http://www.svherald.com/articles/2007/05/1...8f717287054.txt
By Jonathan Clark
Herald/Review

Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2007
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.

Kelly Jarrell, a file clerk at Cochise County Superior Court, talks about her ghostly encounter with Judge Ross. (Jonathan Clark-Herald/Review)
“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.

I have been in that court house and would believe it however the courtroom I was in at the time did not have a spirit in it. I do feel the spirits but that day they did not come out to play with us and the court clerk said the one Judge haunts the place too.