Cripple Creek Historic District (National Historic Landmark) · Colorado gold rush era · Cripple Creek red-light district
US Ghost Adventures' Cripple Creek program runs a nightly one-hour walking tour of about a mile through downtown Cripple Creek, meeting at the former 'Wild West' Building at 429 E. Bennett Avenue.
The route passes the Imperial Hotel, built in 1896 on a steep downtown street; the Outlaws and Lawmen Jail Museum, housed in the former Teller County Jail; Bronco Billy's Casino, a block-long gambling hall dating to the legalization of Colorado limited-stakes gambling in the 1990s; the Colorado Grande Casino, housed in the Fairley Brothers and Lampman Building, which formerly held a furniture and coffin shop with a mortuary and the city morgue in its basement and is also home to the historic Johnny Nolon's gaming hall (open since 1895); the Palace Hotel and Casino, a red-brick historic hotel; and Hotel St. Nicholas, which opened in 1870 as St. Nicholas Hospital, run by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy to treat mining-accident patients, before its later conversion to a hotel. USGA's narration also references the Old Homestead Parlor House, a former brothel from the town's red-light-district era.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/cripple-creek-ghost-tour/
ApparitionsUnexplained SoundsResidual Haunting
According to US Ghost Adventures' marketing, the Imperial Hotel is haunted by former occupants including an artist who met 'a mysterious end.' The Old Teller County Jail is described as home to the spirits of persecuted prisoners, including one tied to a bloodstain the operator says can't be removed, and 'the screaming woman.' Bronco Billy's Casino is said to be haunted by the spirit of a little girl who reportedly destroys gifts not in her favorite color. The Colorado Grande Casino is described as haunted by former mortuary occupants who leave a scent of flowers, prompting a paranormal-investigator visit the operator references but doesn't detail. Hotel St. Nicholas, in its former life as a hospital, is described as haunted by patients who suffered botched amputations, with reports of disembodied footsteps and screams from Room 11. The Old Homestead Parlor House is tied to the operator's account of a former madame named Pearl and her 'unexpected' departure/death, and the Palace Hotel and Casino is described more generally as home to 'several former ghostly residents.'
All of this is the operator's own marketing and narrative material, not documented history verified independently for this listing; it is included here as a description of what the tour covers, not as an endorsement of any specific claim.
Notable Entities
Pearl (Old Homestead Parlor House)
