The Halloween Ghost In The Art Gallery

A couple of decades ago, I was opening a new location in downtown Santa Fe for the owner of a chain of art galleries. As a gallery director by profession at the time, I was excited for this opportunity. Furthermore, it was an interesting location from a metaphysical perspective, due to its previous occupants. Once upon a time, it had been a part of the local bus station, and it was directly across a former burro alley from one of Santa Fe’s oldest hotels.

I noticed a subtle, yet potent energy in the gallery space from the beginning of the endeavor. Clearly, some spiritual entity was attempting to direct the gallery through me, and had other ideas about what kind of art should be displayed here! Of course, it did not match the kind of work the absentee owner had in mind. But I was being pushed psychically to consider more traditional pieces, as opposed to the contemporary focus that the living owner required.

An interesting event happened when I hired a contractor to build some art storage, which was also to serve as a divider between the showroom space of the gallery and the office area. Every time the contractor would work on the new art storage bins, there would be a kind of rustling noise after he left. It was unmistakable, yet every time I would try to locate the source of the noise it would stop, as if by magic.

There is something ghostly in all great art ~ Lafcadio Hearn

Finally, one day, during a moment of especially heightened frustration, I called out, “Who are you, and what do you want!” The answer was immediate. I clairaudiently heard a woman saying that her name was Delia. She then proceeded to spill her story in an almost frantic way, as if I had just uncorked the proverbial genie in a bottle, or Pandora’s box, that had been waiting for this very opportunity!

Delia’s story was that she was originally from Spain, and had come to Santa Fe in the early 1900s to pursue her artistic interests. However, when she arrived, she fell on hard times, because she had come with very little money, hoping to land a position with a gentrified family as a domestic worker, or perhaps a nanny, while she pursued her artistic endeavors. Since Santa Fe was mostly populated with Hispanic and Native American folks with dark hair at the time, Delia had even dyed her naturally blonde hair black, in the hope of blending in. Unfortunately, nothing worked out for her, so in desperation she became a prostitute at the hotel across the old burro alley from the gallery location, which had been a brothel at the time she lived there.

However, a lot has changed since that time so long ago, and where the gallery was located had originally been a small casita that she had rented with her wages from her ‘clandestine work’ at the hotel. Most of the older hotels in Santa Fe were originally brothels, including the hotel she was making reference to, so her story made sense.

Most of what she wanted me to know then came out in bits and pieces, after her initial introduction. I patched it all together and the gist of it is as follows. She had fallen in love with one of her clients at the brothel. He was a Native American man, and he was married. All the same, she became pregnant, and when her lover told her, adamantly, that he would not participate in the birth of the baby, she became so distraught that she attempted to self-abort the fetus in the very space where I had installed the gallery storage bins. Apparently, that was where her bed had been, and also the exact spot where she had bled to death due to the botched abortion. No wonder she became so agitated when I had the art storage bins built there! Still, she still didn’t know she had in fact died. More on that later.

The more I told her that she couldn’t force her art interests upon me, the more she insisted. She even came home with me the night of Halloween that year…all wrapped around my abdomen with her tentacle-like arms of energy. Of all things, I lived in an old stage coach depot, several miles out of town in the country, which already had its fair share of ghosts, but I had never had any of them be so willful and pushy, although on Halloween Eve they had a habit of pulling small rocks out of the native stone walls and leaving them on the Saltillo floor tiles, especially in the kitchen. It is true that the veil is thinnest at All Hallows Eve, which I can vouch for through my own experiences. In any case, that night I had Delia to deal with, on top of all the other paranormal activity!

I think in a lot of cases, ghosts are history demanding to be remembered ~ Jeff Belanger

I realized I had to tell her firmly to detach from me, and that she could not influence me in any way. In fact, I knew I had to be very clear with her and tell her that she had died more than a century ago, and that it was way past her time to cross to the Other Side of the Veil. But I wanted to wait until I got her back to the gallery.

So, the following morning with Delia still adamantly wrapped around me, I drove back to town, parked, went into the gallery and told her she had to detach from me on every level, once and for all, period! Fortunately, she complied and disengaged herself from me without further ado, and for the first time in weeks I felt free again, as if a heavy weight had been lifted. In fact, I thought she was gone and was rather pleased with my ability to set the firm boundary with her. I was grateful as well for her, that her energy had finally transitioned to where it belonged.

Next, as luck would have it, I had planned a blessing ceremony at the gallery for the following Friday night, which was only a few days after removing her energy from me. It included a soft opening with some personal friends and local gallery associates, along with the owner of the gallery and her assistant. They were coming in from one of her galleries out of state, and the assistant was to help with the evening’s events. Leading the blessing was a local astrologer, who always carried a buffalo hide for use in his work. It must have been quite a sight for those not used to Santa Fe’s traditional ways, and clearly the assistant thought the whole event was a bit much.

When the time came, we formed a circle on the floor with the astrologer in the middle, graced by his buffalo hide with its mane of long hair. Then the drumming began. Th e energy in the room heightened and could be felt by anyone that was tuned into the gathering…except for the assistant. He appeared to be going along with the program, but really thinking it was just all a bunch of woo-woo nonsense. In fact, he eventually decided to leave the circle and go to the bathroom. He had only been gone a few minutes, when we all heard a deep, bass-like, rumbling sound. He suddenly came running back to us in the circle and was obviously frightened out of his wits. His skin color had gone very pale. He was trembling and stuttering, as he tried to explain that he had encountered the face of an angry woman with long black hair in the bathroom mirror!

This surreal ghost story ends with the owner of the gallery losing her funding soon after, through circumstances unrelated to the events of that night (or were they perhaps somehow due to Delia’s efforts to have it her way, or no way?) In any case, the gallery closed before it ever opened and I have not encountered Delia since. However, I found out later that no business, before or since, has stayed open in that location to this day for more than a very brief period of time, even though it is an excellent commercial location by anyone’s standards. Coincidence, or haunted by Delia? You decide.