A personal account.
It was 8:30 at night, it was dark, and I was on a ghost hunting tour in the mountain town of Breckenridge, CO with my two best friends. The charming tour guide, Megan, walked us through the streets of the popular ski resort town telling us tales of mining fortune, dredge boats, and ghosts on this Breckenridge Haunted Tour. This dark summer evening, eager explorers listened to history and ghosts stories.
Pet Cemetary at The Barney Ford House Museum. 
Edwin Carter Discovery Center in Breckenridge, CO.
Was it creepy? Well yes, considering that we walked past the Edwin Carter Discovery Center where a house filled with “taxidermied” dead animals from the 1800s still stood. Not to mention that part of the tour took us through a pet cemetery on the grounds of the former slave and successful Colorado businessman, Barney Ford’s home.
Once there were miners, now there are ghosts. The town of Breckenridge was established during the Gold Rush in 1859 and to this day there are multiple paranormal spots to be investigated. Some made their fortunes while many found their resting place. here had been death along the river banks of the Blue River that rushed through Breckenridge. Back then dredge boats were the big money makers after other mining efforts were exhausted. Invented in 1898 and quite profitable for the owners, these boats proved deadly for the workers. Most people at the time did not even know how to swim and often slipped off the gangplanks to their death. This portion of the tour was fascinating.
A lot of miners were buried simply where they had fallen down. Eventually, there were so many bodies that they decided to build an actual cemetery south of town. Eventually, the bodies needed to be relocated and people were offered $1.00 per body found and dug up. Fairly decent cash for back then. No doubt “Supernatural’s Sam and Dean Winchester would have cashed in at the time with their grave digging skills.
Yet what was south of town? There are condominiums, of course. During the building of these homes, construction workers had found a total of nine buckets of bones. Within just a few years, there was faulty wiring, degraded walls, and within ten years they had to completely renovate these brand new condos. It still happens to be the cheapest plot of land in Breckenridge. Shocker.
Now to the ghost story. The Briggle House was built in 1986 and belonged to the mayor, William Biggle, and his wife Catherine, and their children. They were well-off and well-known throughout the town. Catherine was quite the trendsetter as the women dressed like her. Paranormal investigators have checked out the house and they believe that Miss Catherine is still there. There have been sightings and feelings. Cold spots and weird pressures had been reported. During this tour, we were given permission to explore the dark and dimly-lit home and my friends and I made our way to the root cellar. We felt that would be the creepiest part of the house. It was there that this non-believer met her match.
Hi Miss Catherine, I jokingly called out into the dark and damp root cellar. Show yourself. Prove to me that you are real. Tell me that ghosts are real. My best friend, herself a believer, scolded me saying that she was not about to put on a show. Either I believed or I did not. Thankfully Miss Catherine was a friendly and cooperative spirit because as I walked out of that once warm root cellar, a bone-chilling cold swept over me. I had goosebumps and quickly put on the sweater I had tied around my waist. Was this my imagination run wild or did Miss Catherine turn a non-believer into a believer? I chose to believe.
Written By Colleen Bement
