Milligan House

The Flagstaff visitor Center offers a 1.5 walking tour of some of Flagstaff’s haunted places. It is an easy walk which covers seven historic sites where a ghost hunter may encounter a spirit or two. The Mulligan House was the former home of J. C. Milligan. Milligan was a Flagstaff Justice of the Peace and owner of a local brickyard company. The two-story Milligan brick home later served as an apartment house and is now the offices of the Flagstaff Convention and Visitors Bureau. Past tenants of the house and former employees of the CVB report paranormal events and feel an unsettled spirit who roams an upstairs office late at night. A former employee believes this might have been the bedroom of former school teacher Mabel Milligan. Mabel died unexpectedly in 1923 from a diabetes coma and continues to reside in her home. Visitors often report hearing footsteps on the stairs and across the wooden floors. Often the sounds are followed by a freezing cold chill and a feeling of being watched. The spirit is friendly and just keeping an eye on her former home. The spirit is still in charge of the CVB kitchen. Employees talk of placing coffee makers in the kitchen area where they found the appliance would not work properly. The water boiled over and coffee grounds were spilled about the counter. They even purchased an expensive coffee unit, but the unexplained problem continued. They finally rearranged the kitchen, placed the coffee maker in a new spot, and the dilemma finally ceased. The ghost of the Milligan House has been known to be quite helpful. An employee had come to the Visitor Center to prepare for an evening event. She decided to go to the back office and complete some last minute work on the computer. Somehow she lost track of the time. She felt that cold eerie feeling and heard something moving in the hallway. She walked out into the hall to investigate the sounds, but found nobody in the building. When returning to her office, she found a picture of the Visitor Center lying face up on her keyboard. The spirit simply wanted to reminder her of her event and she needed to get a move on.