Holiday spirits raise couple's ghost town

The cattle town she built in her backyard is trading its Stetson and spurs for a witch's hat and broom this holiday as Lola Scamahorn prepares to raise her mock western ghost town to look more like a nightmare on Elm Street.
 
"We got witches, bats and cobwebs scattered all over town," Scamahorn said.
 
The Sun's feature of her self-made Wild West store fronts that could have been the set for the the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, drew block-long lines to Scamahorn's 13724 47th Street residence last spring. She again welcomes the public to view her newly haunted cow town the week following Halloween when "it's best to come at night when it's all lit up."
 
"I got a six foot Pancho Villa back here, he's my life guard," Scamahorn said. "The pool's empty but we had to hire a guard. He's there to instruct you to dive in head first. He's got the body bags sitting next to him."
 
What started out as a whimsical work of adorning a lavatory called "Patty's Potty" in honor of a boon dancing companion from Washington grew to a boomtown of mostly false fronts that summon the flush times of the 49er Gold Rush when many gold seekers stopped in Yuma on their way to nearby fields in California.
 
"I love all the holidays and Halloween is the first party of the season when all the snow birds come down to dance," Scamahorn said. "We call them the 'Yuma Dancers' and there's some place to dance seven days a week. We have lots of favorites, like the Moose Lodge but Mickey B's is our life line. That's where I met Bill and all the good people."
 
Bill is Scamahorn's husband, who married her for her "boss" collection of carpentry tools, she jokes, as they carried on like two runaway teens dancing every evening until after midnight, she recalled.
 
"You gotta get a little crazy on Halloween," she said. "I got a skeleton hula dancer holding hands with one coming out of the wishing well. I got a saloon gal sitting above the sheriff's office with her head in her lap but that's not as bad as the cowboy on the roof with a spear running through him."
 
Other ghastly sights that could scare the rhinestones off any city cowboy is a one-armed jail prisoner dripping blood from his truncated limb, a bullet pocked robber draping the roof of the bank, a skeletonized fisherman caught in his own net, and a huge wicked witch of the west casting a spell over the "Patty Shack" guest house with all the modern conveniences for the weary traveler.
 
She urges visitors not to pass up the "Dead End Cemetery" with gravestones of lava rocks and petrified wood, a memento donated by the lot's former owners. Scamahorn said they interned a few fresh bodies along side the ghosts of Halloweens past with tombstones that lament the demise of Shorty, shot by Too Tall Bill and Dead Eye Dick, who was not that quick.
 
On Halloween, Scamahorn will hand out candy at her pot luck dinner, at which her girlfriend accused her of inviting all of Yuma but actually only includes 130 close friends, she insisted.
 
For the Halloween makeover of her do-it-yourself haunted ghost town Scamahorn again only spent about $50 to $60 lassoing a mother lode of bargains at Habitat for Humanity and Salvation Army. Scamahorn had the opportunity to sharpen her tool handling skills in Washington where she renovated a number of rental properties.
 
After her western town gave up the ghost she is looking for new business and expects this Halloween to be a really nice costume party with the remnants of the wild west likely to summon forth the inner cowboy of many of her guests.
 
"Halloween brings out the childhood in everybody,' Scamahorn said. I swear I'll never get old."


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William Roller can be reached at wroller@yuamsun.com or 539-6858.