SPECIAL RE-RELEASE! | The Chaos in Cheesman Park (with Ouija Boards and Midnight Margs)

Picture this: you're in a park, in the heart of Denver, and beneath your feet lies a chilling secret - a forgotten cemetery, once home to thousands of bodies. Join me, Jeremy, as I tread lightly on these hallowed grounds, uncovering the haunting tales and eerie encounters that surround Cheesman Park with my special guests Shayle and Cheyenne from Ouija Boards and Midnight Marks. This isn't a simple walk in the park. We're cracking open a city's silence on its disturbing past, a past filled with scandal, deception, and the restless spirits left in its wake.

Our journey through Cheesman Park is one of shocking revelations and ghostly encounters. We discuss the scandalous origins of the park, from its days as a burial ground for the poor, criminals, and diseased to its transformation into a city park. We shed light on the gruesome contract of E. P. McGovern, the man contracted to remove the bodies in 1893, and the city's scandalous response to an unexpected surge in infant caskets. As darkness falls, we share our chilling encounters with the ghost 'Slack Jaw' and discuss the film 'The Changeling', inspired by the strange happenings in an old mansion nearby.

As we delve into the heart of Cheesman Park, we uncover more than just stories, we reveal the harsh truth about a city built on top of the dead. We explore the dark history of the park's marble pavilion and the tragic tale of a wealthy family's secret. This is Cheesman Park, a place where the past refuses to be buried. So, come with us as we decipher the whispers of the walls, because here at Cheesman Park, when walls can talk, they have a lot to say.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hey everyone, happy Wednesday from Jeremy and all of us at when Walls Can Talk. And surprise, I bet you didn't expect to hear from me today and you know what I'm not mad. I am actually jumping back in here once again as a very friendly reminder that today our brand new episode of Cinematic Secrets, the Dark Side of the Silver Screen, which is the sister podcast in the when Walls Can Talk network, has released a new episode today and rather than just share a little reminder and let you know kind of what it's about, I actually have something extra special today. The episode of Cinematic Secrets coming out this week is covering the curses, controversies, apparitions surrounding the making of the 80s horror classic film Poltergeist, and I'm so excited I think you're going to love it. But I'm in a very unique situation with this one because I've actually already done an episode here on when Walls Can Talk related to possible inspirations behind the Poltergeist film and ironically, that episode is actually our premier, very first inaugural episode of this show ever from way back in June of 2021. So as a little supplemental content to pair with the new Cinematic Secrets episode, I decided today to do a little re-release remaster of our very first episode, the Chaos at Cheesman Park. The story of Cheesman Park is fascinating. It has wild twists and turns and for many this will always be people's very favorite when Walls Can Talk episode ever. This was before I really identified my voice and tone and really moved into the production aspects, but this was a very fun one because it was my very first guest interview. I got to tell the story of Cheesman Park to my very good friends, cheyenne and Shale from Ouija boards and Midnight Marks. By the way, if you have not gone and followed them on all podcast streaming platforms, make sure that you do, because they are about to release their next season of 13 episodes. I believe it is season five for them already and I will be a guest on that later in the season, so definitely go check it out.

Speaker 1: 2:14

But I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to reshare this episode with y'all. For those of you who have not been listening from the very beginning, it's a great chance for me to introduce you to our birthplace, where we started, and many people's favorite story that I've ever told. This was the story that inspired the idea behind this podcast in the first place, because when I found out the true story of this location. I immediately thought if there are places like this that exist in the world, everybody needs to hear about it. Now, why is this coming out in association with Poltergeist? Well, I don't want to give too much away if you're unfamiliar with the movie and the plot, which I will cover on the cinematic secrets episode, so that may be a good place to begin actually is to listen to the cinematic secrets one first and then come back to this.

Speaker 1: 3:01

But spoilers ahead. One of the main plot lines of the story is that the development complex that is in the movie and the home where all of the paranormal activity takes place is built on what used to be a cemetery, and rather than transfer the bodies, they just removed the headstones. That's like one of the iconic parts of the Poltergeist film. Now, that seems to be a direct inspiration from the story of Cheeseman Park. I'm not going to say anything else at this point, but I hope that you enjoy this double ended deal, so to speak, if you're going to use real estate terms, of cinematic secrets and when walls can talk, both surrounding the iconic horror classic film Poltergeist, they're here, Throughout the ages, man has repeated the same earnest saying or a question, really, or perhaps even a plea If these walls could talk.

Speaker 1: 4:17

But what if they do and always have? Perhaps their stories, memories and messages are all around us. If only we would take the moment to listen. On this podcast, we reinvestigate legends and tales of the past and allow the echoes of their lessons to live on once again, informing us, educating us and sharing new and unique insight into the inner workings of the paranormal and spiritual world. Will you dare to listen? This is when Walls Can Talk, the podcast. These first six episodes are the Colorado Tales shocking true stories of heartbreak, death and the unexplained events that followed. This week, my special guests are also some of my new best friends Shale and Cheyenne from the incredible podcast Ouija Boards and Midnight Marks. I'm so excited, so excited. This is officially when Walls Can Talk, the podcast's very first premiere episode. Yes, and I have the best, the absolute best extra special guests here today. I have Shayan and Shale from Ouija Boards and Midnight Marks. Hi, guys, Hi.

Speaker 4: 5:44

Cheers, widget, cheers. We're freaking stoked to be here, I am so excited to have you.

Speaker 1: 5:50

I don't think you know very much about our topic today, which is like the best part. I have so much on my sleeve. I'm so excited.

Speaker 3: 5:57

Ooh, yes, we love a surprise Right.

Speaker 1: 6:00

And I was like here's the concept which, if you're listening to this podcast, you can see the title, you know what we're going to talk about. But I told them not to do any extra research because I kind of surprised them.

Speaker 4: 6:10

You know, what's so funny is I always forget about that. Like when we record, I'm always like this is going to be such a surprise, right, and then we remember that they'll know by the title yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:20

And here I am, like I don't even really know exactly what the wording of the title is going to be. I have some ideas, so I'm not going to say so it's a surprise.

Speaker 2: 6:25

Right exactly it's going to be a surprise for me too.

Speaker 1: 6:28

So here's what we're talking about today, are you all?

Speaker 3: 6:29

ready? Yes, are we diving right into this? Let's do it.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Okay, let's do it Before we even begin. What do you know about Cheezman Park right here in Denver, colorado? Do you know anything?

Speaker 4: 6:41

I know that it's close to the botanical gardens.

Speaker 1: 6:43

Correct it borders the botanic gardens. That's absolutely correct.

Speaker 3: 6:46

Yes, so literally the only thing I know about Cheezman is that there are bodies there. There were bodies there.

Speaker 4: 6:55

Quote unquote At some point yes, so wait, are there no longer bodies there?

Speaker 1: 6:58

Isn't that the question? So yeah, we are actually. Ironically, we are recording this podcast at my apartment. It's probably one of the only episodes we're actually going to record at this apartment because I'm about to move, so fun. Little caveat If you hear some church bells in the background, that's just the church that I live right next to.

Speaker 4: 7:18

We think it adds to the vibe. I do too.

Speaker 1: 7:20

I think it's kind of a whole vibe, so I'm excited. Yes, so we are recording this podcast right here from Denver, colorado, and Cheezman Park is located here in Capitol Hill, which is the neighborhood that we are in right now. The park is 80 acres and is estimated to contain almost 2000 different trees.

Speaker 3: 7:36

I thought you were going to say bodies. I was prepared for it to be morbid really quickly.

Speaker 4: 7:42

Oh, that's what we're going to get there. We're like stuck on the bodies.

Speaker 1: 7:46

So arguably, very arguably, I think this is one of the most loved and probably most visited parks in Denver. I feel like that's fair. Especially on the weekends it's always packed with people playing volleyball and just kind of relaxing and just kind of hanging out in such a beautiful big space, and you'll hear a little bit more about why it got picked. Unfortunately, most people who are just chilling and hanging out on the weekend have no idea that they are laying and playing games and relaxing on top of the remains of hundreds of bodies.

Speaker 4: 8:17

So there are still bodies there.

Speaker 1: 8:19

There are a lot of bodies still in Cheezman Park. Not just bodies, but a lot of bodies and a lot of people say that when the sun sets in Cheezman it becomes something completely different. The energy in Cheezman is completely different from during the day.

Speaker 3: 8:34

How close did you say we were?

Speaker 1: 8:36

We're less than 50 minutes away.

Speaker 4: 8:38

We could absolutely walk over there we totally should, we might need to do that.

Speaker 1: 8:41

We could go field trip, but yeah described by those living around the edges of Cheezman. It is dark and mysterious. At night it's very eerie. There's a lot of unexplained occurrences that happen there that we're going to talk about in just a few minutes. We will get there, but a lot of people just have this sense of being uneasy and uncomfortable and very eerie. Personally, I will throw in a little thing here that I actually feel that way sometimes walking through the park in broad daylight where I just have this sense.

Speaker 1: 9:11

I often like to walk through Cheezman when I'm walking to my non-95, my little retail thing, my Sunday retail stand. I like to take a little field trip and go through Cheezman and I have to say, even during the day I have these moments where it's like I don't know about this.

Speaker 4: 9:28

I just don't know.

Speaker 1: 9:30

It's just something's going on and, granted, I am a little bit sensitive. I am a lot of bit sensitive to that kind of thing, so I'll chalk it up to that as well. But one of the main experiences that a lot of people have is on moonlit nights, when you stand on the pavilion I don't know if you are familiar with the there's a very large marble structure with columns. It's very Romanesque and we'll talk about its history as we go through the story, but a lot of people will stand on the stairs of the pavilion and look out over the park and a lot of people will see the silhouettes of the tombstones that have been removed very long time ago. But it's yeah. Isn't it kind of like?

Speaker 4: 10:04

whoa, yeah, like it's me chilled.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Yeah, it's one of the most experienced occurrences, where people turn around and they'll just see the silhouette of the tombstones that used to be in she's Men. We need to set the scene here. We need to, we need to set the tell this story right. I need to take you back in time. I'm going to take you back in time with me to 1851. We're going back 10 years before the outbreak of the civil war and one year before Uncle Tom's Cabin was published.

Speaker 1: 11:06

We are three years into the California gold rush, so the amount of American migrants that are crossing the country on the Oregon and the Santa Fe trail and crossing through the Great Plains has increased. It's absolutely exploded.

Speaker 3: 11:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:21

The amount of people crossing the country right now is insane. I think you know where I'm going with this. United States government undertook negotiations with the Native American Plains tribes living between the Arkansas and Missouri River. Their goal here was simply to ensure that there was a protected right of way for the American migrants that were finding their way across the country. As you can imagine, and to our great disappointment, the Native tribes unfortunately were not the ones winning in this particular situation.

Speaker 4: 11:51

Right, I feel like we should say negotiations with, like big time air courts. No, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 11:56

And we're going to talk a little bit about it Just because I think it's important. I think it's important to remember the history that we live upon, the ground that we live upon. We've talked about this together a little bit how important it is to always pay homage to the people who were here before us and the religious beliefs that existed here before us. I want to put that out there as a really important caveat here to remember. We tell the story with love and with a little bit of laughter and a little bit of what's the word? A little sarcasm.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Almost like tongue-in-cheek Of course but it's important to remember that these were probably one of the most bloody periods of history for the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Speaker 4: 12:43

And I think we.

Speaker 1: 12:44

I just think it's important to remember that too, of course.

Speaker 4: 12:47

Yeah, thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Oh yeah, and I honor my privilege here as well. I haven't had to deal with what some of our indigenous brothers and sisters deal with still today.

Speaker 1: 12:59

So in 1851, the Treaty of Fort Laramie was signed on September 17th 1851, between the United States Treaty commissioners and representatives of the native nations. Specifically, we are talking about the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Arapaho, the Crow and several others as well, I believe. In total, there were eight different tribes represented at this meeting. The main purpose, of course, as we talked about, was to protect these pioneers traveling west on the Oregon Trail and unfortunately, the well-being of the native peoples was not the priority in this negotiation, the United States acknowledged that all of the land that they agreed were covered in this treaty was Indian territory and they did not claim any part of it.

Speaker 1: 13:46

That doesn't last very long. The Native Americans guaranteed safe passage for settlers on the Oregon Trail and allowed for roads and forts to be built in their territories along these roads, along these trails, to help develop an infrastructure for the American travelers, the American pioneers, the frontiersmen. The treaty also made a quote Effective and lasting peace among the eight tribes represented, each of which were often at odds with the other.

Speaker 4: 14:15

So they spoke on like behalf of the indigenous tribes. Exactly, the indigenous tribes.

Speaker 1: 14:19

Not surprisingly, this treaty was broken almost immediately after its inception, primarily by the United States government, which proceeded to begin to remove these indigenous peoples from their agreed-upon territories less than a year later. Here we are, back to Cheeseman. I'm sure you can see what I'm about to say the land that Cheeseman sits upon unfortunately was part of the land that was quote, acquired from the native peoples that lived here before us.

Speaker 1: 14:45

On November 22nd 1858, general William Larimer, who was a land speculator around this area, especially during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush, which came right after the California one, he found a hill overlooking the confluence of the Cherry Creek and the South Platte Rivers, which is not far from here, and he states his claim to this land and named it Denver City to honor the governor of the Kansas Territory, james W Denver. Side note can we talk about somebody naming a city after something that's not themselves? Like hold on, I just think it was really cool.

Speaker 1: 15:19

Yeah, he didn't show up and name this city like we would be called Larimer now if that was the case, but he did name it Denver after someone else, so that is really funny Is that kind of funny.

Speaker 4: 15:28

Yeah, I was like huh interesting, that's different, true, no, that is true, but it doesn't sound like he named it himself, Right exactly.

Speaker 1: 15:36

So technically, this land still belonged to the Native Americans even at this point. So we've got a problem Right. We are off to a bad start from the get-go. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:45

And this is where Cheeseman becomes what it is now. So he set aside 320 acres of land that were set to serve as a cemetery for this newly formed city, and this is on the spot that is the current Cheeseman, and Congress parks was included in this original land In 1859, the land was officially given quote-unquote. We're really into giving land to people who don't belong to yeah.

Speaker 1: 16:08

Yeah, the land was given to the city of Denver to be a cemetery and it was named Mount Prospect Cemetery. At the time, cemeteries were similar to today's parks. They were considered where people would go for walks, for weekend picnics, so it was always meant to be a beautiful, lush, well cared for meeting spot for especially the well to do. Spending an afternoon in a cemetery was considered like going to a park today. It was like a very normal tradition at the time.

Speaker 4: 16:37

That's actually so interesting because we talk a lot about how our culture views death now.

Speaker 1: 16:44

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 16:45

And it's super interesting to try to think about. Where was that point where death and being around it became so taboo?

Speaker 1: 16:52

Right.

Speaker 4: 16:53

Because, yeah, it used to be something that was revered, or like we had wakes where we literally like spend time with the body. Yeah, when did that ever end yeah?

Speaker 1: 17:00

And why?

Speaker 4: 17:00

did it become such a weird, scary thing to people?

Speaker 1: 17:03

It was just the thing that you did as a family. Yeah, you get together and you go make a picnic in the grass.

Speaker 3: 17:09

That is so funny, because now that's what we do, right.

Speaker 1: 17:12

Right.

Speaker 3: 17:12

That's what all your weird witchy friends are doing.

Speaker 4: 17:14

Right.

Speaker 3: 17:15

We're all going on goff picnics in the park, but they're goff now yeah. And we're like no, we love to hang out here. Yeah, it's just an interesting juxtaposition, it is.

Speaker 1: 17:27

And it was common for some of the most beautiful open spaces to be assigned a cemetery. So at the time she's been in Congress parks, where it was the highest point in the vicinity and had sweeping views of the mountains. It was a beautiful spot in what would very quickly become the city of Denver. So we're doing okay. So far, I feel like we're doing okay. No, we're not. There's a major twist to this story that I have not yet told you. You ready for it?

Speaker 3: 17:56

Yes, I mean maybe.

Speaker 1: 17:58

Yeah. You may have a guess where we're going here. This acquired land, specifically Cheeseman and Congress parks, were already a sacred burial ground for the native peoples of the Arapaho Nation. It was this revered sacred ground for a very long time. Yeah, already a resting place, and it was handed very casually to the city of Denver. One of the stipulations of the land grant that I was talking about earlier this 1851 treaty was that no bodies in this area were allowed to be buried deeper than three feet deep, because what.

Speaker 3: 18:33

That feels low yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:35

They were not to disturb the Native Americans that were already buried here. Okay, so we're stacking bodies. We're stacking bodies.

Speaker 4: 18:42

So was that out of convenience, or was that actually out of respect?

Speaker 1: 18:46

Ain't that the question.

Speaker 4: 18:47

That is a question, ain't that the question.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I don't know. I don't know why they came or who brought this stipulation into being, but yeah, no, they were not allowed to bury any bodies deeper than three feet in the ground, which is not very deep. Not at all. Yeah, that's not very deep. Yeah. And that becomes a problem.

Speaker 3: 19:05

I'm sure it does. I was going to say there's like a legitimate scientific reason we go at least six right. Yes, I'm checking like dogs digging Right.

Speaker 4: 19:16

I was saying I'm like coyotes aminemals.

Speaker 1: 19:18

Of course you are already here, with me you are already ahead of me, so we're off to a really really, really great start here with this new park, aren't we Okay?

Speaker 3: 19:27

So at this point, we are a cemetery.

Speaker 1: 19:29

Cheeseman Park is a cemetery. The top of the hill was reserved for the most wealthy and well-to-do.

Speaker 3: 19:34

Naturally, of course.

Speaker 1: 19:36

And the outer edges of the cemetery were for the poor and the diseased, criminals, etc. Middle class were you guessed it in the middle. So this is our setup.

Speaker 4: 19:45

Poetic Right.

Speaker 1: 19:47

The story goes and I love this story. This is a good story, Depending on who you ask. The first person to be buried here was Mr John Stofilla, gold prospector, who was hanged on a cotton wood tree at the intersection of Tenth and Cherry Creek for murdering his brother-in-law. Oh, charming, who was also a prospector, and the generally accepted story was that he wanted his brother-in-law's gold leaf that he was panning for at the time. At the time, Denver was only about 100 to 150 buildings so very new, very small.

Speaker 4: 20:19

It's like hard to fathom Right.

Speaker 1: 20:22

There was literally only 100 buildings here at the time, and the nearest court system was in Kansas. There was no established court system here in Denver.

Speaker 4: 20:32

So if you had to go to trial, you had to literally travel like days.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Or you do what we did.

Speaker 4: 20:37

They made a people's court.

Speaker 1: 20:39

Oh, they watched people together and they convicted him and hung him less than two days after the crime was committed. So they weren't messing around here, they were we were. We were quick in, quick out. So the story here is that Mr John Stofill was the first documented execution in burial. Oh yeah, there's another fun story about this that I forgot. We'll get there in just a second, and over a thousand spectators showed up to watch the execution.

Speaker 4: 21:07

It's not that weird to think about for how many centuries that people actually watched executions almost as a form of entertainment.

Speaker 1: 21:16

Like your drama.

Speaker 3: 21:18

What else are you doing? Every day is basically the same. You're doing your chores. You're keeping your house or your animals or your business. Yeah, and attending a little more execution. A hanging is pretty fucking exciting.

Speaker 4: 21:29

I know it's just so weird to think about, it's so morbid, the things that they were sensitive about back then, but like a hanging wasn't one of them.

Speaker 3: 21:37

Oh, cause children were in the audience. Your whole family was going to this.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Well, speaking of which, another little fun fact not related to Cheez-Minn is that France had its last execution by guillotine, yes, I actually saw something about this the other day, 1970. Yeah. 1970.

Speaker 3: 21:53

That's absurd. Fun thing to throw out. We are so gross to each other we are.

Speaker 1: 22:00

I mean it's funny, cause nowadays we listen to podcasts about all these stories. Then this was their podcast. I know.

Speaker 3: 22:08

I'm on this really high, high horse soapbox being like what a bunch of gross people. We're absolutely devouring all of this information.

Speaker 1: 22:17

Right, it's about to get worse. Are you ready? Yes, after the hanging, both John and his brother-in-law were tossed into the same grave. So the man that you murdered you are now stuck with for all eternity.

Speaker 4: 22:31

Okay, in a way I can kind of be on board with that for the murderer, because you're a jerk and you should have to live with that.

Speaker 1: 22:38

You're accountable.

Speaker 4: 22:39

But for the person who was the murderer-y.

Speaker 1: 22:42

Right.

Speaker 4: 22:42

That seems a little shitty, it's exciting.

Speaker 1: 22:44

So we and this is just one, this is one Like barely scratched the surface, one messed up incident. So, yeah, very quickly, the park was filling up with the lower classes on the outskirts of the cemetery, we die faster.

Speaker 3: 22:57

It's so true.

Speaker 1: 22:59

And unfortunately it's just the nif. We are in 18,. What is this? 1860? At this point, not a great time for the medical industry.

Speaker 3: 23:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:08

We'll get into that as well. But very quickly the outskirts of the cemetery were filling up with the lower class and it very quickly gained the nickname the old Boneyard. Oh Right. I read that as like that's good, that's kind of good that's good. But it wasn't good because, at the same time, all of the upper classes no longer had any interest in being buried in a cemetery that had a nickname like the old Boneyard.

Speaker 3: 23:33

That was full of degenerates, yep.

Speaker 1: 23:36

So very quickly, cheeseman Park at that point a cemetery became a cemetery for the poor, the criminals and the diseased Very quickly it developed a reputation, and those were the people who ended up buried there. After it was already such a sacred site Right the first official undertaker of this city cemetery. His name was John J Wally. He was, ironically, a cabinet maker by trade. Yeah, he was an aspiring undertaker, it's a transitional skill.

Speaker 1: 24:10

And I think the word aspiring is um, woefully underplaying his ineptitude, which we'll talk about in just a second. His office was on uh 1412 Larimer Street, which is right on uh Larimer Square. You can literally go visit a store, um, I forget what store it is, but you can literally go visit where his old cabinetry office used to be Interesting, and he was aspiring at best. In 1866, it was recorded that 626 people were buried in the cemetery and while he was doing a disgraceful job as the undertaker, headstones were toppled, graves were being vandalized right and left, cows were being allowed to graze on the whole cemetery and it very quickly it turned into a giant eyesore for the city. They want, as we talked about, they wanted it to be this beautiful place for family to come and gather and spend time with their, their deceased, their loved ones. Um, and it just was not that.

Speaker 4: 25:05

Also, how do you be a bad undertaker? Like your job's not that hard right, oh, it's gonna get it, just gets worse and worse it's gonna get worse and worse.

Speaker 1: 25:13

Eventually, the US government offered the land to the city of Denver, who purchased it for a whopping $200, and named it ever so creatively, the Denver City Cemetery. So we finally changed hands. We finally have this cemetery in the hands of the city of Denver. And this is when the cemetery was then divided up by religions and ethnicities. So you had a Catholic section, you had a section for the Masons, you had a section for the Jewish population, you had a section for the Grand Army of the Republic.

Speaker 3: 25:45

Sorry, how do you do that with the bodies that are already there? I don't know, do we dig people up? Do we move people?

Speaker 1: 25:52

Not yet.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Okay.

Speaker 1: 25:53

We're getting to that, but not yet.

Speaker 4: 25:55

They were just like. This is now.

Speaker 3: 25:57

This is now Whoever's here.

Speaker 1: 25:59

You were probably a Mason and we'll get to this in a second, but the Catholic section is actually where the Botanic Gardens are now Okay and they handled their ship pretty well, comparatively speaking, it's all comparative. And there was also a really big section that was given to the Chinese population because there was a large influx of Chinese immigrants coming to this area as, following the gold rushes, the Chinese population, when they were ordered to move their bodies, were actually one of the only ones that handled it with a lot of grace and they assigned specific ships to carry the bodies back to their homeland, which they were, the only group, the only segregated area of the cemetery to take that kind of action.

Speaker 1: 26:45

And I think it's just kind of special to mention because there was a lot of reverence, or a lot of reverence, in the way that they chose to handle transporting those bodies.

Speaker 4: 26:52

But we'll come back to that in a second. A lot of like, respect and honor.

Speaker 1: 26:55

Exactly. So, on a corner of the cemetery in 1861, a hospital, and I use that word very great. We are being very generous with using the word hospital here.

Speaker 3: 27:06

Just a cocaine about it.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Yep Was created for those suffering with smallpox, because we are now in the smallpox pandemic. Oh, triggered the smallpox panini. We are in a panoramic and this hospital was called oh, we love the 19,. What is this, 1861? It was called the pest house.

Speaker 4: 27:31

Oh God, oh my gosh, are you for real?

Speaker 1: 27:33

I am for real, for real, and it is being described as a glorified shed in which to quarantine those dying of smallpox and many others.

Speaker 2: 27:43

Turculosis the list goes on and on those poor people I know.

Speaker 1: 27:48

Smallpox victims were quarantined away from the general population and, more often than not, were dropped off and left to die. That was the expectation. They would live out the rest of their days in this glorified shed.

Speaker 3: 28:00

This is my gallows humor coming out because I'm horrified by this, but all I can think is also bring out your day. I'm not dead, yet I apologize.

Speaker 1: 28:12

No, it's so real though. The ground behind the hospital was called Pottersfield and a section of the graveyard here was used as mass graves for these victims by 1880, the cemetery was more or less never used wildly on Kempt and ironically it was located in the most prestigious area of town. So the city of Denver decided we need to do something. It was no longer the garden slash park that they wanted, and very quickly real estate developers started campaigning very hard to turn the area into a park.

Speaker 4: 28:49

So it just makes you wonder, like would anything have ever been done if it wasn't in the location that it was, If it wasn't in the middle of town, yeah, or in a prestigious part of town.

Speaker 1: 28:57

Yeah, A Colorado senator convinced Congress to allow the transition to take place and on January 25th 1980, congress announced the clearing of the cemetery renaming at Congress Park. So the families of the individuals who were buried here were given 90 days 90 days to come and collect their remains and transport them to a new resting place.

Speaker 3: 29:19

I can't even imagine Does collect your remains mean I'm literally coming and digging up a family member myself, correct, cool.

Speaker 1: 29:27

They would come dig up their family members themselves.

Speaker 3: 29:31

Like there was no support for that. No, no.

Speaker 1: 29:32

Their goal was to turn this into a park as quickly as possible. Wow, one of the biggest issues here with this transportation order were that records more or less didn't exist. Right Wall-E wasn't doing anything as far as records there are virtually right.

Speaker 4: 29:53

This dude my God.

Speaker 1: 29:56

There were virtually no records of the burials that had taken place during his time as undertaker. So wait. So how do you know?

Speaker 3: 30:02

who you're digging up, I suppose, if you're wealthy enough for your own sake, if you're wealthy enough to have a tombstone, then maybe you'll know where they are. Wow.

Speaker 1: 30:10

The families who could afford it began to transport their loved ones. But since the Catholic section was by far the most densely populated and the Catholic Church tends to be on it when it comes to these kind of things, the mayor sold 40 acres to the Archdiocese right away and named that designated section Mount Calvary Cemetery. They were on top of it. They didn't want to have to move the Catholic bodies.

Speaker 4: 30:34

Okay, something that's kind of popping in my mind is my grandmother always had this thing about never changing a name. So if you got a pet and you adopted, it at the adoption center. You would never change their name because it's bad luck. And so the whole thing I'm thinking is like how much bad luck all these name changes are causing to Jesus in the park. Well, it's so interesting when we get into the hauntings too.

Speaker 1: 30:55

One of the biggest words that people use to describe, especially when they see full body apparitions, which there are a lot of the word that comes to mind from kind of reading through various records is confusion. They're very confused.

Speaker 1: 31:08

That makes so much sense, which also amplifies, at least in my experience as a medium. 99% of the time when somebody comes to visit me in some way, shape or form whether it be in an apparition or be just kind of like an internal awareness it's generally because they're confused and lost and have no idea what's going on. Maybe they passed so quickly that they're unaware that they passed in the first place, which is hard, because sometimes, as a medium, it becomes your duty to inform them that they're no longer walking on our plane.

Speaker 4: 31:38

They're no longer they're here, of course, but they're no longer existing in a human form. So when you do your walks through Chesman Park and you say that you've had moments of chills or darker feelings, have you experienced some of that confusion as well? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:55

It's I find Chesman to be, while stunningly beautiful in somewhere I really enjoy spending time. Also, there's a very heavy sadness there at the same time.

Speaker 3: 32:05

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1: 32:06

They kind of coexist in this really beautiful way. That doesn't surprise me, as we continue to talk about its history, where that would come into play, you know. So by this time, more than 5,000 bodies were still left in the ground 5,000?

Speaker 1: 32:22

5,000 bodies were still in the ground when construction was set to begin, and the reality is is, while I say that there are 5,000 bodies still in the ground, more than likely it was a lot more than that, sure, with the level of undocumented burials and mass graves. On March 14th 1893, ep McGovern and 17 of his employees were hired by the city and given the contract to begin removing the remaining bodies. At a dollar and 90 cents each, they were expected to provide a quote-unquote fresh box and transport them all to Riverside Cemetery. When he was hired, the citizens of Denver were so grateful that he was taking on this transportation process, this project, that they voted him the Grand Marshal of the St Paddy's Day Parade that year.

Speaker 4: 33:06

Oh pure.

Speaker 1: 33:08

If only, if only they knew what was about to happen. Oh no, he was estimated to make at that time $9,500, which is actually about $250,000 now. So he was expected to make what we would consider to be a quarter of a million dollars in this project.

Speaker 3: 33:27

To be fair, $9,000 is still a lot of money to me.

Speaker 1: 33:30

Yeah, it's still a lot of money to me. Right after this began, there was a massive, massive mining accident in Utah. So all of the Denver casket makers were shipping all of their adult-sized caskets to Utah. So our boy McGovern, was without a source for any of his caskets. Oh no.

Speaker 4: 33:52

You ready.

Speaker 1: 33:54

He decided to switch to children's caskets. These caskets were actually-.

Speaker 4: 34:00

Oh my God, are you telling me to chop them up and put them in children's caskets?

Speaker 1: 34:07

These caskets were actually, by our standard, would be considered-.

Speaker 3: 34:12

Considered like infantile, infantile.

Speaker 1: 34:14

They were one foot by three and a half feet. Oh no. So he was forced to begin hacking up bodies and putting them into two or even three different caskets at a time. Now, this worked out in McGovern's favor, because he was being paid by the body. So, they went fucking nuts Even curious reporters hanging out outside the scene because the whole city was watching this.

Speaker 4: 34:42

So they knew that he was hacking up bodies.

Speaker 1: 34:44

They were known as-.

Speaker 4: 34:46

And they still allowed him to claim more than one.

Speaker 1: 34:48

What the the newspapers were writing, all these articles shocked and scandalized by the amount of infant bodies that were leaving or infant caskets that were leaving the site.

Speaker 4: 35:01

But they knew. They knew it was adult bodies and infant caskets.

Speaker 3: 35:06

See, right before you said that I was having this like empathetic moment where I was like God, that's a really traumatic and hard job. Fuck this guy.

Speaker 1: 35:15

Body parts. Bones were everywhere. Shredded clothing was everywhere. Broken caskets were everywhere. Body parts of dozens of different people would be tossed into the same box. Everybody was confused. They said it was literal chaos. A lot of these bodies like let's put out here, a lot of these bodies had been in the ground for a decent amount of time. So we're talking about primarily bone remains is what we're talking about. That does make me feel a little bit-.

Speaker 1: 35:42

However, it was like let's take five boxes of puzzles and throw all the pieces in the air and just start putting them into whatever box is closest.

Speaker 4: 35:48

So I was wondering about that. Did like bodies obviously get mixed up?

Speaker 1: 35:50

in caskets. Everybody was mixed up. There are documented records of 12 plus. Different people would be tossed into the same box. Mcgovern also didn't believe that filling the graves back in was part of his job, so when he finished his work, the entirety of the cemetery was all open graves. The newspapers at this point were sickened and disgusted by the entire operation. It was disgusting, it was something out of a horror movie.

Speaker 3: 36:22

Oh, can you imagine the smell?

Speaker 1: 36:24

No, I truly cannot.

Speaker 4: 36:26

I wasn't even thinking about that till you ran into it yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:29

Eventually, the city was forced to cancel the contract with McGovern and shielded the entire park with a massive fence on all four sides. The health inspector was called in to conduct an investigation and decided that they could no longer open the land. It needed to be sealed, and all that they approved from the city was to remove the remaining headstones.

Speaker 4: 36:50

I'm glad now the health inspector was right Right Now you show up.

Speaker 1: 36:54

No one was ever awarded the contract from the city again. The city simply gave up.

Speaker 1: 37:00

In 1894, the grading and leveling of the park began, but with open graves remaining, still containing body parts strewn around. At this point, might I add, when they finished the contract they left everybody else in place, some of the open graves this is 1894, is when we start leveling this park to make it level and smooth. And you know, the remaining open graves were not filled in until 1902. In 1907, gladys Cheeseman Evans and her mother, mrs Walter S Cheeseman, offered the city $10,000 to name the park after the late pioneer, walter Cheeseman, and they asked to include a beautiful marble pavilion that we were talking about earlier in his honor. The stones for the pavilion were quarried from the caverns of Treasury Mountain and initially this beautiful it was beautiful. There are photos and paintings of it contained ornate stairways, gardens. There's a whole lower level Surprise, surprise, if you live in Denver there's a whole lower level to the pavilion that does not exist anymore. The current pavilion that you see in Cheeseman Park today is actually only half of the actual structure. Wow.

Speaker 1: 38:17

Almost immediately after it was finished, the structure and its entire foundation began falling apart, and the city council refused to accept the shoddy work. They refused to pay for it, and so the construction company that was hired immediately ceased construction, and if you go visit the pavilion today, the columns of the pavilion were never finished or polished, and to this day it has never been completed.

Speaker 3: 38:41

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 38:42

The city decided almost immediately, with all of the foundation issues, the best move for them to do was to simply backfill. They backfilled the whole lower level just to make the structure remain upright. The fountains that you see along the pavilion today, you know how. The fountains up front were put in much, much, much later.

Speaker 1: 39:02

Those are on top of the fountains that are below them. I'll throw some of the photos of the original construction on my Instagram because I think it's really fun to see. I had no idea until I started doing this research that that even existed.

Speaker 1: 39:14

So we're coming to the end of our history of Cheeseman Park, Kind of. The final steps of this story are that by 1950, the Catholic Church decided to remove all of the bodies from their section of the cemetery of the graveyard, and they sold the land to the city to become the Denver Botanic Gardens. So that is when it changed hands from the Catholic Church to become the Denver Botanic Gardens. Of the 20,000 bodies that were buried in the Catholic section of the cemetery, only six were ever recorded.

Speaker 1: 39:54

Six of the 20,000 bodies that were buried there were ever put on official record. Today, it is estimated that 2,000 bodies are still buried in the ground of Cheeseman and the Botanic Gardens, and they continue to resurface regularly.

Speaker 3: 40:12

What? Because they only buried them three fucking feet in the ground.

Speaker 4: 40:17

So you're going to tell me that the place that I go to for peace, I could be bopping along and there's going to be like John Doe from freakin 1865, just being like peace.

Speaker 1: 40:28

Just chilling. Just chilling, you know.

Speaker 3: 40:30

All right, good to know Not to have to mention practical magic in everything we do, but all I see is like rising up from the garden, and I was reading.

Speaker 1: 40:37

I didn't make a lot of notes on this so I don't want to go into it too in deep or too in depth, because I'm not a scientist. But there was a large, a lot of research that was done about the fact that the ground underneath the cheese man is like a variant of limestone. It's very like soap stony. It's very light and very buoyant. So whenever it gets wet or it rains, it's very common for bones that are so airy. Right.

Speaker 1: 41:03

There's so much air, pockets and bones that they find themselves floating to the surface. Also, they've discovered that the remaining bodies that are in cheese man have shifted a very long way. There's one building that is now a mansion, or was a mansion that was changed hands and became the office for the Denver Botanic Garden.

Speaker 3: 41:22

It's on one of the corners actually. Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 41:25

I love that building they went to do soil samples around the mansion and it was discovered that not only had caskets shifted many feet, resulting in them being under the mansion, they also had shifted and turned themselves to vertical. Whoa, when they were drilling core samples for this office building, they discovered that caskets were sanding vertically 12 feet below the property. It's nuts, I mean it's creepy.

Speaker 4: 41:56

Why it's so funny though? Because that shouldn't really be creepy, but first I'll re it is. It just is.

Speaker 1: 42:01

It's weird. So the most recent incident of bodies resurfacing was in 2010 during pretty extensive irrigation work at the Denver Botanic Gardens, when the park workers uncovered four different bodies during excavation for irrigation, one male and three females. The only items found with them were the handles from the coffins. I just find that fascinating when the coffins had all the wood is gone.

Speaker 1: 42:30

The handles remained, the nails from the coffin remained A hair comb was found with them and da da da, all you true climbers out there will love this A 22 caliber bullet was found, which is considered to be possibly.

Speaker 4: 42:47

Like somebody was shocked.

Speaker 1: 42:47

Exactly. I mean possibly a means of death from one of these.

Speaker 4: 42:50

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 42:51

It's just. I think it's interesting to kind of. I think that's super interesting start to piece together what might have been the stories of these people.

Speaker 4: 42:57

Especially when we have zero idea of what their identity was. At least that gives us something, because when you think about the trauma of spirits and the confusion that you talked about, at least there's something that we can piece together to hold onto their story.

Speaker 1: 43:12

Right To make sense of it all.

Speaker 4: 43:14

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:15

There are photos of these bodies. Actually I found quite a few of their public record. They were covered by the news, so if you want to go poke around you can find some. In all, the coroner's office has confirmed that the city of Denver removed approximately 54 bodies during the construction of the Botanic Garden Parking Lot.

Speaker 4: 43:34

And so where do they go In 2010. So then, when they dug up these like 54 bodies, do we know what happened to them? Yeah, we do Are you making me nervous yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:46

I wish I could say better things about the way this was handled and I can't swear for everybody that was removed, but I know that recently a lot that have been transported have been moved to, I believe, its Mount Olive. Cemetery. And it's an unmarked section of the cemetery. So they remain unmarked to this day.

Speaker 4: 44:04

But at least they weren't just like disposed of Exactly.

Speaker 1: 44:07

I had to take this time to really tell you the story, to really set up. Cheezman truly is a perfect storm of bad events that lead to a perfect situation for a powerful haunting.

Speaker 3: 44:21

Yeah, how could it not be haunted?

Speaker 1: 44:22

And I truly feel that Cheezman deserves a place among the most well-known haunted locations in this country. I think it deserves a place alongside the Stanley Hotel, and Penn. Hearse and all of those ones that we talk about all the time. We just did such a good job of trying to cover it all up to make a beautiful park for this city. So let's get into the hauntings. I have some stories that I'm going to read. We're going to get some first person haunted stories from Cheezman.

Speaker 4: 44:56

I'm ready. Ok, let's do it. This is the stuff I live for.

Speaker 1: 44:59

So the first documented experience actually happened almost immediately when the bodies were being removed. So like back in the 1800s, exactly In 1893, jim Astor, who was one of the employees from a government that was awarded the contract from the city to move the bodies quote this is a documented evidence, quote felt a ghost land upon his shoulders. What an 1893 thing to say. Welcome. I want to know what that feels like, though I can't say that I ever had that exact experience.

Speaker 4: 45:36

I know, and it makes it so different if it's an adult versus a kid. That lands up for themselves.

Speaker 3: 45:40

I know For some reason, the sensation I was feeling is not one that would be frightening, so this probably isn't what happened. I know I'm giving it a kid, or I was like a tingling. I was even like a butterfly or like a bird, like something, just like. That is nice. It's probably not how it happened.

Speaker 1: 45:57

No, because after this happened he did run from the graveyard and never returned.

Speaker 3: 46:01

Cool, so not like that, not like that, definitely not a butterfly.

Speaker 1: 46:04

The most common occurrence that continues to this day. People who live near the graveyard in the surrounding mansions have experienced constantly sad, lost and confused people wandering from house to house, tapping on their windows, tapping on their doors, making moaning sounds, along with hearing and seeing children playing in the park around Twilight. And when they go to look over the park, there's nothing there.

Speaker 4: 46:30

There's nothing there, ooh. Yeah. That gives me chills to just picture tapping on each of the houses.

Speaker 1: 46:37

But I feel it's just confusion. Where am I? It's heart-breaking.

Speaker 1: 46:44

My body's been left behind. There are a lot of people that are saying too part of the reason. Well, people trying to come up with excuses as to why the city didn't remove all of the bodies, one of the primary theories at this point, the city didn't have any medical precedent to understand how long a body that passed as a result of small pox was safe. Oh Do you know what I mean. Yeah, they had no they didn't have any way of knowing how long a pock quote unquote would survive on a corpse.

Speaker 3: 47:15

Interesting.

Speaker 1: 47:16

And if it would continue to be, I think that's giving the city a huge amount of credit where I don't think it's necessarily due.

Speaker 3: 47:24

Yeah, that feels like one of those hindsight. What can we tell people that logically could make sense? That you won't get a lot of pushback on, but we definitely didn't think of it in the moment.

Speaker 1: 47:34

And they did quote there was a village in France I forget the date because I didn't make notes of this one, I just remember this one from my research that did unearth the body that had passed smallpox and the entire village passed away. But this was like. I believe this was also like several centuries earlier. There was no, this was not like a couple years ago situation.

Speaker 4: 47:51

This was a while back and it's so interesting to think about this time period because I mean, this is shortly before spiritualism and stuff like that started. But I do feel like people were superstitious at this time. So it's interesting that the bodies were just dealt with in this way, when the people had such a culture of taboo and stuff.

Speaker 1: 48:12

Right and respected. I mean a fearful respect, but a respect. People even now have claimed that after lying on the grass in Cheeseman Park, sometimes they have had this sensation of it being difficult to get up, almost as though unseen forces were holding them and restraining them against the ground.

Speaker 3: 48:30

You, so we're not going to sunbathe at Cheeseman.

Speaker 1: 48:36

Probably mean. The irony of this whole thing is, I bet you today thousands of people. Maybe a stretch, but hundreds of people, at the very least, were chilling out in Cheeseman today and know none of this.

Speaker 3: 48:49

Absolutely none of this, yeah.

Speaker 1: 48:51

Which means that, honestly, the city did their job. They did exactly what they wanted to do. They wanted a park that was well loved, that people would not be constantly talking about what we dredged up today.

Speaker 4: 49:01

But here we are, here we are, here we are.

Speaker 1: 49:03

More reports tell of strange shadows and misty figures that seem to wander through the park in complete confusion. Cheeseman is considered to be the inspiration for the movie Poltergeist, which the crux of the story won't give away everything. Well, spoilers.

Speaker 3: 49:19

It's been out for a while.

Speaker 1: 49:20

I was going to say spoilers, the general premise being a development complex that was built on top of a graveyard, and the famous quote from the movie is literally that they just chose to move the headstones and left the rest, and we saw what happened there.

Speaker 4: 49:37

Oh, that's so interesting yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:40

It's said to have taken direct inspiration from the history and the stories that surround Cheeseman Park. And now I want to tell you my very favorite of all of the haunted stories that I found. I'm going to read this one directly. This is written by Lee Cook, who was a cashier at the King Supers. That's right by, so this is recent. This is within the last 10 to 15 years.

Speaker 4: 50:04

I believe I was sitting here like how old is he?

Speaker 1: 50:06

Yeah, back in 1893. Super's market. Ok, this story is called Slackjaw.

Speaker 4: 50:16

Ew, I'm already freezing.

Speaker 1: 50:18

I live and work only blocks from the infamous Cheeseman Park in Denver, colorado, and I've heard stories of its haunted nature but never thought much of it Until now. One night my friend Ruben and I decided to take a walk through the park. We walked across the south lawn to the pavilion where there were several skateboarders making jumps on the sides of the old fountain and other people walking about. So normal, a normal evening in Cheeseman. We talked about work and other mundane things as we strolled away from the old pavilion to the Rose Gardens, where there is a natural maze of huge rose bushes.

Speaker 1: 50:52

Just then I heard a rattling chain behind us and I said Ruben, can you hear that? As I looked around, he replied that he hadn't heard anything there. I heard it again. I exclaimed as I heard the chain jingling. Still, he didn't hear it and we could see no one. Continuing our stroll, we moved toward the middle of the big field where it was more open, and sat down in the cool grass to smoke a cigarette. Moments later we were surprised when we saw a kid riding a bicycle with a chain dangling from his pocket, turning circles around, a thin, pale man dressed in what appeared to be a shredded hospital gown covered with blood. The pair moved towards us, to say the least. We were petrified. As they grew closer, I could see that the pale man's jaw was broken.

Speaker 2: 51:34

He then approached us and did you hear that tapping Mm-hmm?

Speaker 1: 51:40

There's like I swear to God, there is like scratching and tapping happening on the wall right now. Just documenting that for those of you who might not be picking that up in the night.

Speaker 4: 51:47

Well, it's a long time.

Speaker 1: 51:48

I know, that was weird. I'm not thrown off by weird things, but that was weird, we will continue.

Speaker 4: 51:55

That tapping didn't sound like on a specific wall either.

Speaker 1: 51:57

That's what's kind of creepy. No, it was just there. It was like a scratching sound.

Speaker 4: 52:02

We were just talking about them going around and tapping on the windows and stuff.

Speaker 1: 52:05

We were oh, I don't like that my friend as they grew closer.

Speaker 4: 52:11

We're just helping remember your story, right.

Speaker 1: 52:14

He then approached us and asked for a smoke. As I handed him a cigarette, he said did you see them? Dumbfounded, I simply replied who the ones who did this to me? They stabbed me 15 times. The man said oh, it's heartbreaking.

Speaker 1: 52:29

He then lifted his sleeves to show us what looked like very deep stab wounds in his arms, back and chest. Horrified, I said shouldn't you be in a hospital? Shaking his head, he answered they let me go because I didn't have any money. He then warned us to watch out for quote them and stated several times I'm going to get them. When I reassured him that if we saw them we would let him know, the pair casually moved away from us and into the darkness. When we could see them no longer, ruben and I quickly ran toward my apartment as fast as we could, never looking back Afterward. We talked about what we saw for a long time, both confident that we had seen and talked to the walking dead. So if you ever go out to Cheeseman Park at night, know that you just might be questioned by a ghost in a hospital gown who continues to look for his killers. I have dubbed the ghost slack jaw.

Speaker 4: 53:21

I'm rethinking our field trip now it is really sad.

Speaker 1: 53:26

I have another one that I actually just found in comments that I thought was kind of fun and I thought I'd read. Having had friends in Denver, I made the trip from Omaha several times. I visited Cheeseman Park on numerous occasions with friends, but none of them told me about the graves that still exist there. Not until my last visit in 2011 to see a friend did I learn of the park's dark past. My friend, Don, told me basically the story told here. Then he led me to a couple areas of the park where slightly sunken plots are noticeable. He said those are the empty looted graves the robbers pillaged.

Speaker 1: 54:01

It was obvious looking at the land that these hadn't been actual graves in decades. Then he took me to an area where the poppers, criminals and the destitute were buried and said the area was basically untouched. The bodies were never moved to other cemeteries. He said he was spoken to there by what he said was quote a middle-aged guy wearing ripped up pants, no shirt and a cowboy hat. The guy said to him hey, have you seen my wife? And then disappeared into a bush, as though he had walked right through it. And you know what? I believe him.

Speaker 4: 54:32

That's like another heartbreaking story of like the confusion.

Speaker 1: 54:34

It's confusion and loss.

Speaker 4: 54:36

Yeah, that breaks, my heart.

Speaker 1: 54:41

And the last thing I want to talk about is the movie the Changeling. Have you ever seen the movie the Changeling?

Speaker 4: 54:48

I have not seen it but I am very familiar with, like the legend and the folklore around the Changeling from Ireland.

Speaker 1: 54:55

We might have to plan a movie night sometimes so you can watch it.

Speaker 1: 54:59

So the movie is claimed to be from the experiences of a famous writer, slash playwright, russell Hunter, who was known for his work on Broadway in well, the year that this occurred was in 1968. He had rented a mansion, the Treat Rogers Mansion at 1739 East 13th Ave, after the tragic death of his wife and daughter. The mansion rented for $200 and even at the time that was a pretty reasonable price for this mansion. Hunter claimed that about a week after moving in he started hearing loud thumps and strange noises coming from the bedroom fireplace. He was eventually so frustrated with the sounds that he screamed stop it. And the noises stopped. The activity then changed to doors opening and closing, paintings flying off the walls, and Mr Hunter even claimed that the walls as a whole vibrated. Mr Hunter eventually decided to have a seance with some local psychics to see what was happening.

Speaker 4: 55:57

I love how he goes from frustrated to okay, let's have a seance, let's find out.

Speaker 1: 56:00

It's like the most 1968 thing I've ever heard in my whole life, for sure, when Stop, it didn't work.

Speaker 4: 56:05

Let's do some research. This escalated quickly.

Speaker 1: 56:10

He then claims that the psychics told him that there was the ghost of a child who was the son of the original owners of the home and his spirit was trying to pass on his story. The claim was that when the child was born, he was set to inherit $700 million on his 21st birthday, caveat. There is a lot of tall tale involved in this story. I have to be 100% honest. This is the story that's been told.

Speaker 3: 56:35

And retold.

Speaker 1: 56:37

And retold and turned into movies. Take it or leave it Got it, it's a story.

Speaker 1: 56:42

I don't know that there's true documented evidence of all of this, but it's a great story. It's a great story. The child was set to inherit $700 million on his 21st birthday. The child had been born sickly and was not expected to live to the age of inheritance, and the parents who wanted him to claim the money realized that the child did not live long enough. They would not get any of that money. They decided to adopt a child that was similar to the sickly child and raise him as a replacement change line so he could inherit the money. The sickly child was then locked in a small attic room and left to die.

Speaker 1: 57:17

Mr Hunter was told that he would be able to confirm this story by finding this hidden room in the house. He claims that there was a hidden door leading to an attic room and when he opened the door, a red rubber ball came bouncing down the stairs. He also discovered several toys, a bed, a bathtub that were all child sized. He also claimed to find a diary that contained stories of his life and how his parents had been ashamed of him from the time of his birth. It also mentioned that his favorite toy was a red rubber ball. The psychics then informed Mr Hunter that the sickly boy had died and the family had had him secretly buried in a South Denver location that is now under the closet of a house. The psychics gave Mr Hunter the address of the home in South Denver and said that once he unearthed the body he would find a gold medallion that would be inscribed with the child's birthdate. They told him that once he had the medallion he could go to the public and expose the truth to set the boy's spirit free.

Speaker 1: 58:20

Mr Hunter claims that he was eventually allowed to dig for the boy and indeed he did find the medallion. Once he had the medallion, mr Hunter says the walls of the mansion quote shook and that the thumps were increasingly louder. He even claimed that a glass door exploded and severed an artery in his arm, requiring medical attention. Mr Hunter moved from the location to a home on Kearney Street and claimed that the haunting followed him. He was so desperate that he contacted a priest with the Epiphany Episcopal Church who says they came out and exercised the home. The home was then demolished in 1974. If a story ever existed that would expect to excite paranormal activity, this is surely at the top of the list. Now very little of this story has been fully documented and supported by historical references.

Speaker 1: 59:19

It's a great story, though, and it's a great story that takes place here in she's Been Park. It just gives a little taste of what people have been experiencing all around it.

Speaker 4: 59:30

It's just another story that adds to the lost, forgottenness of. Like that's the whole theme, right, it's about people who have been lost and forgotten.

Speaker 1: 59:39

Yeah, sad, I know it's more sad to say it out loud than I expected to be on. I'd like to be fully honest with you.

Speaker 4: 59:46

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 59:47

It carries more weight when you tell the story now, more so than I expected. And I think it's important also for people to remember not to be put off or turned away from locations that might be considered quote haunted or quote active or scary, and to remember that some of the time in fact I would argue to say most of the times in these locations that are so well known for their paranormal activity, it has more to do with the unfinished business and the enclosed doors and the goodbyes that were never said and the there's always a sense of tragedy about like the most haunted places.

Speaker 4: 1:00:28

It's never like a fun Casper story. Right, Right, right.

Speaker 1: 1:00:31

No, absolutely, and it's easy to take them and to run with them in the poltergeist and the changeling direction, to make sense of them, when sometimes it's a lot more simple. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:00:44

And that's the tale of Cheesman Park. That is the history of the park that we walk over so often, and many I feel there's many in the city who are aware of the tall tale of the bodies buried in Cheesman Park but don't realize quite how tragic and how mishandled it truly was Like there was a period of time where that park was just open graves everywhere.

Speaker 4: 1:01:07

Or the extent of like when you talk about oh yeah, there was a cemetery under here. Right. And there was no one realize it was 20,000 bodies at one point.

Speaker 3: 1:01:14

Yeah, and I think people, well, that was just one section, right, right, 20,000 in one section, just an exception, yeah exactly, yeah, and I think something that's just really interesting to think about and grapple with just on a I don't know, maybe a personal morality level, is when how long of time, what period of time, has to pass for these to become stories.

Speaker 3: 1:01:41

For it to be just like fodder and fun campfire stories and not actual human beings who lived and died just like all of us are going to live and die and like at what point it's like an archaeology right To you. I'm a big like anthropology nerd and it's that concept of how long is somebody gone when their body becomes scientific, yeah, and not humanitarian.

Speaker 4: 1:02:08

I think there's a lot of talk about that with the recent like pharaohs.

Speaker 1: 1:02:12

Yes.

Speaker 3: 1:02:13

About like you're still transporting bodies, right, you're still breaking into sacred spaces and people's final resting places, and in the name of science, sure, and I'm endlessly fascinated by all of that, and you know, we've made some incredible archaeological strides in the last decade even Right.

Speaker 4: 1:02:31

it's an important scientific endeavor in one in some capacity.

Speaker 3: 1:02:34

Yeah, and what? There's a particular. I'm blanking on the name of it right now, but there's a Netflix documentary that came out this last year about one of those sites that was recently unearthed and all of the archaeologists and all the excavators who were on the project were Egyptian. And that was by design, because everyone else who was coming in was not treating it with the same amount of reverence. They didn't understand, so they removed all like no European archaeologists, no American archaeologists, it was. You had to be Egyptian if you were gonna work on this site.

Speaker 4: 1:03:09

I'm really glad to hear that and hopefully that's a shift that happens much more frequently, where the people of that culture are the ones that are doing it.

Speaker 3: 1:03:17

Yeah, like helping transport both the story and I guess in a lot of ways you're keeping people alive that way too. So there is a lot of beauty in remembering these people and knowing these stories. But, yeah, how you tell them matters, and I think we obviously had a lot of work to do with Cheeseman.

Speaker 1: 1:03:37

I think it's also a really interesting cultural difference.

Speaker 1: 1:03:41

One of the things that really stood out to me about the movie Coco is the cultural appreciation of memory and respect and putting it so visually that like even in the afterlife and whether this is true or not true is kind of irrelevant to the point of like when you are forgotten even after you've passed is like a second death, and it's something that I have so much respect and appreciate. It's in my top 10 favorite movies, animated or not, because I think it tells a story from a different perspective that some of us that come from a post-colonialist world it was never something that was important to us or we were never taught to appreciate that quite the same way, and I think it's something we can learn from other cultures how to keep memory alive and respect alive. It's exactly what you're talking about with the pharaohs is like hundreds of thousands of years later I don't, it could be even more than that. I am not a but like. So so much time has passed and yet we're treating this funeral procession as though they passed in this moment. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:04:51

Now or then, they were still pharaohs of their people. Right. And of course, that's a very specific example, because it was such a revered position and a lot of the people that were in Jesusmen were all where the criminals and the poor and those who had passed from disease yeah exactly.

Speaker 4: 1:05:07

And who were forgotten in their life. Right Even before they died, they were on the fringes of society.

Speaker 1: 1:05:12

And it is truly why I've decided to dedicate season one to Colorado Tales is I want us to remember the people of Colorado who have passed, who didn't have necessarily the respect they might have had today.

Speaker 4: 1:05:27

Yeah, I want to hold a little space of gratitude, first of all for having us on your first season, but also that you are allowing a space for the telling of these stories. I think it's so important and I'm excited to see where this goes for you.

Speaker 1: 1:05:44

I am too. I want to take a second to kind of offer this podcast up to the universe for my part, to just kind of allow it to be led wherever it's meant to go, and to celebrate the fact that I got the tap on the shoulder to do it at this moment in time.

Speaker 1: 1:05:59

And it led us together and you need to go jump over to their podcast, because we have some fun stories to tell as well. So I'm very grateful for you guys being here and supporting me in all of this, and I'm grateful for this space that's been given to me to celebrate these stories.

Speaker 3: 1:06:18

Yes.

Speaker 1: 1:06:34

One of the best plus sides about dedicating the whole season of this podcast to the incredible state of Colorado is that I have the gift and the opportunity to go visit these places. So, forgive all the background noise and ambient sounds and everything. I am here standing on the corner of 13th and Gilpin in Denver, colorado, looking at what is now the address 1739 East 13th Ave, and I'm having a very surreal moment here as I stare at what is now, what is now the Ray Cushman Family Center, located on the corner overlooking Cheesman Park. This is the location of what was formerly the changeling house that has since been demolished, and it is very surreal to stand here and look at the structure that's in its place and imagine the stories and the tales that come from that exact plot of land. Whether true or untrue, they had the power of tall tale to last the span of time and to make their way into pop culture in such a profound way that we are left with a movie that will forever remind us of the story. It's even more surreal as it is a beautiful Sunday morning, around 10 30 in the morning, as I stroll my way into Cheesman Park and overlook all the people everywhere walking and laying outdoors enjoying this beautiful day. As I turn to my right and look behind me, I see an ominous black line of clouds as the epic thunderstorms forecasted for this afternoon roll in, and I find myself in an odd sense of stillness, despite the action and bustle around me, as nobody remembers what's beneath their feet, or, if they do, perhaps it has never landed in a way that feels real. I don't know that I can ever go back. When you learn so much about a place, I don't know that you can ever look at it the same way again, and that's a gift and a curse of this sort of thing, isn't it? You can never really go back when walls can talk.

Speaker 1: 1:09:34

The podcast is written, edited and produced by me, jeremy hig. A special thanks goes out to my brother, andrew hig, for providing and producing our theme music and transitional music. I truly hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you would take a moment, be sure to go visit us at wwwwhenwallscantalkterrocom or on instagram at whenwallscantalkwithunderscoresforspaces. You can also reach me to schedule your tarot session by emailing me at jeremy at whenwallscantalkterrocom. Other than that, I truly hope you enjoyed today's episode and I cannot wait to come back next week with another Colorado tape.