Ghost Writers

Ghost stories about the Croke-Patterson Mansion, 420-428 East 11th Avenue, date to the 1890s, when original owner Thomas Croke was too spooked to stay and sold the place to Thomas Patterson, then the owner of the Rocky Mountain News. The mansion is now busy haunting two new books from the History Press, released just in time for Halloween. In The Haunted Heart of Denver, Denver walking-tour guide Kevin Pharris makes the mansion the centerpiece of his chapter on “Capitol Hill Corpses,” adding personal anecdotes to the growing body of legend elaborated on by Jordan Alexander Leggett and Ann Alexander Leggett in The Haunted History of Denver’s Croke-Patterson Mansion. All three authors will be signing copies of their books and sharing stories at tonight’s Haunted Denver presentation at the Tattered Cover.

The Leggetts weren’t sure what to make of stories of a buried baby, dogs leaping to their death from the upper windows, the ghost of a supposed suicide victim, or the dead cat the current owners just found, and Jordan says they found mystery in even the most basic history of the place. “All of Denver’s records on the house are contradictory, and a lot of the records have been shuffled around or changed,” she says. “It was far easier to find people who were freaked out by the place than it was to get a firm handle on exactly what the history of the house was. This mansion has learned how to keep some secrets.”

Haunted Denver begins tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Tattered Cover LoDo, 1628 16th Street; visit www.tatteredcover.com for more in-formation.
Mon., Oct. 24, 7:30 p.m., 2011