Colorado has a fascinating, colorful past, yet most history books ignore the wealth of information that lurks in the shadows of folklore and legend.

This special feature of Spes in Deo Publications is to bring attention to the nearly lost folklore of the state, including that of our rich Native American heritage, the legends and tales of the French and Spanish explorers, on through to the stories from the immigrants of Europe and beyond.

We will feature stories from the collections in TWILIGHT DWELLERS and SOMETHING IN THE WIND, by MaryJoy Martin. If you have tales or photos to share, please feel free to send them along. We will post stories pertaining to Colorado only, stories of ghost sightings, Native legends of spirits and ogres, folklore and family tales.

All excerpts are copyrighted material, used with permission

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Luigi Regalia had killed himself in Room 28 of the Grand Hotel on November 1, 1890. He had made an earlier attempt on his birthday on October 6, but his landlady came in on him before he could carry out the act. On November 1 he put on his best suit of clothes, took a room at the Grand and wrote a letter to his friend Carlo Barsotti of New York. Late that evening he put a gun to his head and, while holding a small mirror in front of his face, pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed through his skull from above his right ear, blowing out the center of his forehead near the hairline, badly fracturing the cranium. Two doctors attempted to bring Luigi back from the brink, but he succumbed quickly... and has never left the hotel...

LUIGI REGALIA — from the new book
SOMETHING IN THE WIND:
SPIRITS, SPOOKS & SPRITES OF THE SAN JUAN
by MaryJoy Martin,
author of TWILIGHT DWELLERS
Both books available from
Pruett Publishing Company
order from
Pruett/Books West: 1-800-378-4188,
or Amazon.com

TWILIGHT DWELLERS
EXCERPT: Chapter 16
One Sunday in September

...Rumors began to drift around Colorado Springs that the young European-born gentleman had slipped the bonds of his grave. Friends and acquaintances caught sight of his sorrowful ghost at Glen Eyrie and Queen's Canyon, at Dr. Bell's house and at Dr. Solly's cottage. Strolling sweethearts saw him by moonlight as a tragic shadow in the Garden of the Gods, and others said he loitered at Crow's Roost outside of town.

Arthur's friends refused to believe the young man had died by his own hand... they were certain he had been shot in a duel... “He was a man of honor and high spirit,” added Hanson Risley, “not likely to carry out an elaborate scheme to make a suicide appear a duel.”

In time Arthur fell among the unremembered passions of youth, his faint melancholy ghost wandering at Briarhurst and Glen Eyrie, unrecognized except on those quaint, soft nights in late summer when the sweet, scented gardens invited lovers for a stroll.

“I cannot forget the night I saw poor Arthur's ghost,” said one of the transplanted English ladies of Manitou. “Never, not ever shall I forget that profound sadness in his eyes.”

SOMETHING IN THE WIND
EXCERPT: Chapter 1
The Gaping Grave

...Something moves. A whir, a twitter, and sharp wings brush the edge of the sky… only a night bird. Ahead, in the heart of the graveyard, the white luminous form still beckons: come closer… closer. It is only a thin marble tombstone, a cold, arched slab standing in a neglected enclosure of rusty rails and stocky posts. The afterlight plays on it, that mysterious silver light left by the dying sun, drawing a glow out of white marble… and yet, no other stones are so easy to read in the growing darkness.

Patrick Smith…died October 30, 1883… age 45. Forgotten now, this son of Eire, but for the twilight's luminous caress, for no one comes to shed tears on his grave. “Patrick…” a sudden breeze seems to whisper. “Patrick…” the word falls soft through the sway of the pines, bringing another sweep of light rain with it. Something moves in the enclosure of Pat Smith's grave. A shadow, a light… a haze of shawl fringe, a mist of white lace… there is someone reaching out toward the tombstone, a longing in her action as if she is afraid to come too near, afraid to disturb his peace, yet wanting him, wanting him in her arms. What gulf yawns between them? What dream did they share?

For over a century she has been coming here, seen faintly in the shadows of twilight, her faded dress, feathered hat and tattered black shawl suggestive of a dance hall girl or a woman of poverty who bought one fine dress and kept it long after the fashion had gone. In the 1880s and 1890s those who saw her believed she was a dead girl of the row, since Pat Smith's life had ended in acute syphilis with softening of the brain. Some identified her as Maggie Hartman, a Lake City prostitute who died in 1880. Later legends claimed Maggie was the woman who nursed a sick miner named Crowley back to health at Sherman, and then succumbed to the disease herself, Crowley being Pat Smith. Other tales wove the ghost as Lizzie West (a.k.a. Lizzie DePendergast), an Irish prostitute from Ouray who killed herself in Denver in spring of 1884. As the story went, Lizzie and Pat had fallen in love and he promised to marry her when he struck it rich. Some years passed and finally he was on the edge of a good deal, about to sell his share of the Carbonate Queen, claim his girl, and retire. But his old illness struck again, taking away his reason, snuffing out his life. This tale matched many of the facts, yet in the early 1900s the Rocky Mountain News published an altogether more curious tale, casting greater mystery over the ghost at Pat Smith's grave....