Haunted Flagstaff documents the ghost stories of Flagstaff, Arizona and the history underneath them: the Weatherford Hotel and its Zane Grey Ballroom, the Hotel Monte Vista and the Grizzly Meat Man, the historic train depot and its phantom conductor, and more. Susan Johnson writes it as a historian, from records and firsthand accounts. The History Press published it on June 6, 2022; the paperback is 112 pages, ISBN 978-1467150699, $21.99.

The history in the book is documented from newspapers, court records, and archives, and the hauntings are reported as what staff, guests, and locals actually describe, with names and dates where the record allows. Whether the ghosts are real is left exactly where a historian should leave it: with the reader.

The Hotel Monte Vista carries the most stories: the Grizzly Meat Man of Room 220, the rocking chair of Room 305, the women of Room 306, and the phantom bellboy John Wayne reportedly encountered. The Weatherford Hotel and its Zane Grey Ballroom are its closest rival. Both hotels get full chapters in the book.

Yes. Both the Hotel Monte Vista and the Weatherford Hotel are working hotels, and their storied rooms can be requested. Booking is up to the hotels; the book tells you which stories belong to which floors before you choose.

The 1926 red sandstone depot is now the Flagstaff Visitor Center, open free to the public, and its staff have reported doors unlocking and a phantom conductor keeping a schedule that ran out decades ago. It is the easiest haunted address in the book to walk into.

The book itself was not a TV show, but its author has been part of two. Susan Johnson provided the historical background for Travel Channel’s The Dead Files two-hour special The Haunting of Flagstaff (2022) and was interviewed for Ghost Adventures’ Fear in Flagstaff (2023), which centered on the Weatherford Hotel.

Yes. The Ghostly Tales of Flagstaff, part of Arcadia’s Spooky America series, adapts the book for readers ages 8 to 12. Julie Rathsack wrote the adaptation. It publishes August 18, 2026 at $12.99, ISBN 978-1467190039.

Susan Johnson is a Flagstaff, Arizona author, historian, and paranormal researcher: author of Haunted Flagstaff, Wicked Flagstaff, and Flagstaff’s Walkup Family Murders from The History Press, curator of the weekly Flagstaff History column in the Arizona Daily Sun, and co-founder of Freaky Foot Tours. She is not the romance novelist or the Australian novelist who share her name.

They stand alone, so any order works. Most readers start with Haunted Flagstaff for the town’s ghosts, take Wicked Flagstaff for the saloons and scandals that explain where the ghosts came from, and finish with Flagstaff’s Walkup Family Murders, the sober account of the town’s hardest chapter.

Bright Side Bookshop at 18 N San Francisco Street stocks it downtown, a short walk from the hotels in its chapters, and the Starry Skies Shop at Lowell Observatory carries it on Mars Hill. It is also at The History Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Google Play.