Cheesman Park, Denver: The Park Built on a Cemetery and Its Ghosts

Cheesman Park covers about 80 acres of lawn and old trees on the edge of Capitol Hill, a few blocks from the Molly Brown House. From 1858 to 1890 the land was Denver’s first cemetery, Mount Prospect, later called City Cemetery. When the city turned it into a park, the job of moving the dead was botched so badly that a newspaper exposed it within days, and the work was never finished.

Estimates of how many graves are still under the grass range from about 1,000 to 3,000, and remains have turned up more than once in recent years. This guide sets out what the records say, which ghost stories are told and where they come from, and how to visit, including the seasonal ghost walks.

History of Cheesman Park

In November 1858 General William Larimer, one of Denver’s founders, set aside land on a hill east of the new town for Mount Prospect Cemetery, and the first burials followed in 1859. Larimer pictured a cemetery with the city’s leading families on the crest, but it quickly filled with the poor, the sick, outlaws and the victims of violence, and it earned the nickname the Old Boneyard. In 1873 it was renamed City Cemetery. Parts of the land went to other groups: a Catholic section, Mount Calvary, and 20 acres sold to the Hebrew Burial Society in 1875. Wealthier families moved their dead to newer cemeteries such as Riverside, founded in 1876.

By the 1880s the cemetery was overgrown, its markers broken and its fences down. On January 25, 1890, Congress authorized Denver to vacate the federal land, and Senator Henry Teller had it renamed Congress Park. Families were told to move their relatives, and some did; thousands of graves, mostly of people no one claimed, stayed where they were.

In 1893 the city hired undertaker E.P. McGovern to move the remaining dead to Riverside Cemetery for $1.90 a coffin. Work began on March 14. Within days the Denver Republican reported broken coffins and torn shrouds piled at the edges of open graves, and that McGovern was splitting remains among small child-sized boxes to multiply his fee. The contract was cancelled. Reports differ on how many bodies he had moved, but the city did not hire anyone to finish the job. Headstones were pulled, the holes were filled, and grading began in 1894.

The park was completed in 1907 and renamed for Walter Cheesman, a pioneer whose family paid for the white marble pavilion, the Cheesman Memorial, built in 1908. The eastern part of the old cemetery became the Denver Botanic Gardens. The past has kept surfacing: construction near the Botanic Gardens uncovered rows of coffins in 2008, and irrigation work in the park turned up four skeletons in 2010. The Denver Gazette, citing a CNN estimate, puts the number of people still buried at as many as 2,000; 9News says about 3,000, and Westword about 1,000 occupied graves. Nobody knows exactly.

The ghost stories of Cheesman Park

Sadness that comes from nowhere

The most common report is a feeling rather than a sight. Visitors describe being overcome by sadness, dread or anger on a sunny afternoon in a beautiful park, and Westword’s roundup of Colorado’s spookiest sites says some park visitors report exactly that. Others describe whispering, moaning or many voices at once, which ghost lore ties back to the cries said to have come from the open graves during the 1893 removals.

Held down on the grass

Cheesman’s best-known tale is that if you lie down on the lawn, you feel an unseen weight pinning you there and struggle to get up. CBS Colorado repeated it in 2012, and a folklore collection at the University of Southern California recorded the same story from a student who grew up beside the park and heard it from her father and grandmother. She also told the collector she put most of the odd night noises down to the lively neighborhood around the park.

Figures, mists and gravestones in the moonlight

Visitors and neighbors talk about misty figures among the trees, apparitions walking across the park at night, children playing in the dark who vanish when approached, and a woman who sings as she walks and disappears when people come close. Some say that in the right light you can see the outlines of old graves on the lawn, and Westword notes that sunken, empty graves really can show up in low light.

The neighbors' stories

Ghost tours tell how, during the removals, people in nearby houses reported sad, confused figures knocking at their doors and windows. The best-known neighbor story is real: playwright Russell Hunter said many elements of the 1980 horror film The Changeling came from the house he rented in 1968 at 1739 East 13th Avenue, on the park’s northern edge. The film is set in Seattle, but its haunted mansion is called the Cheesman house. The building was torn down in the 1970s.

Slackjaw and other modern tales

Online ghost lists, including our own older guide, tell of a pale man nicknamed Slackjaw, with a broken jaw and a bloody hospital gown, who asks for a cigarette and says he is looking for the men who stabbed him. We could not trace it to any named witness or published account, so treat it as a campfire story. The same goes for the tale of a workman named Jim Astor who fled after stealing brass from coffins: it is told on tours and websites, but we found no record of him.

Where to look

• The open lawns: the old burial ground, where the lying-down story is set.
• The Cheesman Memorial pavilion: the white marble pavilion on the rise, best at dusk.
• The edge by the Botanic Gardens: where coffins were found during construction in 2008.
• Near the pavilion: where irrigation work uncovered four skeletons in 2010.
• The northern edge on 13th Avenue: where the house that inspired The Changeling stood.

Visiting Cheesman Park

Cheesman Park is a free city park in Denver’s Capitol Hill and Cheesman Park neighborhoods, bordered by homes on three sides and the Denver Botanic Gardens on the east. It is open daily, and there is street parking on the surrounding avenues. It is a busy, friendly park by day, with runners, dogs and picnics, and a pleasant walk from the Molly Brown House and the State Capitol.

Each fall, private operators run walking ghost tours around the park. In 2025 Denver Local Tours ran a one-mile, roughly 90-minute walk from early October, priced at $25 for adults and $15 for teens, covering the cemetery’s history, the removals and reported paranormal activity. The Denver Botanic Gardens has also run a ‘Ghosts in the Gardens’ tour on its side of the old cemetery. Check current dates before you go.

Please remember that this is a public park in a residential neighborhood and that people really are buried here. Do not dig, use metal detectors or disturb anything, keep noise down at night, and leave the neighbors’ homes alone.

• Visiting Free public park, open daily; part of the old cemetery is now the Denver Botanic Gardens next door
• Tours Seasonal walking ghost tours each fall from private operators such as Denver Local Tours, about 90 minutes

Tips for your visit

• Go at dusk in October, when the light is low and the seasonal ghost tours are running.
• Join a guided walk for the full history; the stories make more sense standing on the spot.
• Combine it with the Molly Brown House Museum, about a ten-minute walk west.
• Visit the Denver Botanic Gardens next door, also on the old cemetery land.
• Then go to Riverside Cemetery, where some of the dead from Cheesman were reburied.

More haunted places nearby

• Molly Brown House Museum: Capitol Hill’s most famous haunted house, a short walk away
• The Patterson Inn: the haunted Croke-Patterson mansion, now an inn
• The Brown Palace Hotel: Denver’s grandest haunted hotel
• Haunted hotels in Denver: where to stay nearby
• Haunted places in Colorado
• Haunted places in Denver

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Denver Gazette: The twisted tale of why bodies are buried under one of Denver's most popular parks (2025)
• Wikipedia: Cheesman Park
• 9News: The haunted history of Denver's Cheesman Park
• Westword: Creep Show, six very spooky sites in Colorado
• CBS Colorado: Denver area's most haunted places (2012)
• Axios Denver: Denver's haunted places hide hair-raising histories (2023)
• USC Digital Folklore Archives: The ghosts of Cheesman Park
• Denver Gazette / Out There Colorado: Walking ghost tour of spooky Colorado park returns (2025)