Hello Everyone,

As many of my southeastern Arizona followers know, Boot Hill is the famous cemetery just outside of Tombstone, Arizona. This cemetery is famous for its notable tombstones that share both humorous messages and also some eerie pasts.

What Boot Hill?

Well as it turns out, there are numerous “Boot Hill” cemeteries across the western parts of the United States of America. This is because it was a common saying for the burial grounds of gunfighters that were more prone to be living in these parts.

The term basically means that they died with their boots on.

Tombstone’s Boot Hill, a little History:

First off, the cemetery was not always in the location that we know it to be today. The cemetery was relocated to the current area in 1884 and is the resting place of over 250 people. This included everyone at the time. It could be the normal townsfolk, pioneers of the land, and even the hardened criminals of the times. There were no other locations or separations of the people depending on class or walks in life.

Perhaps that is why the eeriness of the graveyard is so compelling to look into.

The Haunting:

As many of us know, or have heard, graveyards seem to be a focal point for hauntings and paranormal activities. This is of course due to the fact that they are the resting place of the deceased and known to many to be a place where they tend to rise and walk at night. Perhaps that is because night time seems to be the most powerful time for these forces to arise.

Given Tombstone’s Boot Hill a particular extra edge in all of this, is the town’s history of violence among the living before they were placed to rest on Boot Hill. Many of the killer’s victims rest in the cemetery among those who killed them. Perhaps this turmoil leads to the extra bit of “unrest” that occurs among the dead.

Another reason for the undead might be the shallow graves that many of them were buried in. Given the locations particular rocky and hard soil the graves were usually not deep. Odd when you consider the fact that it was a successful silver mining town with all kinds of digging equipment.

Thoughts:

From personally being there and walking through the graveyard it casts and eerie desert quality of eeriness upon its visitors. You feel very exposed when you are walking through the location like something it always watching you. Kind of like the desert’s shadows are just waiting for the right time to reach out from behind and grasp at you in its desperate attempt to feel life again.

It’s the feelings like this I get in certain places that helped inspire some of the aspects in Desert Shadows. Those feelings that you get in a place where you feel something beyond the normal. The weird thing is, is that I don’t get this in every cemetery or place of rest that I have been to. But Tombstone’s Boot Hill sure brings it out when I visit there from time to time.

Thanks for Reading,

Joshua Crane Dowidat