Halloween Countdown - Oct 2
Oct. 2nd, 2013 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vivienHere's a spooky place in Manitou Springs, about an hour south of Denver.
http://hauntedcolorado.net/Manitou_Springs.html:
Behind a door that looked more like a wall were artifacts from the past that revealed a rich cultural and artistic heritage. Engravings, old photographic plates, metal works and a mirror reflected a time in Colorado few know about.
Built in 1912, it stands today as a symbol of a different type of pioneer. While most think early Colorado was filled with cowboys, cavalry, Indians, trappers, traders and miners; there was another pioneer spirit whose ghost still walks the streets of Manitou Springs. It was the
artist and the craftsman who also came to Colorado seeking freedom and creativity in a natural setting.
Roland Bautwell built The Craftwood Inn and The Onaledge Bed & Breakfast, both fine examples of English Country Tudor. In Bautwell's time, Colorado Springs was known as little London.
In 1940, The Craftwood became a restaurant. In its heyday the cuisine was exquisite, attracting dignitaries and celebrities in search of fine food and ambience. Cary Grant and Bing Crosby lunched by the window seat and Lawrence Welk and Liberace were also frequent guests. An owner of the Hope Diamond leased the entire estate one summer as did Harry Truman's daughter on another occasion.
The Craftwood Inn reopened in the fall of 1988. Many of the restaurant's employees think a ghost - a pioneer spirit who came here seeking creative freedom in a natural setting -
still roams near a secret room discovered in the attic during extensive renovations in 1988.
"While we were doing the renovation, a woman stopped in and said she had lived there as a child in the 1920s and asked if we had found the secret latch," co-owner Cris Pulos says. "She showed us where it was. I talked to everyone who owned the restaurant for the last 40 or 50 years and none of them knew the room was there."
Behind a door that looked like a wall was a treasure trove of turn-of-the century engravings, photographic plates, metal works and an antique mirror. The English Tudor-style inn was built in 1912 by Roland Bautwell, an English architect, coppersmith and photographer.
The building was originally his coppersmith's shop and Onaledge was his guest home.
No one is ready to claim it is the ghost of Bautwell, who's picture hangs on the men's room door, but "there's definitely, absolutely, positively something there," says Karen Deeds, a waitress at The Craftwood for seven years.
"I don't see it, but I feel it and most of the people who have worked here over the years have had some sort of experience with it. Everyone who feels it says it's friendly but if I need to go up by the attic alone, I run. There's two flights of stairs and I come down without
touching a stair. I get goose bumps from the tips of by toes to the top of my head and I can't stop it. My heart rate goes up. It's intense.
"One night, everyone was feeling it. We have five phone lines and they were all lit up but there was no one there. We're all trying to shut them off and they wouldn't go off. Everyone was looking over their shoulders all night."
SOURCE: Publication: The Gazette; Date:1995 Oct 30; Section:LIFESTYLE; Page Number 2
http://hauntedcolorado.net/Manitou_Springs.html:
Behind a door that looked more like a wall were artifacts from the past that revealed a rich cultural and artistic heritage. Engravings, old photographic plates, metal works and a mirror reflected a time in Colorado few know about.
Built in 1912, it stands today as a symbol of a different type of pioneer. While most think early Colorado was filled with cowboys, cavalry, Indians, trappers, traders and miners; there was another pioneer spirit whose ghost still walks the streets of Manitou Springs. It was the
artist and the craftsman who also came to Colorado seeking freedom and creativity in a natural setting.
Roland Bautwell built The Craftwood Inn and The Onaledge Bed & Breakfast, both fine examples of English Country Tudor. In Bautwell's time, Colorado Springs was known as little London.
In 1940, The Craftwood became a restaurant. In its heyday the cuisine was exquisite, attracting dignitaries and celebrities in search of fine food and ambience. Cary Grant and Bing Crosby lunched by the window seat and Lawrence Welk and Liberace were also frequent guests. An owner of the Hope Diamond leased the entire estate one summer as did Harry Truman's daughter on another occasion.
The Craftwood Inn reopened in the fall of 1988. Many of the restaurant's employees think a ghost - a pioneer spirit who came here seeking creative freedom in a natural setting -
still roams near a secret room discovered in the attic during extensive renovations in 1988.
"While we were doing the renovation, a woman stopped in and said she had lived there as a child in the 1920s and asked if we had found the secret latch," co-owner Cris Pulos says. "She showed us where it was. I talked to everyone who owned the restaurant for the last 40 or 50 years and none of them knew the room was there."
Behind a door that looked like a wall was a treasure trove of turn-of-the century engravings, photographic plates, metal works and an antique mirror. The English Tudor-style inn was built in 1912 by Roland Bautwell, an English architect, coppersmith and photographer.
The building was originally his coppersmith's shop and Onaledge was his guest home.
No one is ready to claim it is the ghost of Bautwell, who's picture hangs on the men's room door, but "there's definitely, absolutely, positively something there," says Karen Deeds, a waitress at The Craftwood for seven years.
"I don't see it, but I feel it and most of the people who have worked here over the years have had some sort of experience with it. Everyone who feels it says it's friendly but if I need to go up by the attic alone, I run. There's two flights of stairs and I come down without
touching a stair. I get goose bumps from the tips of by toes to the top of my head and I can't stop it. My heart rate goes up. It's intense.
"One night, everyone was feeling it. We have five phone lines and they were all lit up but there was no one there. We're all trying to shut them off and they wouldn't go off. Everyone was looking over their shoulders all night."
SOURCE: Publication: The Gazette; Date:1995 Oct 30; Section:LIFESTYLE; Page Number 2