The old Doña Ana County Courthouse is a noted landmark in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Construction on the adobe building began in 1936, designed by architect Percy McGee in the Spanish Mission style. In a year, the building was finished, and it opened its doors as a courthouse for the county. A jail was added to the building in 1969, housing a varied range of inmates, including men and women as well as people being held by or for the federal government. The site stopped functioning as a courthouse for the County in 2008. The old Doña Ana County Courthouse is currently listed on the National Historic Register and is only used for tours by a company, not any official government business. While no one can deny the significance that the Doña Ana County Courthouse holds to the history of Las Cruces, the appeal of the tours is less to do with that and more to do with the building’s reputation of being haunted.
It is not completely clear why the ghosts that appear in the old courthouse haunt that specific site. The building is, of course, quite young and does not have any kinds of history of massacres during riots, systemic abuses against inmates, or anything of the sort. Other than the ghost of a smoking judge who has been known to appear on the top floor balcony sometimes, the apparitions seem to hold no obvious tie to the site. This makes sense in the context of hauntings being reported by inmates and staff all the way back during the courthouse’s early days. Perhaps most startling is an apparition of a 7-year-old girl who is called Katie. Clearly neither a former inmate nor a staff member, no one has ever been able to find out why her spirit persists in the Doña Ana County Courthouse.
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