the place was haunted,
her tour group attempted to communicate with spirits in one
of the old bunk houses. Room contained several large tables,
all coated in a thick layer of dust. As the
story goes, the group stood around one of the tables
(19:10):
as they invited the spirits to show themselves, when prince
suddenly began to appear on the table's dusty surface. They
were apparently impressions of hands and arms all the way
from the fingertips to the elbows. They were said by
some to look very similar to rock art representations of
(19:30):
yeah Itzo, the Big Giant, one of the most terrifying
and powerful entities of the Native American in air culture.
Others have sensed more rudimentary spirits echoes of the town's
dark past. Some claimed to have experienced more than a
little shiver down the spine as they passed the one
(19:53):
single ironwood tree that remains in the town, located just
next door to Henry Winkemberg's cabin. It was from this
tree that around eighteen men are said to have been
hanged for the crime of high grading, stealing the best
oree from the mine to self a personal profit. A
(20:13):
nineteen year old Juan Ramos was also hung there, but
his crime was a little more unsavory. It said that
sometime in the late nineteenth century, Ramos grabbed fifteen year
old Sabrina Lasso, then raped and murdered her behind one
of the mining buildings. When some of the townsfolk found out,
(20:35):
they quickly caught the young man and beat him senseless.
After reportedly being shot in the shoulder, Ramos was dragged
to the ironwood tree and strung up. Some believe the
town is also haunted by the ghost of a woman
who was allegedly murdered by her husband in the nineteen nineties.
(20:55):
The woman's body was apparently thrown down at one hundred
and seventy foot deep mine shaft known as the Nicole
Rays and then as Izzy. Izzy is said to be
the spirit of a little girl whose presence many claimed
to have sensed at Vulture City. It's said that Izzy
(21:15):
is very enamored of a vintage doll that was brought
to Vulture City a few years ago. Only one foot tall,
the doll is dressed in period clothing with an eerie
porcelain face. Anyone that goes near it is advised not
to get too close or else risk the jealous wrath
(21:36):
of Izzy. It was sometime in twenty twenty one that
Damien Harris returned to Vulture City for the first time,
having survived its COVID infection. He hadn't thought much about
his peculiar out of body experience until around a year
or so later, when he was guiding a visitor around
(21:57):
the Old Town. When they arrived at the old boarding
House and entered its front room, the same place that
Damien had seen in his strange fever dream, the visitor
stopped suddenly, seemingly gripped by a sudden sense of doom.
When Damien asked what the matter was, the woman apparently replied,
(22:19):
I sent something horrible right in the middle of this room.
It's like some sort of portal. But you know that already,
don't you, she told him. On hearing the woman's remark,
Damien's jaw dropped, and the memories came flooding back. How
(22:43):
he'd found himself in the exact same spot, staring at
the strange black mass that had emerged in the middle
of the room. Back then, he'd felt it drawing him in,
but he resisted getting any closer, fearing that the portal
was an invitation for him to decide whether he wanted
to live or die. Beyond the portal, he believed was death.
(23:07):
How on earth had the woman known that he'd seen
all that in his dream? He wandered, But there was
more that she didn't seem to pick up on, because
that wasn't the only portal Damien saw that day in
the hospital. Having seen the first portal, he became aware
of something else in one of the back rooms of
(23:27):
the same building. He had the instinctive awareness that there
was another portal there too that led to a much,
much darker place, as he put it. The woman on
the tour that day considered herself a psychic and told
Damien that he must have somehow astrady projected himself to
Vulture City when he was sick. Though Damien didn't know
(23:50):
what to make of it himself, He later showed other
self described psychics around the building, who also seemed to
pick up on the ominous energy in the back room,
each claimed to be too scared to go near it,
believing that whatever was in there was just too dark.
Damien Harris has also said that not infrequently during the
(24:14):
tours he gives, a woman in the group will suddenly
double over in pain, saying that they feel like they've
just been punched in the stomach by an invisible hand.
For his money, Harris believes the source of the ominous
energy is an angry male presence, possibly that of one Ramos,
the man said to have raped and murdered Sabrina Lasso.
(24:39):
While Vulture City enjoys its revival of sorts incredibly, operations
at Vulture Mine are continuing helt by recent increases in
the price of gold. It's estimated that the mine has
produced around three hundred and forty thousand ounces of gold
over its checkered lifetime. At the current gold price of
(25:02):
approximately twenty nine thousand U S dollars per ounce, that
amounts to a modern day value of almost one billion dollars. Thankfully,
for his sake, Henry Winkeenberg isn't around to hear this.
And let the bitterness of everything he missed out on
continue to gnaw away at its soul. Or is he
(25:25):
is it his life chrish soul that refuses to let
Vulture City go? Or is it something else entirely that
stalks the town, something that had always been there in
one way or another, ever since the first flex of
gold was spotted in its dusty ground, A dark abstract thing,
(25:46):
a weight perhaps that seems to draw us in, calling
to us like the one ring to Smiegel, the kind
of dark thing that leads people to grow wild eyes,
shed blood, betray brothers, and decimate the land simply because
there are fortunes to be made. Perhaps it's something of
(26:10):
this that still lingers on, like an ink marked too
deep under the skin to ever truly be erased. After all,
they do say that money is the root of all evil,
and everything comes at a price. This episode was written
(26:35):
by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Diane is an
audio producer and sound recordeded in her own right. You
can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot
com and on Instagram at In the sound Field Unexplained
as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
(26:57):
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
also produced by me Richard McClean smith. Unexplained. The book
and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
(27:18):
your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter
at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash,
(27:39):
Unexplained Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (28:41):
And Total Cack and
Damien Harris lay in isolation in the hospital's emergency room,
waiting for a bed in a ward to become available.
He passed in and out of consciousness as the sounds
of the er swirled around his head. Images emerged then
disappeared in his mind's eye. Some were familiar, some strange
(00:31):
and unclear. There was cacti and brittlebush, dusty ground and
deep blue sky, rugged ridges of desert scrub stretching off
for miles, a bright sun baking down from above. One
by one, the images came and went, then finally something
(00:54):
else began to take shape. It was twenty twenty and
the COVID pandemic was at its peak. Damien, who was
sick with the virus, was fighting for his life. As
he dropped finally into a sustained unconsciousness, the desert images
returned and buildings began to spring up all around him.
(01:17):
He suddenly found himself standing at the entrance to a
building that he recognized immediately far out in the sun
baked wilderness of the Arizona Desert, where the mountains burn
red at dusk and the wind whispers through crumbling ruins sits.
What remains of vulture City. Vulture City was established in
(01:40):
the mid nineteenth century around the Vulture Mine during the
Arizona Gold Rush. Though the last of its residents left
many years before, it continues to exist today as a
kind of living museum, where visitors are invited to tour
its many restored buildings and soak up the atmosphere of
(02:00):
this once bustling frontier town. Damien first set eyes on
it while out on a motorbike ride in two thousand
and eight, and immediately fell in love with the place
and its history, so much so that in mid twenty
nineteen he began volunteering there as a tour guide. That building,
Damien found himself standing in front of, deep in his
(02:23):
subconscious was a boarding house that also doubled up as
the town brothel. As his body tossed and turned on
the gurney in his strange dream, he found himself moving
inside the boarding house and on into its living room.
Something seemed to be emerging in the middle of it.
(02:44):
Damien had the absolute conviction that he was staring at
some kind of portal. It seemed to be calling to him,
willing him to come closer and closer. You're listening to unexplained,
and I'm Richard mc lean smith. Hemry Wickenburg shielded his
(03:11):
eyes from the sun and scanned the desert spread before him.
The vista of a dry landscape dotted with ragged rocky
peaks and giants aguaro cactus couldn't have been more different
from the land he'd left behind. Born in eighteen nineteen
in Essen Holsterhausen, Wickenburg spent his early years in what
(03:34):
was then Prussia in Central Europe, though back then he
was known as Johannes Henricus. Much of the region was
covered in swedes of forest, long meandering rivers, and tranquil lakes,
but it was also an industrial powerhouse. Emricus's hometown was
pock marked with slag heaps and the spindly winding towers
(03:57):
of coal mines. The nearby zol Wolverin mine would go
on to become the largest coal mine in the world.
Mining was in the Hemricus family blood. Sometime in the
eighteen forties, Johannes and his brother began extracting coal on
the family's land. Some said was an illegal operation, others
(04:19):
that since the family owned the land, it was theirs
to mine, and that the mineral rights were unfairly seized
by the government. Either way, the property was raided by
the local authorities, and both men were forced to flee
to avoid prosecution. Johannes first joined the Prussian Army, then
later moved to the Netherlands before eventually emigrating to the
(04:43):
United States in eighteen forty seven. On arrival at the
port of New York, Johannes Henricus gave a different name.
He henceforth became known as Henry Wickenberg. The word on
the lips of almost every inmate fagrant was the discovery
of gold in California, and so, with little else but
(05:05):
wild ambition, the newly christened Wickenberg traveled west to San Francisco.
Just under twenty years later, a small group of men
are on horseback, steadily making their way through the desert
scrub of what was soon to become known as Arizona.
They have come looking for gold. The team was assembled
(05:29):
by ambitious prospector Abraham Peoples, and at its head is
famed trapper and frontiersman Pauline Weaver. Not only was Weaver
the best guide in the business, but being half Cherokee,
he was also an invaluable diplomat when it came to
navigating the local Native American communities. As the sun baked
(05:52):
down on their backs, the men stopped to make camp
by a creek not far from the Hasseampa River. Those
stories differ, as they tend to do wherever ambitious men
and gold are concerned. Most agreed that at some point
a horse loosened its ties and wandered off up and
near by hill. When one of People's assistants, a man
(06:16):
from Mexico, went to find it, he noticed something catching
the light in the dusty ground. Bending down to inspect it,
he realized he was looking at a large nugget of gold.
Though the Mexican man's name has been lost to time,
Weaver and People would go down in history as the
first men to discover gold in the region, and so
(06:39):
began the Great Arizona Gold Rush. Among the swarm of
prospectors who quickly flocked to the region to seek their
own fortune was none other than Henry Wickenburg. There are
(07:04):
numerous stories about the day Henry Wickenburg discovered gold. The
most believable account says that sometime in eighteen sixty three,
while out prospecting, he simply noticed a prominent white portz
vein projecting out of a hillside that turned out to
be a significant all bearing load. Another is that Wickenburg
(07:27):
adventured too far out into the wilderness and run out
of food. Close to starving, with carrion feeding birds circling overhead,
he noticed the shiny black feathers of a vulture carcass
lying a little further away. When he headed over to
inspect it, he was gripped by a sudden sense of fate,
(07:48):
as though the vulture was some kind of sign. Lifting
it up, he saw gold flecks glinting in the sunlight
underneath it. However, it happened Henry Winkemberg did find gold.
Sensing that he might be on to something big, he
and the two men he discovered it with immediately made
(08:11):
the sixty mile trek to the town of Prescott, soon
to become the territorial capital of Arizona. There they filed
an initial prospector's claim. The two partners then left the area,
but Wickenberg returned the following year with more men. Finding
the promising quart seem was still untouched, he began digging
(08:33):
what he later named Vulture Mine as the men began
to excavate the rock, following the vane of quartz into
the hillside. The hard white seam proved to be a
rich gold bearing load. When Wickenberg's initial partners came back
for their cut, Wickenburg successfully screwed them out of the deal,
(08:56):
and the court granted him permission to continue with the
responsibility for the mine. Mining The ore was backbreaking work.
Once it was hacked out of the unforgivingly tough bedrock,
it had to be hauled twelve miles down to the
Hasseampa River. There, the revolving system of boulders powered by
(09:18):
mules crushed the ore into a fine powder. Then water
was added to create a slurry from which the gold
was extracted. Wickenburg soon realized that he could avoid the
hard work of mining himself by selling leases to other miners.
They paid him fifteen dollars per wagonload of ore, and
(09:38):
he very quickly became a wealthy man. He eventually settled
in the Hassiampa River valley, about twelve miles from the mine,
where in eighteen sixty five a new settlement sprang up.
They named it Wickenburg. Wickenberg himself went on to hold
numerous important positions, including postmaster, judge, and justice of the peace.
(10:04):
But all was not smooth sailing with Vulture Mine. Not
least was the existential challenge of survival. The area had
long been home to the Yavapaie Native Americans, who early
settlers had misidentified as Apache. For many years, the Hassayamba
River was the life blood of the Yavapaie, who grew
(10:26):
seasonal crops on the river's floodplain. As the incoming settlers
arbitrarily asserted ownership over the land the Yavapies had occupied
for centuries, they reached havoc on the community's food gathering
and seasonal agriculture. But such as the nature of ownership
of land, it's never truly owned by anyone. It belonged
(10:50):
simply to whoever's left. When the fighting stops, a normally
peaceful people, the Avapie, became desperate and had no choice
but to fight to continue their way of life. But
keeping them away was essential to the success of Wickenberg's
Mine and its profits. Backed by the modern military might
(11:11):
of the United States and a religious seal that insisted
the earth was theirs to fill and subdue, it was
a fight the Yavapie was never going to win thousands.
Many women and children would die before they were finally
forced to accept defeat. For the most part, Vulture Mine
(11:40):
was a roaring success. But in eighteen sixty six, perhaps
believing that the mine's gold bearing load would soon be exhausted,
Henry Wickenberg decided to sell his eighty percent share for
eighty five thousand dollars, just over a million and a
half in to day's money. It was bought by a
group of investors represented by Benjamin Phelps, a co founder
(12:05):
of the mining company Phelps Dodge that still exists today.
Wickenberg was given twenty thousand dollars and a promissory note
for the remaining sum of sixty five thousand, but no
sooner had the deal been completed, the new owner disputed it.
He claimed that Wickenburg did not have clean title to
(12:25):
the property because the other two founding owners were not listed,
and so Phelps refused to pay the outstanding amount. You
might say that Wickenburg got a taste of his own medicine,
and it was an exceedingly bitter one extremely aggrieved. It
said that Wickenburg spent what money he had received from
(12:47):
Phelps on lawyer's fees in a failed attempt to get
him to honor the original agreement. To add insult to injury,
the Vulture Mine continued to produce gold with a seemingly
endless bounty. In eighteen eighty, after a pipeline was built
bringing water to the mine, a town began to develop,
(13:09):
including general stores, saloons, boarding houses, rudimentary restaurants, and even
a school. At its peak, Vulture City was home to
five thousand residents. Stamping mills were erected north of the
mine to crush the ore more effectively. Operating up to
twenty four hours a day, they created a hellish din
(13:33):
which shook the ground. They could be heard and felt
from miles away, and covered everything around them in a
fine layer of dust. Running on steam, they also required
vast quantities of wood, so the surrounding Sonoran Desert was
stripped of its abundant ironwood trees to feed them. Meanwhile,
(13:56):
the fortunes of Vulture Mine began to fluctuate wild As
miners tunneled ever deeper into the parent rocks of the mine,
the rich gold bearing load became fickle. The area was
crossed by geological faults, meaning that every now and again
the mother load would suddenly disappear abruptly. Miners would then
(14:20):
have to spend backbreaking hours and days excavating to find
out where the load reappeared. At least one miner was
killed in a cave in as a result. In eighteen
eighty eight, a wagon of supplies, including almost two thousand
pounds of dynamite, got stuck in the mud a few
miles from Wickenberg. As the explosive cargo was unloaded from
(14:45):
the wagon, a miner saw a coyote sniffing at the
boxes and took a shot at it. His shot missed
and struck the dynamite, instead, blowing it up spectacularly, and
some began to wonder if Vulture Mine was cursed. In
(15:09):
the early hours of February twenty second, eighteen ninety, heavy
rains pummeled Vulture City and the surrounding area just upstream
of Wickenburg. Nine years before, a dam had been built
to divert water for mining operations. As the rain continued
to lash down, the pressure against the dam began to
(15:32):
steadily increase. Then it began to crack. When water was
spotted spouting out of it. One man was quickly dispatched
to warn the people of Wickenburg of an impending disaster,
but the man decided to grab a drink on the
way down. One drink became two and three. He never
(15:53):
made it to Wickenburg. Finally, the dam burst, sending a
one hundred foot wall of water cascading down the river
and straight into the town. Between seventy and one hundred
and fifty people were estimated to have been killed by
the flood. Henry Wickenberg survived, but his farm, as well
(16:15):
as other farming property along the river, was destroyed, and
the rich topsoil that sustained the town's agriculture was scoured away.
In time, the town recovered, but Wickenberg had long since
become a shadow of his former self, no doubt haunted
by the unrecovered loss on his sale of the mine
(16:37):
and the devastation of the flood. In nineteen o five,
he was discovered behind his house with a single gunshot
wound to the back of his head and its gun
close to hand. It isn't known if he regretted ever
having found his gold in the first place, or indeed
saw the lorax before deciding to put an end to
(17:00):
his life. In the years that followed, the fortunes of
Vulture Mine continued to fluctuate. There was the nineteen twenty
three collapse that was said to have killed seven miners.
It's claimed that some of the mine's employees had been
working off the clock for personal gain, chipping away secretly
(17:22):
at high grade or pockets, secreting what they mined and
smuggling it out. Gold can do that to you. It
seems that too many men had chipped too often. At
one of the mine's main supporting columns, the roof fell in,
bringing one hundred feet of rock crashing down on top
(17:43):
of them. The mine struggled on for a few more
years until it was eventually closed by the federal government
to conserve resources for the US military during the Second
World War. Over time, people packed up and left, leaving
Vulture City to steadily rust and decay in the hot,
(18:04):
arid air. In nineteen seventy, the mine and the town's
remains were bought and loosely kept as an open museum,
paving the way for its current owners, Robin Moriarty and
Rob Pratt, to take it on as a more formal venture.
Since twenty thirteen, they have run tours through the vacant
(18:25):
city and surrounding areas, and ever since then, strange things
began to happen. There had been whispers for some time
that something weird was going on in Vulture City. On
(18:49):
one occasion, having heard rumors that the place was haunted,
her tour group attempted to communicate with spirits in one
of the old bunk houses. Room contained several large tables,
all coated in a thick layer of dust. As the
story goes, the group stood around one of the tables
(19:10):
as they invited the spirits to show themselves, when prince
suddenly began to appear on the table's dusty surface. They
were apparently impressions of hands and arms all the way
from the fingertips to the elbows. They were said by
some to look very similar to rock art representations of
(19:30):
yeah Itzo, the Big Giant, one of the most terrifying
and powerful entities of the Native American in air culture.
Others have sensed more rudimentary spirits echoes of the town's
dark past. Some claimed to have experienced more than a
little shiver down the spine as they passed the one
(19:53):
single ironwood tree that remains in the town, located just
next door to Henry Winkemberg's cabin. It was from this
tree that around eighteen men are said to have been
hanged for the crime of high grading, stealing the best
oree from the mine to self a personal profit. A
(20:13):
nineteen year old Juan Ramos was also hung there, but
his crime was a little more unsavory. It said that
sometime in the late nineteenth century, Ramos grabbed fifteen year
old Sabrina Lasso, then raped and murdered her behind one
of the mining buildings. When some of the townsfolk found out,
(20:35):
they quickly caught the young man and beat him senseless.
After reportedly being shot in the shoulder, Ramos was dragged
to the ironwood tree and strung up. Some believe the
town is also haunted by the ghost of a woman
who was allegedly murdered by her husband in the nineteen nineties.
(20:55):
The woman's body was apparently thrown down at one hundred
and seventy foot deep mine shaft known as the Nicole
Rays and then as Izzy. Izzy is said to be
the spirit of a little girl whose presence many claimed
to have sensed at Vulture City. It's said that Izzy
(21:15):
is very enamored of a vintage doll that was brought
to Vulture City a few years ago. Only one foot tall,
the doll is dressed in period clothing with an eerie
porcelain face. Anyone that goes near it is advised not
to get too close or else risk the jealous wrath
(21:36):
of Izzy. It was sometime in twenty twenty one that
Damien Harris returned to Vulture City for the first time,
having survived its COVID infection. He hadn't thought much about
his peculiar out of body experience until around a year
or so later, when he was guiding a visitor around
(21:57):
the Old Town. When they arrived at the old boarding
House and entered its front room, the same place that
Damien had seen in his strange fever dream, the visitor
stopped suddenly, seemingly gripped by a sudden sense of doom.
When Damien asked what the matter was, the woman apparently replied,
(22:19):
I sent something horrible right in the middle of this room.
It's like some sort of portal. But you know that already,
don't you, she told him. On hearing the woman's remark,
Damien's jaw dropped, and the memories came flooding back. How
(22:43):
he'd found himself in the exact same spot, staring at
the strange black mass that had emerged in the middle
of the room. Back then, he'd felt it drawing him in,
but he resisted getting any closer, fearing that the portal
was an invitation for him to decide whether he wanted
to live or die. Beyond the portal, he believed was death.
(23:07):
How on earth had the woman known that he'd seen
all that in his dream? He wandered, But there was
more that she didn't seem to pick up on, because
that wasn't the only portal Damien saw that day in
the hospital. Having seen the first portal, he became aware
of something else in one of the back rooms of
(23:27):
the same building. He had the instinctive awareness that there
was another portal there too that led to a much,
much darker place, as he put it. The woman on
the tour that day considered herself a psychic and told
Damien that he must have somehow astrady projected himself to
Vulture City when he was sick. Though Damien didn't know
(23:50):
what to make of it himself, He later showed other
self described psychics around the building, who also seemed to
pick up on the ominous energy in the back room,
each claimed to be too scared to go near it,
believing that whatever was in there was just too dark.
Damien Harris has also said that not infrequently during the
(24:14):
tours he gives, a woman in the group will suddenly
double over in pain, saying that they feel like they've
just been punched in the stomach by an invisible hand.
For his money, Harris believes the source of the ominous
energy is an angry male presence, possibly that of one Ramos,
the man said to have raped and murdered Sabrina Lasso.
(24:39):
While Vulture City enjoys its revival of sorts incredibly, operations
at Vulture Mine are continuing helt by recent increases in
the price of gold. It's estimated that the mine has
produced around three hundred and forty thousand ounces of gold
over its checkered lifetime. At the current gold price of
(25:02):
approximately twenty nine thousand U S dollars per ounce, that
amounts to a modern day value of almost one billion dollars. Thankfully,
for his sake, Henry Winkeenberg isn't around to hear this.
And let the bitterness of everything he missed out on
continue to gnaw away at its soul. Or is he
(25:25):
is it his life chrish soul that refuses to let
Vulture City go? Or is it something else entirely that
stalks the town, something that had always been there in
one way or another, ever since the first flex of
gold was spotted in its dusty ground, A dark abstract thing,
(25:46):
a weight perhaps that seems to draw us in, calling
to us like the one ring to Smiegel, the kind
of dark thing that leads people to grow wild eyes,
shed blood, betray brothers, and decimate the land simply because
there are fortunes to be made. Perhaps it's something of
(26:10):
this that still lingers on, like an ink marked too
deep under the skin to ever truly be erased. After all,
they do say that money is the root of all evil,
and everything comes at a price. This episode was written
(26:35):
by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Diane is an
audio producer and sound recordeded in her own right. You
can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot
com and on Instagram at In the sound Field Unexplained
as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.
(26:57):
All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are
also produced by me Richard McClean smith. Unexplained. The book
and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can
purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.
Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get
(27:18):
your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with
any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on
the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own
you'd like to share. You can find out more at
Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter
at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash,
(27:39):
Unexplained Podcasts.
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