Lynn Hirshman, Central City.  Unlike so many past Cemetery Crawls that featured rain or even snow as well as the appearance of shades of the Central City past, this year’s, on Saturday, August 22, had perfect weather along with superb planning and, of course, haunting.

A shuttle ran from the Teller House parking lot to the Bald Mountain Cemetery above Central City, providing a party-like atmosphere from the time the Crawl-bound visitors boarded it until they arrived at the cemetery. They were greeted by Gilpin County Commissioner (and former Central City Mayor) Buddy Schmalz, who gave a brief history of the Bald Mountain Cemetery. Central City Mayor Ron Engels and Gilpin Historical Society President Deb Wray also welcomed the visitors.

Society members in Victorian dress stood by, ready to act as guides through the closely-packed graves. They were joined of course, by local historians who had spent the past year researching the stories of the shades they were about to portray.

The graves themselves tell a sad story, with birth and death dates far too close together, for the most part. Most touching were the many graves of children, some only days or months old, whose grieving parents has placed elaborately carved headstones on their graves.

The speaking shades also had familiar tales of life, love, loss, and death in (mostly) the wild west that was once the Central City-Nevadaville area.

One notable exception was the shade of Minnie Morgan, who sat gracefully at her gravesite wearing an elegant late-1940s dress and hat. Unlike so many of the women buried there, Minnie was a 20th-century gal, born in Steamboat Springs in 1890 and living in Central City from 1936 to 1948.

She married late – again, unlike most of the women there – at age 30, to the manager of the Weekly Register-Call newspaper. She was, for her time, a career woman: with her year of college behind her, she wrote a column for the paper. When her husband died in 1942, she worked as a clerk for the Selective Service Board.

Minnie was portrayed by Anne Lueddens.

A very different woman was depicted by Jennifer Rogers: Lovdy Davey, who moved to Nevadaville in 1882 when it was booming, married Tom, and had six children “only one of whom died,” she said. She lived to the great age of 70, and when she died, the town “had a great celebration in her honor.”

Unmissable was the pacing, sermonizing figure of William Goode, the famous Methodist circuit-riding preacher of the late 19th century. Played with dramatic bombast by Central City’s Herman Gaines, Goode explained that he had no grave there – he was a “visiting spirit.”

Each of the dozen or so shades had their characters in hand, and were rewarded with applause and, often, questions from the visitors, many of whom had attended other Cemetery Crawls.

Fittingly, thunder began approaching just about the time the last tour group through Bald Mountain Cemetery was finished, as many boarded the shuttle back to Central City and the 21st century.