How To Dress Like a Ghost Hunter

Saddle up your mule and grab your Ouija board, we've got jewelry to wrangle

Aug 22, 2025

It was mid-cocktail hour when I spotted them.

Decades of leisurely sun-soaked afternoons visible in their smile lines and columns of silver and turquoise stacked on their wrists, necks, and fingers. One metal-covered hand was clutched around a mysterious device beeping in a steady rhythm.

“Are you looking for ghosts?” I asked.

“Yes dear, we run some of the ghost tours in town,” she answered in a gravelly voice, confirming my assumption that they'd been smoking a pack a day since the ‘80s.

“When is the party is over, hun? This place is a hotspot and we’ve got work to do.”

I was in Arizona for a friend’s wedding, a couple hours north of where I went to high school and college in the suburbs of Phoenix. When I’d checked into the hotel the evening prior I was let in on a little secret — the place is haunted.

So haunted, apparently, that a few rooms are permanently closed to guests. Too many people had run downstairs in the middle of the night with suspicious supernatural complaints.

The bride and groom didn’t know the hotel was haunted when they booked the venue, but no one seemed surprised. That’s Arizona for you! The whole state is run by ghosts, from the copper mines of Bisbee to the desolate cracks of the Grand Canyon. What remains of the Wild Wild West are lonely spirits, abandoned frontier towns, and truly excellent jewelry.

at a vintage shop near the hotel, imagine all on one person and then multiply it by five

Having grown up in the Sonoran Desert, I’m a moth to the flame of suede, leather boots, and chunky silver — specifically the work of Mexican and Indigenous American silversmiths.

Anyone who’s driven outside of Phoenix proper for an hour or more has stumbled upon roadside jewelry stands selling Navajo artists’ creations affixed with luscious hunks of turquoise, onyx, and lapis lazuli.

on sale in sedona, by navajo artist thomas francisco

I recently snagged a book called Silver Masters of Mexico from a sidewalk sale while strolling down Broadway. My visit to Mexico City earlier this year was spent eating as much as humanly possible and puttering around boutiques and markets admiring the jewelry. (I think about the pendants I passed up at the San Ángel Saturday Bazaar every day — sometimes being strict about your budget bites you in the ass!)

So I didn’t need to read the inside cover before taking the book home with me, I knew it was right up my alley. But when I finally cracked it open I was thrilled to see it centered on a silver workshop in Taxco, Mexico.

Any silver-obsessed secondhand jewelry hunter recognizes the word “Taxco.” A city in Mexico home to a historically booming silver industry, it’s become shorthand for in-the-know vintage jewelry lovers to easily identify high quality pieces.

The book details the artistry and workshop of Hector Aguilar, who operated the Taller Borda starting in 1939, highlighting his mastery of silver and the other artists who flourished under his leadership. Pieces from his workshop were heavily influenced by Aztec motifs and often featured stones like onyx, malachite, and amethyst.

It’s the onyx pieces I find myself especially drawn to. The sharp contrast between glossy silver and deep dark stone: one bouncing the world right off its surface, the other absorbing its surroundings like a black hole. A delicate push and pull worn around the neck like a plate of armor.

But it’s the turquoise that was so captivating on the ghost hunters. The aqua stone is blindingly vivid against muted tones, a small blue sea in the sand, a desert mirage of crystal clear water. It catches my eye with a force, and I nearly always have a piece of it secured on my own finger.

My grandmothers on both sides have passed down a dozen or so turquoise pieces purchased from Indigenous artists through the years, a few of which stay in constant rotation in my ring stack. There’s always a tinge of western influence in how I dress thanks to my Phoenician roots — the rings being an effortless conduit of southwestern flair.

Although central and southern Arizona don’t experience “normal” seasons (I’d argue we have two: Slightly Chilly and Oven Baked), I’ve always felt like the western wardrobe was made to shine in an east coast autumn. Is it too early to call it a western girl fall?

My ideal autumnal palette is one of earthy desert tones: cactus, copper, terracotta, sunbaked red clay, dusky mauve, the slinky neutral sheen of a rattlesnake, the deep fuchsia of a prickly pear fruit, an angry orange like the sky during a dust storm.

Despite my affinity for the vibe, you won’t ever find me ghost hunting. I’m of the mind that spirits deserve to rest and it seems crass to bother them with a reality show production crew. The elderly western woman’s ghost hunting wardrobe, however, I can get behind.

Consider this western ghost hunter autumnal pairing…

(End of summer edition because we’ve still got a month, people.)

Maxxing out suede from shoe to shoulder
Embroidered horseshoes on the chest (sometimes the obvious works best)
Flexible black capris suitable for saddle-mounting or cattle-wrangling
A (not pictured) giant statement turquoise ring, which I love best against a fully black outfit
And a self-inflicted hoof — What’s more western than matching my feet to my horse’s?