 Cover | |
| Author | Ben Radford |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Joshua Hoffine |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Paranormal investigation |
| Publisher | University of New Mexico Press |
Publication date | 2014 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 300 |
| ISBN | 978-0-8263-5450-1 |
Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment is a 2014 collection of thirteen investigations conducted by author Ben Radford into cases involving claims of the paranormal occurring in or with significant connections to New Mexico.
This book describes the author's use of scientific techniques to investigate thirteen cases of purported paranormal phenomena. [1] [2] Interviews were conducted with people connected to the events and places involved in the legends surrounding the KiMo Theater, [3] El Santuario de Chimayo, [4] the crystal skull found in the San Luis Valley, [5] and the hot springs of Ojo Caliente. [6] The case of the West Mesa murders is the backdrop for a series of interviews with psychic detectives who claim the ability to help police solve such crimes. [7] Other cases required more literary and historical research, such as the Aztec UFO Crash, [8] The Loretto Chapel's Staircase, [9] reports of sightings of the legendary Thunderbirds, [10] the apparition known as La Llorona, [11] and Santa Fe's La Posada Hotel. [12] The basic elements of the story of La Llorona, a legend usually associated with the Hispanic culture, for example, are traced back to a German folktale from 1486. [2] [ unreliable source? ] [13] Practical experiments were required for a third group, including determining the origin of The Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost, [14] [15] [16] the reports of hauntings at the Old Cuchillo Bar, [17] [18] [19] and an investigation into the power of labyrinths. [20] The author also places the stories in their cultural context and points out the commonalities shared by the folklore and legends of the supernatural across cultures. [21] [22] Radford characterizes the work done for this book as "taking the claims seriously and offering serious investigation." [23]
Two of the investigations recounted in this book received press coverage before its publication. The Albuquerque Journal covered Radford's investigation of the KiMo Theater in 2009. [24] Both television station KRQE and USA Today reported on Radford's experiments to identify the cause of the images widely known as the Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost in 2007. [14] [15]
In an article for the "Pasatiempo" section of the Santa Fe New Mexican, Robert Nott interviewed Radford about his investigative methods and the psychology behind belief in supernatural phenomena. Regarding the book, Nott wrote, "Using both forensic techniques and journalistic inquiry, Radford makes a pretty good case that La Posada de Santa Fe is not haunted by the ghost of Julia Staab, that a little spirit boy named Bobby does not haunt Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre, that the Miraculous Staircase in Loretto Chapel isn’t that miraculous, and that La Llorona is nothing more than a rural legend." [25]
A reviewer for the Cibola Beacon was impressed with the author's scholarly research, citing the "17 references in the 21 pages devoted to the worldwide phenomenon known as 'La Llorona,'" a "five-page index," and, "copious references at the end of each chapter." [26]
Skeptical writer and podcast host Susan Gerbic wrote, "You can almost see how he is thinking this through, how best to investigate it. Where are the actual claims that can be tested, researched? Then once he has done that he leads us through the investigative process." [27] She later added, "the importance of original research—going back to the first source [as Radford does] and not relying on secondhand (and more likely fifthhand) stories—cannot be stressed strongly enough." [28]
In October 2014, Lesley Anderson of Fast Company wrote an article profiling both the author and his investigative techniques in the case of the Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost. [1]
Kewa Pueblo is a federally-recognized tribe of Native American Pueblo people in northern New Mexico, in Sandoval County southwest of Santa Fe. The pueblo is recorded as the Santo Domingo Pueblo census-designated place by the U.S. Census Bureau, with a population of 2,456 at the 2010 census.
La Llorona is a vengeful ghost in Latin American folklore who is said to roam near bodies of water mourning her children whom she drowned in a jealous rage after discovering her husband was cheating on her.
Rudolfo Anaya was an American author. Noted for his 1972 novel Bless Me, Ultima, Anaya was considered one of the founders of the canon of contemporary Chicano and New Mexican literature. The themes and cultural references of the novel, which were uncommon at the time of its publication, had a lasting impression on fellow Latino writers. It was subsequently adapted into a film and an opera.
The KiMo Theatre is a theatre and historic landmark located in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the northeast corner of Central Avenue and Fifth Street. It was built in 1927 in the extravagant Pueblo Deco architecture, which is a blend of adobe-style Pueblo Revival architecture building styles, decorative motifs from indigenous cultures, and the soaring lines and linear repetition found in American Art Deco architecture.
The Loretto Chapel is a former Roman Catholic church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States, that is now used as a museum and a wedding chapel.
El Santuario de Chimayó is a Roman Catholic church in Chimayo, New Mexico, United States. This shrine, a National Historic Landmark, is famous for the story of its founding and as a contemporary pilgrimage site. It receives almost 300,000 visitors per year and has been called "no doubt the most important Catholic pilgrimage center in the United States."
The Penitentiary of New Mexico (PNM) is a men's maximum-security prison located in unincorporated Santa Fe County, 15 miles (24 km) south of central Santa Fe, on New Mexico State Road 14. It is operated by the New Mexico Corrections Department.
Manuel Armijo was a New Mexican soldier and statesman who served three times as governor of New Mexico. He was instrumental in putting down the Revolt of 1837, he led the force that captured the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, and he later surrendered to the United States in the Mexican–American War, leading to the Capture of Santa Fe.
Benjamin Radford is an American writer, investigator, and skeptic. He has authored, coauthored or contributed to over twenty books and written over a thousand articles and columns on a wide variety of topics including urban legends, unexplained mysteries, the paranormal, critical thinking, mass hysteria, and media literacy. His book, Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment, was published in the summer of 2014 and is a scientific investigation of famous legends and folklore in the state of New Mexico. In 2016 Radford published Bad Clowns, a 2017 IPPY bronze award winner, and he is regarded as an expert on the bad clowns phenomenon.
John Gaw Meem IV was an American architect based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is best known for his instrumental role in the development and popularization of the Pueblo Revival Style and as a proponent of architectural Regionalism in the face of international modernism. Meem is regarded as one of the most important and influential architects to have worked in New Mexico.
The Pueblo Revival style or Santa Fe style is a regional architectural style of the Southwestern United States, which draws its inspiration from Santa Fe de Nuevo México's traditional Pueblo architecture, the Spanish missions, and Territorial Style. The style developed at the beginning of the 20th century and reached its greatest popularity in the 1920s and 1930s, though it is still commonly used for new buildings. Pueblo style architecture is most prevalent in the state of New Mexico; it is often blended with Territorial Revival architecture.
Douglas Kent Hall was an American writer and photographer. Hall was a fine art photographer and writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and screenplays. His first published photographs were of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, and his first exhibition of photographs was at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
The Santa Fe courthouse ghost event was a purported ghost sighted on a video captured by a security camera at a courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 15, 2007. Once the video was uploaded onto YouTube it quickly attracted widespread attention and many improbable suggestions as to its origin. Benjamin Radford, a managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer investigated the sighting and concluded that the origin of the ghost was a bug crawling across the camera lens.
Craig Varjabedian is a fine-art photographer who explores the back roads of the American West, making pictures of the unique and quintessential. He shares stories of the land and the people who live on it, one photograph at a time. Moving from Canada to the United States in 1970, he currently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Rayado or Reyado was the first permanent settlement in Colfax County, New Mexico, United States and an important stop on the Santa Fe Trail. The name Rayado derives from the Spanish term for "streaked", perhaps in reference to the lot lines marked out by Lucien Maxwell.
The Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology. Beginning in the 1970s, some ufologists resurrected the story in books claiming the purported crash was real. In 2013, an FBI memo claimed by some ufologists to substantiate the crash story was dismissed by the bureau as "a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated".
Nutt is an unincorporated community in Luna County, southern New Mexico, in the American Southwest. It is located nineteen miles southwest of Hatch on NM 26 at the intersection with NM 27.
Bernadette Vigil is an American artist and illustrator whose work has been exhibited in museums and galleries nationally and abroad. She has produced permanent public artworks in the form of fresco murals for the cities of Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico. She has been commissioned to create religious frescoes in churches in New Mexico, and has been called a "master of the art of buon fresco" in the Santos Tradition. She has authored a book on Toltec spirituality, Mastery of Awareness: Living the Agreements. In 2002 it was published in Spanish as El Dominio de la Conciencia, and in 2005 it was published in German as Das Geheimnis der vier Versprechen.
While the classic image of La Llorona was likely taken from an Aztec goddess named Cihuacoatl, the narrative of her legend has other origins. As Bacil Kirtley (1960) wrote in Western Folklore, "During the same decade that La Llorona was first mentioned in Mexico, a story, seemingly already quite old, of 'Die Weisse Frau' ('The White Lady')—which reproduces many of the features consistently recurring in the more developed versions of 'La Llorona,' was recorded in Germany"; references to "Die Weisse Frau" date back as early as 1486. The story of the White Lady follows a virtually identical plot to the classical La Llorona story.