Hiwan Homestead Museum has a 25-room 1893 log lodge as well as its other buildings. Besides its historic exhibits and structures, the museum also is rumored to have a spirit that resides in its Spinning Room. The apparition, witnesses say, is a grayish-white figure in a long nightgown. The ghost is used to explain footsteps, the sound of a rocking chair, and photographic anomalies.
Hiwan Homestead Museum
Museum of Colorado Prisons
The Museum of Colorado Prisons is rumored to have some lingering spirits. Cold spots and a phantom tobacco smell have been reported in the old laundry room, and Cell 19 is said to be haunted by a female prisoner who passed away there. Photographs have shown ghost orbs and the sound of coughing has come from the empty cell.
University of Colorado - Macky Auditorium
According to campus legend, Macky Auditorium has two ghosts. One is a young woman who was raped and murdered by a janitor in the 1960s when he found her practicing her opera singing. Although there sadly has been no phantom opera singing, a ghostly organ plays by itself late at night and her apparition has been spotted. Bloodstains from the murder are rumored to remain on the floor, now a professor’s office. The other ghost is a man in brown who haunts one of Macky’s towers.
Elk Mountain Lodge
The 1919 hotel was originally built for miners, and was used as such until the Big Mine closed in 1952. It changed hands and became the Elk Mountain Lodge. It still has the original coal stove and buttresses, and it’s said to be haunted by the spirits of those who passed away in mining disasters.
The Slogar
Slogar’s is locally famous for its fried chicken–and its ghosts. Witnesses have seen apparitions of saloon girls in big skirts late at night.
Crested Butte Cemetery
An allegedly dirty and stinky but friendly hitchhiking ghost is said to come from the cemetery looking for passersby to give him a ride to Gothic. He’s seen along the mountain near dawn, and isn’t familiar with modern cars. He has been known to ask drivers “What do you call this wagon?”
Dogwood Cocktail Cabin
Before Dogwood Cocktail Cabin was a lounge, it was an actual cabin where miners once lived–and some still do. The ghosts of deceased miners are said to show up as anomalies on photographs taken inside.
Forest Queen Hotel
Forest Queen Hotel has a ghost named Elizabeth who stayed here long ago. According to local lore, she fell in love with a shady gambler and gave him her life’s savings, after which he skipped town, leaving her broke. The distraught Elizabeth killed herself by jumping out the hotel window into Coal Creek. The ghost is said to bang pots and pans and slam doors.
Grove City College
Grove City College’s Lily Room is the stuff of legend. Campus lore says it’s a locked-up room in a girls’ dorm in which a girl hanged herself. Rumor has it the room was locked for 15 years and when it was opened again, her lily perfume was still heavy in the air. The room was locked up again, but the girl’s apparition is seen and her crying is heard. At the Mary Anderson Pew Residence Hall, rumor has it another girl committed suicide after being possessed by demons. Her apparition is said to walk the halls and scratch at the walls. The Pew Fine Arts Center has the ghost of Gwendolyn, a student who fell from a catwalk in the 1970s. She was said to haunt the costume shop, and when the new auditorium was built, she transferred there inside a costume.
University of Denver
The University of Denver’s Mary Reed Hall is reported to have cold and warm spots, doors that open on their own, electrical anomalies, and an apparition, which some say is either building namesake Mary Reed or her daughter Margery. Likewise, Mrs. DuPont’s apparition has been seen sitting and reading (in the dark, no less) in the DuPont Room and the Renaissance Room. Not to be outdone, Dunklee Hall at the campus’s Lamont School of Music has a ghost of female student who committed suicide on floor 3.
