The Haunted Opera House in the Desert

You and your Google Maps. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edward, I'm Michelle. We're gonna go down to the Death Valley Junction in Nevada. There's a place called the Amerigoza Opera House and Hotel. Because I think Zach Begans went to this place too. It did go. I see it here on Yeah, on my notes, he did go. Anyway, Okay, so it's in California. But anyway, this place was visited by the Ghost Adventures crew. And this place is actually still working, like it's still in operation and it has it was constructed like over one hundred years ago. We'll pick up the story here by meeting this woman. Her name is Martha Beckett. So she was this actress, ballet dancer, artist, and a mime from New York City. Yeah, you have to stack your talents when you're creative. Got to make sure you tick all the boxes. And she can mine. Chasing some of those talents eventually led her to She ended up on Showboat and dancing at Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway in New York City, and she got married in nineteen sixty two and started touring the country, and for years she was traveling and performing, attending some type of event all the time. But it was in nineteen sixty seven when her and her husband actually they took a vacation by camping in Death Valley, California, and by pure chance, their trailer got a flat tire and they were directed to the town of Death Valley Junction in order to repair it. Kind of sounds like a hills have Eyes type of thing here, it really does. Yeah, just go on into town. They'll take care of you there. But then she started exploring and fell in love with the place, with this old theater that was there, and she wanted it and she felt this like connection that only in artists can feel the place, so she followed it. You see, she had a dream. She wanted to design her own clothes, make her own dances, start a show on her own, like that's what she wanted to do. So like her husband was like, cool, all right, this is fi I mean it was probably like fifty thousand bucks at the time, so which would have been, you know, a five hundred dollars dollar down payment, although at the time that was probably a lot of money, so maybe it was more like twenty five thousand dollars and then you know in today's money that's one point two million. That's that's how that's how it works. Yeah, but yeah, like the husband ended up finding the town manager. He's like, hey, please, anyway, for forty five dollars a month, they got this place. Okay, I'll take it, and however, they would be in charge of the repairs, and so they started. She changed the name to the Armorgoza Opera House. Is it Oprah? I think it's armor. I don't think it's Oprah. I don't think it's Oprah. It's worth mentioning though. Around this time, Death Valley Junction had been renamed Amargosa for the second time, but back then it had changed from Amergoza to something else, then to Omergoes again and whatever. So that's why it was called that, which means bitter water. Really it just means bitter but I guess bitter water was I don't know who added that, but anyway, the post office came. Yeah, it was just like a whole thing. They ended up changing it into Death Valley Junction because of the post office, just because it just makes sense. But think about naming your town bitter. That's true, it's weird, it's it's not exactly the most welcoming name you've ever heard in your life. Yeah, you know, in Cusco, I just remember it. In Peru, there's like right around where I was staying at this empty hotel. It was really nice, but it was empty all the time. It was cool. I got some videos. Anyway, there were these streets that were called like a ta'oud and basically like things like coffin, things like, oh, like maybe that had something to do with like maybe the funeral homes around there or something like that. Yeah, and actually that Yeah, that's how it used to be back in the day, where like you would name a street off of what's popular there, like what you would sell there. Like if it's a street where like all the meat the butchers are, they would call it that or whatever meat street, meat street. No, now that would mean something else, but yeah, oh man. Anyway, so over all this like city stuff. About a year after she got the place, she gave her first performance in nineteen sixty eight, a dozen adults came to watch her. Okay, that's not a great those aren't great numbers. I mean you're in the middle of Like, I mean, you would be very important to those people, though, Like you'd be like the star of the century to those people in that town. You know what I mean. Yeah, I guess, I mean I just took kind of advert like a dozen adults. Okay. Anyway, she didn't give up, though, and she kept performing. She painted, you know, people on the walls to give the wholesome life painting people. Anyway, she painted the ceilings, decorated everything, and by nineteen seventy four it was done. So she took a while. The whole thing started to take shape and more people were arriving. They added a hotel, a cafe, other buildings in Death Valley junctions started getting fixed up. Eventually it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Great, yeah, that's I mean, that's an accomplishment. Just yeah, I mean, she like built it in they came, you know, yeah, but among all that stuff, right, all the success. Okay, you're excited about your place. It also had ghost stories, and they say that some of the rooms and the amer goes a hotel are reported to be haunted, like Room twenty four, where guests often report hearing the haunting cries of a baby at night, even while there are no families with babies on the premises. Strangely, though, they say that there was a young girl that actually died in the bathtub in that room in nineteen sixty seven. So yeah, in room nine, it said. They say that it's one of the most haunted rooms in the whole place, and they say that while people are sleeping, guests have reported that something like an unseen force holds their legs and feet down. Youw I hate that. I mean, at least they hold it down and like you don't lift it up, Like fuck, wake up when your feet are pointed at the ceiling. I did have I did have a nightmare recently where I thought, I don't know, it was like it was like my house was like an Airbnb or something like that, and like I I saw and like someone had walked in thinking that they had rented it, but I had rented it and I was already sleeping in the bed. And then yeah, and then someone followed that person in and grabbed them by the neck. And then I was like, oh good, They're like getting rid of this person. But then they were in the dream they were reaching down to grab me by the neck. And then I woke up kicking kicking directly at like that, like full on kick, like off the mad. I like full body woke myself up kicking the I mean just full because I was just like ready to you know, defend myself. Well that's good, I mean that's your reaction, that's awesome. Yeah, but it was still just like when I woke up, I was like I started laughing because oh my god, like just happy that no one saw it, you know what I mean, be freaking out. I would be freaking out. What the heck? What what would it trigger something like that? Though, Like I don't know, man, but I like generally thrash a lot in my sleep, so it's not like it's not unheard of. But this was just like, yeah, like this was like a clear a weird movement to wake myself up with. That's all super weird. So also in the late evening, while people are getting ready for bed, some guests begin to hear the sounds of a doorknob turning like somebody's trying to get inside, like ugh ugh, like just you know, rattling, And they walk up to the door and they open it. They find that there is no one there, but there is a theory about it. They say that the ghost of a child can be heard running and laughing up and down the hall. Perhaps that's who tries to open the door. Ew ew Yeah, they give me for some reason. Room thirty two has the darkest story though, and this one it's creepy. When guests stay in the room, they report feeling a strange sense of uneasiness, They get chills, they feel sudden loss of energy, and they don't know why. I get that. But then I tried vitamin D and it worked. Ron will also work too iron. Yeah, you get yourself. Yeah, seriously, though, you could you could tell like, yeah, like, once you get to that age, you have to go get your What are you deficient in? Are you eating too much? Geez? Are you how constipated are you this week? What supplements do you need to take? Yeah? Like are you farting too much recently? Are you having too much carb content? Oh? Yeah, it could be any You gotta pay attention to your supplements. Yeah, message from scary mystery surprise We care anyway. It turns out that in that room, Room thirty two was a home to a mining boss and during the mining times. When times were good, there was lots of stealing and fighting among the miners and those who were making big profits. When people were we're going to be executed by hanging, they started taking them to this room. They would step inside and not come out alive. But wait, ye what Yeah, they would take them to that room to execute them. Yeah, to hang them. That's weird. Yeah. Wait what was this building? Was it the court room or no? I mean it just says like it was room thirty too something. I don't know if it was a room before. But you know, like if you're a mining boss, right, you're you own this, but you're like, I'm gonna kill you. So you bring a person, you hang them in your room. Like that's what's a big power move. I guess it's like the suits where you go and you stab someone to death and you're a mobster or something. That's how I imagined it when I first read. Yeah, sure, anyway, but there's lots of more. You know, there's lots of stuff in that place than just the rooms. One of the areas in the hotel, there is an area there's this place that was never renovated and it looks all worn down, and just creepy and I can just see it already. Look, I didn't look any pictures up. But anyway, this area is called the Spooky Hollow by the staff because it was once used as a hospital and a morgue. And things like noises on the walls, footsteps, shower or that turned on by themselves, childs that appear on the stage, some you know, noise that you hear in the middle of the night sometimes early in the morning. Are all things that are very common to hotels, but also you know, like haunted hotels, I guess, but common in this area. But just imagine though, being in the middle of this just vast desert the area and you hear all those things, like really, where are you going to go? It's true, you're just kind of screwed, you're haunted. But anyway, that place, like you said earlier, was investigated by a bunch of paranormal group that not just Ghost Adventures, and they have caught a few things. So if you want to see that episode, find it. I don't know which one it is, but because I haven't seen it, but go find it, go find it, go watch it. Let me know how it is, Let me see Michelle, you know that I think I told you, like when we were recording the like our previous thing or randon Outica, I told you that I liked long drives, like really long ones, and because I think I liked them because I used to drive down the desert. Yeah, And there was a few times that actually I went to Vegas, like driving around and there, and the whole time I'm thinking, like, I see all these sides. I don't know if they're like I don't know if it was because I'm on the map I could see them or like was looking out for them, but they are all these towns that are ghost towns, like they're just empty places. Well, one of these times, I was with a couple of friends that I had met on CouchSurfing, and they said, hey, let's go to They wanted to go to Vegas and the Grand Canyon and see all these places, and we're like, sure, let's just go. We went for like a weekend, like we had one of those long weekends, and we ended up at this ghost town. I forgot the name of it. But it wasn't like just an empty built like an empty town like you would imagine. Anyway, So these towns aren't just like empty, like there's nothing there. They're actually tourists. Like places there's a caretaker you know, that lives in a trailer. They have electricity, they have I don't know how they get it. But we drove by, nobody came out, nobody came out to greet as somebody said anything. We're just driving. We've stopped the car. We try to get out, like open the cars, but then we just got this creepy feeling like we shouldn't be here. This is weird, like this is really weird. So I kind of, you know, anyway, I learned to watch out for that, but it was really creepy, and like, I think the bigger danger for me was like we're probably gonna get shot here or something's gonna happen, you know. I'm more scared of people, like, you know, running into a weird hic out in the the desert is way weirder, like a proper desert rat is can be pretty scary sometimes, yeah, And I can imagine though, like back in the day, in the nineteen sixties, nineteen seventies, Like, I mean, I don't think it was any better. I think, if anything, you you're less connected. There's big time, and people that move out there want to live out there. They want to be alone. They want to collect the rusty cars on their property, you know, like they want There's a certain person that moves out there because it's not easy to live out there. So you just, you know, give them their space. You just kind of give them their space, that's all. Yeah, And that's why I figured, like this this person, Martha, It's like, why why they're like, you know, you're you're used to Broadway, You're you've done things. The desert has is like seductive in a way though, I mean, but it is like committing to a very hard way of life, so seductive, it is seductive. It's like, I don't know, the nights there are so nice, like you know that the mornings are nice. Sucks, the day sucks terribly, but the rest of it magical. Yeah, I mean, I like the desert too, but it's like it just seems such a like you just be lonely there, like you're just so much space, you know around you, Like here, I don't get to see the horizon, and I'm okay with that for now. I see like houses and trees, you know, but anyway, what wonder what what our listeners have to say here? Do you like the desert? Let us know, would you live out there? I mean I think I would if I could buy a house. But also I like being around things, you know, like stuff that's going on, So I like being around stores. What are you talking about? There's like a Walmart and then another super Walmart like across the street. A lot of the time out there, so I mean, we're not it's not always picturesque. There's a lot of sprawl. There's a lot of Amazon distribution centers out there now. So what are we going to talk about next week? Michelle, I don't know, but I think it'll be a surprise. Yeah, okay, cool,