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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609495190 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | History Press, The |
| Publication date: | 07/17/2012 |
| Pages: | 112 |
| Sales rank: | 1,040,050 |
| Product dimensions: | 8.94(w) x 6.08(h) x 0.28(d) |
About the Author
Lori Juszak, MBA, teaches at Front Range Community College and is an avid museum and history buff. She spends a good deal of time around and underneath Old Town Fort Collins leading tours and exploring the history and hauntings of the area. She also teaches classes in paranormal studies and parapsychology. Chris Juszak, who provided the majority of the photos for this book, holds a bachelor's of science in computer science.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Cemetery Hauntings
Fort Collins's First Cemetery and the Legend of the Civil War – Era Ghost Dancers
Visit the Museum of Art today and you'll stroll through innovative art exhibits in a beautifully preserved and restored three-story building. Situated in the middle of Old Town Fort Collins, it sits next to a lovely fountain park where children frolic through shooting streams of water during the summer. Such a bucolic scene could not possibly be the site of darkness ... or could it?
What Lies Beneath
Fort Collins began as Camp Collins in the early 1860s. Named for the commander of the nearby Laramie Post, Lieutenant Colonel William O. Collins, this camp sprang up northwest of the current Old Town along the Poudre River. The military did not erect permanent construction on this site, and soldiers lived and worked in canvas tent buildings and just a handful of cabins. The young soldiers were sent to this post to protect early settlers and travelers from the Native American tribes, which included mainly Arapahoe but also some Sioux and Cheyenne. Early reports place about five hundred Native Americans in the general area and about fifty to one hundred settlers to start. Tension between the tribes and the settlers existed, but in general they coexisted peacefully. While few of the Camp Collins soldiers were killed in action, a handful of them succumbed to disease during the short years in camp. A burial ground was established south of the camp to inter the bodies.
The first burial in the cemetery was one Edgarton Perry, who died in April 1863 of "black tongue." This was not an uncommon cause of death before good oral hygiene practices were introduced. In old journals, it is described as an infection of the gums or mouth that caused a form of gangrene of the tongue.
Another early burial (August 1865) was of a Lieutenant Baker, who had been sent to take bacon up to Fort Halleck in Wyoming. He was attacked by a band of Native Americans along the way, chained to the wheel of his wagon and scalped. Scalping, however, did not kill him, so the natives dragged the bacon out of the wagon, wrapped Lieutenant Baker in the bacon and lit him on fire. This finished the deed.
There is no definitive estimate of how many people were buried in this somewhat makeshift cemetery over the years. It may have been just a handful, or it may have been more. These forgotten people rested there for the next four decades undisturbed. Records were not kept, and gravestones were not installed for any of them.
In the first decade of the 1900s, the burial ground land was redesignated as the future site of the Fort Collins Post Office. The bodies were scheduled to be exhumed and moved prior to the start of construction, but alas, no one knew quite where they were or how many there might be. By the end of the process, a total of six bodies had been exhumed and moved. Only one was identified. A rolled-up note stuffed inside a little glass bottle and placed in the pocket of the soldier before he was buried indicated that the remains were those of W.W. Westfall of Company J, Thirteenth Missouri Volunteer Cavalry, who died on November 3, 1865. The rest remain anonymous to this day.
Despite the obvious concern that more bodies were likely to be buried on the site, construction of the post office began, presumably over graves. Once finished, the post office became a busy downtown hub. Stately and tall, with engraved cornices and multiple-level entrances, it was indeed the cornerstone of the community as Fort Collins grew around it.
As beautiful and welcoming as the building appeared, not all was rosy on this property. Postal workers over the years reported the feeling of being watched, and some heard voices in the rooms above when no one else was in the building. One woman on our tour said that her father was a postal clerk in the building for decades, and he felt that the building was haunted. He said that the little rooms throughout the building had a feeling of being occupied by otherworldly specters, and occasionally the sound of moving furniture would echo from the upper levels.
The building eventually became the Museum of Art. Volunteers and employees at the museum also report that the building is haunted, but they've had somewhat different experiences. They report hearing music coming from the third floor late at night and the sound of footsteps dancing to the music. When a Virginia reel is heard, they hear the shuffling sideways of several sets of feet to the beat; when the music is a waltz, they hear the gentle footfalls of three-quarter time. When someone is brave enough to investigate the source of the music, the party stops before they reach the third floor.
Some of the current employees like to think that the young soldiers and ladies who passed so early in life are up there reclaiming their youth, enjoying cotillion and dancing to their hearts' content. If you ever visit the Museum of Art, climb to the top of the second floor and pause a moment in the foyer to listen. Perhaps you will hear the party as well.
Hotel Hauntings
The Lady of the Linden Hotel: She Appears Only to Children
Northwest Corner of Linden and Walnut Streets
A mighty Chinook wind howled down through the Front Range and nearly overturned a small covered wagon traversing the last leg of a long journey. A small group of young women huddled in the wagon shuddered in unison as they each considered their fate should the wagon be blown over along with all of their worldly possessions. Truth be told, the stuff wasn't worth much, but it was all they had left after an arduous trip across the plains.
While most settlers were headed toward the Fort Collins area to seek land, prosperity and freedom, these women were running away from lives better left behind. Women didn't have a lot of choices in the 1880s, particularly if they were of a lower station. Some took this difficult and risky trip to escape abusive husbands or families and some to put miles between themselves and judgment for some moral wrongdoing they had committed. A few of them believed that the frontier afforded them a more level playing field, where they might have more of a voice than they had in the restrictive society of the eastern cities.
As the wagon rolled into town, the curtains of homes and businesses were pulled aside as locals peered out to see who the newcomers were. If the wind weren't so wild, there would have been people out on the street, but the women arrived to a dusty and deserted downtown. Wind whipped small twisters to life in the middle of the road, and the driver of the team pulling the wagon covered her face with a scarf to avoid the sandblasting force of dirt against her skin.
Her name has been lost along the way, but her story remains as a reminder of the harsh choices frontier women were forced to make in the early days of settlement. She arrived in 1882, running from a husband with a drinking problem and a heavy hand. She had married young, wanting a family and a home. She had loved her husband, but as his drinking and abuse worsened, she realized she had to leave. This was no way to live — in fear and without love.
She loved children and more than anything wanted to be a mother. She knew that leaving him would cause a scandal and that it was unlikely she'd be granted a divorce. Her options made it clear — she'd have to leave and go far, far away to start over. Friends of friends put her in touch with a group of women headed west toward Colorado, and under the cover of a dark, moonless night, she packed a few things, slipped out of her home and climbed aboard a covered wagon bound for Fort Collins.
Soon after her arrival, she found work as a housekeeper for one of the local hotels. It was hard work, and it paid very little. She didn't quite make enough to get by, and within a few months she was thin, tired and close to being evicted from her room for nonpayment of rent. Nearly at the end of her rope, she began to look for other work.
One day, as she walked from business to business seeking employment, she noticed a well-dressed young man leaning against a fine carriage. He was whistling and watching her walk down the street. She smiled shyly, and he tipped his hat. As she approached, he stepped toward her and introduced himself. After a few minutes of conversation, he asked her to dinner. She accepted. She walked away from him feeling lighter and more hopeful than she had in years. Her life was indeed about to change.
Dinner with him was not as she expected. She had been dreaming of love and marriage, and he had a completely different agenda for the relationship. He was charming but to the point. He had money and wanted to take care of her, but there was reciprocity involved. Rather than being a housekeeper in the hotel, she would become a guest with her own room and room service. He would provide her with all she needed and desired, including a generous allowance to spend at the local millinery shop on dresses and hats. In return, she would be available to him at his whim.
Stunned at the inappropriate proposal but feeling the desperate press of poverty closing in on her, she reluctantly accepted. That night, he installed her in the hotel, and for the next little while, his gifts and attentions were enough for her. She realized she had thrown away her chances of ever being considered a potential wife, but she justified her choice as an alternative to homelessness and starvation.
Her willing affection and complete availability kept his attention through the next few months. By winter, however, he had tired of her and turned his thoughts to a new young lady. With just a day's notice, she was asked to vacate the hotel by the manager without so much as a note from the man who had kept her.
Once again homeless and without employment, she wandered about the frontier town, dragging her trunk of dresses and hats behind her on a little cart. Her new reputation as a "kept woman" prevented her from gaining honest work in a town split between bawdy revelry and Victorian morals. She asked around the local hotels about housekeeping and serving positions but was met with icy, judgmental stares. She realized she would never be offered a housemaid position. There seemed only one place willing to take her in — the local brothel.
In 1883, there were between 800 and 1,200 souls in Fort Collins, depending on which historical account one wants to believe. That year, the town supported five brothels, thirteen bars and numerous gambling establishments. She went to work in a brothel over on Pine Street, along with several of her traveling companions who had fallen to the same fate. It wasn't long before she was offered opium and laudanum, the common drugs of prostitutes during this era. Her health began to suffer and with it her beauty. Within a year or two, she was no longer desirable, and it was clear she would be turned out of her hellish career within a few months with nowhere else to go.
Her last "gentleman caller" was a cowhand staying at the Linden Hotel. She climbed the stairs to the second floor, knocked on the door and waited. He opened the door, looked her up and down and spat on the floor. "Thought they was sending me a pretty young thing, and look what shows up," he mumbled, but he opened the door and beckoned her into the room.
A few hours later, she crept quietly out of the room, carrying the cowhand's rope. She slipped somberly down the hall to the top of the staircase, where she had noticed a beam over the stairwell. She threw the rope over the beam and fashioned a slipknot to make it hold. On the other end, she tied a loop; she placed the loop around her neck and threw herself over the bannister.
Her name may not be remembered, but her spirit still remains. Oddly, she appears only to children. She stands at the top of the landing leading up from the first story in a blue dress with a pink sash, and she smiles down the stairs at children who come into the building (now a shop called Nature's Own). They are never afraid but often tug on the sleeve of a parent and ask why the lady is wearing a long dress and why she won't speak. Parents never see her, but so many children have described her in the same way that there is no question about her appearance.
Employees of Nature's Own report hearing movement in that room below the landing after closing; wind chimes tinkle, items on shelves sound as if they're being moved and occasionally something will fall right off a shelf. They also report that a beautiful glass vase sitting on one of the shelves recently split right down the middle horizontally and then split down the middle vertically and fell into pieces, right in front of stunned employees and customers.
We don't know her real name, but we call her the Lady of the Linden.
The Northern Hotel: A Mother Returns Forher Child's Ghost
172 North College Avenue
The Northern Hotel has existed in many incarnations, beginning in 1873 when it was then called the Agricultural Hotel. Travelers involved in agriculture, silver mining and settling the great West stopped to rest along the way and enjoy a respite from their journeys.
Later in the 1800s, an ornate brick building was erected, and the hotel was called the Commercial Hotel.
In 1905, however, the structure was purchased by a group of businessmen who proceeded to renovate and improve the place until it was considered one of the finest establishments in northern Colorado. The Northern boasted electricity throughout, running water to sinks in every room and beautiful Victorian décor. The dining room ceiling included a large stained-glass dome and was the scene of some of the more elaborate dinner soirées of the era.
A cadre of celebrities frequented the Northern over the years, and we're told John Wayne, Hedy Lamarr, Olivia de Havilland and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were among them.
There were no hauntings reported, as far as we know, during the heyday of the hotel. Then, in 1918, the Spanish flu pandemic swept through Fort Collins and cut a swath of death and grief through the community. A woman and her five-year-old daughter were staying at the hotel, and the little girl caught the flu. She fought the fever for two days but ultimately died in the hotel. Her mother was grief-stricken, and after arrangements were made, she moved on.
During the Roaring Twenties, a fourth floor was added to the hotel. The 1930s brought a restoration of the façade of the hotel to reflect an art deco theme.
Still, there were no reported hauntings for another two decades. In the middle of the twentieth century, however, visitors to the building began to report seeing the apparition of a woman dressed in clothing reminiscent of the 1910s walking up and down the hallways and peering into each room as she passed, as if she were looking for someone. Was it the mother, finally herself succumbed to death, returning to find the daughter she'd lost decades ago?
Over time, her image has faded, and her visits are less frequent. The Northern is now used for senior housing on the three upper floors, and there is retail space below. We often begin our tours in the lobby area of the old Northern, and some of the seniors have stopped by to tell us that they have been awakened in the night by a ghostly tap on the shoulder. Some have been shaken awake in the morning only to find no one else in the room. One resident of the second floor reports that he takes a nap every afternoon, and after exactly one hour, someone or something pokes him in the side to wake up. If he doesn't get up immediately, someone starts jumping up and down on his bed until he finally agrees to get moving again. He said he feels it's a female presence, and from the playfulness of the spirit, we wonder if it's the little girl.
We all wonder if the woman is still searching for her child and hope that they find each other soon in the afterlife.
The Antler's Hotel and the Boarder Who Would Not Leave
Block of 224 Linden Street
The Antler's Hotel sits along one of the original blocks built in Fort Collins. It has been the site of many businesses and often doubled as a rooming house or a one-person-occupancy apartment building.
In the early days of Fort Collins, we are told that one of the first newspapers, the Fort Collins Courier, occupied the first floor of that building. The upstairs floors were broken into apartments and occupied by single people and families just starting out.
A young family occupied one of the apartments on the third floor. The father worked, and the mother stayed home and cared for their small daughter. The father doted on his little girl and looked forward every day to coming home, having dinner and then rocking his little angel to sleep in their favorite rocking chair. Sometimes he would read her a book, and other times he would tell her stories, but they always snuggled up in the rocking chair before saying goodnight.
One fateful afternoon in late summer, the father was still at work and the mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner. She was distracted by the lighted stove and wasn't paying attention as the little girl wandered toward the window to look at the horses passing by downstairs. The little girl, just a toddler, leaned out of the third-story window, teetered and fell to her death.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Ghosts of Fort Collins"
by .
Copyright © 2012 Lori Juszak.
Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Preface 5
Introduction 9
Cemetery Hauntings
Fort Collins's First Cemetery and the Legend of the Civil War-Era Ghost Dancers 13
Hotel Hauntings
The Lady of the Linden Hotel: She Appears Only to Children 16
The Northern Hotel: A Mother Returns for Her Child's Ghost 20
The Antler's Hotel and the Boarder Who Would Not Leave 22
Ghosts of the Holiday Inn Holidome 24
Bad Housekeeping Ghost in a Local Hotel 24
Bars and Bistros with Ghostly Guests
BeauJo's Pizza and the Avery Family Murder Speculation 26
Ivan the Hungarian Ghost and His Penchant for the Ladies' Room 29
Starbucks: An Odd Encounter with a Victorian-Era Woman 33
Armadillo Restaurant: A Lynching in Larimer County 34
Armadillo Garage: A Cursed Property? 38
The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Armadillo 44
Choice City Butcher and the Haunted Butcher Block 45
Starry Night: Who Is the Lady in Pink? 47
The Walrus Man and the Town's Most Prolific Spiritual Portal 49
Jilly Bean Java: Mother and Children Haunt the Old Underground Morgue 57
Happy Lucky's and the Gambler's Ghost 58
Moe's BBO: The Blackboard Apparition and Her Flying Spatulas 61
The Town Pump: The Oldest (and Tiniest) Bar in Fort Collins 63
Café Ardour and the Ghost of Madame Marie LaFitte 64
The Wild Boar and Its Playful Spirits 66
Old Town Businesses: Some of Our Favorite Haunts Frank Miller's Extraordinary Life (and Afterlife): Nature's Own Ghost 69
The Welch Block Fire of 1880 and a Poltergeist in the Present-Day Building 71
The Ghost of Trimble Court 74
The Old Town Art and Framery and the Bootlegger's Ghost 76
Happy Jack and His Long Stay at Old Grout 79
Vortex Alley 81
Déjà Vu and Our Local Firehouse 83
Local Ghosts Around Town and in Rural Areas
Suicide by Dual Gunshot Wounds in library Park 86
The Frat House Haunting 88
Ghost Dancers of the 1800s 91
An Encounter with a Ghost Horse and Rider 94
The Ghost Who Took a Dip in the Swimming Pool 96
Old Fort Collins High School and Odd Paranormal Sights 98
Beloved Ghosts of the Railroad Station 99
Legends of the Area
The Hell Tree 101
What Lies Beneath Old Town: The Legendary Tunnels 103
A Speakeasy Frozen in Time 105
The Arapahoe Legend of Horsetooth Rock 106
Waiting Until the Cows Come Home 107
Conclusion 109
About the Author 111