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Speaker 1: Damien Harris lay in isolation in the hospital's emergency room,

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Speaker 1: waiting for a bed in a ward to become available.

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Speaker 1: He passed in and out of consciousness as the sounds

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Speaker 1: of the er swirled around his head. Images emerged then

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Speaker 1: disappeared in his mind's eye. Some were familiar, some strange

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Speaker 1: and unclear. There was cacti and brittlebush, dusty ground and

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Speaker 1: deep blue sky, rugged ridges of desert scrub stretching off

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Speaker 1: for miles, a bright sun baking down from above. One

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Speaker 1: by one, the images came and went, then finally something

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00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:59,480
Speaker 1: else began to take shape. It was twenty twenty and

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Speaker 1: the COVID pandemic was at its peak. Damien, who was

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Speaker 1: sick with the virus, was fighting for his life. As

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Speaker 1: he dropped finally into a sustained unconsciousness, the desert images

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Speaker 1: returned and buildings began to spring up all around him.

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Speaker 1: He suddenly found himself standing at the entrance to a

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Speaker 1: building that he recognized immediately far out in the sun

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Speaker 1: baked wilderness of the Arizona Desert, where the mountains burn

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Speaker 1: red at dusk and the wind whispers through crumbling ruins sits.

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Speaker 1: What remains of vulture City. Vulture City was established in

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Speaker 1: the mid nineteenth century around the Vulture Mine during the

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Speaker 1: Arizona Gold Rush. Though the last of its residents left

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Speaker 1: many years before, it continues to exist today as a

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Speaker 1: kind of living museum, where visitors are invited to tour

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Speaker 1: its many restored buildings and soak up the atmosphere of

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Speaker 1: this once bustling frontier town. Damien first set eyes on

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Speaker 1: it while out on a motorbike ride in two thousand

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Speaker 1: and eight, and immediately fell in love with the place

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Speaker 1: and its history, so much so that in mid twenty

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Speaker 1: nineteen he began volunteering there as a tour guide. That building,

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Speaker 1: Damien found himself standing in front of, deep in his

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Speaker 1: subconscious was a boarding house that also doubled up as

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Speaker 1: the town brothel. As his body tossed and turned on

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Speaker 1: the gurney in his strange dream, he found himself moving

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Speaker 1: inside the boarding house and on into its living room.

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Speaker 1: Something seemed to be emerging in the middle of it.

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Speaker 1: Damien had the absolute conviction that he was staring at

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Speaker 1: some kind of portal. It seemed to be calling to him,

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Speaker 1: willing him to come closer and closer. You're listening to unexplained,

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Speaker 1: and I'm Richard mc lean smith. Hemry Wickenburg shielded his

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Speaker 1: eyes from the sun and scanned the desert spread before him.

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Speaker 1: The vista of a dry landscape dotted with ragged rocky

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Speaker 1: peaks and giants aguaro cactus couldn't have been more different

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Speaker 1: from the land he'd left behind. Born in eighteen nineteen

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Speaker 1: in Essen Holsterhausen, Wickenburg spent his early years in what

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Speaker 1: was then Prussia in Central Europe, though back then he

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Speaker 1: was known as Johannes Henricus. Much of the region was

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Speaker 1: covered in swedes of forest, long meandering rivers, and tranquil lakes,

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Speaker 1: but it was also an industrial powerhouse. Emricus's hometown was

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Speaker 1: pock marked with slag heaps and the spindly winding towers

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Speaker 1: of coal mines. The nearby zol Wolverin mine would go

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Speaker 1: on to become the largest coal mine in the world.

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Speaker 1: Mining was in the Hemricus family blood. Sometime in the

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Speaker 1: eighteen forties, Johannes and his brother began extracting coal on

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Speaker 1: the family's land. Some said was an illegal operation, others

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Speaker 1: that since the family owned the land, it was theirs

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Speaker 1: to mine, and that the mineral rights were unfairly seized

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Speaker 1: by the government. Either way, the property was raided by

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Speaker 1: the local authorities, and both men were forced to flee

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Speaker 1: to avoid prosecution. Johannes first joined the Prussian Army, then

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Speaker 1: later moved to the Netherlands before eventually emigrating to the

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Speaker 1: United States in eighteen forty seven. On arrival at the

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Speaker 1: port of New York, Johannes Henricus gave a different name.

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Speaker 1: He henceforth became known as Henry Wickenberg. The word on

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Speaker 1: the lips of almost every inmate fagrant was the discovery

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Speaker 1: of gold in California, and so, with little else but

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Speaker 1: wild ambition, the newly christened Wickenberg traveled west to San Francisco.

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Speaker 1: Just under twenty years later, a small group of men

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Speaker 1: are on horseback, steadily making their way through the desert

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Speaker 1: scrub of what was soon to become known as Arizona.

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Speaker 1: They have come looking for gold. The team was assembled

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Speaker 1: by ambitious prospector Abraham Peoples, and at its head is

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Speaker 1: famed trapper and frontiersman Pauline Weaver. Not only was Weaver

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Speaker 1: the best guide in the business, but being half Cherokee,

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Speaker 1: he was also an invaluable diplomat when it came to

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Speaker 1: navigating the local Native American communities. As the sun baked

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Speaker 1: down on their backs, the men stopped to make camp

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Speaker 1: by a creek not far from the Hasseampa River. Those

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Speaker 1: stories differ, as they tend to do wherever ambitious men

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Speaker 1: and gold are concerned. Most agreed that at some point

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Speaker 1: a horse loosened its ties and wandered off up and

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Speaker 1: near by hill. When one of People's assistants, a man

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Speaker 1: from Mexico, went to find it, he noticed something catching

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Speaker 1: the light in the dusty ground. Bending down to inspect it,

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Speaker 1: he realized he was looking at a large nugget of gold.

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Speaker 1: Though the Mexican man's name has been lost to time,

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Speaker 1: Weaver and People would go down in history as the

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Speaker 1: first men to discover gold in the region, and so

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Speaker 1: began the Great Arizona Gold Rush. Among the swarm of

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Speaker 1: prospectors who quickly flocked to the region to seek their

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Speaker 1: own fortune was none other than Henry Wickenburg. There are

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Speaker 1: numerous stories about the day Henry Wickenburg discovered gold. The

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Speaker 1: most believable account says that sometime in eighteen sixty three,

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Speaker 1: while out prospecting, he simply noticed a prominent white portz

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Speaker 1: vein projecting out of a hillside that turned out to

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Speaker 1: be a significant all bearing load. Another is that Wickenburg

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Speaker 1: adventured too far out into the wilderness and run out

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Speaker 1: of food. Close to starving, with carrion feeding birds circling overhead,

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Speaker 1: he noticed the shiny black feathers of a vulture carcass

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Speaker 1: lying a little further away. When he headed over to

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Speaker 1: inspect it, he was gripped by a sudden sense of fate,

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Speaker 1: as though the vulture was some kind of sign. Lifting

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Speaker 1: it up, he saw gold flecks glinting in the sunlight

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Speaker 1: underneath it. However, it happened Henry Winkemberg did find gold.

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Speaker 1: Sensing that he might be on to something big, he

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Speaker 1: and the two men he discovered it with immediately made

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Speaker 1: the sixty mile trek to the town of Prescott, soon

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Speaker 1: to become the territorial capital of Arizona. There they filed

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Speaker 1: an initial prospector's claim. The two partners then left the area,

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Speaker 1: but Wickenberg returned the following year with more men. Finding

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Speaker 1: the promising quart seem was still untouched, he began digging

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Speaker 1: what he later named Vulture Mine as the men began

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Speaker 1: to excavate the rock, following the vane of quartz into

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Speaker 1: the hillside. The hard white seam proved to be a

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Speaker 1: rich gold bearing load. When Wickenberg's initial partners came back

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Speaker 1: for their cut, Wickenburg successfully screwed them out of the deal,

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Speaker 1: and the court granted him permission to continue with the

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Speaker 1: responsibility for the mine. Mining The ore was backbreaking work.

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Speaker 1: Once it was hacked out of the unforgivingly tough bedrock,

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Speaker 1: it had to be hauled twelve miles down to the

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Speaker 1: Hasseampa River. There, the revolving system of boulders powered by

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Speaker 1: mules crushed the ore into a fine powder. Then water

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Speaker 1: was added to create a slurry from which the gold

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Speaker 1: was extracted. Wickenburg soon realized that he could avoid the

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Speaker 1: hard work of mining himself by selling leases to other miners.

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Speaker 1: They paid him fifteen dollars per wagonload of ore, and

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Speaker 1: he very quickly became a wealthy man. He eventually settled

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Speaker 1: in the Hassiampa River valley, about twelve miles from the mine,

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Speaker 1: where in eighteen sixty five a new settlement sprang up.

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Speaker 1: They named it Wickenburg. Wickenberg himself went on to hold

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Speaker 1: numerous important positions, including postmaster, judge, and justice of the peace.

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Speaker 1: But all was not smooth sailing with Vulture Mine. Not

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Speaker 1: least was the existential challenge of survival. The area had

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Speaker 1: long been home to the Yavapaie Native Americans, who early

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Speaker 1: settlers had misidentified as Apache. For many years, the Hassayamba

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Speaker 1: River was the life blood of the Yavapaie, who grew

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Speaker 1: seasonal crops on the river's floodplain. As the incoming settlers

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Speaker 1: arbitrarily asserted ownership over the land the Yavapies had occupied

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Speaker 1: for centuries, they reached havoc on the community's food gathering

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Speaker 1: and seasonal agriculture. But such as the nature of ownership

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Speaker 1: of land, it's never truly owned by anyone. It belonged

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Speaker 1: simply to whoever's left. When the fighting stops, a normally

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Speaker 1: peaceful people, the Avapie, became desperate and had no choice

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Speaker 1: but to fight to continue their way of life. But

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Speaker 1: keeping them away was essential to the success of Wickenberg's

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Speaker 1: Mine and its profits. Backed by the modern military might

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Speaker 1: of the United States and a religious seal that insisted

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Speaker 1: the earth was theirs to fill and subdue, it was

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Speaker 1: a fight the Yavapie was never going to win thousands.

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Speaker 1: Many women and children would die before they were finally

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Speaker 1: forced to accept defeat. For the most part, Vulture Mine

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Speaker 1: was a roaring success. But in eighteen sixty six, perhaps

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Speaker 1: believing that the mine's gold bearing load would soon be exhausted,

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Speaker 1: Henry Wickenberg decided to sell his eighty percent share for

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Speaker 1: eighty five thousand dollars, just over a million and a

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Speaker 1: half in to day's money. It was bought by a

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Speaker 1: group of investors represented by Benjamin Phelps, a co founder

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Speaker 1: of the mining company Phelps Dodge that still exists today.

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Speaker 1: Wickenberg was given twenty thousand dollars and a promissory note

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Speaker 1: for the remaining sum of sixty five thousand, but no

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Speaker 1: sooner had the deal been completed, the new owner disputed it.

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Speaker 1: He claimed that Wickenburg did not have clean title to

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Speaker 1: the property because the other two founding owners were not listed,

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Speaker 1: and so Phelps refused to pay the outstanding amount. You

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Speaker 1: might say that Wickenburg got a taste of his own medicine,

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Speaker 1: and it was an exceedingly bitter one extremely aggrieved. It

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Speaker 1: said that Wickenburg spent what money he had received from

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Speaker 1: Phelps on lawyer's fees in a failed attempt to get

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Speaker 1: him to honor the original agreement. To add insult to injury,

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Speaker 1: the Vulture Mine continued to produce gold with a seemingly

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Speaker 1: endless bounty. In eighteen eighty, after a pipeline was built

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Speaker 1: bringing water to the mine, a town began to develop,

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Speaker 1: including general stores, saloons, boarding houses, rudimentary restaurants, and even

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Speaker 1: a school. At its peak, Vulture City was home to

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Speaker 1: five thousand residents. Stamping mills were erected north of the

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Speaker 1: mine to crush the ore more effectively. Operating up to

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Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, they created a hellish din

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Speaker 1: which shook the ground. They could be heard and felt

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Speaker 1: from miles away, and covered everything around them in a

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Speaker 1: fine layer of dust. Running on steam, they also required

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Speaker 1: vast quantities of wood, so the surrounding Sonoran Desert was

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Speaker 1: stripped of its abundant ironwood trees to feed them. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: the fortunes of Vulture Mine began to fluctuate wild As

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Speaker 1: miners tunneled ever deeper into the parent rocks of the mine,

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00:14:06,920 --> 00:14:11,520
Speaker 1: the rich gold bearing load became fickle. The area was

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Speaker 1: crossed by geological faults, meaning that every now and again

186
00:14:15,960 --> 00:14:20,680
Speaker 1: the mother load would suddenly disappear abruptly. Miners would then

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Speaker 1: have to spend backbreaking hours and days excavating to find

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00:14:25,120 --> 00:14:28,920
Speaker 1: out where the load reappeared. At least one miner was

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Speaker 1: killed in a cave in as a result. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighty eight, a wagon of supplies, including almost two thousand

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Speaker 1: pounds of dynamite, got stuck in the mud a few

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Speaker 1: miles from Wickenberg. As the explosive cargo was unloaded from

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Speaker 1: the wagon, a miner saw a coyote sniffing at the

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Speaker 1: boxes and took a shot at it. His shot missed

195
00:14:52,680 --> 00:14:58,080
Speaker 1: and struck the dynamite, instead, blowing it up spectacularly, and

196
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Speaker 1: some began to wonder if Vulture Mine was cursed. In

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Speaker 1: the early hours of February twenty second, eighteen ninety, heavy

198
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Speaker 1: rains pummeled Vulture City and the surrounding area just upstream

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Speaker 1: of Wickenburg. Nine years before, a dam had been built

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Speaker 1: to divert water for mining operations. As the rain continued

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Speaker 1: to lash down, the pressure against the dam began to

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Speaker 1: steadily increase. Then it began to crack. When water was

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Speaker 1: spotted spouting out of it. One man was quickly dispatched

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Speaker 1: to warn the people of Wickenburg of an impending disaster,

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Speaker 1: but the man decided to grab a drink on the

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00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:53,920
Speaker 1: way down. One drink became two and three. He never

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Speaker 1: made it to Wickenburg. Finally, the dam burst, sending a

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Speaker 1: one hundred foot wall of water cascading down the river

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Speaker 1: and straight into the town. Between seventy and one hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty people were estimated to have been killed by

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Speaker 1: the flood. Henry Wickenberg survived, but his farm, as well

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Speaker 1: as other farming property along the river, was destroyed, and

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Speaker 1: the rich topsoil that sustained the town's agriculture was scoured away.

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Speaker 1: In time, the town recovered, but Wickenberg had long since

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Speaker 1: become a shadow of his former self, no doubt haunted

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Speaker 1: by the unrecovered loss on his sale of the mine

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Speaker 1: and the devastation of the flood. In nineteen o five,

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Speaker 1: he was discovered behind his house with a single gunshot

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Speaker 1: wound to the back of his head and its gun

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Speaker 1: close to hand. It isn't known if he regretted ever

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Speaker 1: having found his gold in the first place, or indeed

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Speaker 1: saw the lorax before deciding to put an end to

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Speaker 1: his life. In the years that followed, the fortunes of

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Speaker 1: Vulture Mine continued to fluctuate. There was the nineteen twenty

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Speaker 1: three collapse that was said to have killed seven miners.

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Speaker 1: It's claimed that some of the mine's employees had been

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Speaker 1: working off the clock for personal gain, chipping away secretly

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Speaker 1: at high grade or pockets, secreting what they mined and

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Speaker 1: smuggling it out. Gold can do that to you. It

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Speaker 1: seems that too many men had chipped too often. At

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Speaker 1: one of the mine's main supporting columns, the roof fell in,

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Speaker 1: bringing one hundred feet of rock crashing down on top

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Speaker 1: of them. The mine struggled on for a few more

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Speaker 1: years until it was eventually closed by the federal government

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Speaker 1: to conserve resources for the US military during the Second

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Speaker 1: World War. Over time, people packed up and left, leaving

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Speaker 1: Vulture City to steadily rust and decay in the hot,

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Speaker 1: arid air. In nineteen seventy, the mine and the town's

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Speaker 1: remains were bought and loosely kept as an open museum,

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Speaker 1: paving the way for its current owners, Robin Moriarty and

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Speaker 1: Rob Pratt, to take it on as a more formal venture.

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Speaker 1: Since twenty thirteen, they have run tours through the vacant

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Speaker 1: city and surrounding areas, and ever since then, strange things

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Speaker 1: began to happen. There had been whispers for some time

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Speaker 1: that something weird was going on in Vulture City. On

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Speaker 1: one occasion, having heard rumors that the place was haunted,

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Speaker 1: her tour group attempted to communicate with spirits in one

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Speaker 1: of the old bunk houses. Room contained several large tables,

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Speaker 1: all coated in a thick layer of dust. As the

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Speaker 1: story goes, the group stood around one of the tables

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Speaker 1: as they invited the spirits to show themselves, when prince

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Speaker 1: suddenly began to appear on the table's dusty surface. They

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Speaker 1: were apparently impressions of hands and arms all the way

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Speaker 1: from the fingertips to the elbows. They were said by

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Speaker 1: some to look very similar to rock art representations of

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Speaker 1: yeah Itzo, the Big Giant, one of the most terrifying

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Speaker 1: and powerful entities of the Native American in air culture.

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Speaker 1: Others have sensed more rudimentary spirits echoes of the town's

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Speaker 1: dark past. Some claimed to have experienced more than a

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Speaker 1: little shiver down the spine as they passed the one

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Speaker 1: single ironwood tree that remains in the town, located just

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Speaker 1: next door to Henry Winkemberg's cabin. It was from this

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Speaker 1: tree that around eighteen men are said to have been

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Speaker 1: hanged for the crime of high grading, stealing the best

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Speaker 1: oree from the mine to self a personal profit. A

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Speaker 1: nineteen year old Juan Ramos was also hung there, but

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Speaker 1: his crime was a little more unsavory. It said that

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Speaker 1: sometime in the late nineteenth century, Ramos grabbed fifteen year

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Speaker 1: old Sabrina Lasso, then raped and murdered her behind one

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Speaker 1: of the mining buildings. When some of the townsfolk found out,

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Speaker 1: they quickly caught the young man and beat him senseless.

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Speaker 1: After reportedly being shot in the shoulder, Ramos was dragged

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Speaker 1: to the ironwood tree and strung up. Some believe the

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Speaker 1: town is also haunted by the ghost of a woman

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Speaker 1: who was allegedly murdered by her husband in the nineteen nineties.

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Speaker 1: The woman's body was apparently thrown down at one hundred

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Speaker 1: and seventy foot deep mine shaft known as the Nicole

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Speaker 1: Rays and then as Izzy. Izzy is said to be

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Speaker 1: the spirit of a little girl whose presence many claimed

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Speaker 1: to have sensed at Vulture City. It's said that Izzy

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Speaker 1: is very enamored of a vintage doll that was brought

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Speaker 1: to Vulture City a few years ago. Only one foot tall,

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Speaker 1: the doll is dressed in period clothing with an eerie

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Speaker 1: porcelain face. Anyone that goes near it is advised not

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Speaker 1: to get too close or else risk the jealous wrath

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Speaker 1: of Izzy. It was sometime in twenty twenty one that

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Speaker 1: Damien Harris returned to Vulture City for the first time,

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Speaker 1: having survived its COVID infection. He hadn't thought much about

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Speaker 1: his peculiar out of body experience until around a year

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Speaker 1: or so later, when he was guiding a visitor around

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Speaker 1: the Old Town. When they arrived at the old boarding

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Speaker 1: House and entered its front room, the same place that

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Speaker 1: Damien had seen in his strange fever dream, the visitor

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Speaker 1: stopped suddenly, seemingly gripped by a sudden sense of doom.

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Speaker 1: When Damien asked what the matter was, the woman apparently replied,

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Speaker 1: I sent something horrible right in the middle of this room.

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Speaker 1: It's like some sort of portal. But you know that already,

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Speaker 1: don't you, she told him. On hearing the woman's remark,

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00:22:38,400 --> 00:22:43,040
Speaker 1: Damien's jaw dropped, and the memories came flooding back. How

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Speaker 1: he'd found himself in the exact same spot, staring at

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Speaker 1: the strange black mass that had emerged in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the room. Back then, he'd felt it drawing him in,

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Speaker 1: but he resisted getting any closer, fearing that the portal

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Speaker 1: was an invitation for him to decide whether he wanted

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Speaker 1: to live or die. Beyond the portal, he believed was death.

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Speaker 1: How on earth had the woman known that he'd seen

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Speaker 1: all that in his dream? He wandered, But there was

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00:23:13,240 --> 00:23:16,159
Speaker 1: more that she didn't seem to pick up on, because

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Speaker 1: that wasn't the only portal Damien saw that day in

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Speaker 1: the hospital. Having seen the first portal, he became aware

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Speaker 1: of something else in one of the back rooms of

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Speaker 1: the same building. He had the instinctive awareness that there

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Speaker 1: was another portal there too that led to a much,

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Speaker 1: much darker place, as he put it. The woman on

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Speaker 1: the tour that day considered herself a psychic and told

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Speaker 1: Damien that he must have somehow astrady projected himself to

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Speaker 1: Vulture City when he was sick. Though Damien didn't know

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Speaker 1: what to make of it himself, He later showed other

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Speaker 1: self described psychics around the building, who also seemed to

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Speaker 1: pick up on the ominous energy in the back room,

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Speaker 1: each claimed to be too scared to go near it,

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Speaker 1: believing that whatever was in there was just too dark.

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Speaker 1: Damien Harris has also said that not infrequently during the

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Speaker 1: tours he gives, a woman in the group will suddenly

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Speaker 1: double over in pain, saying that they feel like they've

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Speaker 1: just been punched in the stomach by an invisible hand.

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Speaker 1: For his money, Harris believes the source of the ominous

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Speaker 1: energy is an angry male presence, possibly that of one Ramos,

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Speaker 1: the man said to have raped and murdered Sabrina Lasso.

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Speaker 1: While Vulture City enjoys its revival of sorts incredibly, operations

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Speaker 1: at Vulture Mine are continuing helt by recent increases in

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Speaker 1: the price of gold. It's estimated that the mine has

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Speaker 1: produced around three hundred and forty thousand ounces of gold

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Speaker 1: over its checkered lifetime. At the current gold price of

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Speaker 1: approximately twenty nine thousand U S dollars per ounce, that

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Speaker 1: amounts to a modern day value of almost one billion dollars. Thankfully,

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Speaker 1: for his sake, Henry Winkeenberg isn't around to hear this.

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Speaker 1: And let the bitterness of everything he missed out on

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Speaker 1: continue to gnaw away at its soul. Or is he

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Speaker 1: is it his life chrish soul that refuses to let

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Speaker 1: Vulture City go? Or is it something else entirely that

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Speaker 1: stalks the town, something that had always been there in

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Speaker 1: one way or another, ever since the first flex of

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Speaker 1: gold was spotted in its dusty ground, A dark abstract thing,

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00:25:46,600 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 1: a weight perhaps that seems to draw us in, calling

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Speaker 1: to us like the one ring to Smiegel, the kind

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Speaker 1: of dark thing that leads people to grow wild eyes,

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Speaker 1: shed blood, betray brothers, and decimate the land simply because

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Speaker 1: there are fortunes to be made. Perhaps it's something of

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Speaker 1: this that still lingers on, like an ink marked too

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Speaker 1: deep under the skin to ever truly be erased. After all,

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Speaker 1: they do say that money is the root of all evil,

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Speaker 1: and everything comes at a price. This episode was written

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Speaker 1: by Diane Hope and Richard McLain Smith. Diane is an

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Speaker 1: audio producer and sound recordeded in her own right. You

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00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:47,160
Speaker 1: can find out more about her work at Dianehope dot

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00:26:47,200 --> 00:26:52,719
Speaker 1: com and on Instagram at In the sound Field Unexplained

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00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:57,160
Speaker 1: as an Avy Club Productions podcast created by Richard McLain Smith.

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00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,160
Speaker 1: All other elements of the podcast, including the music, are

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Speaker 1: also produced by me Richard McClean smith. Unexplained. The book

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Speaker 1: and audiobook is now available to buy worldwide. You can

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00:27:09,880 --> 00:27:14,480
Speaker 1: purchase from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones and other bookstores.

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00:27:15,160 --> 00:27:18,240
Speaker 1: Please subscribe to and rate the show wherever you get

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Speaker 1: your podcasts, and feel free to get in touch with

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Speaker 1: any thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on

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Speaker 1: the show. Perhaps you have an explanation of your own

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00:27:27,280 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 1: you'd like to share. You can find out more at

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00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:34,120
Speaker 1: Unexplained podcast dot com and reach us online through Twitter

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00:27:34,320 --> 00:27:39,360
Speaker 1: at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at Facebook dot com, Forward Slash,

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Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcasts.

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Speaker 2: And Total Cack and