Is the Byers-Evans House haunted?
Hold onto your ectoplasm, you faint-hearted fools! The Byers-Evans House isn’t just haunted – it’s a paranormal powder keg ready to explode with spectral shenanigans that would make Houdini himself wet his ghostly pants!
For 140 unholy years, this Italianate monstrosity has loomed over Denver like a vulture eyeing roadkill, its walls oozing with the putrid essence of scandal and intrigue. The spirits of the Byers and Evans families? HA! Those are just the appetizers in this all-you-can-haunt buffet of the damned! Home to two of the city’s most illustrious families – or should I say, infamous? – the Byers-Evans House is a veritable vortex of the unexplained, a nexus of netherworldly nonsense that would make Lovecraft himself reach for the smelling salts!
Byers refers to William Byers, that silver-tongued serpent of a newspaperman who spun yarns so tall they scraped the heavens and all to lure unsuspecting settlers to Colorado with promises of gold and glory. But oh, how the mighty fall! In 1889, Byers found himself in a Wild West showdown with mystery woman, Hattie Sancomb! Bullets flew, reputations shattered, and Byers slithered away to lick his wounds.
Evans refers to William Gray Evans, son of Colorado’s second territorial governor and a man with more skeletons in his closet than a medical school! This streetcar tycoon rode roughshod over Denver’s transportation system, his rise to power greased with whispers of fraud and embezzlement. But even the mightiest oak must fall, and Evans’s mind snapped like a twig in 1913, leaving him to wither away in his haunted halls.
Now, this architectural abomination stands as a monument to madness, a beacon for the bizarre! Reports include a cavalcade of creepy encounters that would send shivers down the spine of even the most hardened skeptic. Phantom children’s laughter echoes through empty corridors, doors slam with unseen force, and full-bodied apparitions materialize like infernal jack-in-the-boxes! But don’t think for a second that these are mere echoes of Denver’s gilded elite!
No, you slack-jawed yokels! There’s more! A psychic investigation – because apparently, we’ve abandoned all pretense of scientific rigor – claims the house harbors a portal to another dimension! That’s right, folks, forget your run-of-the-mill haunted house; the Byers-Evans mansion is nothing less than a cosmic revolving door for spirits of all stripes! It’s a paranormal Grand Central Station where ghosts from every corner of the multiverse come to party like it’s 1899!
And if you think the Byers-Evans House is the only hotbed of hauntings in the Mile High City, you’ve got another thing coming! Just a stone’s throw away lurks the Molly Brown House, where the “Unsinkable” herself is said to rearrange furniture with all the subtlety of a poltergeist with a bad case of OCD. The air is thick with the stench of ghostly pipe smoke, and lightbulbs unscrew themselves faster than you can say “iceberg”!
For those with more curiosity than common sense, Denver offers a smorgasbord of spectral tours that will gladly separate you from your hard-earned cash for a chance to commune with the beyond and plumb the depths of Capitol Hill’s haunted history. So, you gutless wonders, do you dare to confront the phantoms of Denver’s past? Or will you cower in your skepticism, denying the delicious dread that awaits in the haunted homes of Colorado’s aristocratic apparitions? The choice is yours, but remember: in Denver, the veil between worlds is thinner than a politician’s promises, and the ghosts are always watching!
Sources
Denver Architecture. “Byers-Evans House – Center for Colorado Women’s History.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://denverarchitecture.org/site/byers-evans-house/
Ghost City Tours. “The Haunted Byers-Evans House | Haunted Denver.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://ghostcitytours.com/denver/haunted-denver/byers-evans-house/
Denver Like a Local Tours. “Haunted Homes of Capitol Hill.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://denverlikealocaltours.com/blog/haunted-homes-of-capitol-hill/
Wikipedia. “Byers–Evans House.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byers%E2%80%93Evans_House
Ghost City Tours. “The Most Haunted Places in Denver.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://ghostcitytours.com/denver/haunted-denver/
Colorado Virtual Library. “Time Machine Tuesday: Byers-Evans House Museum.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://www.coloradovirtuallibrary.org/resource-sharing/state-pubs-blog/time-machine-tuesday-byers-evans-house-museum/
Denver Terrors. “The Byers-Evans House Museum.” Accessed February 19, 2025. https://denverterrors.com/the-byers-evans-house-museum/
