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Pioneer Saloon is the Season 8 premiere of Ghost Adventures. Zak, Nick and Aaron journey deep into the Nevada desert to the former mining town of Goodsprings, where they will investigate one of the oldest saloons in the country, Pioneer Saloon. There, they hope to solve the mysteries surrounding the 1942 death of a celebrity in a nearby plane crash.

Website for the Location:

https://www.hauntedlockdown.com/thehunt.aspx

Preliminary Investigation[]

The town of Goodsprings was originally know as Good's Spring after its founder Joseph Good. Joseph Good settled in the area in the 1860's mainly because of the rich under ground spring. Many of the Cottonwood trees found in Goodsprings were originally planted by Mr. Good and were able to flourish in this otherwise desert area because of the natural underground spring which he was named after. Goodsprings, Nevada became a booming Mining town in the early 1900s when the Yellow Pine Mine was established as well as the Fayle Hotel, the General Mercantile and yes the World Famous Pioneer Saloon.

Through the years, the old saloon has been featured in countless movies, documentaries and television shows.  In fact, much of the decor that graces movie and TV screens sits around the bar and hangs on the pressed tin walls to this day. Original newspaper clippings tell story after story of the incredible history of this legendary saloon, from its old western mining days gone by, right up through present day events.

The saloon houses a bullet hole on the side of the building and a coroner's letter describing how it was created as well as what is said by many to be haunted by the victim's ghost. In addition, the Pioneer Saloon has a small memorial to both Clark Gable and Carole Lombard. The Pioneer is where silver screen star Clark Gable sat and drank at the bar for 2 days awaiting news about his beautiful wife Carol Lombard.  Sadly, Lombard was killed in a plane crash of a TWA Flight 3 in 1942 on Mt. Potosi located 5 miles directly behind the bar on the 16th January 1942. The saloon and hotel were the centers of operations for the search which resulted in her death.

According to the History Channel, there are three ghosts that haunt the 100 year old saloon and gallery. The Pioneer houses bullet holes in the side of the building and a coroners’ letter describing how they were created. On July 3rd 1915, at the Pioneer Saloon during a poker game, a man named Paul Coski was caught cheating and during a scuffle between him and another man named Joe Armstrong, Mr. Coski was shot several times and killed. The bullet holes are still in one of the pressed tin walls of the Pioneer Saloon. The full story typed out by W. H. Harkins is found hanging on the wall above the bullet holes. Mr. Harkins was a coroner working at the Justice Of The Peace office in Las Vegas and the story on the wall was actually the telegram sent over to Paul Coski's brother Davis Coski. Below you can see the story as told by former long time family owner of the Pioneer Saloon Don Hendrix.

The old bar is said to be "haunted" by the gun shot victim's ghost, as well as the spirit of an old miner, and the ghost of movie star Carol Lombard who is believed to haunt the women’s’ restroom. Over the years, all 3 ghosts have been seen by many employees and saloon visitors alike. Recently the saloon was featured on The Travel Channel TV show Ghost Adventures. During their all night “Lockdown” the show’s hosts, Zak Bagans, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin not only made contact with the known resident spirits, but discovered a fourth spectre named Ruby. Since that show aired countless requests have been made by people who want to be locked down in this world famous landmark and experience its’ haunted secrets.

The Lombard Story[]

The Gable - Lombard romance started on January 25, 1936 at the formal ball called The White Mayfair Ball. This was the first time they had met since the making of their only movie together No Man of Her Own. They seemed to have an eye for each other and then they had a fight. The next morning Gable was awakened by doves in his apartment. Carole had paid the hotel clerks to release the doves in Gable's room. Ah, Gable still had a chance with Lombard.

By Valentine’s Day, Lombard had found a decrepit old Model-T Ford. She knew Gable’s love for fast cars so she had this Model-T towed to a body shop and painted white with big red hearts all over it. Lombard had it delivered to the MGM lot where Gable was working. A note on the steering wheel said, "You’re driving me crazy." Well, Gable called Lombard and invited her dancing at the Trocadero that night. Lombard spent the rest of the day preparing for her first date with Gable. A champagne-colored gown and a white chinchilla jacket. Gable had a surprise for Lombard now. He picked her up in the Model-T Ford. Lombard being the good sport went right along with the joke. They chugged down Hollywood Boulevard at 10 mph laughing all the way. Lombard carried on an affair with Clark Gable from the mid-1930s. The relationship had to be kept quiet because he was still married to his second wife, Ria. Gable was finally divorced from her on March 7, 1939. Gable and Lombard married shortly after on March 29. They bought a ranch, previously owned by director Raoul Walsh, in San Fernando Valley, California. They called each other "Ma" and "Pa", and lived a happy, unpretentious life. To all who knew Gable, she was the love of his life.

Off-screen, she was much loved for her unpretentious personality and well known for her earthy sense of humor. She loved playing pranks during filming, and once joked about husband Gable (widely acknowledged the "King of Hollywood"), "If his pee-pee was one inch shorter, they'd be calling him the Queen of Hollywood".

When the US entered World War II at the end of 1941, Lombard traveled to her home state of Indiana for a war bond rally. At four o'clock (04:00 local time) on the morning of Friday, January 16, 1942, Lombard and her mother boarded a Trans World Airlines DC-3 airplane to return to California. After refueling in Las Vegas, Flight 3 took off on a clear night. However, beacons in the area had been blacked out because of the war, and the plane was 6.7 miles (10.8 km) off course. Twenty-three minutes after takeoff, the plane crashed into "Double Up Peak" near the 8,300-foot (2500 meter) level of Mount Potosi, 32 miles (52 km) southwest of Las Vegas. All 22 passengers were killed. A plaque marked the spot, but was stolen sometime in 2007.Just before boarding the plane, Carole had addressed her fans, saying: "Before I say goodbye to you all, come on and join me in a big cheer! V for Victory!" President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who admired her patriotism, declared her the first woman killed in the line of duty during the war and posthumously awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Shortly after her death at the age of thirty-three, Gable (who was inconsolable and devastated by her loss) joined the United States Army Air Forces, serving as a gunner on a bomber on combat missions over Europe. The Liberty ship SS Lombard was named for her and Gable attended its launch on January 15, 1944. Her final film, To Be or Not to Be, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and co-starring Jack Benny, a satire about Nazism and World War II, was in post-production at the time of her death. The film's producers decided to cut the part of the film in which her character asks "What can happen in a plane?" as they felt it was in poor taste, given the circumstances of Lombard's death. A similar editing instance happened when the 1940 Warner Brother cartoon A Wild Hare was reissued. Lombard's name was originally mentioned in a game of "Guess Who" between Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, but all reissue prints have the name dubbed over with Barbara Stanwyck's. Lombard is interred at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. The name on her crypt marker is "Carole Lombard Gable". Although Gable remarried, he was interred next to her when he died in 1960. Her mother, Elizabeth Peters, who also perished in the plane crash that killed her daughter, was interred on the other side of her.

Ghost interactions[]

Noel Sheckells, the current owner of the Pioneer Saloon, reported that a couple of years ago on a Saturday afternoon that when a slot machine broke he went in the middle of the night to try and fix it when he heard a lady crying in the women's restroom. He started talking to her and telling her to come out because they were closed when instantly the crying stopped and he thought that perhaps the late customer had committed suicide so he opened the door and saw nothing. He went into shock, not understanding where she went. On the other side of the saloon, he had another profound experience when one night he felt compelled to come into the room when no one was around when he saw a misty outline of cigarette smoke. He saw this smoke wrap around him and felt all the energy go through his chest to create a beautiful, happy feeling. Zak thinks this might be in response to him owning and keeping the bar alive which makes the spirits feel happy in response. All these experiences have opened his mind and now he feels that he has a relationship with these spirits - even wanting the spirits to interact with him unlike his son. Tom Sheckells, an employee at the Pioneer Saloon and Noel's son, thinks that whenever the lights go out and he shines a light near the corner it makes everything in him start to shake. He reports that he has seen an apparition with a beat up cowboy hat on and about his father Noel's height, so he has decided to detach himself from the Saloon to avoid anything attaching itself to him out of fear that if the power does go out - he won't be thinking about it. The Sheckells speak about the bullet hole story and the cursed table the man who died sat at along with the bullet holes in the walls and the coroner's report. They also talk about the Lombard accident with Robert Allen, a fellow paranormal investigator they met in 2005, about Carol Lambard's supposed haunting. They found this out by Robert sending three ladies into the bathroom with a digital recorder, annoying her by using her studio name and not Jane Alice Peters which was her real name enough that she spoke through the device "Yes" at they finally using her real name. They believe that Clarke's energy drew her spirit to the Saloon and kept her here, and to this day they both have a memorial there. Zak wonders if perhaps the spirit was one of the 250 prostitutes who serviced the miners and so may have died from an angry customer and not Carol herself.

They then investigate the mine, as Goodsprings was once the heart of the most productive mining districts in Clark County. Over the years, lead, silver, copper, zinc and gold have all been mined from this area. Before 1900, a small cluster of tent cabins and a mill were erected, and a post office Lincoln County established Goodsprings Township. In 1904, Salt Lake City mining interests platted the Goodsprings Township. Most early buildings in the town were constructed during the boom spurred by the railroad in 1910–1911. The mine features several drawings by Native Americans several centuries ago on the cliff face, which the team investigate. They are told about a miner who was stealing deposits and hiding them in the Saloon and so was killed as a result according to Tim France (the Director of the Local Historical Society) while Karen Isaacson who was the owner of the Belle Mine told that she and her son hear abnormal echoes and noises. She thinks she can people in there, and can hear them all the way up to her house. They talk about how a lot of the Miner accidents were never reported and there very well could be someone under there in the mine as a ghostly remnant of a trapped soul.

The owner then reveals that the entire bar is built on top of a mine shaft which can be seen through a covered up hole, which Zak thinks allows the spirits to come alive.

Lockdown[]

Nick and Billy attend on the abandoned mine while Zak and Aaron investigate the Saloon with Jay doing the audio tech and monitoring it. The mine investigation is one of the most dangerous investigations to date while the Saloon investigation uses a Poker Game to simulate the spirits. After the Pioneer Saloon investigation, the team see the rest of the team in the mine via headlights as they drive down to check on them out of fear that they might be stuck in the mine.

Evidence[]

  • Apparition: Noel's experience with the cigarette smoke is referenced here and the team say how this apparition is not dust and not bugs as the HD Camera allows for them to be easily identified. This piece of evidence is at the start of the investigation with a fast moving anomaly shoots from the centre of the camera's screen upward. It also looks like that the anomaly has a second form that seems to follow it as being an orb. Later a ball of light shoots from the left of the X camera where the poker table is, folds together then disappears which seems to be the spirit energy they communicated with.
  • EMF Fluctuation: The REM Pod starts alarming when Zak and Aaron are at the bar and the poker table after a cricket annoys them into going there because its loud noise disrupts the investigation. It then goes away when Zak asks it to go away from the table before coming back when they sit down as if a spirit wants to play cards like the murdered poker player Paul.
  • Spirit Box Voices: Zak starts to read the coroner report to get the Spirit of Paul and then uses the Spirit Box to allow him to speak as well as some whisky, cigars, and cards as trigger objects (items familiar to the subject). Zak then asks what liquor the spirit was drinking when they died and what drink was being used, which is not answered for a little while as he explains that some spirits' responses will be delayed for about two minutes till its said "whisky" in response in a male voice before draining the battery and speaker's battery. After this they contact Noel to investigate the spirit in the bathroom which speaks up after asking the spirits name which says "Ruby" before they ask if they know if she is dead and the spirit answers "yeah". When looked up later in the 1940 USA Census, they find a Ruby Barnes is found in Goodsprings, Nevada via the researcher. They ask how many spirits are in the room which is responded with "two" in a male voice. They then ask if the male voice belongs to the client who killed Ruby which causes what seems to be an "unexplained SCREAM" in reply who is hurting her. When they ask if that is Paul, it responded to with "I think so" and "he's here" in Ruby's voice. They then get an answer to how many bodies were located as buried or thrown in the Mine shaft of the Pioneer Saloon, "Nine". They then investigate the mineshaft under the bar floor by going down the secret entrance, which they don't explore further because of the Black Widow Spiders but in the investigation with a tripod - in 90 minutes they find no paranormal evidence to record.
  • Equipment Malfunction: The Spirit Box goes blurry, then its battery gets drained after receiving a voice from it - "whisky".

  • Residual Noises: Bill and Nick investigate the Mine and see what they think is animal eyes which they don't want to look into because of snakes. They debunk this as a bunch of Bats which attack them. Billy climbs down despite warnings, finding out that what they are standing on is completely dug out, and putting his life at risk (Don't do at home). They begin to hear what they term to be a very high-pitched sound of an alarm noise which Zak supposes if a residual noise from the old miners' old rusty pull system. Like a "Ern! Ern!" sound. They then experience a loud digging, banging, rumbling sound which freaks them out. They then hear shouting way down the tunnel when they ask if they were a man or a woman, which they think sounds clearly like a voice.

  • Season 8 Episodes
    Pioneer SaloonBlack Swan InnTuolumne General HospitalMissouri State PenitentiaryYost Theater & Ritz HotelHaunted Victorian MansionExorcist HouseAlcatrazMustang RanchThornhaven ManorBattle of Perryville
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