Denver's haunted places hide hair-raising histories
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The Brown Palace Hotel in Denver in 2018. Photo: Raymond Boyd/Getty Images
Before it became a destination for picnics and dog walks, Denver's Cheesman Park used to be the last place you'd want to show up with a basket or puppy.
Flashback: It first housed the Mount Prospect Cemetery starting in 1858, and would remain a graveyard until 1890, when the city decided to turn it into a park.
Details: The change meant families had to move the bodies of their dead relatives and friends, which a few years later led to allegations that its undertaker, E. P. McGovern, was dismembering corpses to make them fit into coffins made for children.
Driving the news: The grim rumor and the park's past have sparked myths about it being haunted — one of several places in Denver with such a claim.
Here are three other places in the Mile High City worth a visit… if you dare.
The Brown Palace Hotel (321 17th St.)
People claim to have seen the apparition of Henry C. Brown, who founded the historic, luxury hotel downtown, while Jenna Robbins, who provided tours at the hotel, shared an eerie story with the Denver Post in 2007.
- During a tour in 1999, while Robbins told stories of famed socialite Louise Crawford Hill, hotel staff got numerous calls from Room 904 — where Hill died in 1955 — despite the room not having a phone.
Croke-Patterson Mansion (420 East 11th Ave.)
Now billed as the Patterson Inn, this bed and breakfast is home to numerous urban legends, from the spirit of an Irish caretaker inside the carriage house to the ghost of former resident Kate Patterson appearing before guests, and phantom voices running rampant.
- There's an entire book about its creepy legacy: "A Haunted History of Denver's Croke-Patterson Mansion."
Molly Brown House Museum (1340 Pennsylvania St.)
The Unsinkable Molly Brown's house in the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood is more than 130 years old, and among the first murmurs of the paranormal activity came from Molly's mother, who once claimed she saw a dead servant going up a staircase.
- There are also reported sightings of a ghost cat running around the halls.