Central City Cemetery

A historic cemetery in the mountains above Central City, containing graves of miners, families, and pioneers from the 1860s gold rush. The cemetery sits among pines with views across Clear Creek County.

Central City Cemetery was established in the early 1860s, shortly after gold brought a flood of miners into the area during the Pike's Peak Gold Rush. Central City, founded in 1859 and dubbed the "Richest Square Mile on Earth," saw as many as 30,000 miners pour into the narrow mountain gulch searching for their fortunes. By the end of its second year, most of the placer gold was gone and the dangerous work of hard rock mining began. Many miners died in cave-ins, explosions, and suffocation accidents, and many more succumbed to disease, violence, and Colorado's brutal mountain winters. They were buried alongside their families and other townfolk in the cemetery on the hill above town.

The Freemason section of the cemetery, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows burial ground, has been called one of the most haunted locations in Colorado. The most enduring ghost story is the Lady in Black, a woman in a dark satin Victorian dress who appears on two specific dates each year: April 5 and November 1. She walks to the grave of John Edward Cameron, who died on November 1, 1887, places flowers on his headstone, and then disappears into thin air. Her identity has never been determined -- she is not a known relative of Cameron -- and her faithful, twice-yearly visits have been reported by witnesses across multiple decades.

Beyond the Lady in Black, visitors have seen shadowy figures moving among the headstones and flying orbs of light that drift between the graves. Children have been spotted peeking out from behind trees before vanishing, and figures standing at a distance appear to watch visitors before dissolving when approached. Strange sounds are frequently reported, including whispered voices and the crunch of footsteps on gravel paths when no one else is in the cemetery. Unexplained lights and smells have also been documented by paranormal investigators.

The cemetery sits on a steep hillside above the town, and the weathered, tilting headstones of the oldest sections offer a stark visual reminder of the thousands who lived and died in these mountains during the gold rush. Central City's broader reputation as one of the most haunted towns in Colorado -- with the Opera House, the Teller House, and the nearby ghost town of Nevadaville all generating their own paranormal reports -- makes the cemetery part of a larger haunted landscape that visitors can explore year-round.