RUNE: Our last investigation in the “Old Pueblo” related to the city’s single greatest and most enduring tragedy: the 1970 fire at the renowned Pioneer Hotel. The haunting legends that followed the fire are almost as well known. As with our recent tour of Tombstone, the team wasn’t interested in just regurgitating the vast number of unsubstantiated claims of paranormal activity in the building, but rather in understanding the scope of the tragedy and how it might have lent itself to paranormal activity that continues to this day.

Built in 1929 to the height of eleven stories, the Pioneer International Hotel immediately dominated the skyline of the dusty desert town of Tucson. For the growing community, the Pioneer became that became a hub of activity, commerce, recreation and celebration.  It played host to numerous celebrities and dignitaries and gained a sterling reputation both local and international. By the 1970s, Tucson was a community of over a quarter of a million people and the Pioneer continued to play an important role as a social center even forty years after its initial construction.

On the night of December 20, 1970, nearly six hundred holiday revelers plus the hotel’s usual contingent of guests and employees were inside the main building and its two adjoining wings. People wandered the hallways and danced in the ballrooms until the wee hours of the night. In their eleventh story penthouse suite, Harold Steinfeld, the elderly son of the hotel's architect, and his wife slept through it all. As the hotel clocks struck midnight, all that was about to change. Just a few minutes after twelve, the first of several emergency calls were placed to the Tucson Fire Department. But the calls contained conflicting information, with the first indicating that it was a car – not the hotel – that was on fire. By the time the first firetrucks arrived, the fourth floor was already engulfed in fire and the inferno was quickly moving toward the top levels.

Even at the time, Arizonans understood the horrible significance of the fire. An article that appeared in the Arizona Republic the following morning read in part: “It was the largest single land disaster in Arizona’s history. Only an air crash, the collision of two airliners above the Grand Canyon on June 30, 1956, that killed 128 exceeded the death toll.”

Perhaps as traumatic for the community was not just the number of deaths but how many of the victims died. The above-mentioned article described the carnage:

“Most of the dead, including 11 bodies burned beyond recognition, were found on the upper floors.

As firemen were rolling up to the burning hotel less than 2 minutes after the initial fire call at 12:15 a.m., people began jumping from windows. One woman hurled from the 7th floor, hit an iron railing on a balcony of the mezzanine and cartwheeled to the sidewalk next to the Stone Avenue entrance.

One child, a girl about 10, plunged from about the 9th floor and landed on the sidewalk. Several other children were injured badly when they jumped on the roof of the seven-story east wing from the main hotel building...”

Despite the heroics of the firemen, police and bystanders, seeing such sights, particularly when they involved children, must have been horrific. The tragedy was compounded by the fact that it looked like the blaze had been intentionally set.

The individual who was arrested and convicted for the murder of the twenty-eight Pioneer victims was a 16-year old African American boy named Louis Taylor. On the night of the fire, Taylor had been ejected from the hotel twice, both times claiming that he was looking for friends who worked in the hotel kitchen. Suspicion of Taylor’s involvement grew once his reputation as a “firebug” was revealed to authorities. He didn’t seem to help matters much by repeatedly changing his own story about the events of December 20. Despite his initial statements about searching for unnamed friends, he later told authorities that he had snuck into a private Christmas party to partake of the free food and drink. He also made conflicting statements about seeing others setting the fires on the fourth floor – first saying the arsonist was a long-haired Mexican youth and later “some Negro youths with Afro hair styles.” Although the case against Taylor was mostly circumstantial (no one actually saw him set any fires), he was convicted in 1972.

Ironically, in 2008, 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft took a new look at Taylor and his connection to the Pioneer fire, revisiting several other mysteries surrounding the blaze as reported online:

Among the questions raised by the investigation is why a young man whom authorities described as a “pyromaniac” and had been questioned in connection with another fire five days before the fatal Pioneer blaze, left town when fire inspectors sought to question him about the Pioneer fire. That person, Donald Anthony, is now in prison. He admitted three years after the Pioneer fire that he had committed eight arsons, including a fire set a few blocks from the Pioneer Hotel two months before the hotel fire. Anthony refused to be interviewed and denies he set the Pioneer fire... 

...some witnesses say there was a suspicious person at the fire, a fact police never investigated. A hotel guest that night reported seeing a man directing firefighters with a bullhorn whose presence was so disruptive he was physically removed from the scene. The witness wrote a letter objecting to the fact this person wasn’t investigated and sent it to the Tucson City attorney, who forwarded it to the Fire Department with a note undermining its significance...”

Apparently, however, nothing came of these various conspiracy theories as Taylor remains incarcerated, serving out his life sentence.
So those are the details on the fire. Now what about the hauntings?

Following the 1970 fire, the pioneer hotel was transformed into office buildings and it has remained that way ever since. Although the building still stands prominently in Tucson's downtown quarter, it's virtually impossible to wander the floors where the fire occurred due to limited access and security. As a result, the team wasn't able to do any kind of on-site investigation of the old building. Instead, we had to rely on the accounts of others which over the years have been consistent in both their frequency and details.

Perhaps the most commonly reported phenomenon in the building is smelling smoke or hearing foot falls and cries for help. If you do online searches today, you can still find anecdotal accounts by individuals who claim to have worked in or visited the building and have experienced these things. Several formal investigations of the building have also occurred during the past decade, including one that was filmed by a local news station. In that case, the reporter and the paranormal investigators claimed to have actually recorded the sound of running feet in the empty building which was being refurbished at the time. Although it's hard to say that the hotel is definitively haunted, it certainly is a good candidate. Both auditory and olfactory hallucinations are common in haunted buildings where fires took lives. The emotional anguish produced by being trapped by fire may leave an indelible psychic mark on the building or the area. It's highly unlikely, after all all these years, that any smoke smell still lingers in the old Pioneer. The building has been extensively remodeled several times since 1970, and certainly any traces of the old fire were probably swept away long ago. Rather, I think these persistent reports are probably the result of sensitive people picking up on psychic echoes left by the victims nearly 40 years ago.

I hope that one day the Pioneer Hotel will actually be the subject of some serious paranormal investigation. For now, however, ghost-hunters may have to settle for the occasional ghost tour past the front lobby and memories shared by Tucson’s old-timers who can still vividly recall the city’s worst tragedy ever.