Croke-Patterson Mansion – Denver, CO
We wanted to follow-up and close out on our investigation of the famed (infamous?) Croke-Patterson mansion in Denver in April. We’ll do it in three parts.
First off, the occasion for our walkthrough of Croke-Patterson, which took some time to arrange as we were setting it up with two other groups, happily coincided with Dave’s birthday. So, it was also a night out for Sharon and me.
Croke-Patterson, which is now known as the Patterson Historic Inn, is well-known to Denver area paranormal types. Built in sandstone at the tail end of the 19th century, the place glowers menacingly, a little out of place, over the vaguely hipster-chic Capital Hill neighborhood just east of downtown Denver, and it’s been tromped through by countless para-groups for years now. The place was owned by wealthy and influential Denver families until it fell into some level of dereliction by the 1970s, being used as a flop house for transients at one point, and actually survived a fire during renovation just last year.
But we finally managed (with some scheduling finagling and, as it is now a pretty pricey B&B, a little bit of legal tender…) to check the place out for ourselves.
Now, it should be said, some commercial businesses (hotels especially) are frequently reluctant to publicly discuss their haunted reputations. Sometimes it has to do with the personal beliefs of the ownership (we recall a famous high country opera house in Colorado, for example, whose owner was a deeply religious person and who stoutly refused to acknowledge the presence of ghosts or spirits in their historic building, or anywhere for that matter…), sometimes it has to do with a business-based reluctance to scare potential visitors away from their establishment, and some just worry that geeky paranormal investigators shuffling around at 2 in the morning summoning disembodied voices and tinkering with blinking devices might disturb other patrons. (Where would they get that idea?)
While we treated this particular event with some delicacy in making reservations, we were surprised and pleased to encounter Mike, one of the establishment’s employees, who was delighted we were there to hunt for ghosts and shared a lot of the building’s ghost lore with us, giving us a tour of the three story building and recounting experiences of its various visitors. If we were worried ahead of time that the eight of us would be investigating the place clandestinely, without the knowledge of the staff, we needn’t have.
(L to R)Elise, Mike and Michelle in the Croke Patterson basement.
As I recall, Mike didn’t admit to having any experiences himself, other then feelings of unease at inexplicable times alone on the property, but seemed nonetheless confident that the place was haunted, noting that paranormal manifestations at Croke-Patterson tended to happen in waves – busy for a few weeks, quiet for a few weeks - and that we were visiting during a relatively quiet period. My general impression was that the basement, which had laundry facilities at one end and a small bar/lounge at the other, as well as an infamous alcove in between (we’ll get to that), was probably the best place to mine for evidence. It was also, practically speaking, the one area of the property where we were comfortably away from the other rooms, most of which were booked that night, presumably by people with different agendas from ours.
Along with us were Stephanie, Elise and Michelle, representing the longtime Denver para-group Fullmoon Explorations, Christopher and James from the Manitou Springs based Spirit Chasers, as well as their sometimes collaborator Brett.
Next installment: setup, general impressions and the investigation.
