Ghosts of Goldfield and Tonopah

by Janice Oberding

  LEPRECHAUNS

  The man who shared this story was proud of his Irish heritage. Born and raised in Goldfield, he loved nothing better than to spend hours talking about his childhood in the old gold camp. While he never encountered anything ghostly, he did have a rather strange experience, and to his dying day, he swore the following tale to be true:

  I never will forget that day as long as I live. I was about eight years old when I saw the little people. My dad sent me out to the barn one morning to fetch some tools. When I opened the barn door I saw these little people scurrying to hide from me. They couldn’t have been more than four or five inches tall and they seemed to be pretty scared of me.

  I said something like I’m not going to hurt you. Come here. Don’t be afraid. They stayed hidden in the shadows. I got the tools and ran back to the house to get my dad.

  “You’ve got to see this, Dad. Come on!” I yelled pulling him toward the barn.

  But once we got there they were gone. I looked high and low; the little people were nowhere to be seen.

  “Leprechauns,” my dad laughed. “You saw the leprechauns.”

  “Did you see them too?” I asked.

  “Not too many people are lucky enough to ever catch a glimpse of a leprechaun, son.”

  “Will they come back?”

  “No. Once you took your eyes from them, they vanished…They’ll not return here.”

  He was right. I never did see them again. Folks can call me crazy all they like, but I know what I saw that morning.

  WHO WAS THE GALLOPING GHOST?

  After the gold rush, most of the movers and shakers relocated to northern or southern Nevada. There wasn’t much going on in Goldfield anymore. Newspapers had little in the way of local news for their readers. But one day in July 1916, an article appeared in the Goldfield Tribune that stirred readers’ imaginations. The story, entitled “Galloping Ghost Is Cause of Excitement,” told about a mysterious will-o’-the-wisp that had been seen the night before on East Crook Street. The first witness to the ghostly goings-on was a youngster by the name of Billy Wilbur, who lived between Sundog and Blake Streets.

  When pressed for a description, Billy said the specter was dressed all in white and covered with a white veil. Curious about the apparent visitor from the hereafter, he tried to follow it for a closer look. But to Billy’s dismay, the ghost turned and started running straight for him. Unable to get out of the way fast enough, the boy was knocked down. Never had Billy seen anyone—much less a ghost—make such a jump.

  When the fleeing ghost, with Billy on its tail, sped past Fred Moore’s front porch, Moore gave chase as well. He and Billy gave up at the Sundog School. The ghost kept on running.

  Later, Moore said he believed the ghost was not a specter from the hereafter but a man dressed in a woman’s clothing. While plenty of people in Goldfield saw the ghost, no one knew who it was, where it came from or where it was going. As far as anyone knew, it was the first and last time this particular ghost ever made an appearance.

  A DEPUTY’S STORY

  The deputy sheriff who shared this story with me has long since retired:

  Several years ago, myself and another deputy who worked the graveyard shift were taking a break in the patrol car at the corner of Main Street and Highway 95 [Crook Street]. Rain had fallen most of the day and night. A block away, the old Goldfield Hotel sparkled like new. The rain finally stopped halfway through the shift. The town had received a good soaking; Highway 95 was still slick and wet. The gutters and ditches were thick with mud.

  We discussed people we had known, calls we had been on and our favorite football teams. It was idle chitchat that helps to make those last few hours more tolerable. I was in the driver’s seat and absently glanced in the side view mirror. That’s when I saw this guy coming toward us. He was walking right down the middle of the street and didn’t seem to be bothered by the cold or the damp.

  “Helluva night to be out on foot,” I said to my partner, who turned to stare through the back window.

  “Wonder what he’s up to?”

  “No telling. Probably had a fight with the missus…or ran outta smokes.”

  In a town the size of Goldfield, you soon know everybody here, at least by sight. This man was a stranger to me.

  “He look familiar to you?” I asked.

  “Nope, must be visiting someone.”

  “Could be, but why come out in this?” I asked, knowing full well that I’d be home curled up with a good book if I had my druthers.

  Conversation stopped as we focused on this person who was nearing the patrol car. When he got about even with the driver’s window we could see that his coat was long and tattered. He turned his head slowly from us, ducking it to his chest as if to shield himself from our sight. If this is what he intended to do, it had the opposite effect. We were alert and watching closely as he walked passed. Then, without even looking for cross traffic he walked out into the middle of the highway and vanished. One second we were watching him approach the middle of the street and the next he just disappeared. We looked at each other; our expressions said it all. Neither of us said a word. There was no need to. We knew what we had just witnessed; we also realized there was no earthly explanation for it. We didn’t talk about that night again.

  I have parked at the corner of Main and Highway 95 many times since then and I’ve never seen anything like that. It may have been a ghost of some sort, I don’t know. Al I know is it was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.

  HAUNTED HIGH SCHOOL

  Built in 1907 at a cost of $100,000, the old Goldfield High School opened its doors in 1908 to 125 students and 25 teaching faculty, graduating its last class back in 1947. The school is well known to ghost hunters. Of course, it’s a historic and architecturally interesting old building, but it’s the ghosts that linger here who fascinate us. If you believe that objects can be haunted, then you will be interested to note that some of the sinks and other fixtures from the old Goldfield Hotel are stored at the school. During an early investigation of the school, a psychic zeroed in on the bathroom, believing the ghost of a little boy to be there. The child was happy to be acknowledged but confused about the passage of time. Why was he here? Where were his mom and dad, his classmates and friends? The psychic calmly explained to him that they had long ago moved on and offered to help him toward the light if he chose to go. He didn’t. Contrary to what some might do, the psychic wished him well and went on with her investigation. Ghost sightings at the high school include students and Mary McLaughlin Hatton, a former principal.

  Goldfield High School. Photo by Bill Oberding.

  The Goldfield Historic Society hopes to restore the building to its former glory, but there is much work to be done. The restoration project is going to require a lot of donations.

  Years back, I was invited to take part in an investigation of the school. A local television news team wanted to do the annual Halloween ghost spot, so here I was in Goldfield, looking for ghosts. The team, which consisted of five ghost researchers, would attempt to gather evidence that the hereafter is real and not just the stuff of scary movies and campfire tales.

  Thankfully, the owner of the old Goldfield High School building was agreeable to allowing us access. Yes, the news media does open doors. After a cold night at the Goldfield Hotel, we drove over to the school building. Once inside, it was easy to see the extent of damage the desert clime had done to the building. It was dusty as we walked. There would be a lot of dust orb photos later. Someone heard something, possibly laughter. At one time, there were nearly four hundred students enrolled here. Imagine the noise as they trudged toward their classes each morning. On this night, the building was eerily silent, except for the wind whistling through the walls that no longer held out the cold. This old stone building was constructed about the time that Goldfield was roaring, when this was the largest town in Nevada. Now there are fewer people in town than this school was originally built to accommodate.

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sp; Goldfield High School, with original sinks from the Goldfield Hotel. Photo by Sharon Leong.

  Someone saw the ghost of a young boy. With cameras and recorders ready, we attempted to capture his likeness or his voice.

  “Duck!” someone else yelled. Something swooshed overhead, screeching. Had we disturbed an owl? No, too small. On its second pass, we realized what it was.

  “A bat!”

  “Eeeeeek!” shrieked one of the investigators.

  “Don’t let it get in your hair,” advised another.

  “Bats carry rabies, don’t they?” someone asked.

  “Duck!” shouted someone else.

  All ghost hunting forgotten, we agreed it was a fascinating building and beat a hasty retreat. Some places are better by daylight. This may be one of those. Besides, bats are nocturnal and are sleeping at that time.

  The restoration of the old school continues in earnest.

  DIAMOND TOOTH LIL AND THE RED-LIGHT GHOSTS

  During its heyday, Goldfield had a very large red-light district, a well-known area of town where brothels and crime existed freely. My friend Virginia Ridgway lives in the middle of what was once the red-light district. Nothing remains but a few tumbled-down buildings, the sand and the weeds. Mobile homes dot Main Street on lots where the brothels and saloons once stood.

  Whenever I visited Virginia during the summer months, before her fall, we would walk to and from the Goldfield Hotel, about a block away. When the wind isn’t blowing down from the Malapai, this area is usually eerily silent. But not always—occasionally the sounds of laughter and gaiety can be heard emanating from these long-ago establishments, like the dance hall of Diamond Tooth Lil, one of Goldfield’s most famous madams, where the likes of Diamondfield Jack and other notorious bad men hung out night after night. Here in the red-light district at Victor Ajax’s famous Sunset Café is where one man shot another to death over a two-timing wife. Here in the red-light district is where the most famous ghost at the Goldfield Hotel, Elizabeth, plied her trade in life. Or did she? While Elizabeth may well be the stuff of legends, we know that many young women came to Goldfield only to end up working in the brothels. Some married wealthy men and moved on, some died lonely deaths here in the gold camp and some, like Diamond Tooth Lil, went on to bigger and better things. Then there are those few who haunt this area of town, unaware of the passage of time. If the sounds of hilarity and good times are any indication, they are enjoying themselves in the afterlife very much.

  Mary’s Dance Hall in the Goldfield red-light district was probably similar to Evelyn Hildegard’s dance hall. Library of Congress.

  Ghost hunting in the red-light district with an infrared camera. Photo by Anne Leong.

  Listen for tinkling champagne glasses and a raucous laughter. Some of these sounds have been recorded as EVP during impromptu recording sessions. When asked, “Can you tell us your name?” a female voice that is particularly interesting responds, “I bet you know.”

  Perhaps it is the ghostly Diamond Tooth Lil returned to her old pied-à-terre here in Goldfield. If she is here, can Diamondfield Jack be far behind?

  Diamond Tooth Lil was born in Austria-Hungary in 1885 as Evelyn Fiala. If not for her parents wanting a better life for their children than they themselves had known, Evelyn might have lived out her life in relative obscurity somewhere in Vienna. Diamond Tooth Lil would certainly not have been the household name that it was in the Roaring ’20s. But the Fialas did want more, and so they packed up their children and sailed across the Atlantic. They settled in Youngstown, Ohio, where they worked hard and grabbed what they could of the American Dream.

  The Fialas worked long hours to feed their family, and Evelyn grew into a beautiful teenager who daydreamed of fancy clothes, romance and true love. When she was fourteen, she met Percy Hildegard, and her girlish dreams were answered. He was as enchanted with her as she was him.

  The young lovers sneaked away to Chicago and got married. But Evelyn’s happily-ever-after didn’t last very long. Alone in a strange city, she found a job as a singer in a local saloon, and thus began her singing career.

  Other marriages and divorces would follow. As an elderly woman living in relative obscurity, she would remember thirteen husbands, yet she kept the name Hildegard all her life. Evelyn Hildegard was her professional name, until she became Diamond Tooth Lil.

  She was singing in San Francisco when the 1906 earthquake struck. With the city in shambles and engulfed in flames, Evelyn decided to pack up and leave. Goldfield, with its wealthy citizens and all those millions being produced in its mines, was just her sort of town.

  To the delight of his customers, Tex Rickard hired her to sing at his Northern Saloon. Years later, she would say Rickard had generously paid her $200 a week for her services. She took Goldfield by storm. With her repertoire and good looks, she was soon packing them in. Within a few months, she opened her own dance hall: the Nevada Club in the Tenderloin, across the street from Victor Ajax’s Sunset Café.

  Evelyn’s stay in Goldfield was short lived—less than a year—but it was long enough for her to meet and romance Diamondfield Jack Davis. Evelyn was impressed with his diamonds; Diamondfield Jack had a pocketful of them. Obviously, he was wealthy, and she wanted to be that rich. According to some, she would later win a bet with a Reno dentist, and it was in payment of the bet that he placed a diamond in her front tooth. And Diamond Tooth Lil was born.

  Soon the beauty with the sparkler in her front tooth was the talk of the town. Opportunity beckoned elsewhere, and true to her nature, Lil heeded its call. In 1928, actress Mae West wrote and starred in Diamond Lil, a Broadway play that some thought was loosely based on Lil’s life. This may or may not have been the case. There was at least one other woman who used the Diamond Lil moniker during the same time period as Evelyn Hildegard. This is why researchers often encounter some confusion between Honora Ornstein’s Diamond Lil and that of Evelyn Hildegard. Both women were born in Austria-Hungary. The women were about the same age, both were singers and entertainers and they each had a diamond, or two, placed in a front tooth. While Ornstein’s Diamond Lil spent most of her time in the Klondike and the Seattle area, Hildegard traveled throughout California and Nevada.

  Regardless of on whom the character Diamond Lil was based, Mae West’s play was a smash hit. Five years later, she starred in the film She Done Him Wrong, loosely based on the play.

  The real-life Lil headed out to Death Valley, where she operated a brothel for a while. She owned and operated such businesses in Idaho and California before settling in California. Diamond Tooth Lil continued to make the news. In the December 8, 1943 issue of the Ogden Standard Examiner, an article appeared about her running a tourist camp in Boise, Idaho. “We drank, but we didn’t get drunk in those days,” she recalled. “You can’t have fun when you get drunk. And we were just out for fun.”

  She was again in the news in 1944 when she announced that she was remembering the Idaho Children’s Home in her will. She was leaving the orphanage the diamond from her front tooth. The Wichita Daily Times of January 27, 1944, reported: “‘When I die I want the tooth sold at auction and the money given to the Children’s Home,’ said the fifty-seven-year-old woman born Evelyn Fiala in a town near Vienna, Austria.”

  In 1966, Mae West successfully brought suit against a Los Angeles nightclub performer who was using the name Diamond Lil. West thought herself to be the only true Diamond Lil. Ironically, Evelyn Hildegard was penniless and living in California at the time.

  The Gazette Montreal of September 8, 1967, reported:

  “I used to have diamonds on every finger and hanging around my neck,” she said in a 1963 interview, “When I was broke, I’d hock them.”

  Fond of recalling her fun-filled life, she said once drank champagne in New York with a former Prince of Wales.

  “I’ve been every place I want to go and seen everything I want to see,” she told a reporter in 1963. “I’ve had everything I ever wanted out of life.�
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  Evelyn “Diamond Tooth Lil” Hildegard died at the Claremont Sanitarium in 1967. But there’s no stopping a determined ghost. Like the Titanic ghosts, Lil may have come back to Goldfield, led by her memories and love of the good old days.

  ASHES, ASHES, WE ALL STAY AWAKE

  I believe that ghosts can, and do, communicate with us in our dreams. This strange incident confirms it.

  Whenever my husband, Bill, and I go to Goldfield, we generally stay in Virginia Ridgway’s little apartment. It’s a cozy place, although there is the occasional spider, but that’s life in the desert for you. Much of the furnishing in the apartment is antiques that belonged to Virginia’s mom and dad. There was something more the first night we stayed there.

  I am the type of traveler who can fall asleep the minute my head hits the pillow, wherever I am. Bill is not. The least little uncomfortable thing, like a lumpy mattress or bright streetlights, will keep him awake. Thankfully, Virginia’s apartment suffered none of those things.

  We went to dinner with Virginia and her husband that night, and after a quick review of the following day’s plans, we said our good nights, went to the apartment and prepared for bed. I was asleep, but it wasn’t peaceful, with Bill tossing and turning and tossing. Finally, I was awake. I sat up in bed and sleepily asked what was wrong.

  “I have been having the weirdest dreams,” he said. “This old man was tapping me on the shoulder and telling me that something’s got to be done. Over and over, he kept saying, ‘Something’s got to be done.’”

  “Probably the chicken cacciatoria,” I yawned.

  “That’s not it! This place is creepy, and I don’t like it!”

  “Well, try to get some sleep,” I said, sliding back under the covers. “Think of something else.”