Who's afraid of the friendly ghosts?

Williams afterlife expert and medium Paige Bruening gives a run down on some of Williams' most famous ghostly residents

WILLIAMS, Ariz. - Like most small towns across the United States, Williams is full of colorful characters. But if you ask Williams resident Paige Bruening, she'll tell you some of the most interesting characters in town are dead.

Bruening considers herself a medium and has been able to see ghosts and talk to them since she was 9 years old.

She and her husband Ron run Saloon Row Ghost Tours in Williams.

"I call it a gift and a curse," she said. "I do this out of respect. The ghosts want to tell their stories. That's why I started this in the first place. They have history. We treat them with respect."

According to Bruening, there are five reasons a person's ghost may stick around after they die: unfinished business, sudden death, death by trauma, child death and lost love.

And in Williams there are quite a few locations with ghosts hanging around.

"The word is the 'Haunts,'" Bruening said. "Places with the most activity. Hot spots."

At the top of the list is the Sultana Theater.

"Underneath. Inside. And that's according to me as a paranormal investigator and a parapsychologist," Bruening said.

She said a little girl with a clubfoot named K.C. roams the theater space.

After Bruening heard the name K.C. through Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), local historian Sylvia Andrews found a story about a little girl abandoned by her family in the theater during the depression era.

"The lady gave the daughter a box of popcorn and says 'go watch a movie.' Nine of them drove off and left their little girl here," Bruening said. "It was the depression and there were too many mouths to feed. She had a club-foot and she was sick."

And because ghosts don't pay much attention to walls, K.C. spends time in Bruening's storefront in the old theater ticket booth.

"She comes in here and plays with the dolls I have here," Bruening said. "I have creepy dolls in the shop. She pulls them down on the floor. Other people have seen her and felt her and they hear her club foot on the stage."

The fashionista

A ballroom dancer with a fashion sense also haunts the Sultana. Bruening calls her the fashionista.

On one particular ghost tour, as her husband Ron was explaining his equipment to a woman with a blue purse, everybody heard the word "blue" on the EVP sensor.

"The next thing we hear is 'New York' and we look at the ladies and say 'is anyone here from New York' and one said 'no, but my purse says New York.' And she felt her purse being lifted up," Bruening said. "So, we have a fashionista that doesn't get out much. She was checking out the purses on the ladies."

Bruening said the fashionista has been known to treat some people on the tours to a bit of a dance in the ballroom as well.

Apparitions visiting the Visitor Center

The Williams Visitor Center is home to an apparition named Jimmy, a freight manager who worked in the building when it was a depot.

"Jimmy has been seen by many people and rangers don't like to admit it because when they're in uniform they're not supposed to," Bruening said. "But they will tell you they did take out one of the displays because it kept going off because of the motion detector when nobody was there."

One of Jimmy's defining features is his hat hair.

"He likes to take his hat off to the women on the tour when they're taking a photo," Bruening said. "He is a heavy set, stout man. He wears a flannel shirt. Many people go on the tour and catch him. He likes it there, so he stays. It's their time, their place and if they're comfortable there they will stay."

Williams-Grand Canyon Chamber of Commerce Information Specialist Pimi-Barrozo-Bennett said she has never seen Jimmy and isn't particularly scared of ghosts. But she has noticed "weird" things happening in the building.

"When we turn things off in the office and we know that we did it, we come back and it's on," she said. "Way back in the day (Bruening) said 'if you don't say goodnight to the ghosts then they get upset.'"

A dead boy and his dead dog

Ghosts don't have to be dead people; they can be dead pets as well.

According to Bruening, Copper the dog haunts what is now The Grand Canyon Wine Co. tasting room next to what used to be an opium den in the early 1900s.

"Copper is a dog that is over 100 years old and makes his appearance in there every night," Bruening said. "The bartenders will tell you that they didn't believe but Copper brushes by them, they see him out of the corner of their eyes. He is a cow dog. He actually runs back and forth between the tables, behind the bar."

Bruening said her original partner in the Ghost Tours, Dari Mendoza, took a photo of her dog playing with the ghost dog.

"This is the only place in the United States that I know that you can go and pet a ghost dog," Bruening said. "And this is the best dog in the world because you don't have to walk him, clean up after him or feed him."