There’s a reason why the Haunted Stage Stop has become such a popular Halloween attraction. Sure, the production is extremely well-planned and well-executed; but the deviously twisted minds behind the scenes were certainly inspired by unnatural forces to produce such terror. Maybe it’s the chill of the season, the turning of the leaves, and the aesthetic of Rollinsville in general that inspires such horrors; or perhaps it’s the Stage Stop itself.

If one were so inclined to believe in the supernatural, they would know that spirits can often cling to a place and haunt its hallways for generations. Sometimes these physical places can become tainted, perverted and twisted into otherworldly portals of mystic convergence, that forever attract the tormented and the macabre.

The Stage Stop is older than the state of Colorado, having been built in 1868. It has served as a toll stop for stagecoaches from the Butterfield Stage Coach Company, back in the dangerous and bloody frontier days; and as a boarding house, with a barber shop and grocery store, back in the 1920s, after the mining boom brought violence and organized crime.

It became a tavern in 1962, and since remained as a social hub along the Peak to Peak highway, though one with a more rough-around-the-edges reputation.

The old building has survived much wear and tear over the years, some more severe, including a wildfire that roared through the hills of Rollinsville back in 1950. The Stage Stop endured, almost stubbornly, as if its roots ran deep into the dark recesses of the earth, and its foundation armored by the decades upon decades of anguish, of blood, sweat, and tears, spilled on its grounds.

Like any good horror movie haunted house, the Stage Stop has even seen its fair share of impetuous and dangerously clueless youth, recklessly desecrating the sacred place with broken bottles and thoughtless graffiti.

If they had had the forethought to refrain from wantonly trespassing in a 150-year-old abandoned building, treading where most wouldn’t dare, they could have avoided the known risk of idiotic teenage behavior attracting the unwanted attention of the undead. If they had listened to those who have witnessed the ghosts of the Stage Stop first hand, they would have had a better chance of survival.

Owner of the Stage Stop Judd Kaufman doesn’t call himself a “believer.” As he tackles the improvements needed to reopen the Stage Stop in all its restored glory, he’s personally worked deep within the innards of the beast; but he has only once witnessed somewhat of an otherworldly presence, or an unnatural disturbance on our fabric of reality.

“I am not particularly tuned to the paranormal dimensions. However there was one night shortly after we purchased the Stage Stop when I was embarking down the stairs that went from the first level to the basement,” Kaufman told The Mountain-Ear.

“Something caught my eye and I had a very strange feeling like my stomach was in my throat. There was some sort of movement and I paused and felt terror, and then the feeling passed and I went on with what I was doing. But that is as close as I have come to an actual ghost encounter anywhere, I guess.”

But Kaufman’s one small occurrence is nothing when compared to the stories surrounding the infamous Stage Stop.

“I’ve been told many ghost stories by many local folk and a lot of people have talked about this particular ghost, his name is Tom,” Kaufman explained. “Legend has it he died in the basement, some say by his own hand, but I like to believe he died in a shootout with the revenuers during prohibition.”

“Tom, apparently, was a Wild West sort of man who enjoyed drinking his whiskey. He would come into embodiment to patrons at times, and to people who worked there, and he could get quite surly.”

“They figured they should leave a shot of whiskey out at the end of the bar at the end of the day, and miraculously it would be empty the next morning each time, and apparently Tom would become significantly more friendly with this gesture of goodwill and friendship amongst beings both paranormal and also not-quite normal,” Kaufman said.

But Tom isn’t the only specter roaming the Stage Stop. Kaufman explained how he and a friend once used professional equipment to gauge the paranormal situation within.

“According to my friend, who is more attuned to these things than I, there were some very strong signals that were indicating the presence of multiple entities,” Kaufman said.

“I’ve heard about two other ghosts at the Stage Stop; one being a small girl in a dress who would play with other children while they were there, and the other a young lady who usually would be seen going up and down the stairs between the first level and the second level, which is funny because those stairs aren’t very old. I think they were put in maybe in the 70s or 80s…the 1970s or 80s,” Kaufman specified.

“People say that she would go up and down the stairs, as if looking for something, and that she would also drop pennies. I will say, I did find a lot of pennies on the floor at the Stage Stop, including a couple after we had already gone through it and cleaned everything.”

“If spirits are a thing, this building is definitely host to some…I feel no doubt of that,” Kaufman concluded.

So, when asking why the Haunted Stage Stop feels more authentic than other such Halloween productions, the answer may be more disturbing than you realize. And whether you’re a “believer” or a skeptic, one must admit that sometimes a century and a half of strange, dark, and murky history speaks for itself.