“My name is Emma Shields, and I’m supposed to tell you that I never meant to kill anyone. But that would be complete balderdash.””

CENTRAL CITY – Macabre tales of murder, mayhem, and mischief rang through the night during the 16th Annual Creepy Crawl on October 17, 2025. Sponsored by the Gilpin Historical Society, the tour featured a pentalogy, or five stories, of the spiteful spirits that are said to inhabit the region. 

The tour began at the Century Casino, where guests were warned not to use a camera flash for fear of scaring away the specters. A drink ticket was an added bonus, for a free beverage at Dostal Alley after the crawl.

The boarding house murders

The first spirit, Emma Shields, emerged in the dim light of the Teller House dining room to tell her story. “My name is Emma Shields, and I’m supposed to tell you that I never meant to kill anyone,” she began. “But that would be complete balderdash.”

Emma owned a boarding house in the 1860s, shared with her daughter Ellie and Ellie’s husband Greg. When Ellie died of pneumonia, Emma’s resentment toward her son-in-law turned into something darker. 

Her first victim was a boarder named Mr. Hicks. “Before I really knew what I was about, I crept up behind Mr. Hicks, and I gave him such a good crack on the back of the skull that he toppled out of the chair.” 

She disposed of the body in a nearby mine shaft and claimed to be horrified when the sheriff broke the news of the man’s death.

More killings followed, including two boarders whose remains were found years later. Emma’s undoing came when she and Greg attempted to kill a guest named Timothy Roworth, who escaped long enough to identify them before dying. 

“Gregory and I were taken into a penitentiary down in Canon City, where we quietly suffered until we were even more quietly executed,” she said, ending with a chilling laugh. “If you take one thing with you, please let it be my humble little last words of advice: Kill the son-in-law first.”

Yankee Doodle Lake near Rollinsville

From there, the tour crept into the famous Central City Opera House, and the story turned modern and eerie. The group heard about Flight Echo 9, a plane that vanished near Yankee Doodle Lake in 1953 while carrying aerospace executive Wendell K. Sloan. 

No black box was recovered, and the crash site was never disclosed. Only a few insiders knew the plane came down around Yankee Doodle Lake. There was no media coverage, and a local coroner by the name of Halder Reed signed off on three death certificates with no autopsies.

“Old hunters say that in spring, when the lake begins to thaw, you can see shadows moving through it, twisted metal, a cockpit windshield, a hand pressed against the glass.” One hiker reportedly found a dog tag with Sloan’s name before dying mysteriously. 

The coroner’s lost journal later surfaced: “Sloan wasn’t burned or frozen. His eyes were gone, not removed, but missing, like they never existed.” 

The narrator described the crash as a government cover-up involving “materials, experimental tech, something developed in secret.”

Every October, right around the anniversary of the crash, the fog gets thicker around Yankee Doodle Lake. Locals call it “Sloan's Breath.”

The tale ended with a warning: “If you ever find yourself near Yankee Doodle Lake…and the mist creeps in…don’t look into the water. Because sometimes the dead are still watching.”

The postmaster’s affair

At Williams Stables, visitors met Joseph Updegraff, the postmaster of Central City, whose lover, Rose, was murdered in 1903. The story unfolded as a ghostly reenactment between the doomed lovers, who were having an affair.

Rose pleaded, “You promised you’d marry me! You said you’d leave her. I could go to your wife, you know?” while Joseph, growing cold, snapped, “Enough of your prattle.” Moments later, Updegraff fired the pistol. 

His mistress lay dead, slumped upon the table. Updegraff then prepared the group to meet the next ghost, another previous romance of his. 

The morphine dancer

Inside the next room, the lively spirit of Florence Booth greeted everyone with a flourish. “When I was 15, I got married for the first time—a dreadful inconvenience, I must say.” 

She detailed a life of romance, addiction, and violence that stretched from Cripple Creek to Denver. 

Booth said that after years of dancing in Cripple Creek and Denver, she began using morphine—first as a common remedy, then as a habit shared by friends. When her addiction worsened, she sought help at the Keeley Institute, a well-known treatment center of the time. 

It was there, during her recovery, that she met Updegraff, a visiting county clerk from Gilpin County whose charm quickly caught her attention.

While visiting a friend, Ms. Bysong, in Denver, Booth opened the door to find a deranged, jealous lover from her past, John Bell, waving a pistol and foaming at the mouth. He fired three times at her, landing the last shot. 

“I passed out on the floor,” she said with theatrical grace. The bullet lodged under her skull, but she survived. Bell was later buried in an unmarked grave. 

As Florence finished her tale, she smiled wickedly. “Joseph’s in town now. I think I might pop in and visit him for old time’s sake.”

A thumb for a thumb

The final stop brought the group to the future site of the Baby Doe Casino. The poor spirit, Thomas Seery, greeted the crowd shouting, “Anybody seen my thumb?”

He told of moving to Central City in 1872 to strike it rich at the Mercer Lode Mine. When his rival, Kidvig, accused him of stealing ore, the feud turned deadly.

“I kind of snuck around this mound of junk,” Seery said, “and I looked up there at Kidvig and I shot—well, I shot his damn thumb off. That’s what I did. And then, he was whining and crying so much I shot him right in the head.” The crowd jumped at the sound of the flash gun.

Seery was charged with first degree murder but the case was thrown out for lack of a murder weapon.

The ghost of Kidvig then appeared. Seery screamed, “You’re dead! You can’t do anything to me!” only for Kidvig to shoot Seery, reclaiming his lost thumb. “I reckon it should be a thumb for a thumb,” Kidvig declared before vanishing back into the dark.

Spirits at rest

Each stop on the 90-minute walking tour revealed another piece of Gilpin County’s haunted past: murders, affairs, and mine-shaft mysteries told by ghosts who refused to stay buried.

Around 800 people will participate in the two-weekend event this year, and with tours running every 30 minutes on multiple days, you can still snag a spot to see the specters. Tickets are only $20 and help fund the Gilpin Historical Society.

For more information and tickets, visit gilpinhistory.org/creepy-crawl. There’s still time to attend the final shows on October 24 and 25. 

Additionally, on November 1, there will be a paranormal investigation at the Gilpin History Museum with Other Side Investigations. There will be two sessions, from 7 to 9 p.m. and 9:30 to 11:30 p.m. Tickets are $35; call the museum at 303-582-5283 to purchase.