Albuquerque's first-elected sheriff is back from the dead.
See for yourself at the history-infused biographical magic show Friday at the Magic Juggler Shop at 3205 Central Ave. N.E.
Magician and performer Blake, who declined to give his last name, plays the ghost of sheriff Milton Yarberry, who was convicted of murder and hanged Feb. 9, 1883.
"Everything in the show is based on historical fact," Blake said. "My type of magic is storytelling magic, where the magic happens as kind of a sidebar to the story, so you hook people in with the story and then the magic kind of occurs."
He said the study of history is dying out. Young people don't show up for Old Town's history and ghost tours, for which he works.
"I want to bring back interest in history," he said. "By attending the show, people walk out of here highly entertained, but they also walk out going, 'Wow. The railroad came through Albuquerque in 1880, and Yarberry was the first sheriff,' and some things like that."
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The setting is intimate, sitting about 20 people in the room where Blake is dressed in sheriff regalia in front of a fire and surrounded by old-time wooden props, a noose and a copper spittoon.
"One of the things about making history more interesting is you should have some kind of a niche," he said. "You should have a catch, because that's the way our society is now: There has to be something to draw you in. Most history ends up being pretty boring, so I think that by providing magic as a medium, it brings people in."
Yarberry's real last name was Johnson, according to history books. He is said to have changed his name to Yarberry after he murdered a man in his home state of Arkansas and left town to minimize shame to the family name.
"That might sound all well and good except that all the sudden on the genealogical Web site one day, I get a notice from somebody named Yarberry - Corey Yarberry - who actually says that he's related," Blake said. "Now there are two strings going two different directions. (In) history books, they're saying Yarberry wasn't his real name. Yet I get this hit from the genealogy place that Yarberry was in fact a family member, and he sends me a photograph of Yarberry sitting in a chair in chains and irons preparing to be executed."
Instead of building gallows, officials hanged him with a newfangled death contraption that premiered in Las Vegas, N.M.
"It was one of the worst towns out West - it had a terrible reputation," Blake said. "It was nothing more than a frame with a pulley. They ran a rope through the pulley, put a hangman's noose on it. The other end of the pulley, they connected to about 500 pounds of counterweight. You simply stood there, put the rope around your neck. They cut the rope, the 500 pounds fell, which jerked him up off the ground so hard that if it didn't break your neck on the way up it broke your neck on the way down. They called it being jerked to Jesus."
'The Ghost of Milton Yarberry'
Friday, 8 p.m.
Magic Juggler Shop
3205 Central Ave. N.E.
$10
