HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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Built in 1895 by a French Catholic priest in nine architectural styles, Miramont served as a tuberculosis sanatorium for the Sisters of Mercy from 1907 to 1928 — now a Victorian house museum with persistent reports of ghostly nuns and a child's presence in the doll room.
9 Capitol Hill Ave, Manitou Springs, CO 80829
Research updated August 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
General admission charged; see website for current rates. Tea room on-site.
Access
Limited Access
Multi-story Victorian castle on Manitou Springs hillside; multiple levels connected by stairs. Limited wheelchair access.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1895 · Nine Architectural Styles in a Single 1895 Building · Designed by Father Jean Baptiste Francolon · Sisters of Mercy Tuberculosis Sanatorium 1907-1928 · National Register of Historic Places (1977)
Father Jean Baptiste Francolon arrived in Colorado Springs in the early 1890s, sent by the Diocese of Denver to minister to French-speaking Catholics in the Pikes Peak region. His mother, Adeline, followed him from France and suffered from tuberculosis; the dry air and mineral springs of Manitou Springs were then considered therapeutic for lung conditions, and the Pikes Peak region had become a destination for patients seeking the altitude cure.
Francolon designed Miramont Castle himself, beginning construction in 1895 on a hillside above Manitou Springs. The structure is unusual in American residential architecture for incorporating nine distinct architectural styles within a single building — Moorish, Byzantine, Flemish, Richardson Romanesque, Châteauesque, Elizabethan, Queen Anne, Shingle, and Medieval styles each appear in different sections of the 14,000-square-foot structure. The result is less a coherent period piece than a personal exercise in architectural eclecticism.
Francolon left Manitou Springs in 1900, and the castle passed through several owners. When the adjacent Montcalm Sanitarium burned in 1907, the Sisters of Mercy took over Miramont Castle and operated it as a tuberculosis treatment facility. The sisters treated TB patients in the castle's rooms until 1928, when the facility closed as tuberculosis treatment moved toward more clinical hospital settings.
The castle served various institutional uses over the following decades. In 1976, the Manitou Springs Historical Society acquired the property and opened it as a Victorian house museum. The National Register of Historic Places listed Miramont Castle in 1977. A tea room operating within the museum offers period refreshments to visitors.
Sources
Miramont Castle's reputation as a haunted site draws directly from its sanatorium period. The rooms in which Sisters of Mercy nurses worked and patients received care for tuberculosis from 1907 to 1928 are the focal points of reported activity. Visitors and staff report nuns in period religious habits appearing briefly in the Sisters' wing hallway and near the former patient wards — the figures are described consistently as silent and moving with purpose rather than drifting.
The doll room — a display space within the museum housing period dolls and toys — generates a second category of reports. Visitors describe an unsettling atmosphere in the room, with some accounts mentioning the sensation of a child's presence near the glass cases. Museum staff have described objects that appear to have shifted position between visitor groups, though no systematic documentation has been published.
Cold spots are reported throughout the former sanatorium rooms, with the greatest density in the lower floors where patient care was concentrated. The scent of what visitors describe as perfume or flowers appearing in rooms with no obvious source is a recurring detail in visitor accounts collected by regional ghost-focused publications.
The castle's physical characteristics — multiple levels, narrow corridors connecting architecturally distinct sections, stairwells that dead-end unexpectedly — contribute to the disorientation that many visitors note. The combination of the sanatorium's history of illness and death with the building's genuinely unusual spatial qualities gives Miramont a paranormal reputation that is consistent and long-standing across the regional ghost-literature.
Notable Entities
Tour the 14,000-square-foot Miramont Castle with its eclectic blend of nine architectural styles — Moorish, Flemish, Byzantine, and others — including rooms that served as patient wards during the sanatorium era. The doll room and former Sisters' quarters are among the rooms visitors associate most with reported activity.
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