Haunted Baldpate Inn, Estes Park, Colorado

The Baldpate Inn, nestled along the mountainside at an elevation of 9,000 feet near the Rocky Mountain National Park, has been serving guests for more than 100 years. Today, it said to be haunted.

Gordon and Ethel Mace, who were newlyweds at the time, homesteaded the property in Estes Park and built a classic log cabin in 1911. To supplement their income, they built several small tourist cabins, which proved to be a huge success. They began to make plans to build a larger lodging facility and in 1917 they opened the Baldpate Inn.

They named the inn after a fictional inn in a mystery novel where regular guests were given their own keys to the building. The Maces practiced this tradition until World War I when the cost of metal rose so steeply, they could no longer afford to give away keys. When this happened, their loyal guests started a custom of bringing a key with them to leave at the inn, which started the famous “Key Room”, which holds over 20,000 keys. Keys from Westminster Abby, Mozart’s wine cellar, the Pentagon and even Frankenstein’s castle adorn the room.

Baldpate Inn, Estes Park, Colorado by Kathy Weiser-Alexander.

Today, both Ethel and Gordon reportedly continue to stay at their old Inn in a spiritual fashion. Staff and guests say that Ethel has haunted her old room for years and particularly likes spending time in the Key Room. She also likes to sit in a wing-backed rocker before a fireplace that is now located in a storage room. Her feet up, she is said to sit in the rocker reading the bible.

Evidently, Ethel supported the prohibitionists because she also likes to spill mix drinks, while others have a tendency to fly off of tables. Gordon’s pet peeve, on the other hand, is evidently smoking. Though the lodge does not allow smoking, if a guest does in fact light up a cigarette, something smashes it or their cigarette packs come up missing.

Baldpate Inn is now run by the Smith family, who purchased the inn in 1986. Only the second family to ever own the inn, the Smiths continue to welcome guests in the same fashion as the Maces. The 12-room lodge is open from Memorial Day to mid-October 1st and is located seven miles south of Estes Park at 4900 South Highway 7.

The Baldpate Inn
PO Box 700
4900 South Highway 7
Estes Park, Colorado 80517
970-586-6151

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The Spook Of Misery Hill

Tom Bowers, who mined on Misery Hill, near Pike City, California, never had a partner, and he never took kindly to the rough crowd about the place. One day he was missing. They traced his steps through the snow from his cabin to the brink of a great slope where he had been prospecting, but there they vanished, for a landslide had blotted them out. His body was exhumed far below and decently buried, yet it was said that it was so often seen walking about the mouth of his old shaft that other men avoided the spot.

Thriftless Jim Brandon, in a spasm of industry, began work on the abandoned mine, and for a while he made it pay, for he got money and squared accounts with his creditors; but after a time it appeared that somebody else was working on the claim, for every morning he found that the sluice had been tampered with and the water turned on. He searched for the trespasser in vain, and told “the boys” that if they called that joking it had grown tiresome.

One night he loaded his rifle, and, from a convenient nook, he watched for the intruder. The tamaracks crooned in the wind, the Yuba mumbled in the canon, the Sierras lay in a line of white against the stars. As he crept along to a point of better vantage he came to a tree with something tacked on it–something that shone in the dark like a match. In its own light he read, “Notice! I, Thomas Bowers, claim this ground for placer mining.” Raising his hand to tear off the paper, he was amazed to feel a thrill pass through it, and his arm fell palsied at his side. But the notice was gone.

Now came the sound of water flowing, and, as he angrily caught his gun and turned toward the sluice, the letters shone again in phosphorescence on the tree. There was the sound of a pick in the gravel now, and, crawling stealthily towards the sluice, he saw, at work there, Tom Bowers–dead, lank, his head and face covered with white hair, his eyes glowing from black sockets. Half unconsciously Jim brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired. A yell followed the report, then the dead man came running at him like the wind, with pick and shovel in either hand.

Away went Brandon, and the spectre followed, up hill, in and out of woods, over ditches, through scrub, on toward Pike City. The miners were celebrating a new find with liberal potations and a dance in the saloon when, high above the crash of boots, the shouted jokes, the laughter, and the clink of glasses, came a sound of falling, a scream-then silence.

They hurried into the road. There lay Brandon’s rifle, and a pick and shovel with “T. B.” cut in the handles. Jim returned no more, and the sluice is running every night on Misery Hill.

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Suicide Bridge – Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, California

The majestic 1913 Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, California not only wowed early travelers crossing the causeway but soon took on a more sinister note when people began to leap from the 150-foot bridge to their death. Within a decade of its construction, locals had begun to call it the “Suicide Bridge,” and as you can imagine, legends began to abound that the bridge was haunted be those unfortunate souls.

The beautiful concrete bridge spans 1,467 feet across the Arroyo Seco, a deeply cut canyon linking the San Gabriel Mountains to the Los Angeles River, and containing the intermittent Arroyo Seco Stream for which it is named. The bridge is often incorrectly referred to as the “Arroyo Seco Bridge.”

In Pasadena’s early days, before the historic Colorado Street Bridge was built, crossing the Arroyo Seco was an extremely difficult task. Horses and wagons descended the steep eastern slope, crossed the stream over a smaller bridge, and then climbed up the west bank through Eagle Rock Pass.

The bridge was designed and built by the J.A.L. Waddell firm of Kansas City, Missouri and named for Colorado Street (now called Colorado Boulevard,) which was the major east-west thoroughfare through Pasadena. Known for its Beaux-Arts arches, ornate lamp posts and railings, the initial design proved difficult due to finding solid footing in the Arroyo bed. However, when engineer John Drake Mercereau conceived the idea of curving the bridge, he created a work of art.

Colorado Street Bridge, Pasadena, California

The first tragedy on the bridge occurred before construction was even complete. Allegedly, when one of the bridge workers toppled over the side and plunged headfirst into a vat of wet concrete, his co-workers assumed he could not be saved in time and left his body in the quick-drying cement. His is only one of the many souls said to haunt the “Suicide Bridge.”

The first suicide occurred on November 16, 1919, and was followed by a number of others, especially during the Great Depression. Over the years, it is estimated that more than 100 people took their lives leaping the 150 feet into the arroyo below. One of the more notable suicides was when a despondent mother threw her baby girl over the railing on May 1, 1937. She then followed her into the depths of the canyon. Though the mother died, her child miraculously survived. Evidently, her mother had inadvertently tossed her into some nearby trees, and she was later recovered from the thick branches.

By the 1980s the historic bridge had fallen into great disrepair as chunks of concrete began to fall from its ornate railings and arches. After the Loma Prieta earthquake near Oakland in 1989, the bridge was closed as a precautionary measure. Eventually federal, state and local funds provided some $27 million dollars in renovation costs and the bridge was reopened in 1993, complete with its original detail, plus a suicide prevention rail. Though the number of suicides throughout the years has decreased, the bridge continues to retain its nickname and its ghostly legends.

According to the tales, a number of spirits are said to wander the bridge itself as well as the arroyo below. Others have heard unexplained cries coming from the canyon. One report tells of a spectral man that is often seen wandering the bridge who wears wire-rimmed glasses. Other people have claimed to see a woman in a long flowing robe, who stands atop one of the parapets, before vanishing as she throws herself off the side.

In the arroyo below, phantom forms have been seen walking the river bed, a number of unexplainable sounds are often heard, and the atmosphere is often described as “thick.”

The Colorado Street Bridge was part of Route 66 until 1940 when the Arroyo Seco Parkway opened. Today, the bridge has received a Civil Engineering Landmark designation and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, California by Jim Hinkley.

The Mother Road Icon was the center of tragic news again in late October of 2015 when noted Actor, Model, and Musician Sam Sarpong took his own life by jumping off the bridge.

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'There's no Reason to be Afraid'

When my sister Betsy and I were kids, our family lived for awhile in a charming old farmhouse. We loved exploring its dusty corners and climbing the apple tree in the backyard. But our favorite thing was the ghost.We called her Mother, because she seemed so kind and nurturing. Some mornings Betsy and I would wake up, and on each of our nightstands, we'd find a cup that hadn't been there the night before. Mother had left them there, worried that we'd get thirsty during the night. She just wanted to take care of us.Among the house's original furnishings was an antique wooden chair, which we kept against the back wall of the living room. Whenever we were preoccupied, watching TV or playing a game, Mother would inch that chair forward, across the room, toward us. Sometimes she'd manage to move it all the way to the center of the room. We always felt sad putting it back against the wall. Mother just wanted to be near us.Years later, long after we'd moved out, I found an old newspaper article about the farmhouse's original occupant, a widow. She'd murdered her two children by giving them each a cup of poisoned milk before bed. Then she'd hanged herself.The article included a photo of the farmhouse's living room, with a woman's body hanging from a beam. Beneath her, knocked over, was that old wooden chair, placed exactly in the center of the room.

by whoeverfightsmonster

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