Denver Ghost Tours

The Brown Palace, opened in 1892, is one of the first atrium-style hotels in the United States. Its triangular footprint and eight-story open lobby create acoustics where sounds carry unpredictably—a feature that both explains and enhances its haunted reputation. Every president since Theodore Roosevelt has stayed at the Brown Palace, and its guest registry reads like a who's who of American history.

The hotel's most documented haunting involves a 1911 incident in which socialite Louise Crawford Hill was at the center of a love triangle that ended in a shooting in the lobby. Two men—one her husband, one her lover—exchanged gunfire. The lover, Frank Henwood, was convicted of murder. Reports of unexplained activity on the floors associated with the shooting have continued for over a century.

A string quartet has reportedly been heard playing in the empty ballroom, and guests have described encountering a woman in Victorian dress on the upper floors who vanishes when approached. The Brown Palace is open to non-guests for dining and afternoon tea, making it accessible as a ghost tour stop without requiring a reservation.

Lower Downtown (LoDo) is Denver's oldest neighborhood, containing buildings that survived the 1863 fire and the 1864 flood. Larimer Square, the city's first commercial block, has been preserved with its original Victorian facades. The buildings now house restaurants and shops, but their upper floors and basements retain evidence of their frontier-era uses as saloons, brothels, and opium dens.

The Oxford Hotel, built in 1891, claims several resident ghosts, including a mail carrier who reportedly committed suicide in the hotel and a woman seen in the third-floor hallway. The Cruise Room bar, added during Prohibition's repeal in 1933, is modeled after a lounge on the Queen Mary and has its own atmospheric character.

Walking tours through LoDo cover approximately 1 mile of streets that have been in continuous use since the 1860s. The neighborhood's warehouse architecture, brick-paved alleys, and proximity to Union Station create a setting that requires minimal imagination to connect to Denver's frontier origins.

Cheesman Park occupies 80 acres of what was formerly Denver's City Cemetery (Mount Prospect), established in 1858. The park's elegant Neoclassical pavilion, designed by the same architects who created Denver's Civic Center, sits atop an estimated 2,000-5,000 unrecovered human remains. Homes surrounding the park have generated reports of apparitions, unexplained sounds, and objects moving since the neighborhood was developed in the early 20th century.

Riverside Cemetery, established in 1876, is Denver's oldest active cemetery and contains the graves of many prominent early citizens including Augusta Tabor (first wife of silver king Horace Tabor), Silas Soule (a Union officer who refused to participate in the Sand Creek Massacre and was later murdered), and numerous victims of Denver's frequent epidemics.

The 1982 film Poltergeist, about a suburban family whose home is built on an ancient burial ground, was partially inspired by the Cheesman Park story. The film's central conceit—that developers moved the headstones but left the bodies—is essentially what happened in Denver in 1893.

Margaret "Molly" Brown, famous for surviving the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, lived in a Victorian mansion on Pennsylvania Street in Denver's Capitol Hill neighborhood. The house, now a museum, has generated reports of unexplained activity since it was restored in the 1970s. Staff have documented rearranged furniture, unexplained shadows, and the smell of cigar smoke attributed to Margaret's husband, J.J. Brown.

Tours of the Molly Brown House combine the story of Margaret Brown's remarkable life—from poverty in Hannibal, Missouri to Leadville mining wealth to Titanic heroism—with the documented reports of paranormal activity in the building. The house's Victorian interior has been restored to its 1910 appearance, providing an authentic period setting.

Colorado's mining history produced hundreds of towns that boomed and died within decades. Georgetown, Central City, and Idaho Springs—all within 45 minutes of Denver—retain historic buildings, cemeteries, and mine entrances that serve as reminders of the brutal conditions miners endured. Silicosis, cave-ins, avalanches, and explosions killed thousands of miners across the state.

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, 75 miles northwest of Denver, is Colorado's most famous haunted destination. Stephen King's stay there in 1974 inspired The Shining. The hotel offers daily ghost tours, nighttime paranormal investigation packages, and a horror film festival. While outside Denver proper, it is the most commonly requested add-on to Denver ghost tour itineraries.