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.
Strange occurrences continued to happen after the destruction of the house in the 1970s. Residents complained of large dust clouds, and some found red rubber balls in the street near it. And there are those who claim that the ghost of the child may have followed Hunter to his new home.
CHAPTER 3
Molly Brown House Museum
DENVER
Titanic survivor Molly Brown is one of Colorado’s few celebrities. Her historic home holds tours, where she is said to make ghostly appearances.
NOT ALL HAUNTED SPACES HAVE THEIR STORIES soaked in gore, violence, and death. The Molly Brown House Museum, which is possibly haunted by its namesake, provides a good example of this.
Margaret “Molly” Brown did many notable things in her life—the most famous of which was surviving the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. Arguably one of Colorado’s most beloved celebrities, she left her mark on the Mile High City in many ways. Better known for her unofficial nickname, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” she inspired both a musical and later a film starting Debbie Reynolds in the ’60s. According to one of the Molly Brown House Museum’s tour guides, Catherine Trumpis, the fiery and passionate woman never went by Molly in her lifetime, just Margaret or Maggie. Impressions she left on the world go beyond her sense of spirit, her activism, and the tragedy of the Titanic. Her house, now a historic landmark and museum, may hold her ghost as well.
She was born Margaret Tobin in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1867. Her family was very poor, and Margaret dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help care for her five brothers and sisters. During my tour of the Molly Brown House Museum on September 18, 2014, Trumpis said that Margaret made her way to Leadville, Colorado, hoping to find a husband after receiving a letter from her brother Daniel, who lived there and alluded to her impending future as a spinster. She would later wed James Joseph “J.J.” Brown in 1886. Margaret was 19 when they were married, and J.J. was 32. They had two children while living in Leadville, Lawrence and Catherine.
Although they married poor, J.J. would later help create a technique to shore up mine walls. This enabled his mining venture, Ibex Mining Company, to hit what was the largest gold strike at the time in Colorado, the Little Johnny Mine. As a reward, he was given shares of company stock, and the Browns bought and moved into their home at 1340 Pennsylvania St. in Denver 1894 after coming into this fortune. They purchased the house for $30,000, the equivalent today of about $833,300. Unlike many Victorian homes of the period, their house had electricity, a phone, three central heating units, and indoor plumbing.
Once the Browns had settled into their home in Capitol Hill, Margaret started throwing parties to take part in the higher society that Denver offered. Allegedly, J.J. did not approve of these parties and would spend all his time during them in his study smoking cigars. This leads to the first item on the list of possible hauntings in the house: the lingering smell of cigars. Although no one has been allowed to smoke in any area of the house for several years, guests of the museum’s daily tours have noticed the odor of cigars, specifically on the second floor where J.J.’s study was. It should also be noted that while J.J. and Margaret’s mother, Johanna Collins Tobin, enjoyed smoking, Margaret herself did not, saying it smoked up the house and that she did not like the smell. In 1910 she converted J.J.’s smoking parlor where he entertained guests into a library.
A big reason Margaret was able to convert J.J.’s parlor was because the couple had separated in 1909. The couple never formally divorced due to their religion, but they never reconciled either. Trumpis said that their relationship may have crumbled due to Margaret’s activism for miner’s rights, to which J.J., who served
