Season 08 Episode 25: Where There is Gold There is Blood

for miles, a bright sun baking down from above. One by one, the images came and went, then finally something 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.

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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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

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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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 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 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. 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.

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