The following is an excerpt from Erin Taylor’s latest book Haunted Leadville, published September 16, 2025, by The History Press. Available in paperback. 128 pages, $21.95. Available where books are sold, or online at: Amazon, Amazon.ca, Barnes and Noble, and Books-a-Million.
From the beginning of Leadville’s development, there was a need for structure and order, as dreamers and seekers flowed in droves to town. Not everyone had good intentions, as some deviants chose a life of crime to get what they wanted. Some found themselves without other means to bring in income and resorted to the means necessary to survive. Famous ruffians made their way through the streets of Leadville, such as conman Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” Smith. Smith manipulated folks by selling soap to them and claiming that if they bought the soap, they might win prize money. In front of a crowd, a customer unwrapped their new bar to find a celebratory $100 bill. This excitement enticed others to buy bars to try their luck impulsively. Of course, this was a whole set-up, as no bar of soap held the real winnings except for the one that was part of the trick.
It was a wild time in the Wild West. Marshals patrolled the streets, and criminals tried to elude capture. When they were not so lucky, the accused were hauled off to the city jail to have their day in court. Not everyone left the streets, and not everyone left the jail; some stayed in spirit. Let us prowl the streets of historic Leadville.
As Leadville became an established community, an election was held on February 12, 1878. Horace Tabor was appointed mayor, C.E. Anderson was appointed clerk and recorder, T.J. Campbell was appointed as judge, A.K. Updegraff was appointed as attorney and T.H. Harrison was appointed as town marshal. By April 1878, Harrison had resigned, and Mayor Tabor had appointed George O’Connor to the position. O’Connor was murdered a month into the job while confronting one of his junior officers, James “Texas” Bloodsworth. The latter liked to frequent bar halls, which O’Connor disagreed with. On the night of the incident, O’Connor denied the accusation of calling Bloodsworth a coward. Attempts to de-escalate the situation failed, and O’Connor was shot five times before he stole the best horse in Leadville and ran out of town. So far, the position of town marshal was proving to be a challenging one.
Martin “Mart” Duggan was appointed the third marshal due to his burliness and no-nonsense behavior regarding lawbreakers. He had come to Leadville with nothing but his name, wandering the mines before taking on the role of the law. It was pretty clear that lawbreakers behaved themselves when Marshal Duggan monitored the streets, as crime increased when he left the force. P.A. Kelly succeeded Duggan, but Mart returned to serve another stint as marshal from 1879 to 1880, as Kelly could not brave the job. In November 1880, Duggan encountered Louis Lamb on Fifth Street outside one of the brothels. While transporting a sleigh to Winnie Purdy’s house, Lamb was struck. Words were shouted, and pistols were drawn. Lamb never had a chance before the bullet hit its mark. Mart Duggan went straight to the police and was acquitted of any murder charges on the claim of self-defense. Mrs. Mindy Lamb, the widow, declared vengeance for her husband’s death, spitting out that she would dance on Duggan’s grave. Mollie May saw the whole thing transpire, and she came out to console the upset woman, claiming she knew Duggan was guilty of the crime. From then on, the two women were quick friends, something not common among the red-light district ladies. Mrs. Lamb attended Mollie’s funeral.
One night in April 1888, a shot rang out in the dark outside a notorious gambling hall on Harrison Avenue, known as the Texas House. An unknown assailant had shot Mart Duggan. The shooter was initially said to be Bailey Youngson, but Duggan rescinded his accusation. The following day, the ground where Duggan had fallen was stained. A woman came out of the crowd of onlookers. “With the air of a priestess performing a rite, she began a solemn waltz on the darkened boards. It was Mrs. Lamb,” wrote The Herald Democrat.
A man did not want to be caught alone on State and East Chestnut Streets. Men might drink too much, pass out and find themselves robbed after waking up. They wanted to avoid hearing the words “Hold up your hands!” shouted by a footpad hoping to make a quick buck. Most men carried a pistol as a form of protection. Many illicit behaviors were overlooked to avoid trouble, such as gambling and sex work. One visitor wrote home about the violence, expressing that one may not know who is next to die. Policing the area did little to stop the crime, due to the veracity of trouble. Fires occurred often, keeping the town’s hose and ladder companies busy. One visitor noted that “if one didn’t start, someone started it just to see the action.” In the late summer of 1879, eight men were deputized by the sheriff as part of the Merchants’ Protective Patrol. Like a neighborhood watch of today, these men reported anything suspicious to alert the uniformed officers.
Sometimes, the citizens took the punishment into their own hands.
On November 20, 1879, the Tabor Opera House opened its doors to the public for the first time. Not all the tickets sold out, as there was another show. Patrick Stewart and Edward Frodsham were being held in the city jail on suspicion of murder and lot jumping. Stewart and a colleague had attempted the robbery of a barber, Carl (also reported as Charlie) Bockhaus, who did not want to comply and shot Stewart’s partner. Frodsham had been trying to steal Capitol Hill real estate lots. A vigilant crowd gathered outside the jail that November night to seek justice. Fifteen men were said to have entered the jail and seized the two men to hang them outside. Frodsham was said to have been afraid, and he fought for his life.
A note was attached to Frodsham’s dead back as a notice to all criminals:
“This is our commencement, and this shall be your fates. We mean business, and let this be your last warning….Vigilantes Committee. We are 700 for review strong.” It is unknown who was among these men who quickly busted out the two accused to take their last steps on Earth.
Frodsham’s ghost still has unfinished business; some believe his spirit still vies over lots to steal.
The old jail was not a pleasant place to be. It saw the likes of men, women, drunks, criminals, sex workers, etc. The cells were made of metal plates within the same materialistic cage. Cell 8 was always empty. Multiple inmates claimed it was haunted, and no one stood a chance of being housed within its walls. Allegedly, one inmate took his own life by suffocation, and while his body left the cell, his spirit stayed behind. Numerous times, inmates screamed to be let out of cell 8, claiming a “corpse with a blue mark around its neck had crawled into bed with them.” Initially, guards were nonbelievers, but after several complaints—including one from a brutal bully who bargained, “String me up and whip me!”—the possibility of a haunting seemed likely.
The original courthouse and adjoining jail were demolished in the 1940s and rebuilt in the same spot. The jail still stands with its original bars and hauntings. In the early 2000s, complaints of cold gusts of air, television problems and moving objects came from the trustee’s cell block without a valid reason. A brave soul decided to set out a tape recorder to try to capture any phenomena. Paranormal investigators use this technique to capture electronic voice phenomena (also known as EVPs) to capture voices that might generally not be heard audibly—voices that might be considered spiritual in origin. The words “higher” and “bless me” were audible in the playback, along with questionable noises that sounded like they came from a male source. When a lieutenant reviewed the potential evidence, he said, as a religious man, “If that were me back there [referring to the trustee’s cells away from the general population], I’d never go back there again.” The trustees were specific inmates who worked in trusted jobs in the courthouse and jail. The spirit had given gifts to the trustees, such as granola bars and crosses, especially when a nylon cord cross was discovered hanging from a cell doorway. Who was this spirit, and were they trying to seek salvation?
Might this be Old Hank, whose spirit was floating around the jail in 1881? An inmate named Blake was spending his time in the jail cell when he heard Hank banging. Hank informed him that he was in “purgatory and asked Blake and the other boys in the jail to pray for him” so he could have penance and freedom. A news reporter later asked Blake if this was a spirit, not another inmate making noise. Blake was adamant it was the ghost, as did at least two other inmates.
Blake was also curious if the spirit was connected to the recent hangings of two convicted murderers only thirteen days prior. The gallows stood outside town, waiting to send the accused off this earth. The largest execution must have been that of Merrick Rosengrants (or Rosengrantz) and Francis Gilbert, who were legally hanged on double gallows on July 29, 1881. Both were accused of murder at Tennessee Park, several miles from the city. Rosengrants had been rifling through John Langmeyer’s belongings the year prior when the victim confronted him. Rosengrants answered with his pistol, and the man died three days later. Gilbert killed James McCallum over money in 1880, claiming self-defense.
On the day of the men’s hangings, the news reported they slept well, groomed themselves and wore new suits. Rosengrants tearfully proclaimed his innocence at the scaffold, while Gilbert stated, “I have made all the statements I wish to the reporters. That is all.” Depending on the source, there were an estimated seven to ten thousand witnesses (men, women and children) to observe the deaths of these criminals. After the autopsy and burial at Evergreen Cemetery on the same day, the Rocky Mountain News noted, “The city is extremely quiet.”
Cycling back to the spirit in jail, the question was: Who was Hank? Old Hank’s spirit told Blake that Gilbert greeted him upon his death, as if he had died within the previous two weeks. Was he related to one of the recently condemned? Could he have been one of the men who died by suicide behind the steel bars? Other jail deaths were the results of overdoses, whether intentional or accidental. Perhaps one of these was his.
By 1884, a State Street woman by the name of Minnie was arrested due to her intoxication and carted off to the city jail. It was said she sobered up and, in despair of the life she was living, decided to end her life. Somehow, she obtained a bottle of poison, which she used to end her life. It was too late when someone walked by, as “the poor waif on life’s troubled sea gave up the ghost in the cell,” reflected a reporter of The Herald Document. Rumors of her death circulated, and inmates were wary of the cell Minnie in which died. The female inmates claimed that Minnie’s ghost appeared to them, dressed in white, which terrified them. “It looked so sad,” one inmate said of the apparition of Minnie. When the guard investigated, nothing was there, and they blamed shadows for the excitement.
The spirit of Si Meunich made its way around Leadville, as mentioned in other chapters. In 1886, he booked himself into the city jail before his body was laid in the paupers’ field. According to The Herald Democrat, Mrs. Floody had just arrived at the jail for “creating a tempest” and shrieked when she saw the apparition of the dead man. Her new friend and cellmate, Ellen Smith, mourned the passing of the reportedly innocent man who died at the gallows for the murder of Sam Baldwin. His body was still being held at the local undertakers, awaiting burial planning. The bereaved woman shushed her friend and told her to not scare the spirit away, but Ellen could not see the spirit herself. It is unknown what the dead man wanted and why only one woman could see his apparition.
An 1897 account of a spirit at 118 West Fifth Street may also contribute to the hauntings of the jail. Once a brothel, the house is long gone now; a parking lot for government buildings occupies the space today. The Herald Democrat reported that the abandoned house once had a life of crime, murder and suicide. A young woman had gone missing, while a musician died from suspected poison, though an evaluation proved nothing. One night, George Sylvester got the scare of a lifetime as he walked home at midnight. As he passed 118 West Fifth Street, a light caught his eye from the desolate building that was once Winnie Purdy’s ladies’ boardinghouse. “The phantom, or whatever it was, raised its hands, and then came a most unearthly cry,” wrote The Herald Democrat. Police had been called to check out strange activities at this house, but no living person was ever found upon inspection. Where did the spirit go? Was it one of the lives lost in the once-busy bordello? Could the spirit have made its residence in one of the government buildings?
Walking through the streets of Leadville, you might not realize how much occurred in the early years. From criminal depravity, many spots may have been the scene of someone’s lost life. Many deaths, whether incidental or accidental, occurred on the streets and around the structures. Several buildings, like the Delaware Hotel, home of two separate murders, are still open for business. While many of the old buildings were demolished or destroyed in fires, could the energy of those spirits remain in the land they once knew as home? The West was wild in Leadville; although now, the dust has settled, and it is a quaint mountain town. Squint down Harrison Avenue for a moment. Against the clapboard buildings, you may see the horses tied to hitching posts along the dusty road. Quiet yourself. You may believe you can hear shouting, gunfire or music. Perhaps you will experience the auditory remnants of a town’s past. Everyone came here for a reason—the hopes and dreams still linger. The energy of Leadville and its history remains strong. Visit and see for yourself.