Murder In Room 18

Some places are built on stories. Others are built on secrets. And then there are the places built on something darker — places where the walls seem to remember, where the air feels heavy, where tragedy settles like dust and refuses to be swept away. The United States mining town of Globe in Arizona, a place forged in copper, whiskey, and violence. A place where fortunes were made and lives were lost in equal measure. And at the centre of it all stood a building that locals have whispered about for more than a century. The Drift Inn was a saloon downstairs and a brothel upstairs. Typical of the time, except one room holds a secret darker than the others. — Room 18 — is where two men died under brutal violent circumstances. No explanation, convictions or answers were achieved. But its events have resulted in a haunting that continues to this day.

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CREDITS
https://www.azfamily.com/2024/10/31/true-crime-arizona-unsolved-murders-room-18/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/53-murder-files-unsealed-129931869/episode/the-unsolved-murders-in-room-18-234106702/
https://www.hauntjaunts.net/the-spirits-flow-at-the-drift-inn-saloon/?utm_source=copilot.com
https://mythsandmalice.com/hometown-history/globe-arizona-the-curse-of-room-18two-miners-one-deadly-room
https://www.newsbreak.com/arizonas-family-1982219/3656246832331-true-crime-arizona-the-unsolved-murders-in-room-18
https://www.spreaker.com/episode/the-unsolved-murders-in-room-18--62592161
https://uppbeat.io/

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Although every effort is made to ensure that the episode is researched and accurate we cannot guarantee the complete contents is entirely factually correct, and AI tools maybe used to enhance the dramatization of episodes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Some places are built on stories, others are built on secrets, and then there are the places built on something darker, places where the walls seem to remember, where the air feels heavy, where tragedy settles like dust and refuses to be swept away. The United States mining town of Globe in Arizona, a place forged in copper, whiskey, and violence, a place where fortunes were made and lives were lost in equal measure, and at the center of it all stood a building that locals have whispered about for more than a century. The drift in was a saloon downstairs and a brothel upstairs. Typical of the time, except one room holds a secret darker than the others. Room 18 is where two men died under brutal violent circumstances. No explanation, convictions, or answers were achieved, but its events have resulted in a haunting that continues to this day. Welcome to Unexplained, brought to you by Enigma from the Pod. And you are listening to Murder in Room 18. It rose out of the dust during the 1870s, a cluster of tents and timber shacks clinging to the edge of the Penal Mountains, where copper veins ran deep and ambitions ran deeper. Men came chasing big paydays, but whiskey was more often used to soften the blows they didn't see coming. And the whiskey was poured at the Drift Inn. To understand Room 18, you have to understand the building that held it. The Drift Inn Saloon was built in 1902, during the height of Globe's mining boom. Copper was king, and the town was overflowing with miners, drifters, gamblers, and men looking for trouble or trying to escape it. The Drift Inn was exactly the kind of place they ended up. Downstairs it was just another frontier saloon, creaking floorboards, tobacco smoke hanging in the rafters, and a bar polished smooth by a thousand desperate hands, the clatter of poker chips, and the kind of laughter that always seemed short-lived. Upstairs, a brothel known as the International House, with a row of small rooms, each barely big enough for a bed, a washstand, and a single oil lamp. Room 18 was at the far end of the hallway, quiet, isolated, a perfect place for privacy, or for something far worse. After dark, the building changed. Locals said the walls seemed to listen to its occupants, that the lamps flickered even when there was no draft, that the second floor that held the old boarding rooms held stories no one wanted to repeat out loud. Most towns had a place where desperation and despair were born or attracted to. The township of Globe had the Drift Inn. On the morning of October 16, 1906, the Drift Inn awoke to a silence that didn't belong within its own walls. The saloon usually stirred before sunrise, boots on floorboards, the clatter of bottles being cleared from the night before, the low rumble of hungover miners dragging themselves back to the shafts. Even the walls seemed used to noise within it. Laughter, arguments, the scrape of chairs, the muffled thump of footsteps moving between the saloon and the rooms upstairs. But that morning, room 18 stayed quiet, too quiet, and the ladies of the establishment knew not all was right when its occupant would not wake to persistent knocking. When the door was finally forced open, the men who stepped inside froze. On the floor lay Joseph Ludwig, a miner who drifted through Globe the way dust drifted through the desert wind, aimless, unpredictable, and impossible to pin down. Ludwig had no home, no family anyone could name, and no shortage of vices. He drank hard, gambled harder, and lived the kind of life that made enemies without even trying. The night before, he'd been seen heading upstairs with one of the women who worked the brothel rooms. There wasn't anything unusual about that. At the drift in, men came and went at all hours. But whatever happened after Ludwig closed the door behind him has been argued about for more than a century. What the men found inside room 18 was something Globe had never seen before. Ludwig's throat had been cut so deeply it nearly severed his head. His torso was mutilated, not the wild, frenzied violence of a drunken fight, but something colder, deliberate, the kind of brutality that suggested either a personal vendetta or a message meant for someone else entirely. And then there was the detail that still unsettles historians today. Someone had tried to destroy the evidence with dynamite. Not enough to blow out the walls or ignite the saloon below. Just a small controlled charge. Precise, almost surgical. The type of blast set by someone who understood explosives the way other men understood cards or whiskey. In a mining town that narrowed the possibilities, but not enough to name a killer. The newspaper Arizona Silverbelt didn't mince words. They called it the most brutal murder in Globe's history. Police questioned everyone. The women upstairs, the bartender, the car dealers, the men who'd been drinking late into the night. But no one was charged. No one even seemed particularly frightened. Violence was common in Globe. Knifings, shootings, drunken brawls, all part of life in a copper town. But this, this was different. This was methodical, calculated, and whoever did it walked out of room 18 without a single witness willing to speak. Within weeks, the case went cold. Room 18 was scrubbed, repainted, and put back into service. The Drift Inn didn't have the luxury of sentiment. Business was business. But the women refused to sleep in that room. Some wouldn't even walk past it. Men who stayed there complained of cold drafts, strange smells, or waking in the night with the unshakable feeling that someone was standing over them. And slowly, the Drift Inn earned a reputation. Not just as a saloon, not just as a brothel, but as a building that remembered. A place where one room, in particular, never forgot what happened behind its closed door. Room 18 became a story whispered over whiskey, a warning told to newcomers, and eventually a legend. Because in Globe, Arizona, some people believed the past didn't stay buried. Not in the mines, not in the desert, and certainly not in Room 18. July 3, 1907, less than a year after Ludwig's death, Room 18 claimed another victim. His name was Richard Veckland, a Swedish immigrant who drifted through Globe the way many newcomers did, taking whatever work the mines offered, sleeping wherever he could, and sending what little money he saved back home. Veckland wasn't known as a troublemaker. If anything, he was quiet, polite, almost painfully shy, the kind of man who disappeared into a crowd. But on a warm evening in July, he walked into the drift in and headed straight upstairs. Hours later, he was found staggering through the streets of Globe, barely conscious, his pockets turned inside out, his shirt torn, his pupils widely dilated, an incoherent mumbling of drunk. But Veckland wasn't drunk, and witnesses said he looked like a man trying to outrun something only he could see. When police approached him, asking where he needed to go, Veckland managed just three words. He collapsed moments later, carried back to the drift inn, but he died before sunrise. This time the police moved quickly. They arrested Elena Mendoza, one of the brothel workers, accusing her of drugging Veckland, robbing him, and causing his death. It wasn't the first time a woman in Globe had been blamed for a miner's misfortune, but the case seemed open and shut. Until it wasn't. Witnesses contradicted each other, testimonies changed, and evidence consisting of an opium bottle and paycheck went missing, not misplaced but vanished, and within weeks the charges against Mendoza were quietly dropped. Two men dead. Same room, same building, same absence of any justice. By now, room 18 had become a place of whispers. A room the women refused to use unless they had no choice. A room the men joked about but never booked willingly. A room that seemed to swallow the truth whole. For decades, the murders were treated as isolated incidents. The kind of violence that happened in mining towns were desperation and alcohol mixed freely. As the decades passed and locals learnt more about the people and the workings of the drifting saloon, the most common theory accepted is a simple and chilling one. The brothel workers were running a robbery scheme. Men would come upstairs, they'd be drugged, robbed, and if they resisted or threatened to expose the operation, they were killed. Room 18, being the most isolated room, became the perfect place to carry out the scheme. It explains the drugging, it explains the robbery, it explains the violence, but it doesn't explain the dynamite or the brutality or why two murders so close together were never solved. Maybe someone powerful with influence was involved, someone the police didn't want to cross. After the murders, the drift in continued operating for decades. But room 18 developed a reputation. Workers refused to sleep in it. Guests reported strange sensations. Cold spots, sudden nausea, the feeling of being watched. Some claimed to hear footsteps pacing the hallway at night. Others heard a man's voice whispering from inside the room when it was empty. One woman said she woke to see a figure standing at the foot of her bed. A man with a slashed throat staring silently. When she screamed, he vanished. The building changed hands many times. The brothel closed, the saloon remained, but room eighteen stayed exactly the same, untouched, unrenovated, as if the building itself refused to let it go. Today, the Drift Inn is still standing and still operating, but it's a very different place. In 2018, Meghan Crawford became the owner of the Drift Inn that's still functioning as a bar and restaurant. When Meghan assumed ownership of the Drift Inn, she didn't believe in ghosts, but she does now. Meghan resides in the building too, on the same floor as where the brothel operated, and she has experienced things she cannot explain. She's heard voices when she's alone. She's seen doors slam shut without wind. She's felt something brush past her legs, like a dog, even though she doesn't own one. She's seen shadows move across the hallway. She's heard footsteps pacing above her bedroom at night, even though no one was upstairs. And she says absolutely that room 18 is the epicenter. When she enters the room, the temperature drops, the air feels heavy, and she feels, every time, like someone is standing behind her, watching, waiting. Today, the Drift Inn has a reputation as one of the most haunted buildings in Arizona. Not the playful type of haunted either. This haunting is the kind that people turn into t-shirts and Halloween tours. The kind locals still lower their voices to talk about it, fearful of stirring something unwanted awake. Bar stools are knocked over for no reason. Pool chalk is seen flying through the air. You might catch movement out of the corner of your eye, or feel an invisible touch on your shoulder. And the staff at the drift in blame it on the restless spirits held within the building. Ghost hunters visit regularly. Paranormal groups set up cameras in the hallways, leaving digital recorders running through the night. They claim to capture electronic voice phenomena, known as EVP, and hear faint voices whispering from empty rooms, footsteps pacing across the second floor when no one is upstairs, and the unmistakable sound of a door closing softly. Some investigators say they've seen a man standing at the far end of the hallway, motionless, staring toward room 18, as if waiting for someone to come out. Others describe a woman drifting through the corridor. Dark hair, long skirt, face pale as moonlight. Some believe it's Elena Mendoza. Others insist it's someone older, someone whose name never made it into the newspapers. But the most common report is the same, no matter who you ask. Visitors say that when they stand outside room 18, even in broad daylight, they feel a pressure in their chest, like the air thickens around them. Some describe a sudden cold, a drop so sharp it feels like stepping into a cellar. A few say they feel a hand brush their arm, as if someone is trying to stop them. And then there's the voice, always a man's voice, always low, always urgent, a whisper that seems to come from just behind the door, or just over a person's shoulder.

unknown 17:02

Don't go in there.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

People who hear it say the same thing afterward. It doesn't sound like a threat, it sounds like a warning. The two unsolved murders within the Drift Inn creates a dark history enough for any location to suffer a reputation of trapped souls within it. But at the Drift In, it doesn't stop there. In 1963, violence returned to the Drift In, this time in broad daylight. A well-known local man was sitting at the end of the bar, nursing a drink, when his ex-girlfriend walked in. No one knows exactly what was said between them. Some patrons claimed they were arguing. Others insisted they were speaking quietly, almost calmly. What everyone agrees on is what happened next. She pulled out a gun and shot him where he sat. He died on the bar stool before anyone could reach him. The woman was arrested, but the story never settled. Some said it was jealousy. Others said it was self-defense. A few whispered that he had been threatening her for months. The truth was swallowed by gossip, court delays, and the kind of small town silence that protects its own. Today, people say the man still sits at the end of the bar. Not visibly, but in the way the air changes, the way the lights flicker, the way bartenders feel watched when they're closing up alone. Some investigators who regularly attend the location claim that when they set up their electromagnet field meters in that vicinity of the bar, their meter readings frequently spike, and others say they've captured a man's voice on EVP, muttering a single word. Why?

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Why? Why?

SPEAKER_01 19:26

The murders in room eighteen are more than a historical footnote. They are a reminder of a time when justice was optional, when violence was common, and when the truth could be buried as easily as a body. But some truth refused to stay buried. Room 18 still stands, still waits, still remembers. Two men walked into that room more than a century ago. Neither walked out alive. And until the truth is known, if it ever is, room 18 will remain what it has always been. A room where the dead whisper and refuse to be forgotten. This has been unexplained, brought to you by Enigma from the pod. And you have been listening to Murder in Room 18. As a stand up podcast, we greatly appreciate your support. Please follow us on social media and consider leaving us a review.