Video: What was it at the courthouse?
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June 15, 2007

By Jason Auslander
The New Mexican



'Ghost' keeps people guessing Apparition or reflection, that is the question.





A surveillance camera at the First Judicial District courthouse downtown captured a strange image Friday morning that left sheriff’s deputies, lawyers, clerks and judges scratching their heads as to what it might have been.

Some thought it was the ghost of a man killed at the courthouse more than 20 years ago after bringing a rifle to the building and taking several people hostage. Others felt it had to be a reflection from a passing car or a piece of cottonwood tree fluff. Still others threw their hands in the air, but somehow liked the image anyway or at least the hullabaloo it prompted.

“I don’t know what it is, but I think it’s neat that it showed up on a Friday,” said Sally Saunders, assistant to District Judge Stephen Pfeffer. “Now we have something to talk about.”

Deputy Alfred Arana first noticed the image when he arrived at the courthouse early Friday morning and began reviewing the surveillance video from the night before, said Sgt. Vanessa Pacheco of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department. Pacheco arrived half an hour later, and Arana said he’d seen something he couldn’t explain on the digital video and asked Pacheco to rewind it, she said.

When she watched the video, Pacheco was stunned. “It’s something unexplainable,” said Pacheco, who watched the 12-second clip over and over Friday. “I don’t believe in ghosts so I don’t think that’s what it is.”

The image, which starts at 7:27:11 a.m., shows a bright spot of light that comes from either the roof or near the courthouse’s back door on Catron Street — which is used only by law enforcement personnel. The light flits with buglike movements toward the west, appears to move across the front bumper of a parked police car and then traces a small semicircle in a gravel area in the frame’s foreground before leaving the frame at 7:27:23.

“To me, it looks like a person walking, but I don’t know why they have this neon light on their head,” said Steve Aarons, a lawyer.

The light looked a bit like a crab and seemed to crawl like a bug, though Pacheco and others who regularly look at the video said they’ve seen bugs on the lens before, and they don’t look like Friday’s image.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the image is that it appears to cast shadows that look a bit like the movements of the invisible movie monster in the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film, Predator. Many who watched the video said the shadows looked like legs. Mary Marlowe, another lawyer, said she saw hands in the image.

Courthouse employees debated whether it might have been a reflection. However, the angle of the sun didn’t fit with the image, and a large tree outside the door shaded most of the area from above.

“It looks like a reflection of something but the angle of the sun is all wrong,” said Juanita Sena-Shannon, a court clerk.

District Judge Michael Vigil said he, too, thought it was a reflection at first, perhaps from a passing car. But when he looked closer, he realized a reflection would have moved in a straight line, which the light did not. “It doesn’t make sense,” the judge said. “It is bizarre.”

Arana said the footage was clearer when he first watched it than when it was replayed over and over Friday. During that first viewing, he said, it looked as if the light had stars in the shape of a diamond that were each spinning clockwise. Arana said he had no idea what the cameras might have captured.

“But after I saw it, I even went to the door to see if anything was there,” he said.

Deputy Anthony Maes, however, had no problem venturing a guess. “I say it’s a ghost,” he said. “What makes us think we’re the only beings on this planet? It’s too weird.”

Maes said he thought it might be the ghost of convicted murderer Andy Lopez, who took nine people hostage at the courthouse in February 1985 after killing the wife of his original victim. Lopez, who had a rifle at the time, was shot by a sheriff’s deputy when he peaked his head out the back door, said Judge Vigil. Deputies originally thought the incident might have taken place in June, and the alleged ghost was making an appearance on the anniversary of Lopez’s death, though that proved false.

Joanna Salazar, a victim’s advocate for the District Attorney’s Office, said she believed the image was of a spirit. “It’s a little girl, and she can’t find where she needs to be,” Salazar said. “Somebody disturbed her.”

Candy Sisneros, a clerk, said she thought it might have been a ghost disturbed by the construction of the city’s new convention center across the street. She said her husband, a sheriff’s deputy, used to work in the courthouse at night when the county’s dispatch center was located there, and he used to hear footsteps, doors opening and closing and elevators going up and down.

Jude Torres, 29, has worked at the court house as a janitor for four years and said he sometimes hears noises at night in the building.

“You sometimes hear the cells — like the doors closing.” he said.

He also hears the sound of water around the building but figured the Judge Steven Herrera Courthouse is an old building. However, the noises mainly originate from the same side of the building where the light was seen, Torres said.

To Torres, the image looked like an insect or a spider. He said he’s puzzled by what he saw on the video and would dismiss it outright if it wasn’t for the Predator-like shadow. “There’s just no explanation for that,” he said.

Earl Rhoads, a public defender, had a different take. “I think what you have is a piece of material from a cottonwood tree,” Rhoads said. “I’m not willing to say it’s proof of paranormal activity. I think it’s totally explainable.”

Im so sick of all these "ghost" sighting videos. I cant help but throw in the BS flag

Im also sick of that ghost show on Discovery. I love it when the priest goes to bless the place and always avoids some room then leaves in a hurry, lol

I have no idea what it could be. I cant even make a logical guess.