👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9478
ACTIVE
Santa Fe courthouse ghost
At 7:27 on the morning of Friday 15 June 2007, a surveillance camera above the law-enforcement back door of the First Judicial District courthouse in Santa Fe, New Mexico, recorded a bright, blurry shape drifting for twelve seconds across a patrol car and a strip of gravel.
Where is Santa Fe courthouse ghost?
- Location
- New Mexico, United States
- Type
- Public building
- Coordinates
- 35.691, -105.941
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Santa Fe courthouse ghost said to be haunted?
A deputy found it while reviewing the footage; the local paper published it; within days it was on national news sites and in YouTube's top fifteen. Courthouse staff supplied the ghost: Andy Lopez, a man shot dead at that same back door in 1985 after taking nine hostages. Then Benjamin Radford of Skeptical Inquirer, invited by the newspaper, spent two days at the site and did what almost nobody does with a viral ghost video — he reproduced it, placing ladybirds on the camera casing until one crossed the lens and made exactly the same glowing blob. The building itself has since been demolished and replaced by county offices, finished in 2019, which makes this less a haunted place than a case study in how a ghost is manufactured, and how it is taken apart.
What is the history of Santa Fe courthouse ghost?
The camera that made a Santa Fe courthouse famous was pointed at a back door almost nobody used.
In June 2007 the First Judicial District Court occupied the Judge Steve Herrera Judicial Complex, a block of downtown Santa Fe bounded by Catron, Griffin and Grant, directly across from the city's new convention centre, then a building site. It was not a grand territorial courthouse. It was a 1938 junior high school, Leah Harvey, converted into a court building in a 1978 remodelling. The rear entrance on Catron Street was reserved for law-enforcement personnel, and a surveillance camera mounted roughly twelve feet above the ground watched that door, a strip of gravel, and the patrol cars parked under the trees.
The back door already had a story attached to it. On Friday 15 February 1985, Andy Lopez, forty-five, walked into the same courthouse and took nine people hostage. Two days earlier District Judge Tony Scarborough had sentenced him to seven years for the September 1984 killing of Andy Hernandez, then released him with orders to report to prison the following Monday; a state psychologist, Susan Cave, had testified that he was unlikely to hurt anyone in the meantime. That Friday morning, according to police, Lopez went to the home of Regina Hernandez, his victim's widow, and shot her in the head before driving to the courthouse. He demanded that the hostages be exchanged for the judge who had sentenced him. He was shot dead by officers as he tried to leave the building — at the back door, court staff would recall in 2007, when a deputy peered out and fired.
So when a small glowing shape crossed that same doorway on the morning of 15 June 2007, the courthouse already had a name ready for it.
Timeline: the documented record of Santa Fe courthouse ghost
- 15 February 1985 Andy Lopez, 45, sentenced two days earlier to seven years and released pending his prison date, shoots his victim's widow Regina Hernandez at her home, then takes nine hostages at the Santa Fe courthouse and demands to exchange them for the judge who sentenced him. Officers shoot him dead as he tries to leave the building.
- 15 June 2007, 7.27 a.m. A surveillance camera above the law-enforcement back door on Catron Street records a bright object for twelve seconds, from 7:27:11 to 7:27:23. Santa Fe County Deputy Alfred Arana spots it while reviewing the footage and calls Sgt. Vanessa Pacheco, the court security supervisor, who tells The New Mexican: "It's something unexplainable. I don't believe in ghosts so I don't think that's what it is."
- 19 June 2007 Jason Auslander publishes the story in The New Mexican and puts the clip on the paper's site; it is then uploaded to YouTube. Deputy Anthony Maez tells him it is the ghost of Andy Lopez; a victim's advocate sees a lost little girl; a public defender says it is cottonwood fluff. Wire versions run on abcnews.com, cbsnews.com, foxnews.com, courttv.com and Yahoo.
- 20 June 2007 A UPI wire quotes State District Judge Stephen Pfeffer, who thinks it is a bug: "Whatever it is, it has to go through security like anyone else." The same day Radford spends over an hour at the back door taking measurements and blowing cottonwood cotton past the lens through a length of plastic pipe.
- 21 June 2007 Radford returns at 7 a.m., places ladybirds and other insects on the camera casing and at 7.26 a.m. reproduces the image in size, shape, colour and movement. He publishes the result on LiveScience that evening: "The Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost was a bug."
- 26 June 2007 Radford discusses the investigation on episode 55 of the podcast Skepticality, eleven days after the recording.
- September–October 2007 Skeptical Inquirer runs Radford's report in volume 31, issue 5. He records the media asymmetry: the mystery made the front page of The New Mexican twice, the solution one short sidebar in the C section.
- 31 October 2007 An Associated Press Halloween piece puts the clip past 132,000 YouTube views and reveals the cost of the experiment: 1,750 ladybirds for nine dollars. "In the end, it was in fact a bug or insect of some sort that was on the lens of the surveillance camera," Radford says.
- 2013 The First Judicial District Court moves to a new Judge Steve Herrera Judicial Complex on Montezuma Avenue and the Catron Street building is vacated.
- Autumn 2019 Santa Fe County finishes the County Administration Complex that replaced the demolished Old Judicial Complex. The doorway, the gravel and the camera in the video no longer exist.
- 26 September 2024 The county changes the complex's official address from 100 Catron Street to 240 Grant Avenue to improve emergency access.
Is there a rational explanation for Santa Fe courthouse ghost?
This is not really a ghost story. It is one of the very few viral paranormal cases with a documented, reproducible ending, and the interesting part is how it was reached.
Benjamin Radford, then managing editor of Skeptical Inquirer, was brought in by The New Mexican, the paper that had published the clip. He first watched the footage remotely, on Monday 18 June, and wrote to the reporter that the much-discussed "shadow" trailing the object was probably not a shadow at all: "the dark patch seems to closely follow the movements of the object on the video screen instead of the terrain beneath it, as we would expect if it's a shadow." He then drove to Santa Fe and worked the site for two days.
His first move was to fix the scale. Nothing in the frame is in focus, so the object could be large and distant or tiny and close. Catron Street is busy with cars and pedestrians and lined with condominiums, and the recording was made at about 7.30 in the morning: "I can't believe someone wouldn't have noticed it from the apartments or driving by," he told The New Mexican. That reasoning eliminated the big-and-far option, and with it the reflection and the hoax — as he later put it to the Associated Press, "why would someone conduct a prank on courthouse surveillance with deputies with guns watching?"
That left two small, near candidates: cottonwood fluff, which was drifting around the building in June, and a bug. He blew cottonwood cotton across the lens through a length of plastic pipe. Size and shape roughly matched; colour and motion did not, and the object on the tape followed a path rather than being carried by the wind. So he bought insects — 1,750 ladybirds for nine dollars, by his own account — and placed them on the camera casing. On the second morning, at 7.26 a.m., minutes off the clock time of the original event, he got a match: same size, same shape, same colour, same movement. Deputy John Lucero, who had watched it with him, told him: "You got it. I'm convinced it was a bug."
The optics are ordinary and worth knowing, because they generate most "orb" photographs. Anything sitting a few centimetres from a lens is far inside its minimum focus distance, so it is rendered not as an object but as a large, soft, luminous disc. Where night-time orbs are lit by the camera's own flash or infrared illuminator, this one was not: Radford attributed the glow to direct morning sunlight striking the insect from a low angle. The courthouse staff had sensed the problem without being able to name it — a clerk, Juanita Sena-Shannon, told the paper that it looked like a reflection "but the angle of the sun is all wrong."
One last detail is the most instructive. Radford noted in Skeptical Inquirer that the mystery ran twice on the front page of The New Mexican, while the solution got a single short sidebar in the C section. The bug never went viral.
Can you visit Santa Fe courthouse ghost?
The building seen in the 2007 video was demolished to make way for county offices. The First Judicial District Court vacated its complex on Catron Street in 2013, when Santa Fe County completed the new Steve Herrera First Judicial Complex on Montezuma Avenue; on 27 November of that year the county asked residents, through a survey, what should be done with the old site. The county's project page says the new County Administration Complex, about 62,000 square feet with on-site public parking, replaced the "Old Judicial Complex" and was completed in the autumn of 2019. The courthouse's back entrance went with the old building, among it the camera that The New Mexican described as mounted about 12 feet up.
The pin sits about 30 m from 100 Catron Street, the complex's address until 26 September 2024, and about 500 m north-west of the Plaza. On that date the county moved the primary address to 240 Grant Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501. The notice gives that address as the public entrance to the building and the parking lot as well as the E911 address; it adds that 100 Catron Street is no longer a public access point. The county's contact page gives office hours of Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to noon and from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., with some offices open over lunch.
The court is about 690 m south-south-west of the pin, at 225 Montezuma Avenue, Santa Fe, NM 87501, telephone 505-455-8250, open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The court's own page calls it the Santa Fe County District Courthouse; the county's notice of 5 December 2013, announcing its grand opening, calls it the Steve Herrera First Judicial Courthouse. Both buildings are working public offices.
The footage is better documented than the place. Jason Auslander's report in The New Mexican of 19 June 2007 describes a 12-second clip that Deputy Alfred Arana found while reviewing the previous night's surveillance video. Two days later the paper reported that it had passed 50,000 views on YouTube since being posted, and in October the Associated Press put the figure at more than 132,000.
Sources consulted
- Jason Auslander, «'Ghost' keeps people guessing» — The Santa Fe New Mexican, 2007 newspaper archive
- Jason Auslander, «Skeptics, believers all have 'ghost' theories» — The Santa Fe New Mexican, 2007 newspaper archive
- Jason Auslander, «Ruling on courthouse 'ghost': Not likely» — The Santa Fe New Mexican, 2007 newspaper archive
- Benjamin Radford, «EXCLUSIVE: Courthouse 'Ghost' Video Mystery Solved» — LiveScience, 21 June 2007, 2007 report
- Benjamin Radford, «Santa Fe 'Courthouse Ghost' Mystery Solved» — Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 31 no. 5 (September/October 2007), p. 17, 2007 report
- United Press International, «Courthouse camera captures 'ghost'» — UPI wire, 20 June 2007, 2007 newspaper archive
- Associated Press, «Tests Reveal Spook Haunting Santa Fe Courthouse Is Actually an Insect» — Fox News, 31 October 2007, 2007 newspaper archive
- Associated Press, «Man Freed After Confessing to Murder Kills Victim's Wife, Dies in Shoot-Out» — Los Angeles Times, 16 February 1985, 1985 newspaper archive
- Derek Colanduno and Swoopy, «Skepticality 055: Santa Fe Courthouse Ghost — interview with Benjamin Radford» — Skepticality podcast, 26 June 2007, 2007 interview
- Santa Fe County, «County Administration Complex and Restoration Project» — Official project record, 2019 web
- Santa Fe County, «Address Modification for Santa Fe County Administrative Complex» — Official notice, 26 September 2024, 2024 web
- First Judicial District Court of New Mexico, «Location, Hours & Contacts» — Official court information, 2026 web
- Santa Fe County, «Santa Fe County Seeks Input on Old Courthouse — the Old First Judicial Courthouse on Catron Street, vacated in 2013 after the county completed the Steven Herrera First Judicial Complex on Montezuma Avenue» — Official news release, 27 November 2013, 2013 web
- Santa Fe County, «Steve Herrera First Judicial Courthouse Ribbon Cutting — grand opening on Friday 6 December 2013 at 225 Montezuma Ave.» — Official news release, 5 December 2013, 2013 web
- Santa Fe County, «Contact Us — county office hours: Monday to Friday 8 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., some offices open during the lunch hour» — santafecountynm.gov (consulted 24 September 2026), 2026 web
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content
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