BISBEE — Kelly Jarrell, a file clerk at Cochise County Superior Court, had gone to the top floor of the courthouse to retrieve a file from a storage area when she got the surprise of her life.
After collecting the documents from an old jail cell — the top two floors of the courthouse, now a storage area, once served as the county jail — Jarrell stepped into a passageway and saw something that made her scream.
“I turned to my right and there was this, well, I call it a form,” Jarrell said.
The form appeared to be that of a man whom Jarrell described as “grandfatherly,” dressed in black and seated on a chair staring straight ahead.
Jarrell dashed down two flights of stairs and locked the door at the bottom with a chain, although, as she realized later, if the form she had just seen was, as she suspected, a ghost, a chained door would do nothing to contain it.
She ran to courthouse security officer Hector Blaine and told him what she had just seen.
“Tell me I’m not the only one!” she pleaded with him.
She wasn’t. Paranormal phenomena have been regular occurrences for years at the 75-year-old courthouse. Lights and elevators have been known to turn on and off without explanation, courthouse employees have reported hearing footsteps in deserted hallways, and security personnel have spotted a black-robed figure whisking out of the Division 2 courtroom.
“I’ve felt him,” said Blaine, a 14-year veteran of courthouse security. “I’ve opened the door to Division 2 and seen a shadow rushing out.”
The “him” that Blaine refers to is John Wilson Ross, a judge at the Superior Court from 1931 to 1943. While some attribute courthouse spookings to the spirits of former prisoners at the old jail, most say that it is Ross, the first judge to serve at the Bisbee courthouse after it was constructed in 1931, who haunts its hallways.
Court Administrator Karen Ferrara has been hearing about Judge Ross and his supernatural activities since she started working at the courthouse 16 years ago. She recalls one popular story in which a cleaning woman brought her young daughter into the Division 2 courtroom to help her vacuum. The woman asked the girl to lift the seats in the gallery, but later found that the seats had all been put in their down position.
When the woman asked the child who had put all the seats down, the girl reportedly pointed to a portrait of Judge Ross hanging on the courtroom wall.
But while fleeting glimpses of the former judge are relatively common, along with unexplained events attributed to him, Blaine says that Jarrell’s sighting of the seated specter three weeks ago had an unusual element.
“This is the first time someone has come this close to him,” he said.
Jarrell’s family members have been having fun with her close encounter, she said. One relative bought everyone in the family a gold cross to wear around their necks. Jarrell received an extra gift: a chain of ceramic garlic cloves in case a vampire decides to join up with the judge.
But while she can laugh about it now, Jarrell still feels shaken by her memorable meeting with the grandfatherly form in black.
“Needless to say, I do not go up to the jail anymore by myself,” she said.
(Original headline: Ghost haunts court: Vision of 1930s-era judge creeps out clerk )
