From the long-forgotten graveyard beneath Denver Highlands to the lost burial ground of a lawless railroad town, Colorado’s pioneer cemeteries are haunted by ghosts who refuse to rest. The following stories were collected from more than 150 years of firsthand accounts.
Notorious outlaws at the lost Julesburg burying ground
Created by the westward expansion of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1867, Julesburg’s third location was once known as the “Wickedest City in the West.” (The first location burned down; the second was relocated.)
It was governed by a lawless bunch of gamblers, thieves, and murderers who settled disputes with death. A gang of pitiless criminals formed a league in that “Hell on Wheels” town under the pretense of preserving order, but really for the purpose of committing robbery. They drugged and stole from soldiers, teamsters, and travelers. They killed with little provocation.
An informal burying ground was staked out in the sand hills outside Julesburg. One grave was dug a day, and in it was placed the dead of the previous night. Occasionally, an old wood plank was stuck in the sand as a marker.
Two gamblers who found their way into a shared grave died over a ruthless game of poker in 1867. Both were so quick to draw and fire their revolvers, bystanders claimed two shots sounded like one. But since neither man was quicker on the trigger than the other, they ended up buried beside each other. Two pine boards were stuck in the sand. One read “Two Aces” and the other “Three Aces.” That was the worth of the poker cards each held in their dying grasp.
When the Union Pacific continued its march toward Cheyenne, the third Julesburg was abandoned. No one cared who lay in its old burying ground, so no one bothered to maintain it. When the grave markers rotted away, the location was lost to time. Only the dead were left to wander the open plains, as they do now, where once their terror reigned.
Haunting voices at a long-forgotten cemetery in Denver Highlands
Most residents of Denver Highlands are unaware some of their homes rest atop the grounds of the long-forgotten Acacia Cemetery. Opened in 1867 by Denver’s Masonic and Odd Fellows organizations, the cemetery operated for less than a decade. The bodies were relocated in the 1870s, but some people believe their presence still lingers.
On a brisk evening in September 1880, a Denver man named John Church was riding his horse-drawn wagon past the abandoned Acacia Cemetery when he caught sight of wispy figures dressed in white drifting through the ruined graves and toppled headstones. In a fright, he put the whip to his horses and sped away. But he felt ashamed of his reaction and returned to the cemetery to investigate.
Church hitched his horses to the fence and walked through the weedy graveyard toward the area where he had seen the ghostlike forms. After wandering about the cold place for some time, he found no sign of the apparitions and started back to his wagon. He had walked no farther than fifty yards when his ears were pricked by the sound of haunting voices behind him. They seemed human, and yet they did not.
Shaken by the thought of ghosts hovering in his periphery, Church rushed out of the cemetery and drove his wagon home. When he relayed his story in Denver the following day, some said they knew odd things happened around that burial ground at night. A skeptic among them suggested Church had stumbled upon body snatchers at work. But all the bodies had been moved years earlier, and this was widely known. There was no one left to dig up. Only spirits left to roam.
An indignant ghost at Mount Pisgah Cemetery in Cripple Creek
In the fall of 1894, a Cripple Creek bank robber named Tom McBride was caught stealing a case of cheap wine from the Altman & Flatow saloon. When an officer attempted to arrest him, he resisted and was killed in the struggle. He was carried off to the undertaker, and several citizens were summoned to confirm his identity.
The citizens agreed, without a doubt, that the man killed by the officer while stealing wine was Tom McBride. His unflattering obituary was published in the paper, and he was interred in Mount Pisgah Cemetery overlooking town.
Tom McBride didn’t stay buried long. His apparition rose from the grave days later and drifted into Cripple Creek to confront the officer who killed him. It seemed McBride didn’t object to being dead, and he wasn’t dissatisfied with his burial plot. Where he drew the line was at his obituary stating he had been caught stealing cheap wine. He would never waste time on something so trivial; he robbed banks, not saloons.
The ghost of McBride complained about his funeral too. It wasn’t interesting enough, and he wished he had been there to liven it up. Satisfied he had gotten all that off his chest, he returned to the cemetery and disappeared.
Legally, Tom McBride was dead and buried, but his refusal to remain so confused the people of Cripple Creek. Many believed the ghost of McBride had come back from the dead to air his grievances. Others wondered if perhaps McBride wasn’t dead at all, and some other man who resembled him had been shot stealing cheap wine and buried in the grave marked for Tom McBride.
Unclaimed burials beneath Cheesman Park
The haunted history of Denver’s Cheesman Park has fascinated people for over a century. Those who know its morbid past have good reason to wonder whether unsettled spirits wander among the living in the otherwise peaceful place.
Like most frontier towns, Denver recognized the need for a cemetery early on. A site was identified on the land that is now Cheesman Park, and it was opened as Mount Prospect Cemetery in 1859. Thousands of people were buried there over the years that followed.
As Denver grew up around the cemetery, citizens began pushing to have the unsightly grounds converted into a park. Permission was granted in 1890 on the condition that the burials be moved to a different cemetery. Public notices were issued urging relatives to claim their remains. Very few did. When all was said and done, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 burials were still in the ground.
An undertaker named E.P. McGovern was hired to dig them up and relocate them. The problem was that McGovern lacked scruples. He was paid by the coffin, so rather than moving the remains of each grave intact, he dismantled them and spread the bones of each person across multiple child-sized coffins. Meanwhile, grave robbers seized the opportunity to loot the dead.
When McGovern’s grotesque practice was discovered, his contract was cut short. He had made little progress, so thousands of graves remained untouched. And they stayed that way, even after Cheesman Park and Denver Botanic Gardens were built atop them.
Many believe the passage of time has not put to rest the spirits of the dead who remain interred beneath the park. Some say their presence thickens the air or stirs up coolness where warmth should be. Others claim their gauzy forms have been seen peering into windows of nearby homes and drifting aimlessly through the tended grass that grows above them.
The first corpse of Georgetown Cemetery
Georgetown’s first citizens staked out a cemetery shortly after the town was established. They didn’t have anyone to bury yet, and a few years passed with the grounds sitting empty. Finally, after much anticipation, a gambler named Edward Bainbridge was hanged in order to have a corpse. Bainbridge was the only man in Georgetown who everyone agreed was deserving of that role, chiefly because he was a poor loser at the poker table.
On the night of Bainbridge’s death in 1867, he was playing a heated round of poker with a man named James Martin in Mickel’s saloon. As Bainbridge’s pile of chips grew smaller, his anger at losing intensified. He swore to shoot Martin if the man won again, and he meant every word of it. When the next pot went to Martin, Bainbridge drew his revolver and shot him.
While Martin lay sprawled on the floor, presumed to be dead (only to survive later), Bainbridge was arrested for murder. One of Martin’s friends yelled, “Let’s start the cemetery,” and a mob was formed. They dragged Bainbridge away from the marshal and hanged him from a tree. Then they buried him in Georgetown Cemetery with little ceremony.
Two days later, body snatchers dug Bainbridge up and hauled him to Central City for a doctor who wanted to dissect him. But that wasn’t the last Georgetown would hear of the short-tempered gambler. The ghost of Edward Bainbridge returned to earth in 1868 to haunt the house near the tree where he was hanged. He blew out lanterns, banged kitchen cupboards, opened locked doors, and slammed them shut. His distinctive laugh could be heard echoing through the halls. The bizarre events were so terrifying, the residents of the home were forced to move.
People in Georgetown visited the house in hopes of experiencing the hauntings themselves. Many claimed they did. One man even said he witnessed a shadowy figure slip around a corner inside the house. He chased it outside, where it turned to reveal the specter of Edward Bainbridge with a rope around his neck. Then it vanished into the night.
Silent gravediggers on a downtown Denver street
A prominent Denver man claimed in 1889 to have witnessed gravediggers excavating the dirt road near the corner of 17th and Arapahoe Street in downtown Denver.
He was walking home after attending a late-night party at the Windsor Hotel when he came upon six workers silently digging a trench with shovels and picks. They spoke not a word as they lifted the loose dirt from large holes that resembled graves. Under their slouch hats, it was impossible to see their eyes.
Assuring himself the workers were ordinary men doing their job at an odd hour, the man stepped around the trench and continued home. The next morning, he expected to find dirt piled up around the site of the excavation. Instead, he found no evidence the ground had been disturbed. He examined the road up and down. After a moment of baffled thinking, he concluded his eyes must have played tricks on him.
Later that night, he returned to the scene. He hoped to find nothing but an empty road, but the silent workers were there again. Certain he had witnessed a haunting, the man convinced two police officers to come with him and see for themselves. They arrived at three in the morning, and indeed, the ghostly workers were there, excavating the road before their eyes.
In disbelief, the officers confronted the apparitions and told them to cover their holes and go away. None responded, offering only a hollow stare. The officers were spooked and didn’t stick around any longer. Still, they reported the hauntings to Chief Farley. He sent a guard to examine the scene, but the apparitions never materialized again. It seemed they had obeyed the officers’ orders to fill their holes and leave.
As the Denver man struggled to make sense of what he had witnessed, he arrived at a single conclusion: an old graveyard must lie beneath the road, predating the city itself. The phantom workers were gravediggers, shoveling out holes for the unremembered dead buried there.
A restless coal miner at Crested Butte Cemetery
An Austrian coal miner named Martin Braivich was buried in the Crested Butte Cemetery in 1913 after dying in an accident at the Big Mine. He had been living in a miners’ boarding house at the time of his death, and his trunk was still in his room.
According to the proprietor of the boarding house, the night after Braivich was buried, several miners were awoken by the sound of his trunk being dragged across the floor. Then they heard the noise of someone fumbling with the lock. Thinking a robber was at work, they rushed into Braivich’s room along with the proprietor, but there was no one inside.
Two nights later, the bizarre sounds roused the men again. When the proprietor entered Braivich’s room for the second time, it was empty, but he noticed the trunk had been moved from where it stood the night before. He suddenly recalled that Braivich had described locking money in the trunk and had begged the proprietor to send the money to his sister if something should happen to him. He wondered if the ghost of Braivich had dragged himself from the grave, over the rough roads of Crested Butte, up the stairway of the boarding house, and into his old room to check on the trunk.
Hoping to calm Braivich’s restless spirit and cure his boarders of the fear stirred by the noises, the proprietor pried open the trunk, collected the money, and deposited it in the safe at the Mike Fisher saloon until arrangements could be made to honor the miner’s wishes.
