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The haunting
By Megan Carneal
mcarneal@mscd.edu

Photo by Jason Small • jsmall4@mscd.edu An orb, the most common evidence of paranormal activity floats in the middle of the infamous Valentine Suite.

The Lumber Baron Inn looms ominously on the corner of 37th and Bryant Street.

Though the house has undergone many transformations over the years, its haunted past remains constant.

What is now the Valentine Suite at the inn used to be a tiny studio apartment rented by a 17-year-old runaway girl in 1970 for about $150 a month. On the night of Oct. 13, 1970, the tenant and her friend were murdered. Both girls were found in the room, each killed in a different way.

The tenant’s friend was found lying on top of the bed, her arms folded across her chest with a single, execution-style, gunshot wound to her head. The tenant was not so lucky. Her body was found shoved under the bed, naked, sexually assaulted and stabbed. The events surrounding the murder are still a complete mystery to police.

“Room inside a room.”
When Walter Keller bought the house in 1991 and turned it into a quaint little bed and breakfast, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. About six months after he bought the property things started to get weird.

One day a policewoman knocked on the door asking, to Keller’s surprise, if he had any new information on her missing persons case. Keller was told that before he bought the house the policewoman had been sleuthing with a detective and a psychic, looking for information on the case.

When they drove past the house, the psychic told them to stop. They looked around the house until the psychic was drawn to the basement. The psychic had said she kept getting a message in the basement: “Room inside a room.” Since there was no other room in the basement, the trio left.
After hearing her story, Keller told the policewoman that he had just bought the property and he had no information. Then he thanked her for the sleepless night that awaited him.

“Later that day, over a couple of cold adult refreshing beverages,” Keller laughed, “my buddies and I are sitting around talking about this story, and I said ‘let’s go down in that room and look around.’”

Keller and his friends looked around for a bit until they found a strange opening behind a box that led to a coal tunnel extending to the middle of the street outside. His friends suggested that he crawl through the tunnel to investigate. He crawled through the arachnophobic nightmare and turned back to see his friends.

“I couldn’t believe what I saw when I looked back,” he said. “I could see that they were standing over a small mini cave that someone had dug back under the cement. They had dug back about two feet, and stashed in that mini-cave there were some old, dirty clothes and a shovel.”

They dug with hopes of finding the body of the missing person, but came up empty after about a foot of digging when they hit flank stone.

“No missing person, but close. Really, really close,” he said.

As for the room now, it is where his son sleeps.

"I guess as a new home owner you’d like to hope that you haven’t bought a haunted house,” Keller said. But he is now open to the fact that his charming little bed and breakfast has a very dark history and energy. He opens it up for the haunted university tour about four times a year.

Ain’t ‘fraid of no ghost
At first, Chris Moon tried to overlook the fact that he had a special ability to connect with the dead. But after a while, it was hard to ignore.

Since finally accepting his gift, Moon has founded the Haunted Times magazine and travels the country putting on the Ghost Hunter University tours at various haunted venues. April 7, the tour came to the Lumber Baron Inn.

“We get people that come just because there is a certain energy to the house,” Keller said.

There is a draw to the house, and maybe that is what attracts some of the more incredulous guests to participate in the tour. The guests range from skeptics dragged along by curious cohorts to true believers who have followed Moon throughout all his endeavors. The allure could also be due to the giant star atop the house, which longtime Denver residents will recognize as the star that used to sit on top of the now demolished Celebrity Fun Center.

Once all of the guests were name-tagged and seated for the tour, Moon broke the ice with a humorous opening: “Hi, my name is Chris Moon and I see dead people.” Introductions were made around the room, and nonbelievers were kindly, if not embarrassedly, pointed out. The evening began with a slide show presentation explaining the many intricacies and subtleties of what it means to be a professional paranormal investigator.

“We’re always concerned about people who just jump into this from a TV show, or reading an article, or whatever the case might be. There are a lot of hidden dangers,” Moon said.

The slide show, presented in the impressively large third-floor ballroom, was followed by a dinner full of ghost stories relating to the house and plenty of strong coffee to keep nerves on edge.

After the dinner, the real ghostbusting began. Guests were allowed to use some of the tools provided by the Haunted Times University crew, with hopes of having their own paranormal experience. Moon encourages guests to bring digital cameras to capture the most traditional form of paranormal evidence: orbs, or little bright spots of light visible only to cameras, animals and children who are all uncorrupted by the cynicism of the world.

Many of the guests managed to capture pictures of orbs, but the most exciting part of the tour was “the telephone to the dead.” According to Moon, it was first contrived by Thomas Edison with the hope of contacting his late mother. The purpose of the phone is to collect EVPs – electronic voice phenomena – another form of paranormal evidence.

For maximum creepiness, the phone was set up in the Valentine Suite and guests were allowed to ask their own questions. The purpose of all this, Moon said, was for both scientific research and the criminal investigation into the murders of the two girls. Moon someday hopes to help solve these murders with the research he has conducted.

For one guest, 12-year-old Corey Stanely, “skeptic” is a word yet to be learned. For his birthday, he and his mother stayed in the Valentine Suite. Throughout the night, Stanely conducted his own investigations along with Moon’s own daughter, 10-year-old Sarah Huff, and managed to capture several orbs on camera and claims, with the unbridled belief of a preteen, that he recorded his own EVP.

The night may not have ended with absolute proof of the paranormal, and, maybe for an ultimate skeptic, the tour provided nothing but amusement. However, some guests, even the innkeeper himself, swear they will never doubt the paranormal again.

“I was skeptical I would say,” Keller said. “I think now there’s just overwhelming evidence to confirm that it has to be haunted.”