|
| ||
Paige Kaltsas Photos by Sean Hartgrove |
It's Midnight. It's Friday the 13th. The moon is full and bloated, with a mandarin tint, and I stare at the sky, mouth slightly open. I'm standing in Cheesman Park at this moment trying to find ghosts. I've never done this sort of thing before, and I'm not aiming to start a hobby of playing with the supernatural. When I was younger, I used our Ouija Board as a platform for playing "spin thebottle." I compulsively read every Nancy Drew mystery book, motivated by the thought that at some point Nancy and her boyfriend would finally hook up. (Nancy is still a virgin to this day.) So let me be honest with you, I'm here in this dark park to get some real meat for an article. I heard that there were ghosts here and, goddamnit, I'm gonna find some. I prance around on the marble pavilion, beer in hand, laughing like a banshee. "C'mon you fucking ghosts! Reveal yourselves!" In movies, this display of disrespect and mocking would invite a grue some end to someone like me. But nothing happens.
"Well," I muse, "if they aren't going to come to me, then I have to come to them."
Luckily I have my friend Steve with me, and I grab on to his arm and we walk silently around in circles, trying to listen for the panting noises that people report hearing in the park. We walk slowly on the grass, near thick, dark trees. I feel like I am looking for a lost dog or something. I take off my jacket, to better feel the icy, ghostly chills that others report feeling. Steve kicks the grass and dirt trying to find some old graves. I kind of feel like we are trying too hard. But, supposedly, there are 2,000 bodies still buried beneath Cheesman Park from the days when it was Denver's first official cemetery. We try to find the secret burial spot we heard about-- the gravesite where nothing casts a shadow at high noon. The man buried there was convicted of murder and unjustly hung and buried. When officials realized their mistake, it was too late. The tombstone was ripped down when the transition to the park was made, and the body still lies, located somewhere in the center of the park...
This all feels too serious, so then I can't stop laughing, and Steve and I end up talking about the cereals we ate when we were ten. When he men
tions BooBerry cereal, I remember what I am really doing here, and then I am completely apathetic to the whole situation. For being Denver's first cemetery (formerly called Mount Prospect Cemetery) I feel nothing, no chills no spooks, no panting noises. As we walk out of the park, a little drunk and tired, I start doubting it all.
When we leave I decide that I need some help, someone who knows Denver inside and out, including all of its nasty little secrets. So I call up a local "ghost expert" Phil Goodstein. His voice sends shivers up and down my spine, and he gives me the creeps. I guess that's exactly what I am looking for.
So night falls again. The moon is still full. It's still Friday the 13th, and I'm standing in front of the Capitol building with 20 other people, staring at ghost-man Phil. Wiry brown hair spills sideways out of his hat, and his mouth moves beneath a bushy beard, flecks of spit soaring into the cool night air. And this guy has a voice. It quivers, sings, and projects like a police siren. If you ever needed to scare a little kid, this is your man.
"My name is Phil Goodstein and I got kicked out of East High School in 1970. Then I went to college, and dropped out. Then I went to college, and dropped out. Then I went to college, and dropped out. Then I went to Metro and got a Ph. D. in useless information, such as, 'The Role of the General Strike in European Social Democracy from the French Revolution to World War One, ' or 'The Character of Polish Nationality Disputes in the Revolutions of 1830 and 1846, ' or 'Eschatology in Puritan New England. ' So anyway that brings me nowhere and I start teaching at Denver Free University in the early '80's."
Phil tells us how his first tour of the city's ghostly and "seamy" areas started on Colfax where the tour was invited to a bottle party. While learning the difference between topless and bottomless bars, they got a streetwalker strolling by to talk about her job.
"Now, folks, I could talk to you about the architecture, sociology, and culture of this area, or I could focus on the sex, sleaze and ghosts." No one really says anything, sort of thinking he has already made a choice for us. Phil nods approvingly and directs our attention to the Capitol building looming behind us. "Now this building here is a very cold and evil building," his voice quivers. We learn about the "floating heads" that haunt the Capitol Building.
"In the early 1860's a price was put on the heads of the Espinoza brothers, two Mexican settlers who were on a murdering rampage through southern Colorado. They were finally killed and beheaded, and their heads were brought hundreds of miles to Denver, rotting and stinking. Governor Evans placed the heads in large specimen jars, preserving them in alcohol. Over the years, the jars were moved down to the tunnels that run under the Capitol and through the district. A number of years ago, the Colorado Historical Society tried to find the heads but they had mysteriously disappeared! Some hypothesize that during prohibition, somebody was so desperate for alcohol that they stole the jars and drained them. Some claim to have seen two headless horsemen, wearing clothes from the 1800's, riding around Cripple Creek. Others who spend time studying or doing work down in the basement of the Capitol Building have reported feeling like someone is looking over their shoulder, or over both shoulders and giving them icy chills." We stare at Phil and at the building, and he motions us on.
We work our way across Colfax, around Logan and 16th Street, learning about the greed and adultery that occurred in a number of innocent looking houses. I feel like I'm on a live version of "Unsolved Mysteries."
We stroll by the Acacia Apartments off 14th and Colfax, where a senator's mistress slit her wrists in the bathtub of apartment 111 when she found out that he went back to his wife. People who stay in the apartment report that sometimes, late at night, the bathtub will start gurgling and filling up with water, including a reddish brown color, perhaps the mistress' blood, and it floats up and stains the tub. Lights constantly burn out and keys spin around in certain locks.
Such is the case at the Grosvenor Arms apartments off 16th and Logan, where residents report seeing the ghost of a '20's flapper girl running down the hallway. Another friendly type of ghost lives in there as well who turns the heat on in the mornings and switches on lights.
But Phil can't get away from the sex stories. We learn how the prostitution moved around on Colfax and why there is a red light on top of the Capitol Building. "Well, you know," he spits, "in the 19th century, railroad brakemen were required to carry red lights (which means 'stop the train! ') and would carry them wherever they went, even when they were off the job. When they visited the whorehouses on days off, they would leave their red lights outside on the street. When lots of the railroad guys were in there getting some action, their abandoned lanterns would accumulate into one big red glow. Others would walk by, see the light and think that this whorehouse was the place to be." Phil gazes up at the Capitol Building smiling. "That's where the term 'red-light district' came from," he says. He is sort of elusive as to why there is a red light is actually perched on top of the Capitol.
As I walk away from Phil, I still haven't seen any ghosts. I mean, I wasn't really expecting to, but damn, I don't really know what I want anymore. The ghosts don't seem like they are out to get anyone; it's like they're just trying to hang out and get through all the same shit as we are. I wander around on Colfax a little bit by myself, checking out the other houses. The Janleone restaurant catches my eye. Situated in the old Colmar mansion off Colfax and Marion, I step into an elegant, yet cozy, red interior. I talk to people who work there. They speak in hushed voices of a previous resident, a wealthy man, G. V. Kram, who married a younger, beautiful woman. He discovered one fine day that she was a gold-digger and sleeping with someone on the side. Kram sunk into a depression and buried his money in the basement. Then he tied up a hefty noose and hanged himself down there. The young woman stayed in the mansion after his death until her own, and is now a regular presence in the place. The staff calls her Ollie. A waiter takes me to the back parlor dining room. "She leaves her chair out like this, see?" he whispers. "And the patio door! I'll open it on a beautiful, breezeless day, and she'll slam it shut." He sighs and says it's okay; they don't mind sharing with her.
Other waiters approach me and tell me how sometimes they suddenly smell her rose perfume and that she closes doors on them a lot. Derek the waiter thinks that she calls his name randomly, just to play with him.
They say that you can sometimes see the old man still counting his money behind the thin curtains of the upper window overlooking the patio. Derek tells me a story of an older man quite a while back, when the restaurant was under different ownership and called The Heidelberg. This man came in almost every evening and ordered a filet mignon. He was one of those quiet regulars, who you knew but didn't really know. Then all of a sudden he disappeared and didn't come in for three weeks. At the end of the three weeks, he broke in during the night and hanged himself in the basement. Derek asks the owner if he can take me to the basement, and she refuses.
So I have a few drinks there to feel out the place. I try to get Derek to sneak me downstairs, but it doesn't happen. No one calls my name, and no doors shut in my face. Maybe you just have to be in the right place at the right time. Until then, walk on and watch out. And by the way, if you try to rent apartment 111 in the Acacia House, see if you can get a discount.
Not all is uncovered and explored. Phil Goodstein's book, The Ghosts of Denver, Capitol Hill is 500 pages long and documents every last stick of wood still standing in the area. Something interesting has happened around every corner. Phil also recommends checking out his book, The Seamy Side of Denver, to find out more about the sex, scandals and sleaze that have happened around here. Hop on Phil's ghost tour on Halloween weekend, called "Haunted Halloween." Ticket info and times are available through Colorado Free University.
The Janleone restaurant is open Tuesday through Sunday, with a piano bar on Friday and Saturday nights, and is located at 1509 Marion St at Colfax. For more information, call 303-863-8433.
Graveyard Bunny |
|---|
He creeps about the graveyards on Hallowen night with his chainsaw, stalking the innocent. | 
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
