The Ghosts of Cheesman Park
O’Brian Gunn
Ahhh. There’s nothing quite like stretching out on the grass of Cheesman Park to soak up some sunrays and look up at the sprawling open sky overhead. The next time you’re relaxing in the park, there’s a very good chance that you might be enjoying the latest bestseller on top of someone’s final resting place. A day at the park isn’t complete without walking barefoot over someone’s desecrated grave.
This Land Is NOT Your Land
The haunting of Cheesman Park stretches back to 1858 when a man named William Larimer elbowed some Arapaho Indians aside and laid claim to 320 acres of land to use as a cemetery in the newly-named city of Denver. The Mount Prospect cemetery was divided up into tiers for influential residents of the city, ordinary folk, and paupers and criminals.
The new cemetery’s first resident was the murdered brother-in-law of a Hungarian immigrant who soon became the cemetery’s second resident after he was hanged for his crime. In an effort to make sure they kept in touch in the afterlife, the two were dumped into the same grave. When Mount Prospect started to look more like Mount Murder & Accident Victim, the original name soon fell out of use and the cemetery was referred to as “Boot Hill” or the “Old Boneyard.”
Rest in Pieces
When Denver started movin’ on up in the Western side due to real estate and silver mining success, the Old Boneyard became old news … old news with tumbled tombstones, digging prairie dog squatters, and cows with a hankerin’ for graveyard grass. In true affluent family fashion, Denver’s well-off residents left the cemetery to the city’s paupers, criminals, unclaimed victims of infectious diseases, and other unsavory types and set up their dearly departed shop in the newer, glitzier Fairlawn and Riverside Cemeteries.
Interred Inheritance
Cabinetmaker John J. Walley had the pleasure of inheriting the cemetery from Larimer. Walley treated the cemetery more like spam email and ignored his obligation to keep up the grounds. The city government was pressured to take action and figured out a way to bamboozle Walley by “suddenly” discovering that the shame-etery was part of an Indian treaty made before 1860, which made it US property. Not wanting to appear un-American, the US government sold the land to Denver for a cool $200.
Yours, Mine, and That’s Not Ours
After learning about the cemetery’s new owners, Jewish synagogues moved their dead from the graveyard and decided to lease the land to the water department. The Catholic church bought up their section of the cemetery and kept it looking like a cover of Better Homes & Graveyards … until 1950.
Get Out Your Dead
Eventually, City Hall announced that everyone had 90 days to remove their dead from the cemetery. By the end of the deadline (get it?) more than 5,000 bodies were left unclaimed. When arrangements were made to have the unclaimed remains removed in 1893, Denver mayor Platt Rogers was on vacation sunning his butt in Cabo (not really), leaving the task to an underhanded undertaker named E.F. McGovern.
McGovern did a haphazard job of moving the remains, stuffing them into too-small boxes and leaving them vulnerable to looting. It was then that reports of supernatural activity started trickling in from residents living around the cemetery who heard restless spirits knocking at their doors and moaning in the dead of night. When the project was abandoned due to legal intervention, the rest of the broken and desecrated bodies were left in the ground where they are still being discovered to this day.
Who’s up for a relaxing day at the park?
Check out our other Halloween stories from this issue:
- Colorado’s Ghost Towns
- Ouija, Is Anyone Here?
- Five Haunted Hospitals
- Messages from Beyond the Grave
- Netflix Instant Screaming
- The Stanley Hotel: Colorado’s Premiere Spooky Destination
- Oh, Blucifer
- First stop for UFOs: the Watchtower in Hooper
- The Ghosts of Cheesman Park
- Scientology is Scary [Opinion]
- Halloween Hitmakers
- En Garde
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