Constructed in 1894, the original Victor Hotel, was a wooden, dual-story building. However, when a devastating fire swept through Victor in August, 1899, the wooden building succumbed to the flames that spread quickly and destroyed the entire town in just five hours.
Victor’s founders, the Woods brothers, rebuilt the hotel’s spacious accommodations, this time with brick and stone, in order to withstand the harsh Colorado elements.
Since the Victor Hotel was the only structure in Victor, Colorado, with an elevator, during the cold months corpses were loaded into the lift and carried to the building’s fourth floor, which became a makeshift morgue. It is apparently many of these long-dead Victor residents that haunt the historic hotel today.
The Victor Hotel is a historic hotel in the mining town of Victor, Colorado in the United States. The first floor of the building was originally the Citizen’s Bank of Victor.
It may be the only banking concern in the world where one of its depositors mined directly beneath the bank at five hundred feet from the surface. Over the years, the property has served as a bank, hub for business offices, restaurant, grocery store, and soda fountain.
After the Woods fell from power, A.E. Carlton bought the Bank Building, establishing his City Bank on the first floor. The second and third floors remained offices, but the fourth floor was converted unto a hospital, where operations, such as an emergency appendectomy, were performed as early as 1906.
During the winters, when the ground was frozen between October and June, it was impossible to dig graves for those that died in the quickly growing city. As an alternative, the bodies were taken up the elevator and stored on the fourth floor of the building until the ground thawed enough to bury them.
It’s no wonder then that headless, limbless apparitions are allegedly witnessed, to date, strolling the hallways of this ornate, Victorian era hotel. Though seemingly harmless, several people have witnessed the site of disembodied apparitions on the fourth floor.
Reports include what look like both doctors and patients, sometimes without arms, legs, and even heads, moving about this place that once acted as “holding cell” for the dead.
“I had a terrifying experience on the fourth floor. When falling asleep I was attacked and was kicking and trying to scream to get him off of me. Felt like attempted rape. I have not had any other occurrences the other nights I have stayed there”, – this is how one visitor described his experience at the hotel.
Apart from the spirits of doctors and mutilated patients on the fourth floor, there also appear to be otherworldly presences residing throughout the entire venue. The hotel’s Bird Cage elevator is said to operate of its own volition around 3 a.m. nightly, consistently stopping on the third floor. Though the elevator is regularly inspected and maintained, it often tends to activate itself going up and down the shaft when no one is near it.
The lift is supposedly haunted by “Eddie,” a turn of the century miner who resided in room 301 during the early 1900s. Apparently, Eddie fell to his death down the open elevator shaft in the small hours of the evening, more than a hundred years ago.
To this day, guests report reverberations of heavy, disembodied footsteps within room 301, along the third floor’s hallways, and near the antiquated elevator. Utensils levitating of their own accord have been reported by employees working in the Victor’s kitchen.
Lisa’s story
My friend and I stayed at this beautiful Victorian hotel in about 2005. We were part of the Marine Corps wives doing an event and ‘The Victor Hotel’ was our only option to stay (only a short time away from Cripple Creek).
We had numerous events happen like my eyeglasses went missing the second we came in to bring our things in. We had no idea of the hotel’s past, but things kept happening..my glasses suddenly reappeared after tearing the room and our belongings apart…when we put the room and our thing’s back together, my glasses were neatly sitting on, the freshly made bed(?)
Then we had some things happen in the elevator…it wouldn’t take us to our floor (3) and stop on 4 where we heard footsteps.
The phone rang 5 or 6 time’s and when we answered no one was there… the toilet (old Victorian style) would flush, and noises came from the very old radiation system, as well as curtains moving with no explanation…
We mustered up the energy and went down the back staircases (as the elevator would not work) and asked the clerk if the place was haunted. She said yes, and explained the various things that had happened there.
We went back to our room, and not even 10 minutes later we heard heavy footsteps walking down the hall… I jumped up quickly to open the door just to see if I could catch someone playing a prank… or worse… but, Nope! No one there! After I closed the door (not even 15 seconds later) we heard tsp tap tap on the door. Jumped in bed and didn’t move all night!
We heard whispers, voices, laughter, footsteps, screams, tapping, saw our curtains moving and had items disappear and reappear, plus the old elevator moving all by itself. I wish more paranormal investigators would go there! I would sign up right away.
Source: Paranormal Underground Vol. 3 May 2010: “The Haunted Victor Hotel” by Hugh Mungus
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