Audio By Carbonatix
Since its opening in 1892, the Brown Palace has experienced its share of oddities — including ghosts who check in but don’t check out.
How else to explain the sudden, static-filled telephone calls from the ninth-floor suite where famed Denver socialite Louise Hill once lived…and died? Not only was Mrs. Hill’s former room unoccupied at the time, it didn’t even have a telephone. Or the shocking encounter between a newly hired hotel bellman and another uniformed man who was silently picking up newspapers from the bellman’s cart? When it dawned on the new employee that this apparition was his recently deceased predecessor, he quit in a hurry.
The mysterious guest list scrolls on and on: a ghostly trio playing music after hours in the old San Marco Room, then vanishing; lights turning on without a hand flicking the switch; cold breezes whooshing through clattering doors; a Victorian woman wandering the halls dressed in pink; girlish voices giggling near the site of the long-gone grand ballroom.
Brown Palace historian Julie Kanellos glows at the retelling of such stories during her 45-minute Ghost Tour. “We’ve never been able to put a name or a face on the strange occurrences,” she tells our group of twenty ghoul-gawkers.
But that doesn’t stop her from trying. Drawing on old newspaper clips, conversations with hotel employees and guests and even her own ethereal experiences, including the time a stack of copies inexplicably scattered in a closed room, Kanellos offers otherworldly anecdotes about the world-class hotel.
Nameless forms reportedly float around the triangular landmark, pulling poltergeist pranks. One resident spirit on the eighth floor makes doorstops fly out from underneath doors. Another moody ghost sits, staring, on a couch, tauntingly disappearing if approached. And an unseen cloakroom doppelgänger tugs on dresses.
While most of the hotel’s non-paying residents are anonymous, Kanellos senses that hotel founder Henry Brown is among them. And she’s not alone in this belief. A few years back, a bartender tidying up after hours in a hotel tavern turned off the stereo. Suddenly, the music blared back on. After checking to confirm he’d pushed the right button, the exasperated bartender bellowed, “Henry, please! I’m trying to work!” At that, the music ceased.
But the legends live on.
