Five Unusual Places to Stay in New Mexico

Painted Lady Bed & Brew
Albuquerque 

When Jesse Herron bought the Painted Lady Bed & Brew in Old Town in 2014, it checked all the boxes: “Billy the Kid, buried treasure, and ghosts,” he says. “Where do I sign? I’ll pay whatever.”  

Herron lived in the property for the first eight years, working through a major renovation that pulled the building back toward 1881, when it opened as the Swastika Saloon with an “attached wine room,” code for a brothel. Behind a sealed wall, untouched for years, Herron’s crew found two original rooms still intact, dirt floors, and scraps of wallpaper. Descendants of the original owners say Billy the Kid stayed here once, his name entered in a register that has since disappeared into family lore. 

The building came with darker echoes. A priestess who blessed the place early on identified three lingering spirits—two female and one male—and helped the women move on. The male spirit was more resistant but was eventually removed. What lingers now is mostly atmosphere: creaking floorboards and a charge in the air, the latter of which Herron describes as “almost like walking into an electromagnetic field.”  

A gentler presence stayed too. From Herron’s first night, something settled onto the bed beside him—“not the weight of a human, but like when a cat gets on the bed.” In 2020, he finally saw her: a girl, age 12 or so, hair in a tight bun, staring forward, never at his face. “She was protecting me,” he says. 

High ceilings make the guest rooms feel expansive. The decor is funky and Western. An almost-expectant energy remains, as if you’re waiting for someone to walk in. The brick-paved beer garden holds the Ghost Light Saloon, tucked into a renovated city trolley, where breakfast is swapped for a free round of beer and horror-themed
readings and other events are held.  

“I live for creepy and haunted places,” says Albuquerque horror writer and filmmaker Scotty Milder. “Jesse has really filled that need for all us spooky misfits.”

Holy Ghost Campground
Pecos 

Fifteen miles north of Pecos, at 8,200 feet in the Santa Fe National Forest, Holy Ghost Campground takes its name from the area’s original Spanish name, Espíritu Santo, or Holy Spirit. Legend gives it a darker layer, stemming from a 17th-century story in which a Spanish priest either killed the Pueblo people who lived on this land or was killed by their defense of it. The truth is lost, but the legend persists. Some visitors to the 23-site no-reservation campground report heavy footsteps circling tents with nothing visible outside, shadows along the tree line, and unexplained noises after dark. Camper Ernesto Martinez once heard three slow whistles from deep in the woods, growing closer. “Every instinct told me to get back to my tent,” he says. But not everyone agrees, including longtime Pecos resident Eric Roybal. “My family has lived and camped in the area for generations and never seen anything spooky,” he says. “It’s a peaceful, sacred place.” Others lean into the legend, happy to let the stories keep the crowds away from this scenic spot.

Atlas F Missile Silo
Roswell 

Gary Baker played in these abandoned silos as a kid in the 1970s, when the government wasn’t talking. “You could not go to Roswell and get a paragraph about these places at the library,” he says. “Even at my military school, you couldn’t get a page.” The silos were operational from 1961–1965 but never used. Thirty years ago, Baker bought two for $55,000 apiece; each once held an 82-foot intercontinental ballistic missile, and one site was referenced in President John F. Kennedy’s remarks during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “When these sites were built 65 years ago, they were called one of the greatest engineering feats in the state of New Mexico’s history,” Baker says. After nearly $400,000 in renovations to the silos, Airbnb guests now sleep 40 feet underground in the former launch control center surrounded by period memorabilia, Cold War books, and original photographs, with a tour descending 180 feet into the silo itself included.  

Conestoga Wagon
Rodeo 

Rodeo has a population of less than 50 people, no gas station, and spotty cell service on a good day. So throwing it back to simpler times made sense when Bob and Sheri Ashley spotted a custom-built Conestoga wagon on display in Tucson. They bought it on the spot for their 200-acre property outside the Chiricahua Desert Museum near the Peloncillo Mountains and outfitted it for full glamping comfort. Inside: a king bed and a bunk sleep four, along with heat and air-conditioning, access to a private bath house, plus a covered dining area, grill, and firepit. Bob has photographed reptiles out here since the early 1980s, and the desert delivers: horned toad lizards, Mohave rattlesnakes, and Gila monsters, plus the colorful elegant trogon, which draws birders from around the world to nearby Cave Creek Canyon. But the night sky may be the main event. “People are blown away by the stars,” says manager Michelle Simpler. “I’ve had arguments about the Milky Way because guests have never seen it clearly.” When the coyote packs sing outside the canvas, she says, “It can raise the goose bumps.”  

Kokopelli’s Cave Bed & Breakfast
Farmington 

In 1982, geologist Bruce A. Black stopped into a Durango, Colorado, cafe after fishing and fell in with the Zinc brothers, local miners. After a few beers, Black offered $20,000 to dig a cave as big as they could in the cliffs above his Farmington property. “Dad envisioned the cave becoming his office,” says his son, Bruce H. Black. Two weeks of blasting later, the Zincs had carved 1,600 square feet into the sandstone. But the elder Black got busy with his career, and the office sat vacant, eventually sealed behind a quarter-inch steel plate. His son finished it in 1994, hauling appliances down the cliff by hand with buddies paid in beer. The interior features a kiva-themed sitting room and a stone hot tub with a waterfall shower. Temps hold at 65 to 68 degrees year-round, while 70 feet of solid rock swallows every sound. “Most folks say they sleep extremely well,” Black says. “They wish they’d booked another night.”