The following is an excerpt from Richard Estep’s latest book Dark Spirits: Monsters, Demons and Devils, published March 11, 2025, by Visible Ink Press. 256 pages, $19.95. Available where books are sold, or online at: Amazon, Amazon.ca, Barnes and Noble, and Books-a-Million.
The Dead of Denver Botanic Gardens
A number of wonderful ghost stories have made it to the silver screen. Without a doubt, my favorite of them all is Poltergeist (and I’m talking about the 1982 original, not the 2015 remake). Steven Spielberg and Tobe Hooper’s classic chiller brought the supernatural to America’s suburbs, taking the familiar, everyday world and injecting ghosts.
The suburban neighborhood in which the film is set, turns out to have been built on top of a cemetery. As the movie builds toward its big finish, and coffins explode from the ground all around the Freeling family residence, family man Steven Freeling grabs his weaselly boss and growls: “You son of a bitch! You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn’t you? You son of a bitch, you left the bodies, and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! Why? WHY?!?”
As a plot device, it’s brilliant. In order to save money on construction, a building company removes the headstones from a graveyard, smooths the ground over, and then begins building on top of it. This isn’t just the stuff of Hollywood imaginings, however; it really did happen.
Denver’s Mount Prospect Cemetery (also known as Prospect Hill Cemetery) hosted its first burial in 1859. Its location had been carefully chosen; it had to be within easy traveling distance of the city, but at the same time, not so close that it impeded Denver’s growth. The cemetery grew but never realized its true potential. For one thing, because there was very little water in the vicinity, it was difficult to irrigate the grass, which meant that the graveyard contained as much dirt, weeds, and dust as it did greenery.
There was also no real organization to the way it was laid out. Catholics were buried next to Protestants, whose graves abutted those of Jews. At first, it was an ugly mishmash, and as the city grew, people wanted something better. Although Mount Prospect was better organized by the end of the Civil War in 1865, with separate areas for different religious factions, deceased Union soldiers, and a Potter’s Field for the poverty-stricken, a competing cemetery was established in 1876. Named the Riverside Cemetery, this was where the rich and connected were buried.
After 1893, there were no further burials in Mount Prospect. Instead, it was decided that the cemetery would be converted into a park for the enjoyment of the public. The only problem was: what was to be done with the bodies? Thousands of men, women, and children were buried there. The services of a private contractor were engaged to exhume them and relocate them to Riverside. To say that this was not done in the most respectful manner possible would be an understatement. Two, three, sometimes four or more bodies were broken up and jammed together in the same casket. This mistreatment of human remains became something of a scandal, and the contractor was ultimately dismissed. Ghost stories began to circulate, with people avoiding the area surrounding the cemetery at night in case they encountered the spirits of the restless dead.
Families of those buried at Mount Prospect were given a few weeks’ notice to arrange the movement of their loved ones’ remains to a new resting place. After that, the headstones would be removed (and almost certainly destroyed) and the process of converting it into a park would begin. A small number of Denverites made sure that their dead family members were relocated, but that still left thousands of bodies moldering beneath what would soon become Cheesman Park.
In 1926, an elegant mansion was built on top of Calvary Hill, formerly the Catholic section of Mount Prospect. The Waring House, as it came to be known, is currently the administrative center for Denver Botanic Gardens, which now backs onto the house itself. Considering the ground on which it was built, it should come as no surprise at all that the Waring House is said to be VERY haunted indeed.
A number of staff members refuse to work late, especially after night has fallen. Some have heard their names called, while others have heard voices telling them to get out. Lights switch themselves off and on, and doors are also known to open and close by themselves. Footsteps walk across the floors of empty rooms. There have also been sightings of shadow figures. It is a classic case of a haunting, if ever I saw one, and when I was offered the opportunity to spend several nights there, I jumped at the chance.
For the most part, the people who work at the Waring House have a good sense of humor where the paranormal activity is concerned. A sign is posted on the basement door, reminding staff to keep it close “because it keeps the ghosts in.”
The building is reputedly haunted by the spirit of a mischievous young boy, a prankster who loves to play tricks on staff and visitors alike. My colleague, Catlyn, may well have encountered him herself when she was paying a visit to the ground floor restroom. The rest of our team had gathered in the main hall, and every one of us was accounted for when we heard the sound of the restroom door handle jiggling.
We just looked at one another and shrugged, assuming that the door, which was old and sturdy, was probably prone to sticking in the frame. All it would take to open it would be a sharp tug. When Catlyn finally emerged, she was not amused at what she thought was a practical joke on our part. Despite our team having a no pranking on investigations policy, she believed that one of us was deliberately holding the door shut, preventing her from getting out.
“That wasn’t just a sticky door,” she insisted. “Somebody was pulling hard on the other side, keeping me from opening it. For a moment, I couldn’t get out.”
We were gifted with both EVPs and direct voice phenomena, the most memorable of which was obtained in the basement. The basement is certainly the most eerie part of the building (aren’t they always?) and becomes even more so when you realize that directly beneath your feet are coffins containing the remains of people who died in the 19th century. When we asked the question, “Where are we?”, we received the rather disconcerting answer: In a mass grave. [i]
There were also a number of profane EVPs, which was only to be expected: after all, how happy would YOU be if your place of eternal rest was disturbed by construction workers, and a manor house built on top of it? I can’t speak for anybody else, but I’d be angry, and I’d do everything possible to make that anger known to the living.
Not only are the staff at Denver Botanic Gardens used to sharing their workplace with ghosts, but each October, they embrace the subject fully by running tours known as Ghosts in the Gardens. It’s an opportunity for visitors to learn about the haunted history of the gardens, and I heartily recommend signing up. If you should happen to use the restroom in the Waring House…watch out for that door.
[i] Estep, Richard. The Dead Below: The Haunting of Denver Botanic Gardens, Independently Published, 2019.