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Painted Lady Bed & Brew combines history, hops and hauntings
When Jesse Herron first purchased a relatively nondescript property in Albuquerque’s Wells Park neighborhood, he couldn’t have imagined the history it contained.
“It really didn’t have a whole lot of curb appeal,” he recalled.
“It had like a chain link fence around it, and there were weeds everywhere and there were bars on the windows and doors. So it looked pretty, pretty bad.”
As a self-proclaimed beer aficionado, Herron had a notion to launch a bed-and-brew concept — a twist on the typical Airbnb — in the Duke City. As it turned out, he lucked into a spot that offered a little something extra. In the early 1900s, the space operated as a saloon and brothel. There are also tales of money buried in coffee cans, still hidden on the property grounds due to the previous owners’ distrust of banks. The spot eventually became a grocery store during Prohibition, but over the years, the ghosts of the past have remained.
“Haunted as hell” was the description a neighbor gave Herron when he first assumed ownership. After living in the owner’s suite for nine years, he can vouch for that assessment.
“From even the very first night in there, it was like, ‘Game on,’” he said. “That first night things were making noise and things were moving, and you could definitely feel like a presence. And then the first year or so things were happening weekly.
“It wasn’t always big, major events, but it would be like, ‘Oh, I just saw something out of the corner of my eye.’ That bedside table just moved. Here my dog is picking up on something and is sensing something in this corner. Little things like that made it interesting and fun. I’m like, ‘Hey, I’ve got this haunted house.’”
Herron no longer lives on the property, but Painted Lady Bed & Brew officially opened in August 2018. At the time, the bed-and-breakfast liquor license allowed guests to be served two beers per day. A couple of years later, Herron acquired a small brewer’s license from the state and in 2024, he began brewing his own beer using a one-barrel system.
While the Painted Lady still utilizes four suites for the bed-and-brew, one doesn’t have to spend the night to enjoy a spooky beer. One of the highlights of the location is the Ghost Light Saloon, which is open for “Hoppy Hour” Thursday through Sunday, opening at 5 p.m. The taproom is a renovated trolley that Herron acquired thanks to his connections from having run a tour company in the city. He believes it’s the last of its kind in New Mexico.
“The interior has been redone with the original benches, the original brass rails,” Herron said. “It’s almost like a little museum. So the decor is a blend of spooky sort of stuff, but also there’s historic photos of the old trolley company and trolley company workers in Albuquerque from the 1880s to the early 1900s. There’s some early Albuquerque photos of the KiMo Theatre and some Prohibition-era photos with speakeasies and that sort of stuff.
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“So there’s definitely a vibe in there.”
The interior is cozy — it can hold about 15 people — but there’s also an outdoor beer garden that can seat up to 85 more. Because it’s a smaller system, Herron usually only has one or two Painted Lady originals on tap. However, that is supplemented by a variety of other local offerings from breweries such as Marble Brewery, Santa Fe Brewing Company, La Cumbre Brewing Co., Flock of Moons Brewing Co. and others.
The Painted Lady beers come with a horror theme: A recent option was dubbed “We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes,” a West Coast IPA that pays homage to the Alfred Hitchcock classic “Psycho.” It also was served in conjunction with a screening of the film as part of the establishment’s “Brews and Boos” series.
Other previous offerings include an amber called “Wolfman’s Got Nards” (“Monster Squad”), “Don’t Kill Me Mr. Ghostface” (“Scream”) and “You’ve Got Red on You” (“Shaun of the Dead”).
“Whenever a new beer comes out, we have an event called Scary Movie Bingo where the beer gets kegged, and tapped that day, usually a Saturday. We have a big, 85-inch flat-screen TV that we roll out into the gazebo in the beer garden. And we watch that movie and we play Scary Movie Bingo.”
It’s just part of a spooky event schedule, which also includes ghost story open mic nights, talks from paranormal expert Cody Polston and a spooky goods market. It’s possible that one might just experience something a little stranger than fiction.
“Things don’t happen like every night or every week, but there were probably 10 to 12 instances that were crazy, holy cow moments that would fit right alongside a scary movie,” Herron said. “I wouldn’t go back there and try to live there again.”
