Ghosts of Colorado Springs and Pikes Peak

Stephanie Waters

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN:
  9781609494674
• eBook ISBN:
  9781614236153
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Get your Rocky Mountain high on with creepy tales of demon dogs, pioneer phantoms, and Old West wraiths.
 
Eerie tales have been part of the city's history from the beginning: Pikes Peak and Cheyenne Mountain are the subjects of several spooky Native American legends, and Anasazi spirits are still seen at the ancient cliff dwellings outside town. In the Old North End neighborhood, the howls of hellhounds ring through the night, and visitors at the Cheyenne Canon Inn have spotted the spirit of Alex Riddle on the grounds for over a century. Henry Harkin has haunted Dead Mans' Canyon since his gruesome murder in 1863, and Poor Bessie Bouton is said to linger on Cutler Mountain, hovering where her body was discovered more than a century ago. Ghost hunter and tour guide Stephanie Waters explores the stories behind "Little London's" oldest and scariest tales.
 
Includes photos!

THE OTHERS

Hold on, man. We don’t go anywhere with “ghost,” “scary,” “spooky,” “creepy,” “haunted” or “forbidden” in the title.

—Shaggy to Scooby Doo

THE CREEPY CITY AUDITORIUM

The Colorado Springs City Auditorium at 221 East Kiowa Street was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1996. The old grande dame has seen many famous faces, including Dick Clark, Johnny Cash and the Harlem Globe Trotters. Built in 1923, only a privileged few were in the know about the secret subterranean tunnels that connected it to the police station, city hall and the morgue. City officials used the tunnels of the underworld to secretly venture to the auditorium after hours. There they could openly drink moonshine and gamble with their cohorts. Legend tells that the manager of the building was involved in a bootlegging ring, which led him to be bludgeoned to death in the caretaker’s apartment. His corpse was taken to the basement and thrown into the gigantic boilers, along with two other bodies that were incidentally still alive when they were sacrificed to the hellish inferno. The remains of the three victims were never found, and neither was proof that this story actually happened. I contacted a retired Colorado Springs police detective who confirmed that he had heard the rumor but had never run across proof that it actually happened. However, he added that it does not mean that the murders didn’t occur. It’s quite possible that the embarrassing situation was “hushed” and swept under the rug by the so-called good old boys club.

Perhaps the building’s haunted reputation had something to do with renaming the Little London Theater inside the City Auditorium after famous horror movie actor Lon Chaney. The favorite son of Colorado Springs was born in the city on April Fools’ Day in 1883, which was befitting since he soon became a jokester. Chaney enjoyed making people on the streets laugh with his uproarious impersonations of local characters, like drunken Judge Baldwin. Chaney’s parents were both deaf, which fostered his gift for pantomime from an early age, and he became world renowned as the “Man with a Thousand Faces.” Lon Chaney was one of the most famous actors of his time and was perhaps best known for his role as the Phantom of the Opera. The Lon Chaney Theater is reportedly haunted by the celebrity, and some joke that it is he who plays the huge antique pipe organ housed under the stage. A few maintenance workers over the years have told about the old Wurlitzer organ playing haunting music at night when no one else is in the building. Could the spooky music be a ghostly performance by the city’s very own phantom of the opera?

If anyone could answer that question, it would be the SpiritChasers paranormal investigation group headed by Christopher Allen Brewer and his partner, James Manda. The dynamic duo formed the paranormal investigation team after a strange experience in the City Auditorium that ended up hurling them into the national spotlight. All the hoopla began five years ago, when the accidental celebrities had the creative idea to make a DVD that would serve as a Halloween party invitation. Brewer and Manda were filming some footage in the City Auditorium when they accidently captured all kinds of ghost orbs, streaks of light and other paranormal activity. The evidence was so startling that they were flown to Los Angeles to film an episode for the Biography Channel’s program My Ghost Story. The amateur ghost hunters had so much fun that they went pro, and the SpiritChasers set sail for the big horizon.

In April 2012, the team scored again when it appeared on My Ghost Story with evidence collected in Manitou Springs at the Cave of the Winds. The two ghost hunters joke about their launch into paranormal stardom and have continued to host the private Halloween party at the City Auditorium ever since they hit the big time. The highlight of the special event is a movie of all the paranormal evidence that the team has collected over the previous year. Christopher and James firmly believe that the City Auditorium is one of the most haunted spots in Colorado Springs and have collected volumes of evidence to prove it. For more information on their ghost hunts, you can view their blog, which details their paranormal adventures, at thespiritchasers.blogspot.com.

Want to hear the mighty Wurlitzer organ and possibly see a ghost? Summer Sack Lunch Serenades are presented by the Pikes Peak Area Theatre Organ Society. For more information, please call [phone].

THE HAUNTED ANTLERS HOTEL

Queen Palmer named the first fine hotel in town the Antlers after the elk horn hat racks in the lobby. Built in 1883, the hostelry enjoyed only fifteen years of success before it was consumed in flames. Several people were killed in the raging blaze that was ignited from a cinder of a passing train. The hotel was rebuilt on an even grander scale in 1901, and the castle under Pikes Peak brought visitors from all over the world. The Antlers reigned over downtown Colorado Springs until it was razed in the 1960s in the name of progress. The new Antlers Hotel is built on the same spot, and some folks claim it is haunted by former guests, including two suicides and one murder victim. Others joke that the fine hotel is haunted by a former affable character known as Judge Baldwin, whose namesake bar is located near the lobby. Baldwin was a drunken farmer known for riding a donkey into town and for politicking from a soapbox. In 1868, he was attacked by Indians where the Antlers Hotel now stands, but the savages set him free when they discovered he had already been scalped once before. Ironically, he escaped the wrath of the murderous Indians only to die a few weeks later at the bottom of a water well. The joke went around town that the judge drowned by the very liquid he had refrained from drinking his entire life. But no one was laughing when it was discovered that the judge had possibly been murdered. Police found it suspect that the victim’s pockets were turned inside out and his bank bag was missing. Not long after the judge’s funeral, several folks saw the phantom of the drunken farmer stumbling around town, and the ghost stories about Judge Baldwin flourished. Some folks at the Antlers claim that the ghost of old Baldwin still bellies up to the bar now and then—a century after his fatal swan dive.

One of the Antlers’ legacies is the ghost stories that were left behind after 129 years of business.

Gerry Murphy volunteers at the Old Colorado City Historical Society and conducts haunted tours of the downtown Colorado Springs area during the month of October. The Antlers Hotel is one of his favorite haunted hot spots. More information about his tours and historical presentations can be obtained at CallMurphy.com.

THE SPOOKY BROADMOOR

It’s the world’s tallest tombstone, but Spencer Penrose named it the “Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun” instead. Will Rogers was an American humorist, actor and politician from Oklahoma whose homespun charm and witticisms earned him legions of fans, one of them being the blue-blooded Philadelphian Spencer “Speck” Penrose. The unlikely friendship blossomed after just a short time, and when Rogers was killed in a tragic plane crash over Alaska, Speck named the monument in his honor. The singing tower chimes two thousand feet above the city of Colorado Springs, and its delightful song can be heard throughout the Broadmoor area. Remarkably, the 114-foot-tall shrine was built from a single slab of Cheyenne Mountain granite and was constructed without the use of any nails or wood. Speck and his wife, Julie, are interred in the chapel of the shrine on the lower level. Mr. and Mrs. Penrose were instrumental in the development of Colorado Springs. In fact, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, located lower on the mountain, was built by Speck, as were the Pikes Peak Highway, the Broadmoor Hotel, Pauline Chapel and the El Pomar Foundation.

An antique postcard of the Broadmoor Hotel. Author’s collection.

On October 31, 2004, the Colorado Springs Gazette listed the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun in the top ten creepiest locations in town, noting that the colossal monument looks haunted with its spiraling towers reminiscent of Dracula’s Castle.

THE SCARY GHOST TOWN WILD WEST MUSEUM

The Ghost Town Museum located on Highway 24 and Twenty-first Street will give you a unique peek into the past. Once you walk into the building, you are transformed into another dimension because, believe it or not, a replica of an old frontier town has been built inside the building, complete with a barbershop, apothecary, saloon and every other kind of business you might expect to find. (Except for brothels, because this place is rated PG.) Thankfully, the streets are lined with boardwalks so that the ladies don’t have to drag their long skirts through the imaginary mud and horse dung. This place is more fun than a barrel of monkeys, but is it haunted? Some folks think so; in fact, several ghost-hunting clubs have rented the facility to hold investigations and have posted their evidence online.

It stands to reason that the fun-filled museum could be haunted because it was once part of the Midland Railroad yard. According to the Old Colorado History Center, there were a couple unsolved murders and several accidental deaths that happened in the old Midland yard. One worker fell head first into a vat of molten lead, and another was impaled when he jumped from the train and accidently landed butt first on a fence post (you know that had to hurt!). With all the tragic deaths, it’s easy to say that the place could have a hotheaded or stuck-up ghoul lurking about.

THE FORBIDDEN CENTRAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH

“A hole in the ground” is what congregants at Tourist Memorial Mission called their church on South Nevada Avenue for five years until it was completed. Memorial Mission only had money to dig the basement, and that’s where they held their services until the rest of the church could be built in 1917. The building has had several incarnations since its holy days. The most diabolical owner was alleged gangster Joe Bonicelli, who owned the Pearl of Allah, the largest freshwater pearl, worth millions of dollars. The church is now the office of the Colorado Springs Independent newspaper and is reported to be very haunted. The most frequently seen specter is of a nice-looking young man who is spotted on the main level of the building reading a book. Witnesses have identified the ghost in an obituary photograph that was found in an old church scrapbook. He is believed to be Walter G. Schaefer, one of the first pastors of the church, who was fresh out of seminary school in 1916, when he took the pulpit. The Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society did an investigation of the building in 2006 and confirmed that it is haunted.

THE SCARY CITY HALL AND FIRE STATION

The Colorado Springs City Hall at 107 North Nevada Avenue is supposedly haunted by a ghost who got caught with his pants down—literally. The ghost is known as George, a former policeman who accidently shot himself in the crotch when he hung his gun holster on the back of the bathroom door. George has been hanging around since the 1940s and is known to play practical jokes. He likes to hide things from employees, especially their cellphones. Perhaps George doesn’t like all the noise. However, he should be used to it by now because the basement of the building was once used as a shooting range. When the building was being remodeled in 2001, sounds of guns firing startled some of the construction crew working in the basement because they were unaware of the building’s haunted history.

A fire warden known as “Old John” haunted the station near city hall. John lived to a ripe old age; however, his ghost started showing up at the fire station shortly after his death. One article in the Gazette published in 1909 wrote about how wiretapping on the fire alarm happened for months after Old John died, even though it was not even connected. The mystery deepened when the tappings were deciphered as coming from fire box number thirty-three, which didn’t even exist. However, several people remembered that thirty-three had been the warden’s badge number. The article went on to say that the firemen were at a loss in understanding the strange mystery.

An antique postcard of downtown Colorado Springs. Author’s collection.

THE CREEPY GHOST GIRL AT LOWELL SCHOOL

Lowell School was built in 1892 and was the biggest school in Colorado Springs by 1910, with over one thousand students. The red brick Romanesque-style building at 831 South Nevada Avenue is now used as offices for the Colorado Springs Housing Authority and is home to a few ghosts, as well. One of them is believed to be a little girl named Nellie Ferguson, a former ten-year-old student who mysteriously disappeared from the school grounds back in September 1917 and was never seen or heard from again. It was called the biggest manhunt that the city had ever seen when hundreds of volunteers spent day and night searching for the redheaded, freckle-faced kid. Not long after she disappeared, several of her classmates claimed to have seen little Nellie playing on the schoolyard wearing her favorite pink dress. Still others attested to seeing their old friend skipping down the hallways. School administrators admonished these children for being insensitive and asked them to stop talking about the haunting on school property. However, when years went by and incoming students described the same apparition, staff took notice. It is believed that only other children can see the ghost of Nellie, and she is often seen playing on the playground and skipping down the hallways to this very day.

SKY-HIGH GHOST CASTLES

The Union Printers Home is a lovely red stone castle built on top of the hill overlooking downtown Colorado Springs back in 1892. The imposing structure sits on the corner of Union Boulevard and Pikes Peak Avenue and was built as a hospital and nursing home for members of the International Typographical Union. Mailers and printers worked in a risky profession, as many suffered and later died from the dreadful black lung disease. The illness was contracted by inhaling carcinogens, including coal dust and carbon-based ink. Essentially, victims were slowly poisoned over time, and it is safe to say that death by ink was not a pretty way to go. Madness often claimed patients long before sweet merciful death, and the wait for the Grim Reaper was agonizing. The lingering painful illness caused several victims to leap from the sky-scraping turrets to their deaths. The gruesome phantoms seen after the unfortunate suicides forever dog-eared the hospital as being haunted. When a murder happened there in 1907, the grisly reputation of the historic landmark was cemented for all eternity, especially after the ghost of Don Ferguson was seen wandering the hallways with a meat clever stuck in his head. The middle-aged man was clubbed by fellow wheel (bicycle) enthusiast, Jack Harris in the grand hallway. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

A neighboring historical landmark building is the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, which has been located on the corner of Kiowa and Institute Streets for nearly 140 years. The institution was built by Jonathan R. Kennedy out of necessity because three of his children were born deaf. His daughter Emma Kennedy married a deaf barber named Frank, and they became the proud parents of famed silent movie actor Lon Chaney. The Deaf and Blind School...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction. Why Did I Become a Ghost Hunter?
• The Phantom Axe Man of Dead Man’s Canyon
• Hell Hounds of the Old North End
• The Riddle and Wraith of Cheyenne Canyon
• The Shadow Boxer of Kid Montana
• Cities of the Dead: Evergreen and Fairview
• Gray Ghosts of the Old Railroad Depot
• Downtown Spirits of Justice and Jinx
• Haunted Hospitals of Little London
• Shades of the Mayor’s Mansion and Pioneer Park
• Dark Secrets of Fountain and the Hovena House
• Pioneer Phantoms and the Black Forest
• Spirits of Pikes Peak and Garden of the Gods
• The Others
• Bibliography
• About the Author