SPEAKER_00 0:09

Good morning, Boulder Valley. It's Wednesday, November 4th. I'm your host, Jay Castle, and this is the Frequency. If you're looking for your regular roundup of local news, you'll have to wait until Friday. We're switching things up to give election workers more time to count votes. Today, we've got a spooky story from the Mountaineer's Tyler Hickman about the ghosts and ghost hunters of Gilpin County.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Liana Jonas says there's something strange in Gilpin's water. The paranormal investigators spent decades trying to communicate with the many spirits that haunt the mining towns that dot the rural community. According to her, there's a magnetic pull on people who visit this place that's so strong it might even be keeping them here long after they've died. Welcome to the Mountaineer Podcast. I'm Tyler Hickman. Today, we're visiting the spirit world with Liana to hear her first hand accounts of the paranormal in Central City. Whether or not you believe in ghosts, there's no denying that eerie feeling you get inside of the old, drafty buildings dating back to the 19th century Gold Rush. Is it really haunted? I'm a skeptic, but through her research, Liana says one thing is for sure. There's a reason certain people feel called to this rugged, unforgiving place.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Many people that have moved there went to visit and they had a calling where they needed to come back. I don't know if it has to do with the spirits. I I kind of think it does. I think a lot of these spirits are connected with these people, whether it be a past life, family history, genetics way down the line. But there are a lot of them that try to fight it. But everybody else can tell you. I visited here and I was drawn and I needed to come back. Something called my name and I needed to live here. And then once you're there, you don't leave. It's kind of like Hotel California. It is, honest to God. So that's why I say it's in the water.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

Liana was able to get away. She lived in Littleton while she was investigating all those years and now resides in Florida. But she spent a decade on the Gilpin Historical Society and became all too familiar with the tragedies that plagued Gilpin families in the heyday of mining.

SPEAKER_01 2:43

Almost every building there has a haunt and has spirits that reside. Many of them are children. And back in the day in the 1800s, the scarlet fever ran rampant, like it did everywhere. But in the mountains, you know, you would have families that would have eight kids, and one kid would get it, and four of them would die from it because they'd catch it. Not really the Masonic Cemetery, but the uh Central City Cemetery, Pythias. You're going to see plots where it's a family plot, and there's children, there's babies that die, and they all die the same year because they caught it and they all died. And that's the one thing that we run into a lot when I investigated there was the children. And that was my main thing is to try to help them cross.

SPEAKER_02 3:35

Okay, children, get back in the room. It's at the summer. Class is about to start. Come on, children.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Please have a seat.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 3:48

I started working with an angel reader in town. She kind of, you know, explained it to me. We would call in Archangel Michael, Jesus, to bring the light down to cross these kids over. And in fact, in Mount Menagerie, which is called something different, no, Fox Mercantile or something, we were totally in a different section of the building where you couldn't even hear us. And I laid um a digital recorder on the counter. And later on, we got little kids going, Hey Melanie, what you got? I mean, like they were playing. It's like, what kind of toy do you have? So I had the angel reader come in and said, you know, please talk to these kids and see what we can do. And she talked to them and they said that their parents told them to wait for them. So when the parents died and the kids died, parents moved on and the kids stayed there waiting for their family. And it's really sad. And we ran into that a lot. In fact, in Doc Holiday Building, when it was a casino, they used to have red balloons that they would blow up. And they would, and this one little boy spirit would take this red balloon everywhere. And they had different levels. I think there's four levels in that building, believe it or not. It goes up the side of the back of the mountain, the hill. And they would find that red balloon the next day here, there, and everywhere. And when we were upstairs in one of the vacant areas, my teammate felt a tug on her pants. And I'm like, what the what would be down there? Well, we we kind of figured it out. It was a little kid pulling on her pants. And so when we realized that, I started talking to the little boy, and I said, I hear you like red balloons. How about I bring you a red ball next time I come and I'm gonna try to help you get back to your mommy and daddy? And we did research. The angel reader talked to the little boy, found out that his mom was a prostitute there because they used to have prostitution and they had regular room, hotel rooms in there. And the miners would come in with their money, and that's how they did it. You know, it was bordellos and everything. And the little boy was pushed into a room with all the other kids during when their parents, their moms, had to work. And so he was left behind, and so I told him I would try to help him cross. So I brought him one of those, you know, those big balls you can buy at Toys R Us. And uh I put it in the room, and they found it everywhere. They found that ball everywhere inside the building.

SPEAKER_03 6:21

Liana is the lead investigator for the Spirit Realm Investigative Project. Srip for short. Part of their goal is to help spirits cross or move from being stranded in the natural world around the rest of us to whatever comes next. She tries to avoid evil spirits, she says. The sinister, the demonic. But sometimes that's not possible. It's not always up to her.

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I'll let you know that there are three negative spirits in Central City. Three kingpins. Over the years of doing this, I kind of know who they are. Um, one of them we caught, well, we picked up in Sawyer McShane building. It's the only freestanding stone building that made it through the fires. That and its sister store on Main Street. And we have a spirit there, and I won't give him his name. It starts with a V. I won't give I won't give that to him. But he physically attacked my teammate over and over, over and over.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

It's hard to tell a good spirit from a bad one, she says, because they'll imitate the very children she's trying to contact.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

You really can't tell because a lot of them, especially the demonic ones, will pretend and mimic a child to get you off guard. Um, I had one, and he kept on wanting me to go to the shed and wanted help. So we were together, me and my my teammates, holding hands, trying to cross them over, and I felt like my soul was being pulled out of my body. Honest to God.

SPEAKER_04 8:02

What does that feel like?

SPEAKER_01 8:03

It feels like things like your being is just being pulled through your head. I mean, you can feel like your heart and your whole being just being pulled, and I had to fight it. And I went to a medium, someone I trusted, and he said, Oh, don't, you know, watch that because you're opening yourself up and they can grab your soul if they are that bad. So whenever I started feeling that, I would shut down. Or I would get strong in my mind and say, You're not taking me. It's mind over matter, basically. And when I know that I'm dealing with something negative, sometimes I shut the whole thing down. I mean, I've done it before, to where I'm just like, no, I don't feel comfortable with you guys because they always go after my teammates because I stand up to them and it's like it's not worth it.

SPEAKER_03 8:56

Late one night, inside the Sawyer McChane building, Lienna was trying to contact the spirit of an old art teacher when a dark force intercepted them. That's when some evil, unexplained entity attached itself to one of her teammates.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

Angelo Di Benedetto used to be an art teacher there. He he basically lived in that building for years. We found out that he was in Haiti as a mapographer. Like he would, I don't know if it was for what war it was in, but he used to do the maps, and he got into voodoo. And this was Lolly's first investigation. And we went to the Sawyer McShane and I did my opening about talling up talking. I always do interviews with people that have had uh experiences prior, or I do the history of the building, or anything that I already know about, you know, personally. And so I was doing an opening for it, and um, my one teammate was videotaping, and Lolly and I were using the ovulus and talking to the spirits and seeing their feedback, and we when everything was kosher, although we heard about Mr. V, his name kept on coming up, and I thought, what the heck does this name mean? It's not a common name. And so we went on the second floor and we were getting some hits on our REM pod. And then I brought up the thing about the voodoo, and everything went sideways after that. We went into the kitchen and we were talking to a spirit, and all of a sudden Lolly's like, something's something's choking me, Liana. Something's choking my neck. And she could hardly move.

SPEAKER_00 10:32

What do you hear? There's something like grabbing my neck. What? There's something grabbing my neck. I mean you really didn't tiny. Not a good way.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Not hey, leave her alone! Leave her alone!

SPEAKER_01 10:43

And I'm like, all right, let's get out of this room. And on the ovulus, it says squeeze, which is the same as choke, right? You get to know what some of these words represent. So we get out of there and we go to the third floor and she starts getting attacked. And she's bent over and she can't stand up. And I'm trying to hold her up and I'm screaming at it, leave her alone in the name of Archangel Michael and Jesus, leave her alone.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

And stop it! Wait, in the name of Archangel Michael! Let me put her back! Stop it! No, leave us!

SPEAKER_01 11:25

She's like going down, and I'm trying to hold her up. And she's like, It's in my it's in my back, he's in my back. And he was squeezing her back kidney. And she, I mean, she was in dire pain. And the girl that was videotaping was scared to death. She's like, Oh my god, let's get out of here. And and I'm like, we gotta stop, we gotta stop. And she's like, No, no, it's no, and she didn't want to ruin our investigation. I'm like, Lolly, I'm not gonna let this happen to you. You've been attacked twice already. You know, we're out of here. And I'm yelling at it. Like, back, why are you doing this? I'm trying to reason with it. Like, I've got spirits here that really want to talk, and then you're in here bullying and you're attacking my teammate, and that's unacceptable, you know. And I'm yelling at it. So we talked her into going back out, and we started to go out of that section, and he hit her again, and she's in the doorway and she's collapsing. And I'm like, oh my God, it was all we could do to get her out of that building. When I got her out, I said, Jen, stage her now. We always cleansed ourselves after an investigation because none of us wanted to bring anything home. I was very adamant about that. And so I said, take her out, sage her. I gotta go back in. I got like $10,000 worth of equipment that's all unpacked. And I got a pack, and I'm in there by myself, yelling at it. And I'm like, you a-hole, you really messed up my investigation. Thanks a lot. You know, who the hell do you think? You know, I'm I don't care. I talk to him just the way I would anybody. And all of a sudden, in my back, kidney, he's trying to get in there. I could feel him. And I'm like, oh no, you're not. I just started and I was yelling the whole time. I was I was an angry woman. And I was yelling at him, and I'm trying to pack my gear, and we got out of there, and we went to the century um, because she said I still feel something. We went to the century parking lot and I got her out and I saged her again because I didn't want to bring it into the hotel. Uh, not that it would really matter, but she went home the next day and she saw a shadow at the end of her apartment hallway to go into her place. And she ran in her house, shut the door, grabbed salt and water, put salt along the bottom of the door so it couldn't cross, and she was scared to death. And so I finally had to get a hold of my medium, and I said, You gotta cleanse her. And it took a long time, and then he just started showing up at every investigation after that, and I'd shut him down as soon as his his name would come in. I'm like, get out of here. I'm not gonna let you do to the spirits what you've done, and I'm not gonna let you torment my teammates. I won't let you. So um, that's what started. I mean, that was I've been I was there a good two years beforehand, but that's when the bad things started happening. I never had any problems before then. This taught me a big lesson that you can do all the protection you want, but when it comes down to it, if this spirit has that much energy to cause you harm like this one did, you really can't do anything about it. You can't.

SPEAKER_04 14:42

Do you do you still get scared or are you just do you are you just like impervious now that you've had all of these experiences?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

You do get jaded to a point because you feel invisible sometimes. But when you're in a room alone, it can be scary. Sure. Anybody, I think anybody. Um, the only thing that doesn't scare me are put on haunted houses. I'd laugh. The whole thing. It doesn't scare me. I think it's hilarious. I've I've seen the real thing, okay? I after that the reality sunk in and seeing my teammate get hurt the way she did. And let me tell you something, she died of kidney failure. Don't think for a minute that doesn't bother me. That I sorry, I'm gonna choke up here. I tried my best to protect her, and I couldn't. So that's one thing that's really hard because even though that's what she wanted to do, I was the one that was in charge. And when you're the lead investigator, that's the thing, and and I'm the founder, that is the part that's really hard because you don't want something. I mean, it's just like being in the service and you're on a battle zone, and you've got a brigade of guys, and you lose some of your guys, you feel responsible for it because you were the person that was in charge. It's no different, and that will that will always haunt me because I know what he did to her in the end had a lot to do with what happened to her of her passing. There was other there was other elements in her, she had diabetes and other problems, and I'll let you know this. The the one thing that they go after are people who have health conditions because they feel you're weak. And if you show fear, that's a good one too. Just like an animal. If you show an animal fear, like a wild animal, they're gonna go after you. It's the same thing with the negative spirit. If you show your fear, game on. They feel that you're weak. I mean, she had other stuff going on, but the kidney thing was the thing that did her in, and that's what he grabbed on her.

SPEAKER_04 17:08

It's a it's a very hard thing to to carry around like that.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

Yep. So, you know, I just tell people out there there's a there's up and coming younger folks that are getting into this now. A lot of them. I'm seeing YouTube like crazy. I wish a lot of them would talk to some of us older investigators that have been around. Because we know, because they might not have encountered this yet.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Is there something that like makes Gilpin really stand out and and have such a reputation for being a place that that's haunted?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

I think it it stems from the miners. That's when it started. Mining accidents were all dime a dozen. They sweep it under the rugs. These guys, you know, there was no safety. I don't know if you know about this, and I forgot the name of the people that actually built it, but you know those buckets that used to go down in the mine shafts? Well, the family that built that, two of the brothers, and I know it was one of the bad spirits there that had something to do with this, they were going down in one of their own buckets and it dropped and it killed them. They they say when a lot of spirits, when you die of a traumatizing situation or even with suicide, or just spontaneous, like you just had a heart attack, and you don't know you're dead. You you come out of your body and you still think you live in that house, and you still think that this is your place and you're still alive. I can't tell you how many times that I would ask a spirit that and they would get mad at me, and I say, Do you know that you're not here anymore? You're you're dead, and they're like, Screw you, you know, like jerk would come up on my thing, they would call me names, and I'm like, I'm not trying to be, you know, disrespectful. And then the word alive would come up. They're like, No, I'm alive. I think a lot of them don't know the difference, and after years, they just keep on piling up. And I'm gonna tell you this, and this is just from me Central City and Black Hawk are collecting souls. The souls are collecting souls. Don't be surprised if you stick around there till you're old and gray and you pass, and they don't come to try to take you away to be with them. And there's a lot of people there that want to be with them. I've talked to people that have said, When I pass, I'm not going anywhere, I'm staying here. That's the draw of this place.

SPEAKER_03 19:49

Liana might have physically moved on from Gilpin and Central City, but she still feels that pull today. And she's got advice for anyone who's interested in trying to investigate it for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

If there are any people that end up investigating that town, a lot of places have closed things off because of people coming in and bringing even worse things in, which can happen too. That's why I always tried to protect the place. I always tried, it was my home hometown basically for investigating. They trusted me enough with their spirits. So if there's up and coming coming in, please, I I I beg of this to teams, have some respect. These were people, these were your moms, your uncles, your grandpas, your sisters, your brothers. They all r were people. And when you go into a town, you need to respect those spirits. Not there to provoke, not there to use them for whatever means you want for popularity or what have you. It's not what it's about. That's when bad things start happening. So all I can say is, you know, if you do end up getting into any of these buildings, try to respect the people and the children and the minors and the the prostitutes, all the people that were there before you, they're still there and they still need some respect. So if I can uh give anybody a piece of my mind on it, because I still feel like I need to protect that place. I always will. Because of of what I know and and the connections I made with the spirits.

SPEAKER_04 21:26

It's good advice. Thank you so much, Liana.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

SPEAKER_03 21:52

If you want to check out more of Sripp's work, head to their YouTube channel. We've got all these linked in our show notes. That's all for today. One last thanks to Leanna Jonas for everything, and to all the folks who helped me get in touch with her. If you're at all interested in learning more about Gilpin History, I highly recommend checking out the Gilpin Historical Society. They run tours of historic buildings and they've got a real paranormal investigation. Open to the public, planned for November 7th. Tickets are $35. Head to our show notes to find out how to sign up. And remember, if you do visit Gilpin, you might end up being there a bit longer than you planned.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Because as Leanna says, It's kind of like Hotel California. It is, honest to God.