{"id":3030,"slug":"wallace-wallace-idaho","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Wallace is the town that silver built and the mountains tried to kill. The Silver Capital of the World sits in the narrow canyon of the Coeur d'Alene River, founded in 1884 on the lodes that would produce a fifth of the world's silver — a mining camp that became a town that burned to the ground twice, flooded once, and buried ninety-one miners in a single morning. The whole downtown is on the National Register; the buildings that survived the fires are the brick ones that went up after the 1890 burn.","The disasters stacked up like the ore did — the 1890 fire that took the timber town, the Big Burn of 1910 that took a third of the rebuilt one, the flood of 1913 that washed a train off its tracks, the labor wars of the 1890s that brought martial law and the miners' union that was born in the bunker where the strikebreakers were held. The Sunshine Mine fire of May 2, 1972 was the worst of it — the carbon monoxide that came through the ventilation while ninety-one men were still underground, the hoist operator who kept pulling miners out until the smoke killed him at the controls, the mine that produced silver for a hundred and ten years and produced Idaho's worst disaster on one morning.","The town is what survived — the brick downtown, the four museums, the Oasis Bordello preserved as the brothel it was until 1988, the street that goes under the interstate because the highway had to come through and the town wouldn't move. Wallace declared itself the Center of the Universe in 2004 — the mayor's proclamation that if it couldn't be proven it wasn't, it was.","Wallace is the archive's survival file — the town that burned twice and flooded once and buried ninety-one miners and is still there, the silver capital that outlasted the metal, the place that declared itself the center of everything because it had earned the right to say so."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Wallace is the archive's Silver Valley file — the town that produced a fifth of the world's silver and survived fire, flood, labor war, and the Sunshine Mine disaster that took ninety-one men, the mining camp that became a museum of itself because it refused to become a ghost town.","A town that survived everything keeps its streets — the file's suggestion being that Wallace's haunting is the ninety-one: the men who died in the smoke on May 2, in the town that kept mining after the funerals because it didn't know how to stop."]}],"name":"Wallace","aliases":[],"type":"TOWN","type_label":"Town","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","MINING"],"groups":["dark-history","hauntings","legends"],"desc":"The \"Silver Capital of the World\"—where the bordellos stayed open until 1991.","full_desc":"Wallace is a town in Wallace, Idaho. The \"Silver Capital of the World\"—where the bordellos stayed open until 1991. Its accounts name only a collective — the bordello ghosts. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. It is a living community — be a respectful visitor.","address":null,"city":"Wallace","county":null,"state":"Idaho","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":47.473578,"lon":-115.922542,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site / park","research_notes":"PNW batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":2918,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"The bordello dead are reportedly seen. The presences go by the bordello ghosts in the file. The town in Wallace, Idaho has its documented history and then it has this — the account everyone locally knows. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. 'Wallace' carries the account. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The bordello ghosts","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Wallace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace,_Idaho","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":2919,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures in the hotels. Wallace in Wallace, Idaho carries the story the way small towns do — as common knowledge no one quite verifies. It originates in investigator claims — compelling inside the team's log, unverifiable outside it. Sources including 'Wallace' keep the claim in circulation. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.","evidence":"PARANORMAL_INVESTIGATION_CLAIM","evidence_label":"Investigation claim","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Wallace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace,_Idaho","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The district’s history is documented; the bordellos ran to 1991. A Idaho community's documented history gives the file real ground underneath the local lore. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. 'Wallace' documents the entry. The record keeps it — history, not lore. The claim holds its place in the ledger.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Wallace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace,_Idaho","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The bordello dead are reportedly seen. Wallace in Wallace, Idaho carries the story the way small towns do — as common knowledge no one quite verifies. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The retelling is the record now — the legend metabolized the facts long ago.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Wallace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace,_Idaho","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The bordello ghosts","claimed_identity":"The bordello ghosts","verified":null,"summary":"The bordello dead are reportedly seen. The accounts name only a collective — the bordello ghosts. The town in Wallace, Idaho has its documented history and then it has this — the account everyone locally knows. The account appears in 'Wallace'. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is The bordello ghosts.","behavior":"The bordello dead are reportedly seen.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Wallace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace,_Idaho","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Public townsite; walkable areas are generally accessible year-round.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Wallace","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace,_Idaho","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Wallace, Idaho","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace%2C_Idaho","desc":"City in Idaho, United States","extract":"Wallace is a city in and the county seat of Shoshone County, Idaho, in the Silver Valley mining district of the Idaho Panhandle. Founded in 1884, Wallace sits alongside the South Fork of the Coeur d'Alene River (and Interstate 90). The town's population was 791 at the 2020 census.\nThe Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes rail trail passes through Wallace.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Wallace_ID_-_downtown.jpg/960px-Wallace_ID_-_downtown.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":86,"lat":47.47361111,"lon":-115.9225},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}