Ethel Halstead

Haunted Flutes Ethel Halstead

The idea for this story came from an article I read in an Albuquerque newspaper: The story in the newspaper was about a hiker finding the remains of a corpse on a desert in Cochise county Arizona. At the time I wondered why a reporter even bothered to write up the story because someone is always finding skeletons and decomposed bodies in isolated parts of dry and hot deserts. Many of the bodies are those of illegal aliens crossing into the states looking for work, and while that is a very sad thing, it surely is not a rare thing, nor does it make truly interesting reading. But there was a follow up story stating that the body had been identified as a young attorney from Manhattan who had lived with a life-long dream of being a rancher/cowboy and owning a ranch in the great American west. There was no indication of foul play, so the man had likely died from heat exhaustion or snakebite.