Along Highway 89 north of Flagstaff, three ghostly faces painted onto wooden posts stare out on the windswept high-desert expanse. The site has become a tourist attraction and even something of a shrine. In his latest Canyon Commentary, author Scott Thybony reveals the little-known origins of what’s known as the Wupatki Spirit Totem.
It’s easy to miss. As the highway descends from the mountains north of Flagstaff, cars pick up speed. Before realizing it, many have zipped past a roadside mystery. It consists of three wooden posts with haunted faces painted on them.
The Atlas Obscura website calls it the Wupatki Spirit Totem due to its proximity to Wupatki National Monument. And online comments describe the “mysterious totem” as a sacred place. “Really good spirit vibes,” as one put it. An enthusiastic traveler called it “a once in a lifetime gem.”
The origins of the site are not widely known. Guesses have ranged from a Hopi shrine to a wayside pull-off where people leave tokens for a safe journey. I first learned about it thirty years ago when historian and merry prankster Robert Coody confessed to having painted the posts. He said they looked so bare standing in the middle of nowhere, he decided to paint the faces and not tell anyone. Keep it a mystery, he figured, and people could read into it their own fears and dreams.
While working as an archivist at Northern Arizona University, his active imagination kept patrons on their toes. Whenever I stopped by, he told me about some item of historical interest he had found buried in the archives. And one time he mentioned, with a straight face, how new evidence had emerged proving Paleoindians had hunted a species of wooly Chihuahua during the last Ice Age. Not the hairless variety, he added.
The historian liked to have fun with the credulous. He once learned about an upcoming party at a friend’s house out in the cinder hills. Just at dusk he emerged from a line of junipers dressed as a Spanish conquistador in the proper armor. He paused within view of the partygoers for only a moment before vanishing. Years later some of them were still talking about the Spanish ghost they had seen.
His best-known prank was a scholarly paper presented at a history conference titled, “Steamboats on the Rio de Flag.” Historical photographs accompanied his report to give it credence, and some people fell for it. The ephemeral stream is often dry as it winds through Flagstaff. Kayakers have been known to run it on rare occasions, but no one has yet spotted a steamboat.
Recently I was on a road trip with my wife when we stopped at the Spirit Totem. I found the normal assortment of offerings, mostly spare change pressed into the wood. Someone had left behind a bundle of sagebrush and another had left a pebble painted with a face.
Out of nowhere a young guy dressed in bright neon jogged across the highway holding up a half-empty water bottle. He was heading toward the desert in midsummer and had miscalculated how much water he would need. I topped him off as he told me he was running from Los Angeles to New York, covering fifty miles a day. He asked about the totem, and I gave him a brief rundown on how an old sign post had been used for a prank only to take on a life of its own. I added it had become a place where people left offerings.
“Cool,” he said and walked over to the posts. Despite knowing it had started out as a prank, the runner left a quarter. “I’ve been carrying it since L.A.,” he said.
His gesture opened my eyes to the alchemy of belief, the way a prank had evolved into a roadside shrine. The origins of the Spirit Totem didn’t matter as much as what people brought to it—their curiosity and even a capacity for wonder. In the end, the joke turned out to be on the prankster.
Scott Thybony is a Flagstaff-based writer. His Canyon Commentaries are produced by KNAU Arizona Public Radio.
