Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost - The Mysterious Object

The Mysterious Object

On June 15, 2007, a mysterious star-shaped object floating around the First Judicial District courthouse was recorded by a surveillance camera. The image, starting 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. Quickly thereafter, reports on the event were posted on various news web sites such as courttv.com, abcnews.com, cbsnews.com, foxnews.com and Yahoo!, and promptly became a topic of discussion all over the country. Soon after videos and images were released to public, a large number of e-mail messages were sent to a New Mexico Magazine reporter, proposing various theories on what the object was. Thousands of hits for the video were recorded on The New Mexican site. The video was later uploaded to YouTube and has been viewed more than 80,000 times, drawing hundreds of e-mail comments.

Many predictions were made about the real identity of the mysterious object. Some people supposed that it was the ghost of Andy Lopez, who took nine hostages at the courthouse in February 1985 after killing the wife of his original victim 20 years ago. Other predictions included a person walking, a male's face and a spirit. However, common theories were that it might be just an insect (later found to be true), a spider, or a reflection, as well as some kinds of light phenomenon. Vanessa Pacheco, supervisor of the court security for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, said people’s opinions on the video depended on whether they believe in ghosts.