Description:

Several hundred feet above sea level, the “blessed water” contained in this abandoned "resort and spa" was once claimed to cure just about any ailment known to mankind (and many which are not.) Though it’s been abandoned since the authorities seized control of it, the spa building itself still exists. The only indication of this is a dingy sign marking a dirt road up the hill into the badlands. It has innumerable holes in it, and you can just faintly make out letters boasting that the baths up the road are “world famous” and a “hot destination.” You can tell from the upkeep of the sign that this is no longer the case (though on a technicality, “hot destination” may not be false advertising.) Up the road are the remnants of an off-white stucco motel with boarded-up windows, a novelty oversized wagon, and pungent pond water sitting in square pools, strewn with rusting garbage and motel towels. Upon closer inspection, many of the boards in the windows are missing, and the glass has been cracked wide enough to allow people to enter - but considering someone unlocked the doors from inside years ago, you’re better off getting in that way nowadays. Footprints of Tokotas and riders break up a layer of dust on the hardwood floor in the lobby. Every other month, some kid or another break in to explore this place for a new viral video, so if that’s your idea, it’s not an original one. Perhaps it’s better to do a little more digging (or, more likely, perhaps not.)

Landmarks:

• Abandoned "Resort and Spa" - Long after the Double-Q's closure, the skeleton of a stucco-facade building remains. It has about 24 rooms, each equally inhospitable. Linens are strewn everywhere, and none of the electricity works, which makes it pretty jarring when a light turns on in the middle of the night. There’s a vintage pinball machine in the lobby still, quite dated, but custom commissioned by the original owners, claiming to be immaculately tuned to “quiet the mind and focus body and soul.” The flippers still work if you push the buttons pretty hard, but it’s full of spiders now - don’t play it.
• The Gilded Gila Restaurant and Gift Shop - An artificially old-timey saloon that sits at the edge of the motel. Considering the previous owners’ love of batwing doors and open-air patios, boarding it up to the public was never even attempted. Most of the tables were removed a long time ago, either by looters looking to sell things from the "haunted motel," or by campers for firewood. Weirdly, a few plushies sporting t-shirts and oversized novelty combs still litter the floor.
• Flowing Hot Spring - It’s more of a trickling, lukewarm spring, but that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. This shrubby brook is where the spirits were claimed to originate in the region, and it’s probably about the only source of water for miles. Products were once bottled here, and unlike the pond sludge pools, it’s probably drinkable. (Though swimming isn’t possible here, as the creek isn’t that deep.)

Lore:

Decades ago, a self-proclaimed medium and her husband settled in Fosbir to make money dishonestly, convincing the general public that they were capable of curing ailments through the aid of spirits, which were supposedly present in the “life-sustaining liquids” in the deep desert, be it water, tears, or diesel fuel. They began marketing these “spirit-blessed waters” (not the diesel fuel so much) to the public as “health supplementation” on local radio, claiming each vial of water had spoken to them in the voice of Aippaq (sometimes other deities made a guest appearance.) Though it had a few buyers, the restless couple wanted more. The con artists opted to turn their dusty homestead into a motel, sure that if they put enough effort into maintaining a mystical and luxurious facade (while cutting every corner possible,) people would have no choice but to stop in and spend.

The couple marketed their alleged health spa aggressively to wealthy clients, and the duo raked in a sizable amount of cash for several years, building out the motel into a larger complex, and buying roadside advert space everywhere people would see it. It was “talk of the town” for a while, and really, they were doing better - until the day something put a wrench in the works:

The place was actually inhabited by spirits and not the benevolent ones they’d been advertising as eternal inhabitants of their proprietary water.

The lights in the lobby started going on and off at random - blamed on spotty power infrastructure. Then, clients would set down their purses and backpacks, only to have them show up in another room, or outside of the hotel entirely, their contents spilled in the sand and organized into ominous circles - but of course, that was just some kids pulling a prank, right? Shortly thereafter, brilliant fires would light up the desert at night, only to disappear seconds later, and a deep, bestial wailing became constant - and the owners couldn't find anything to blame that on.

The couple lost their well-paying, elderly clients in droves, and trying as they might to keep their spa in the black, the medium and her husband had to eventually accept the financial loss (and then an arrest and ensuing fine for violating health and building codes) and it was shut down. Given the Double-Q's distance from all major cities, nobody came out to demolish it, it was simply left to decay as-was.

Years later, the remaining evidence of the once-prosperous sham business has appeared on lists of bizarre places in Tokotna, rated highly both for its intriguing mystery and potential fire risk. The place is technically closed to the public - but nobody is going to stop them. Once every so often, local authorities get calls from frantic campers about circles of pool towels they didn’t arrange, and glowing eyes in the dark. In response, they groan and advise the panicked caller to leave the area.

Original location inspiration by kepperoni