Croke-Patterson Mansion

A Romanesque Revival mansion built in 1891 on Capitol Hill, now operating as the Patterson Inn. Thomas B. Croke commissioned the building but sold it after only six months following the deaths of his wife Margaret and mother. Often called the most haunted house in Denver.

In December 1890, Thomas B. Croke -- merchant, plant breeder, and future state senator -- pulled a permit for an eighteen-thousand-dollar brick-and-stone dwelling at the corner of East Eleventh Avenue and Pennsylvania Street. Architect Isaac Hodgson designed it in the Chateauesque style, modeling the red sandstone gables and turrets after the sixteenth-century Chateau d'Azay-le-Rideau in France's Loire Valley. It remains one of Denver's three finest examples of the style and the only one to survive. Yet almost immediately after completion, Croke sold the house and moved away, trading it to Thomas M. Patterson -- congressman, U.S. senator, and editor of the Rocky Mountain News -- for 1,440 acres of ranchland. Croke never explained why he left after just six months. The mansion was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

The hauntings became impossible to ignore during 1970s renovations, when three Doberman guard dogs were placed inside to prevent break-ins. On the first night, one dog crashed through a plate-glass window on the third floor and died on the driveway below. The second night, a second dog went through the same window to its death. The third was found shaking and drooling in a corner of the third floor, apparently traumatized beyond recovery by something unseen. Phantom barking from the second floor has been reported ever since, though no dogs have been kept on the premises.

During the same renovation period, a young couple living on the main floor experienced what they described as a superhuman force blasting down the chimney, ejecting a seventy-five-pound brass-and-wood fireplace insert into the room and destroying their apartment. A priest was later called to bless the house, but when he entered the front parlor, plaster began peeling from around the fireplace and a dark vortex of wind erupted from behind it. The priest left immediately and never returned. When the mansion served as an office building in the 1980s, typewriters started typing by themselves in the middle of the night, party noises emanated from a back closet, and the sound of crying babies drifted from the third floor.

Among the named spirits, Kate Patterson -- wife of Thomas Patterson -- is the most benevolent. A pregnant woman expecting triplets reported that an apparition identifying herself as Kate helped her roll over in bed during a difficult night, comforting her before vanishing. On the third floor, a man's desk placed between two small closets had its drawers repeatedly open and close on their own, yet the drawers were found locked when checked. A psychic named Krista detected a woman named Rosemary during an investigation, and a disembodied whisper responded on the recording: "Rose." In the basement, during a 1980s seance, a medium detected a deceased child and a weeping mother; investigators found an unusual bricked-up corner behind the electrical panel containing what appeared to be ashes -- feeding the local legend of a woman who buried her lost baby in the wall.

Perhaps most chilling is the discovery of a death certificate in old tax records from when a Dr. Sudan owned the property, documenting a woman who committed suicide inside the mansion using rat poison mixed with water to create cyanogas. A psychic investigating the staircase independently reported sensing oxygen depletion in the same area, consistent with the suffocation the woman would have experienced. The mansion has operated as the four-star Patterson Inn since 2013, welcoming guests brave enough to spend the night in what many consider Denver's most haunted building.