What happened
The site of Denver’s first cemetery, on a hill east of town, was chosen in the winter of 1858–59; the first burial, of gunfight victim Jack O’Neill, took place on 30 March 1859. It was called Mount Prospect and, from 1873, City Cemetery. It had sections for different faiths and fraternal societies, as well as for paupers and for the Chinese. Once Riverside Cemetery opened in 1876, burials declined, the cemetery fell into neglect, and developers pressed for it to become a park. In 1890 Congress allowed the city to turn the land into a park. In March 1893 the city hired undertaker E. P. McGovern to move the remains to Riverside Cemetery for $1.90 a body. Because he was paid per coffin, McGovern used small child-size coffins, cut up bodies and split them among several boxes; bones were strewn about, and onlookers took items from the graves. On 19 March 1893 the Denver Republican exposed the practice under the headline “The Work of Ghouls.” The mayor cancelled the contract. Only 788 bodies had been moved; in August 1893 the city gave families 90 days to remove their dead, after which the ground was sown with grass. The park, later named after Walter Cheesman, was completed in 1907, and thousands of bodies stayed beneath it. Residents of nearby apartment buildings tell of figures drifting across the lawns at night, whispers, and hollows that sink into the turf.
Witnesses
Local residents and park visitors; the 1893 scandal was reported by the Denver press of the day, including the Denver Republican.
Explanations and hypotheses
That human remains were left under the park is well documented: in 2008, during construction of a parking structure at the Denver Botanic Gardens next to the park, bones and coffin fragments were found and reburied elsewhere. According to the Denver Public Library about 4,200 bodies remain beneath the turf; other estimates put the figure at more than 5,000. The ghost stories, however, are anecdotal and have never been investigated in any way; the uneven ground is explained by the soil settling over old graves. The park is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
More: Wikipedia (en)