Ghosthunting Colorado. Kailyn Lamb
ghosts, such as conducting séances, consulting with psychics, and using Ouija boards. She added that, while the museum prefers to concentrate on what Margaret Brown did during her lifetime, psychics have conducted their own investigations there.
“There have been independent psychics who have visited the museum who claim that Mrs. Brown’s mother, Johanna Tobin, roams the second floor, that J.J. smokes cigars in the back hallway, and that a maid is dusting the library shelves,” Malcomb said.
After Margaret’s death in 1932, the house was sold for $5,000 (approximately $86,200 today). During the time of the Great Depression, people in the city were selling houses for anything they could get, according to Trumpis. The house would later change hands several times, even becoming a home for wayward girls in the 1960s. In the early ’70s, the city looked at demolishing the house in favor of something new and more urban. This is when the idea of Colorado’s Landmark Preservation was born. The organization Historic Denver was created and purchased the home in 1970, making it the organization’s flagship property. The Molly Brown House Museum would become the first home to gain landmark status (ordinance number 113, March 30, 1971).
When the home was first purchased in 1970 for use as a museum, none of the Browns’ original belongings were still in it, and the girls home had updated the kitchen to 1960s standards. Fortunately, Margaret not only loved to throw parties, but she also loved to take pictures of them to share with friends who could not make it. Trumpis said the museum now has several pieces of the Browns’ original furniture thanks to the curators’ use of these photos. Trumpis also mentioned that none of the items in the house are younger than 1910; she estimated that the curators were able to obtain 35%–40% of the Browns’ original belongings that were in the house.
In the absence of violence, the Molly Brown House Museum has acquired the ghost of a fiery, strong woman, and maybe the occasional sign of disapproval from her husband. But her presence does beg the question of what makes her stay. Maybe she feels as if her work of fighting for the rights of others is not yet over. More than likely, of course, we will never know.
CHAPTER 4
Oxford Hotel
DENVER
Several rooms in the oldest hotel in Denver are reportedly haunted.
AS THE OLDEST HOTEL IN DENVER, the Oxford Hotel’s history is rooted in luxury. Built in 1891 during the peak of the silver rush, the hotel was fitted with gas heating and an elevator and even had its own power plant to enable these luxuries. It was, in fact, one of the first buildings in Denver to have elevators, or as they were better known then, “vertical railways.” With an ideal location of mere blocks away from the railway at Union Station, rooms would set weary travelers back $1, or $2 if they wanted a bath. This was made possible because each floor had its own water closets and other sanitary appliances.
At the time the hotel opened, Denver was considered the third largest city in the West after San Francisco and Omaha. The hotel survived the Silver Panic that caused many businesses to crumble in 1893, and it continued to thrive. Its subsequent history includes several renovations and additions to the building.
The start of a new century did not halt the hotel’s booming business. In 1902, hotel manager Calvin Morse boasted that the hotel was so popular that it was hosting 35,000 guests per year and they were turning people away due to no vacancies. This popularity led to the first addition to the hotel, a two-story building behind the hotel on Wazee Street. Not much later, in 1906, the new managers conducted a remodel of the hotel that added an exterior entrance to the barbershop, a mezzanine, a café, and marble wainscoting (decorative paneling). In 1912, a five-story annex was added, connected to the original hotel by a bridge from its second story. Since being renovated once again in the 1930s, the Oxford has been known for its Art Deco style. This renovation also added the Cruise Room, the hotel’s local watering hole.
In 1979, the hotel gained a new owner, who temporarily closed it for renovations. This round of changes turned out to be quite important, as the owners discovered false ceilings and other unexplored areas of the property. They found several items in these hidden rooms, including blueprints from the first architect, which helped the renovations more closely match the original work. This was also when they began to modernize the hotel and the era during which it attained landmark status. For those who dare to look, there are also a few gems of ghostly activity hidden throughout the building’s many stylish rooms.
The building was designed by Frank E. Edbrooke, who, coincidentally, designed the Brown Palace, Denver’s second oldest hotel and the Oxford’s prime competition for the most haunted hotel in Denver. The hotel is five stories high and contains several reputedly haunted locations.
One of the first haunted locations presents a little bit of a novelty. Located off the main lobby and down some stairs on a lower floor is a women’s restroom, but when the hotel was originally built, this area was the barbershop. Some of the activity here is fairly “typical,” such as doors locking by themselves and faucets turning on of their own accord. What makes this restroom a little more unique is that the ghost who resides there is apparently a peeping tom who has frightened several women trying to use the facilities. Undoubtedly, this puts the hotel in a slight predicament, as there are not many women who would appreciate a desk clerk telling them that the person startling them in the bathroom is a ghost or a figment of their imagination.
The next room that sees ghostly activity is the Cruise Room. It now houses Denver’s first post-Prohibition bar, which opened the day after passage of the 21st Amendment, which ended Prohibition in December 1933. On the more racy side of history, there is rumor that before the Cruise Room officially opened, it was the location of a speakeasy, complete with a secret back stair that led to a room with prostitutes. As far as paranormal activity goes, it is reputed to be haunted by the ghost of an old man who comes to the bar to order a beer. Bartenders and patrons alike have witnessed the man drink his beer and continuously mutter about getting presents to children. When the man leaves and the bartender goes to pick up his empty glass, however, he always finds it full again. He is supposedly the ghost of a mailman who was going to deliver Christmas presents to children in Central City in the early 1900s, but he never arrived, and people assumed he had stolen the gifts. His partially frozen and decomposed body, however, was found in Central City with the presents still with him near the end of winter.
One of the more mystifying and scary areas of the Oxford Hotel is its attic. It used to be a hot spot for ghost tours but now the hotel uses it for storage, and customers are no longer allowed into it. Some say it is one of the more eerie of the haunted locations in the building, and it has been the subject of paranormal investigations in which people claim to have recorded voices. Some employees will not go up into the attic alone because of the creepy vibes they get there. There have also been reports of objects stored there moving by themselves and the distinct sounds of footsteps behind people when it is obvious no one else is there.
The last of the haunted locations in the Oxford Hotel is room 320. About half of the stories about it say that a woman named Florence Richardson was staying in the hotel with her husband one night in 1898 when she decided to kill him and then turn the gun on herself. There is no proof that the couple were actually married, but they registered for the room as “H. C. Rockwell and wife” from Greeley, Colorado. She shot him and then herself a half hour later. The name H. C. Rockwell was presumed to be an alias, as the man Richardson shot was later identified as W. H. Lawrence from Cleveland, Ohio. The New York Times ran an article on the deaths of both Lawrence and Richardson on September 12, 1898, citing jealousy as the motive for the killing, but the article did not provide the room number. The other half of the accounts say that a man caught his wife with another man in this room and killed them both, which fits better with the paranormal experiences people have had in the room. Indeed, the ghostly presence seems to make itself known only when there is a single man staying there, and the men have reported waking up to an apparition of a male figure at the foot of the bed yelling about corrupting his wife. Reportedly this has caused several of the men to leave the room, and in turn the hotel, immediately. Other