Heard any stories of ghost sightings in Metro Denver? The answer to that question, asked around the area, was howling yes, with ghost stories based on unusual sightings in the Denver Public Library, the Capitol, the Oxford Hotel in LoDo, a mine shaft in Lafayette, and even the home where a dress with what looked like bullet holes in the pocket was found under some floorboards.
That’s in response to a listener’s question in Colorado Wonders — they wanted to know if we could find some new and interesting tales about ghost activity around the area. We set out to answer the question, which led to numerous group and solo field trips to the homes and workplaces of Coloradans who felt a little twinge, or saw a shadow of a body, and felt it was more than chance.
At the State Capitol, for example, visitor’s guide Mac Jordan put together a brief tour taking place four days in October, during which one finds out where the infamous Espinosa brothers’ ghosts lurk around the treasurers’ office, disgruntled with their own deaths, after they went on a murderous spree, killing nearly two dozen over land issues when Colorado was still a territory.
“A lot of folks will say that the heads remained here in the treasurer's office for quite some time,” Jordan said. “... some say that they were displayed in other areas of the building, but eventually the heads were taken down to the tunnels here in the Capitol, where they were stored for many, many years. And eventually they were put into the incinerator.”
Even if their skull bones burned, their spirits didn’t, according to local lore. “Some say that when it's quiet in the building, you can hear the hoof beats in the rotunda — where the headless brothers are riding their horses, still looking for their heads,” Jordan said.
If the Espinosa brothers weren’t happy with how things ended up for them, neither was a ghost called Florence, who is said to haunt room 320 of the Oxford Hotel in LoDo, because she caught her husband cheating on her with a woman in their bed — in that very room over 100 years ago.
Florence was said to have killed him, then herself, and then remained as a ghost, playfully chiding guests who stay in that room, especially during Halloween. That’s when she is said to ramp up her monthly visits and show up even more often, according to staff who have come to accept her as part of the hotel community. Some guests check into the hotel and specifically ask to stay in that room, while others have checked into that room and later asked for a room change.
“While they’re in their room, they’ll spread out their toiletries, she’ll shift them around and not put them exactly where they were … guests have experienced her pulling the sheets off of them at night,” said Alexis Esquivel, who has worked at the front desk of the hotel for the past few years.
According to staffers, Florence ramps up her prankery when it’s a single male in the hotel room. Other times, she’ll flit around, fluffing employees’ hair, usually making her ghostly presence known by filling the area with a whiff of floral scents or causing the lights on the third floor to be dimmer than those on other floors.
“That’s when Florence is around, when you can smell a jasmine, a gardenia or a rose. She’s more of a prankster, I would say, rather than a scary ghost,” Esquivel said, adding that the woman is not the only ghost dwelling in the historic hotel.
The hotel’s engineering coordinator has also noticed a youthful ghostly presence when preparing for the Christmas holidays.
“She gets to go up to our attic and deal with all of our Christmas decorations and things like that,” and when she does, Esquivel said, “she'll just see a little boy running around every now and then.”
Florence and the little boy are just a few characters in the Denver Metro’s haunted history who seem to answer the question: Are there spirits around us? Rachel Hanson, a longtime Lafayette resident, agrees.
When she renovated her house not too long ago, she found a lump of fabric in a space under the floorboards. After soaking it so the fabric could move freely, it looked like a 30s era maid’s dress with what appeared to be bullet holes and a few matches in the pocket.
Since then, she said, “I have had experiences seeing something in a couple different places in our home. Sometimes I have seen a shadow of a woman near our back door … it certainly is something that catches my eye once in a while. I have had people tell me that they’ve seen a woman or a girl near where we found that dress.”
Olivia Meikle has heard about other sightings — in the same suburb, about 20 miles away from Denver. She leads a historic tour of haunted spots in Lafayette, with a long history of mining. One stop on the tour is at Simpson Mine Park, where, according to local lore, the ghosts of miners killed there reappear after dark.
“We are standing directly over the original mine shaft, the original opening from, for the Simpson Mine, and the coal here is 250 feet down,” she said during a recent tour of the park.
“There's a 250-foot elevator shaft before you even hit the coal,” she said. “A lot of miners died in these mines. If you are here at dusk, many people will tell you that if you wait long enough, just as the sun is going down, you will see the miners merging from the ground one by one and walking down this pathway here back to their homes and boarding houses.”
Meikle said she makes a point not to be around the park when darkness falls, but her tour participants have gone back specifically to see if that portion of her tour might pan out. “I've had several people tell me that they've seen them come back after tours to sit and watch and wait, and they have seen them here,” she said.
Another tour is at the State Capitol — where Mac Jordan walks guests through stories of spooky incidents believed to have left their mark on the building: besides the Espinosa brothers’, Jordan pointed out a few spots in the domed building where people have reported ghost sightings — just not as interactive as the Oxford Hotel’s ghost, Florence.
“The third floor is where all of our legislative offices are. This is where a lot of the sightings have been … a Victorian woman who wanders the Senate. No one has really been able to have any type of interaction with her other than seeing her.”
At Denver Public Library’s main branch, staffers have also come across some ghostly presences — ones that seem to disappear just as quickly as they show up.
“I’ve heard rumors of a ghost in this basement,” said adult services librarian Andrew Wickins, who heard the following story from a co-worker: “[She] was telling me that one time she was down here in B2 (in the basement off-limits to patrons), she was shelving some materials and she felt the presence of somebody coming up behind her … she turned around to say hi to who she thought was a fellow staff member — and nobody was there.”
Library communications coordinator Alvaro Sauceda Nunez has heard a story or two as well. “I recently spoke to one of our longtime security guards who is in the belief that this building is haunted, but she was very adamant to share that the ghosts are friendly.” He shared what’s been called the “Blue Dress” story: “There were two guys … here after hours … one of them was in the bathroom. He noticed that there was a … blue dress at the bottom of the stall … And so he ran out, talked to his colleague. His colleague returned with him, and there was no blue dress underneath the stall.”
Although many of the ghost stories were second-hand, a presence of a ghost may or may not have shown up at the end of the tour of the library’s basement. That’s when the battery power on a recording device being used by a reporter to document any ghost stories or activities experienced a strange shift: it started out with only one bar of power left — only to get charged back to two bars after the tour was done — maybe one of the ways the friendly ghosts haunting the basement made their presence known.
Colorado Wonders
Colorado Wonders
This story is part of our Colorado Wonders series, where we answer your burning questions about Colorado. Curious about something? Go to our Colorado Wonders page to ask your question or view other questions we've answered.
