The Old Carson - Yaren Obando

A friend told me once about a supernatural event that occurred about five years ago to his older brother, while working as a part-time security guard in one of his graveyard shift at an abandoned hospital.

The Ft. Carson hospital and mental clinic that is located in the outskirts of Colorado, was once a facility used to keep German and Italian prisoners of war. The facility was closed around 1961 and demolished a couple of years later to build this so called hospital. The hospital has now been closed for more than twenty years and still is being patrolled by authorities to keep homeless people out. ('Warning trespassers will be prosecuted").

Del Creepe - Matt Starke

This one time I heard this story from my brother’s dad; A story about his son, me. This story came into existence in the creepy Del Arte Lofts and Flats, where a young relationship was on the rocks. A girl and a boy, desperate to be off on their own, experiencing life as it isfor themselves, were finally right where they wanted to be, experiencing the relentless fist of life. They had spent a lot of time together in the months prior and they knew each other overly well. The boy was college bound and preparing himself for what laid ahead. The girl was there for the boy. She was different though; she thought of herself as sensitive. She had been through tragedies and been devastated by horrible events throughout the length of her life. It was something she had grown accustomed to. She knew sorrow; it played a huge role in her life. And when that happens things tend to pick up on that and feed on it. Sorrow and pain are the two things they need most in their immortal lives.

Tale of the Tommy knocker - Joel Goers

There are many stories of the gold rush throughout the west. It was a time of economic boom, a time for progress in industry, territorial expansion and also a time for fantastic, romantic and sometimes tall tales of the epic west. A sense of mysticism and destiny surrounded the conquering of this fabled land. Yet as quickly as it had started, the gold rush soon burnt itself out, a raging fire with not enough fuel. Left in the wake of the rush are the skeletal remains of ghost towns, huge mining shafts, and innumerable twisted catacombs deep beneath the heart of the Rocky Mountains.

Mining was one of the most dangerous jobs of that era and truly required gold as an incentive. The technology of the time being somewhat unreliable and crude compared to modern times, cave-ins and mechanical of mishaps were an everyday threat to miners. Now according to popular mining town lore/history (for the two are quite often interchangeable in such romanticized environments), cave-ins, missing tools and machinery malfunctions were not always the result of poor construction or lack of care. Sometimes the unexplained happened and even when every possible precaution had been taken by the miners, catastrophes still occurred. When unexpected things happened, many miners with simple educations would use tales and folklore as an explanation.

The Spirit of War - Chau Ta

The Vietnam War inflicted pain on many Vietnamese and American families. Over 300,000 people died during this tragic 20-year conflict. Despite the international treaties established during the Geneva Convention of 1949 against the inhumane treatment of prisoners of war and wartime civilians, the Vietnam War did not abide by these terms. There are many accounts regarding the torture of war captives that were beat with fists, clubs, and rifle butts. This brutality caused the death of many soldiers in prison. Although many bodies were identified after the end of the war, the bodies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers have not been accounted for and given the proper burial. In the Vietnamese culture, it is important to provide a proper burial for deceased family members in order to give the spirit peace. It is thought that wandering spirits that are not given the proper burial will stay to haunt the living. Therefore, Vietnamese culture is deeply rooted with superstitions that dictate the appropriate treatment of the body after death.

Shadow Runner - Ciera Springer

I will share a story as told by my cousin “Sarintha” of a curious experience she had a few months back. Our family is aware that Sarintha finds herself in unexplainable situations and in the presence of unusual company quite often. I have learned to listen to her bizarre accounts; however, on this occasion there was another witness.

Sarintha and her boyfriend Will had gone to see Mike and Jenna, a couple they were friends with, and their new baby boy one afternoon. They were sitting around talking and passing the time when the baby started crying. Sarintha and Will followed Mike and Jenna into the baby’s room. They stood in a circle around the crib, Mike at the far end of the room, Sarintha directly across from him in the doorway and Jenna and Will on either side of the crib. Jenna held the baby rocking him until he fell asleep; she placed him into the crib. The four watched the baby sleep for a few minutes until Sarintha spun around startled and shocked. Mike whispered, “Did you see that?” staring intently behind Sarintha. Will questioned the two and Sarintha immediately responded that she had felt a breeze rush past and had heard footsteps running quickly behind her. Mike, still in shock, reported that he had seen a dark figure sprint behind Sarintha past the doorway. Mike ran out of the room searching the house for an intruder, unwilling to accept the fact that he saw something paranormal. After searching the house thoroughly and finding nothing out of the ordinary, Mike slowly came to terms with his encounter. Sarintha was shaken but was used to the strange presences that seemed to follow her.

Cow Skins - Elluany Plaza

Everyone has heard many strange and unusual stories that happen all over the world but for some reason the scariest ones are most likely to come from Mexico. And when I heard this story I was definitely scared, especially to walk by myself at night. When my grandfather was a teen one of his uncles always told him a story about his grandfather, he lived in a very small town in Sinaloa, Mexico. He watched over some cows at a ranch and it took him 2 hours to walk to his job and another 2 hours from his job to his house. He butchered and skinned the cows and sold their meat.

The Sears Southwest Spector - Tyler Gehring

Not too long ago, a coworker related a story to me of the ghost of the Sears at Southwest Plaza. To those with a weak stomach or those who are the faint of heart, this may not be the story for you. It is filled with angst, death and woe. Many of the events have been fabricated or elaborated to add to the story. I am not declaring that the story is entirely true, but it is based off of an event that did occur. I am not meaning to offend or cast offense to the deceased victim of this story; I am merely relating a relation that was related to me.

It was a kind of dark and kind of stormy night. Not quite dark out yet: the sun’s rays, barely peeking out over the top of the Rocky Mountains, cast an eerie twilight over southern Denver. Storm clouds loomed in the distance threatening to unleash their great loads. But this is not a tale about the weather mind you. I would like to bring our attention to a young man at the ripe age of twenty eight. John Smith is his name, and Loss Prevention is his game.

Musical Manipulation - Forrest Saye

There is an interesting college degree that has been around for a while now (since 1944) called Music Therapy. In theory it is used to work with behavioral-emotional disorders and how different sound waves affect the brain. However, while music therapy may not be every ones cup of tea, everyone still does it without even realizing. Music can affect people for better or for worse.

La Gargola - Forrest Guthrie

I was walking down the beach and ran into the security guard Armondo. The soft spoken native to Mexico was always eager to share his knowledge of the land and people with the white tourists. He started the topic of the night by telling us about his brother Raul. According to Armondo, Raul was about as honest as Abe Lincoln. At the end of all of Armondo’s stories he ended with, “If you dont believe me, ask my brother, he never lies”.

After about a half hour the sun began to slowly disappear. This is when Armondo’s story truly began. He started by asking us, “have you ever seen a gargoyle?” We laughed as we told him about the big marble gargoyles on the tops of buildings in America. He looked at us as if we were talking about the Virgin Mary as a comic book character. To him La Gargola was much more than a Myth. We later found out that 18 years earlier Armondo experienced something that gives him every reason to believe in such things.

Encounter at Campus Village - Jacob Wagner

Only a few days into my stay at Campus Village, I experienced something out of the ordinary. It was my first week at Campus Village; I was walking around the place, checking everything out since I was going to be living there for the next few months. It was late at night as I started walking down a long hallway towards my room when I saw something at the end of the hall. I couldn’t quite make out what it was. It wasn’t a person, but some sort of shadow. It didn’t move or anything, it was completely still. All of a sudden it disappeared.

I was a little freaked out about what just happened. It was late at night and I was all alone in a very long and silent hallway. There was an eerie feeling in that hallway. I hurried back into my dorm. As I went to bed, I was very paranoid; I had no clue what I saw. “What was it”, I kept asking myself,” a ghost, a spirit, or something else?” I ended up deciding that it was just my imagination and that nothing else happened. I didn’t want to keep thinking about it.

Home Isn't Where the Heart is - Kieu Nghi Nguyen

My friend Brandi lived near downtown in a beautiful Victorian home. It had been sitting there in the heart of Denver for some time, so it was somewhat old. I didn’t come to visit Brandi often simply because every time I stepped foot into that house, I always thought it carried bad vibes. Brandi had a class with me in high school, and we studied in Biology together. We had finals coming up in the next couple of weeks, and we had to assign ourselves a study date. My house was out of the picture, so we decided on going to her place.

Brandi had the whole entire upstairs level to herself. Her bedroom was the only room upstairs, and there was a bathroom connected to it. Brandi had a little four year old sister at the time named Mya, and she loved to follow us around everywhere. As we were studying, Mya had asked us a question that gave me the most unsettling feeling.

Broken Spirits Katie McAfoos

My mother shared a story with me recently about an event that occurred shortly after the passing of her brother. His death was a shock to the family and to this day there is no closure. On Feburary 18^th, 1993 her brother Pat went missing. Almost three months later his body was found in the Mississippi River. His death was ruled undetermined by the coroner and the circumstances surrounding how he ended up in the river are unexplained to this day. His Notre Dame class ring was found in a shed on The Arsenal Island, along with blood and evidence that he tried to enter the shed unsuccessfully. It remains an unsolved mystery, but what happened afterwards makes me believe he wanted somehow to tell them something, or at the least, comfort my mom through her grief.

Unexplained Opening Doors - Ryan Stokes

This is an experience that I had back when I was living in Misawa, Japan in the base hospital that was located on the base. Back in December of last year I had to have surgery and after I had the surgery I had to go to the hospital for the next month to have the surgical site packed with gauze. I had to go to the emergency room every night to get the wound packed and I was also doing college classes at night so I would have to go to the emergency room late at night.

Cemetery Gates - Alex Factor

My father recently acquainted me with the story of him and his friend getting locked in a cemetery over night. This event occurred in Detroit, Michigan in the 1970s while he was a college student.

It was a cold evening and my dad and his friend were walking down the street. They had just left dinner with some good friends and were on their way back to the college dorms. After about five minutes of walking, an erie feel has swept over them. My dad’s friend glanced behind him with the fear of someone following them, but there was no soul in sight. Both of them started surveying their surroundings, but the streets were bare. They stayed calm and my dad’s friend mentioned a short cut to get back to the dorms faster.

"Only in the Bakery" - Natalie Kellett

While my mother was growing up, her nuclear family would commute to Nebraska on a semi-annual basis to visit their extended family. My mother’s grandfather (my great-grandfather), Bill NImmich, owned a small bakery in the tiny town of Pawnee City, Nebraska. When her family visited Nebraska, they would all squeeze into the humble living space located above the Nimmich bakery.

As my mother experienced these family get-togethers, she saw the love and dedication her grandfather put into his baking. Her grandfather would faithfully wake up at 4:30 every morning to assemble the pastries. Through his adoration for baking, my mother gained her own fondness for the art. When she turned five years old, my mother started working alongside her grandfather in the bakery. Her passion for baking continued throughout High School where she was employed at the small school bakery. At this informal bakery my mother made cinnamon rolls that were famous school-wide.

Haunted History - Kenneth Tollefson

During the beginning of 2009, I was part of a very unusual occurrence that took place in Littleton CO. A group of us had gathered at my cousins house to celebrate his seventeenth birthday. A while passed and we decided to venture down to an old barn by his house that had been around for many years, before anything around it had been built. Many people had claimed that this particular barn was haunted. When we approached the barn we realized it was fenced and listed as government property, but of course, being young teenagers that did not stop us from going around the fence and completely ignoring the “do not enter” signs.

It was late at night and the only light around was a full moon and the lighting emitted from our cell phones. After tripping and stumbling on ditches and logs we finally made it to the barn door. After gathering up the courage we slowly entered the antique barn finding many old meat hooks lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling as well as what seemed to be animals or some creatures moving around the floor. Two of my friends and I decided to climb to the top of the barn to see if anything could be lurking about.

Silently Watching - Chelsea Mason

I stared. The curtain was the same as it had always been: a blanket thrown over a window. It was dusty and tattered. I saw something in the curtain though -- a face with sharp features and wide, angry eyes. The face would only appear in the middle of the night when I finally managed to start dozing off. I feared the face that watched me.

I had never seen anything unusual in my house. I only saw white walls and boring objects. I started seeing the face of the "demon" when I switched to my second high school in 2009. I thought I was just crazy and seeing things or my exhuastion was pulling a cruel joke on me. The nervousness from switching schools was another idea I attributed to the face.

Too Similar a Dream - Jessica Lucy

It is often said that twins have a supernatural connection; they can feel each other's pain, and always know where the other is and how they are feeling. There are hundreds of accounts of twins having amazing powers. Media has even grasped this concept, and twins with super abilities appear in books and movies all of the time. I am also a twin. I have a sister, Jacki, who is 13 minutes older than me. When people first learn of this fact, they are always asking questions about what it is like being a twin. "Are you best friends? Can you read each other's minds? Can you feel each other's pain?" And the answers are always the same "no, no and no." Try as we might, we cannot locate each other if we get separated on a trip to Water World any easier than the average separated siblings can.

Black Balled - Rachel Lamb

Most children play with dolls or toy soldiers; go out with friends to the movies or the mall, but my mother once toyed with something outside our realm. She and her close friend played with a Ouija board.

My mother, Tammy was in eighth grade and was enticed by the promises of magic and spiritual happenings. She and her friend Diane saved for weeks and bought a book witchcraft. An article they had read in the newspaper had promised they could have anything they had ever wanted, as soon as they wanted it. They had been reading this book for a few weeks before Diane introduced my mother to a Ouija board.

The Ouija board was a dark wood with the usual markings on it, yes, no, goodbye, and letters in the center. In the middle of the board was a perfectly round, cold, black ball. Diane and my mother sat down on either side of the board and looked at each other. Neither one of them had ever even seen a Ouija board, so they definitely didn’t know how it worked.

Burial Ground- Gianny Lozada

In many areas around the world, there are supernatural events that occur. In these’s events, there is usually a lost spirit trying to contact someone in present, for good or either for bad. An incident like this occurred to a boy and his family in their new home.

At the age of 15, Jacob grew up believing in realistic things, unlike Santa clause, the tooth fairy, or even spirits. Jacob and his family moved into a new house located in a rural area in Colorado Springs. He was very uneasy about his new home, but his mother and father reassured him. 3 months had passed, and Billy became comfortable in his home. But, a series of supernatural events had occurred. Jacob’s mother began to see dark figure in the corner of her room—this figure had human like features. At first, she brushed it off, until she kept seeing this figure in the same spot in her room. Jacobs’s mother began to talk to herself, and tried explaining this to her husband, but he ignored it. She would repeat to herself that there was a Native American man staring at her. After these countless events, they took his mother to a mental institute for evaluation.

Seeing Dead Loved Ones - Jordan Harder

It was freshman year; I was excited to finally be a high school student, ready to meet new people and make new friends. In my child development class I met one of the sweetest boys I have ever met, his name was Josh. We became close friends and hung out a lot; even rode the bus home together. The child development class had a project of taking home a fake baby for a few days. It was supposed to make teens understand what being a parent is like at such a young age. Josh named his Alaska. He made me do most of the work for him but I was fine with that because that meant I got to spend more time with him. As time went on we started to grow apart, we talked less, and I could tell something was different about him. Semester two started off with me trying out for the soccer team.

Silent Phone Calls - Amy Charles

My father had told me a story he experienced in 2006, two months after my Grandmother had passed away. He had always mentioned how close he was to his mother, as well as the tight bond she had with his two brothers. The family was connected, but on a much deeper level. During the time she was alive, she would often call and check up on my dad if she felt something was wrong, or knew he was going through a hardship. She had this “way” of knowing when something was off.

Those two months after she passed away, my dad would have vivid dreams of her, and a strange occurrence during work. A couple times per week during the grieving stages, the phone would ring at his office. Nobody would answer back after he picked up. With the silent calls going on for weeks, it was brought up to my mother, who said it was my grandma reaching out to him. My mother has always paid particular interest in subtle happenings such as these. So she knew without any doubts, this was my grandmother reaching out from the other side.

Sleep Paralysis - Katie Gambrell

Through out high school, I would frequently take naps either between classes or after school because of having to wake up so early. Around the time of April, I had a crazy experience I had never had before while trying to take a nap. As I was drifting off into sleep, I felt a pressure close around my head, as if someone were hugging my head. Because I was half asleep, at first I thought it was my boyfriend awkwardly hugging me while I was lying down, but then it started to feel more like I was being suffocated. Finally I remembered that I was alone in my bed, trying to take a nap. I realized that I wasn’t fully asleep, but was caught in the middle of being asleep and awake. My body was asleep but my mind was still awake. I was able to think normally, but I couldn’t move at all. Even using all my force and strength, I could not manage to lift my pinky finger up. My eyes were caught between being half closed to fully closed, so I could see some of my surroundings but everything was fairly blurry. I watched as my mom passed by my bedroom, and I tried to scream for help, but I couldn’t open my mouth, and no sound came out. At that point in time I felt and literally thought I was paralyzed.