TUCSON, Ariz. — "This is the room that the cowboy, little girl, all kinds of people come into," Becky Gydesen said preparing for an evening of ghost hunting.
She has a K2, and a recorder with her as well as a couple of special guests for this ghost experience, her daughters.
"La Cocina is actually what I consider my home base and that's because we start the tours here and we do the Tucson Ghost Experience here," Gydesen said.
Tucsonans may come to La Cocina to enjoy a drink or meal, but Becky says there are several spirits joining folks for dinner.
"We know there are about five different haunts for sure here," Gydesen said. "A couple different cowboys, an older lady that they have nicknamed Rosa, a little girl and a little boy we don't know much about."
Becky said there's a lot of history at La Cocina because in 1775 they created the presidio wall where the restaurant currently stands.
Throughout the years it's gone from a general store, to a brewery, and then to a restaurant that still stands today.
"We've heard knocks. We've heard furniture being dragged. We've even had a radio turn off and turn up lounder until we went to locate where that radio was at and it wasn't on when we first got here," Becky described a previous experience she had a La Cocina.
Three encounters, Becky said, happened over the past several years, but nothing stood out to her more than what her daughter saw when she was four-years-old.
"I was riding in a stroller and there used to be a clothes rack in this shop," Bailey said describing what she saw. "She was hiding in the clothes rack and when I turned to look I just saw a girl playing peek-a-boo with me."
"She just thought it was a real little girl," Becky said. "She had no clue that it wasn't a live little girl. She didn't know she was interacting with a ghost."
Bailey said she hasn't seen the girl in four years. Becky brought her daughters with her to the hunt in hopes of having them play once again.
"Just ask her to come out," Becky encouraged her daughter. "Little girl, can you come out and play?"
Even though the team didn't get a sign in that room once they moved outside they got some interaction, but once Becky's daughters left that interaction left with them.
"The K2 was going off when Bailey was back here so maybe that was the little girl," Becky said.
She called her daughters back and they started playing together.
"I think the little girl is back here with you guys because when you left it stopped flickering," Becky said.
"In a lot of cases we get the children are the ones that are the most sensitive to it for some reason," Becky said. "It's believed that since children aren't told that ghosts aren't real and it's not something you should talk about... because of that reason they are more open minded so they see it and experience it more."
