Ghosthunting Colorado. Kailyn Lamb
lived in the carriage house of the mansion is often thought to be McGovern, most likely because of his work in Cheesman Park, but this spirit is most often called “Willie.” In addition to the holding of satanic rituals, the wild stories also say there was a young boy murdered and later hanged from a tree in the yard of the mansion. People claim that the dead bodies from Cheesman were not enough for the carriage house occupant and that he eventually began kidnapping people off the street. The metal beam on the upper floor of the carriage house was supposedly where he would hang bodies after he killed them in his rituals. There is also a now-closed tunnel that he supposedly used to transport bodies from the main house to the carriage house. There are, however, no records that anyone lived in the carriage house, or that it had other uses outside of such a building’s normal functions. In fact, real estate records also show that McGovern lived in an entirely different house on Pennsylvania Street.
This stage area in Cheesman Park was once used for performances of Broadway show tunes and other theater pieces. It’s rumored that in some areas of the park, patches of grass grow greener because they mark the site of a grave.
Despite the number of bodies removed from Cheesman Park by McGovern and the families of the dead, it is estimated that 2,000–3,000 remain there. Close observers of the park may note that parts of the grass have rectangular plots that are lower than others and that in the spring some plots, also rectangular in shape, become green faster than others. Park goers also report cold spots throughout the park or the feeling of hands grabbing their ankles as they walk through the grass. Some also claim to have seen ghostly limbs or other body parts lying around, and others still have reported seeing ghostly figures looking for their own remains—the most horrifying of which are missing their heads. This ties in with widespread ghostly lore that the spirits of the dead cannot properly rest if their bodies are not intact or in one piece. Supposedly, under the right type of moonlight, visitors can also see the ghostly shapes of old gravestones in the park.
Because of the type of clay soil Colorado has in this area, much of which is found in Cheesman Park, caskets and skeletons have been known to move or shift positions. On a haunted tour with the Rocky Mountain Paranormal Research Society, Matthew Baxter and Bryan Bonner will paint a picture typical of scary movies in which a ghostly hand reaches through the soil to grab someone’s ankle. They go on to say that, due to the shifting clay, bones can really shift to the surface of the park.
Because of a lack of funds, the park initially remained fenced off and untamed from 1894 to 1898. In the early 1900s the park did open but lacked a lot of architect Reinhard Schuetze’s original designs, such as a pavilion. Mayor Robert Speer offered anyone who would donate the funds to build the pavilion the right to name the park. The wife and daughter of recently deceased Walter Cheesman donated $100,000, giving the place its current name. Construction of the pavilion started in 1908, and it still stands today. Of the 320 acres originally used for Mount Prospect, only 81 were used for Cheesman Park; the rest were allocated for the new Congress Park and the Denver Botanic Gardens.
On occasion, when work is being done in Cheesman Park, such as in 2010 when the city was digging a new irrigation system, skeletal remains are found and then reburied in a different location by the municipality.
DENVER BOTANIC GARDENS AND THE SURROUNDING AREA
IN 1892, local Catholics moved their burial grounds from the York Street area of Mount Calvary to Mount Olivet Cemetery, although interments continued in the original location until 1908. It was finally sealed off in 1910. Twenty acres of the Catholic cemetery were sold to a real estate developer to create Morgan’s Addition in 1887. Development of the land began in 1903 and was quickly used for homes for the wealthy. The few houses that remain surround the Cheesman Park area and sit next to the land that became the Denver Botanic Gardens.
In 1950, Denver had convinced the Catholic archdiocese to deed the remaining property of Mount Calvary back to the city. After an excavation of the remaining bodies, two-thirds of which were infants, the land was riddled with holes. Through much of the decade it remained this way, unlandscaped and fenced off. Meanwhile, the City Park Botanic Gardens was not doing as well as the city had hoped. City Park was a more active area, which caused difficulty with the rose gardens. Due to little policing, the area was also frequently vandalized.
Originally, in 1953, the gardens were to be housed in a 100-acre plot of land on the eastern edge of City Park, near the already-established Denver Museum of Natural History and the Denver Zoo off of Colorado Boulevard. The city went so far as to start planting rose gardens, as well as a lilac lane that was placed between the zoo and the museum.
In 1958, it was decided that some of the gardens would be moved to the Mount Calvary grounds, the idea being to protect the plants from the damage happening at City Park. Within a few years, however, the entirety of the gardens was moved to the York Street location. After receiving a grant in 1963 to build what is now the gardens’ centerpiece, Boettcher Conservatory, the location was formally dedicated in 1966.
Morgan’s Addition, mentioned earlier, became an important part of the life of the gardens. One house in particular, 909 York St., was donated by residents from Morgan’s Addition. The house was originally owned by none other than Margaret Patterson Campbell and her husband, Richard, of Croke-Patterson Mansion fame. In April 1959, the house opened as part of Denver Botanic Gardens, and it is used today as administrative offices.
In Kevin Pharris’s book The Haunted Heart of Denver, he recounts his time as a volunteer at Denver Botanic Gardens and, specifically, his encounters with this house. Before writing the book, Pharris gave historical tours of Denver and eventually transitioned to giving haunted tours, and the botanic gardens asked him to write a haunted tour for them. While he did hear stories about dark clouds floating around the classroom areas in the gardens, the Campbells’ house at Ninth and York seemed to hold more. This house had secret passages, as did many old houses, and one secret door led to a small room with a narrow, steep staircase leading to a bedroom. According to Pharris, the stairs lift to reveal another secret passage, but no one who works in the house is willing to do this, as it supposedly awakens and angers the ghosts who reside there. Workers report that if the passage under the stairs is opened, the house becomes plagued by strange sounds and objects are moved when no one has been there. This continues for several weeks, losing strength and frequency as time passes, until the ghosts again resume “sleeping.”
Residents of Morgan’s Addition strongly influenced the future of Denver Botanic Gardens. Some were on the board for the gardens, while others engaged with the city in secret meetings dealing with the residentially disliked, yet popular, concerts for which the gardens had become known. Summer concert series are still held there today.
Although many of the mansions did not survive and were demolished, some of the stories of homes in the surrounding Cheesman Park area carry stories of ghosts that live to this day. One such house on 13th Avenue was rented by Broadway and Hollywood composer Russell Hunter in 1968. He claims that in the spring of 1968 a ghostly cat appeared and that faucets would turn on by themselves. But the bulk of his hauntings were associated with a continuous bouncing sound that was heard in the attic and, after discovering a sealed staircase leading to an attic room, Hunter decided to explore more. Opening the door at the top of the staircase, a red ball fell down the stairs, only to vanish after a couple of bounces. Shortly thereafter, Hunter discovered a trunk in the attic containing the journal of a sickly 9-year-old boy. His elaborate story continues from there, painting the picture of a boy kept in the attic when his family discovered he was infirm. As he was heir to a large fortune, the family feared that his death would mean the money would pass on to someone else, so they adopted a child that looked like him, whom they trained to be their own. They secretly buried their real son when he died. Hunter claims that a séance led him to the burial ground of the boy, but the ghostly activity in the house became more violent after he was uncovered. His story inspired the 1980s film The Changeling. Historian Phil Goodstein, however, claims in his book The Ghosts of Denver: Capitol Hill that many elements of Hunter’s story do not add up, such as the age of the boy and that no one in Colorado had as large a fortune as Hunter described.