Ghosts move coffee cups and tools. They turn on radios. They whiz about the warehouse, and occasionally Rob Barnes believes he catches a glimpse. His brother David, who works in the same warehouse, says he has seen them several times. One time, he says, a ghost pushed him down.
Rob Barnes – he almost harumphs as he admits this – believes in ghosts, and it’s not something he advertises in casual conversation.
“I’m not some kooky guy with unicorns on the walls and crystals hanging everywhere,” says Barnes, a big, blunt guy who obsesses about military history and has little patience for anything smacking of political correctness.
The brothers Barnes aren’t the only people near the intersection of Interstate 25 and West Eighth Avenue, on the site of a Civil War fort, who say they deal with ghosts.
Mary Baca, 65, an owner of Plastic Supply and Fabrication, grew up in and around the area where her factory now sits. She saw ghosts when she was a little girl.
And now, “Everyone who has worked here has had an encounter,” she says in her cramped, busy office. “We don’t think anything of it, because it’s normal.”
Skeptics dismiss ghost sightings as alternately the machinations of charlatans or the dreams of people who want to believe in ghosts. Honest people see ghosts, critics say, because they want to, not because real spirits are floating around.
“We are emotional creatures, and our emotions are important to us,” says Joe Nickell, a senior research fellow with the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Para-
normal who has spent more than 30 years examining claims of haunted houses and other phenomena. “At the same time, evidence should be looked at with the organ above the neck and not the heart or the gut.”
Barnes sympathizes with skeptics like Nickell. He calls himself a skeptic. But in the case of the ghosts in his neighborhood, he says, “I look at this as hard, factual stuff.”
He resisted his brother’s assertions that ghosts dwelled in their shared warehouse. But an incident several years ago with a can of paint “transformed” his view of ghosts, he says.
Barnes, who is in his 40s, is one of a few people in the country who uses certain types of antique letter presses to make fancy invitations, books and other paper products. He was alone in his neat, bright half of the warehouse one night, preparing to paint a wall.
He opened a big can of white paint, dropped dollops of other colors into the can without mixing the paint, but then realized he didn’t have a brush.
Barnes went to find one. When he returned moments later, the paint had been stirred and poured in a great arc on the floor.
“I was like, OK, I’m open” to the idea of ghosts, he says, recalling his reaction. “I’m willing to put my arms around it a little bit.”
Since, the embrace has turned into something like a bear hug. The practicing Catholic asked his priest about it, and the father said: “Rob, who am I to deny those experiences didn’t happen to you?” Barnes says.
The ghosts, Barnes says, “for some reason aren’t finished here,” Barnes says. “They are here to teach us something. Maybe they’re here to remind us of our own mortality.”
Who are they?
Barnes believes many are soldiers.
The brothers’ property sits on an edge of what for about four years in the 19th century was Camp Weld, a fort built to house and train soldiers for the Civil War. During the war, the Union dispatched men from Camp Weld to fight several battles, including a battle against Confederate troops from Texas at La Glorieta Pass in New Mexico.
The battle has been dubbed “the Gettysburg of the West,” because the Colorado regiment whupped the Texans when they met at the Pass, sending the Confederates back to the Lone Star State and saving the Southwest, and its Rocky Mountain gold, from Confederate control.
Camp Weld also was the site of negotiations between American Indians from the Arapahoe and Cheyenne tribes and the U.S. government in September of 1864, says Colorado Historical Society Chief Historian Modupe Labode. Some accounts say the government promised Plains Indians protection at the meeting; others say the talks produced nothing but ambiguity.
Either way, the Indians walked away believing they were safe. Two months later, soldiers from the Camp – including the same colonel, John Chivington, who led Colorado troops during the Glorieta Pass battle – headed east in search of Indians. On Nov. 29, 1864, about 150 apparently peaceful Indians, including women and children, were killed in what is now called the Sand Creek Massacre, probably the worst episode in Colorado history.
The fort burned down in 1865. After that, it became a city neighborhood, called Frog Hollow, until Denver’s massive 1965 flood destroyed everything. Before the flood, the area also held a “potters field” – a cemetery for indigents. Now, it’s a tight assortment of businesses – everything from a coffee roaster to a junkyard.
The little-known slip of Denver resonates with vivid history – the Civil War, the Sand Creek Massacre, the flood of 1965 – and claims of haunting aren’t new to the area. Baca said there was a school on the grounds when it was Frog Hollow, and kids never would walk down a certain alley because of a crying female ghost who lived there. Baca’s building, she says, sits on the potters cemetery she remembers as a child. At least some of the ghosts, she says, spring from the ancient graveyard.
Jeannie Garcia, 55, has worked in Baca’s factory for 25 years, for the most part without ghostly incident.
But one night about a dozen years ago, she says, “I saw cavalry men getting ready for a ball of some sort. You could see ladies in these big dresses.”
“I thought for sure that it would freak me out,” she says, “but I thought it was pretty cool. It didn’t scare me.”
The area isn’t especially unique in the state, at least in the minds of ghost hunters.
“We’ve found activity throughout Denver, from Capitol Hill up into the mountains,” says Christopher Moon, owner of Haunted Times Magazine, published in Highlands Ranch. “Colorado for some reason has some of the highest levels of paranormal activity in the world. We could dedicate our magazine to Colorado and fill-up the pages if we wanted to.”
When told that people think they are seeing ghosts on the grounds of a Civil War fort, professional ghost debunker Nickell responded: “It’s a place that if it isn’t haunted, it ought to be.”
“Most places that are said to be haunted are places where you have the romance of history and tragedy and are places that if you were picking a place that should be haunted, it would be a likely place,” he says. “People do not see ‘ghosts.’ Usually there is a climate in which ghosts are talked about, or there is a historic place. A Civil War site fills the bill in spades.”
The soldiers that Barnes believes live in his warehouse may be troubled by their legacy, by how they are remembered, Barnes says. To honor the men, Barnes and his brother scrubbed a grimy Camp Weld memorial that was erected in 1934 and now sits surrounded by industrial hubbub. The brothers also attached a wreath of plastic flowers to the memorial.
David Barnes was the first of the brothers to have run-ins with ghosts. He’s a set designer, his soaring warehouse space filled with objects he uses in theater productions, bar mitzvahs, corporate events, and any other occasion calling for, say, a 20-foot-high mock pirate ship full of bandana-wearing, cutlass-bearing skeletons.
He’s seen the same dark-bearded soldier twice. He’s seen a white-haired soldier walk through a wall. At least one ghost is female – David Barnes calls her Lydia. She wears lilac perfume.
David Barnes was there, after a rooftop July 4 party, when a group of revelers witnessed what they think was a ghost taking control of Rob Barnes’ new SUV. The vehicle’s locks opened and closed so fast it took them nearly 20 minutes to open the doors. The headlights flashed on and off at the same time. Rob Barnes took the truck to the Ford dealership afterward, and the mechanic said what Barnes described was impossible.
Like his brother, David Barnes says he respects the ghosts, even though he says one of them pressed its hand into his back – he could feel the palm – and pushed him about 5 feet through the air.
But his friendship has limits.
“I think the first time I hear them call out my name, I’m out of here,” he says. “Daaaaaaavid.”
Staff writer Douglas Brown can be reached at 303-820-1395, or djbrown@denverpost.com
