Mini Tour

Colorado State Capitol
© Carl Coffman

Ghost lusters

Haunting tales on Denver's Capitol Hill

By Dan Leeth

"There is probably no more evil, haunted and mischievous structure existing in this town," exclaims historian Phil Goodstein. "Virtually from the time it opened in 1894, strange things have happened in this building."

About 40 of us are taking one of Goodstein's ghost walks, a soles-past-souls saunter through Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood. Our two-hour tour begins on the hallowed steps of the State Capitol building where, Goodstein advises, apparitions abound. Some people, for example, have seen ectoplasmic prospectors standing by the Capitol's downspouts during rainstorms, panning for flakes from the building's golden dome. Inside, late-working legislators sometimes glimpse an elderly matron staring at them with absolute contempt, her vehement visage undetected by the unelected. Most frightful of all, says Goodstein, are the floating heads.

The tale of the floating heads began in the 1860s when Felipe Espinosa and a cousin committed acts of murder and mayhem in Colorado's San Luis Valley. Territorial governor John Evans placed a bounty on the banditos' heads. Mountain man Tom Tobin, apparently taking the offer literally, delivered the pair's severed noggins to Evans personally and the grateful governor preserved the heads in alcohol-filled specimen jars. Eventually, the Colorado Historical Society took possession of the pickled pates, which were soon lost in the catacomb-like maze of tunnels that lies beneath the Capitol. The corpseless craniums have never resurfaced.

"When conditions at the Capitol get intense, people down in the tunnels will get an eerie feeling that something is looking over their shoulder," relates Goodstein. "Sometimes both shoulders."Goodstein, a Brillo-bearded PhD, doesn't take himself too seriously, and listeners are left to separate facts from farce. While the Denver native has taught serious history at Metro State and written at least nine books about the city's past, he has also taught Denver and Colorado Free University classes on less staid topics such as "The Pedestrian as a Hunted Animal." The walking tour business, he claims, came as an accident.

"One beautiful evening, I decided to go for a stroll. I was walking down Colfax backward, wildly waving my arms and talking to myself. People started following me around. On that basis, I figured I might as well give walking tours." Rather than espouse sanitized, chamber-of-commerce versions of Denver's past, Goodstein focuses on the scandalous. Fortunately, parents of the pre-teens with us realize his sometimes seamy topics might warrant PG-13 ratings.

"Leave a path open so other streetwalkers can get by, and watch your step," he warns as he leads us up the street. "Sidewalks are not always even, and dogs leave interesting things behind."

We stop at Grant and Colfax where a peeling Hotel Newhouse sign juts from a three-story brick building. This, Goodstein tells us, is the haunt of a young, vivacious ghost named Deborah. Often clad in short shorts and skimpy top, the alluring wraith loves to lure men to her room. The would-be Lotharios later awaken in a parking lot or back alley, discovering that both Deborah and their wallets have disappeared into the ether.

At the Denver City and County Building on Bannock, Goodstein tells the tale of a mischievous ghost who breaks into offices where he shuffles papers and moves files. If there is something present that shouldn't be, he will remove it. Some, Goodstein claims, think the specter is the spirit of George Begole, the city's penny-pinching mayor from the early '30s. This skinflint was allegedly so tight, he chastised employees for having too many paperclips in their possession.

Not all of Capitol Hill's ghouls and goblins bear only two legs. According to Goodstein, there is at least one hoofed phantasm chewing its cud on Capitol Hill.

It lives in the block bounded by Broadway and Lincoln, 16th Avenue and Colfax, which was once owned by Walter Scott Cheesman. The tycoon came to Denver in 1861 to open an apothecary store, and wound up possessing railroads, banks, mines and utilities. Cheesman wanted this downtown parcel to remain vacant so nothing would block the view from his front porch. To avoid paying prime property taxes, the Mile High millionaire had the block assessed as agricultural grazing land. To prove he wasn't cheating the public, he put a cow on it. "People are convinced the ghost of the bovine is still present," says Goodstein. "Folks waiting for a bus at Colfax and Broadway after midnight sometimes suddenly smell barnyard odors and hear mournful mooing."

We troop north across Colfax, admiring Goodstein's spooky ability to see walk/don't walk signs change while looking in the opposite direction. Striding backward, the man never misses a word.

At the Wells Fargo Bank's "Cash Register" building at 17th Avenue and Lincoln, Goodstein relates how workers have felt ghostly sways, seen lights unaccountably flicker and discovered locks suddenly springing open. More haunted happenings occur at the former El Jebel Shrine building at 18th and Sherman, where janitors and night watchmen feel fez-wearing Shriners staring from the walls.

Across the street at 18th Avenue and Grant rises the Warwick Hotel. In the late '60s, the local Playboy Club occupied the building's penthouse floor. One of its bunnies died in a drug deal gone wrong, and Goodstein claims that today's penthouse guests sometimes glimpse the specter of the irate playmate out looking for revenge.

Nearby, between Grant and Logan on 18th Avenue, stands the Cooper Flats condominiums, home of another '60s-era ghost. A young couple from Louisiana resided here, and Goodstein tells how one September evening the drug-loving husband ingested a large amount of LSD. When his psychedelic flight eventually landed, the man found his innocent spouse dead in the bed, five bullet holes piercing her back. The wraith of the murdered wife apparently still occupies the renovated condominiums.

"The Rocky Mountain News did a very nice feature on one of my books, and they needed a picture of me," says Goodstein. "The photographer told me he lived in Cooper Flats, so I told him the story about the homicide.

"'Maybe that explains it,' the photographer said. As long as he did his darkroom duties at the News office, his pictures turned out fine. When he tried to process pictures at Cooper Flats, there'd be strange blemishes on the images. Even after going digital, he got the same bizarre blotches."

We pass Temple Emanuel at 16th Avenue and Pearl, said to be haunted by a rabbi who hated dancing. At the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception on Colfax at Logan, a ghost named Clarence purportedly shows up at the most solemn services and occasions. The Shuey building south of Colfax on Pennsylvania, once Denver's bastion of liberal organizations, may now be haunted by hippie hobgoblins wearing flowers in their ethereal hair—and across the street, Goodstein claims, a chilling presence in an 1870-vintage office dwelling drove the Colorado Black Chamber of Commerce to find a new headquarters.

On 14th Avenue between Pennsylvania and Logan, we stop outside the Acacia Apartments. Built in 1922, the brick complex first served as an elite residential hotel often used by legislators. One of them, an elected sin-fighter from Mancos, rented apartment 111. On a surprise visit to Denver, the man's missus discovered the moralist had a mistress.

Irate, the woman gave her cheating hubby a choice—leave the legislature or be exposed as a fraud. When the man dutifully dumped his paramour and returned home, the jilted girlfriend committed suicide in the apartment's bathroom.

"Ever since then, residents of unit 111 will hear the tub gurgling late at night," claims Goodstein. "For years, people got a special break on the rent for sharing the apartment with a ghost."

Continuing up Logan Street past 13th Avenue, we pass the Denver Women's Press Club, which occupies a friendly-looking brick home once owned by artist George Elbert Burr. Naturally, the structure is haunted, but in a nice way.

"People go in and feel this very warm, encouraging spirit," explains Goodstein. "A member will have terrible writer's block. She'll go in and let the spirit of inspiration take charge. Suddenly she's winning awards."

I suspect this information comes secondhand to Goodstein. I doubt this arm-flailing, backward-walking, nonstop-talking source of haunted history and humor has ever suffered from writer's block.

The Capitol Hill Ghost Walk and other tours are held several times a year. Contact Leonard Leonard & Associates (303-333-1095) for information about Goodstein's upcoming tours.

Dan Leeth is a freelance writer and photographer based in Aurora.