Posted May 18, 2009
Ghosts and ghouls and shack buses… oh my!
“Banjo Billy’s bus tour: ghosts, crime and history
• Stops include: Hotel Boulderado, the site of three suicides; The Arnett-Fullen House, the haunted former home of Historic Boulder; Mount Saint Gertrude Academy, supposedly haunted by the ghost of Sister Mary Theodore O’Connor; The Boulder Theater; Pi Beta Phi Sorority house; The University of Colorado’s Macky Auditorium and the Boulder History Museum, which reported strange occurrences after inheriting memorabilia belonging to an obsessive Boy Scout, who was forced out of the organization at the age of 46.
• Duration: 90 minutes
• The rundown: Warmer and easier on your feet than a walking tour, Banjo Billy’s offers a view of Boulder’s spookiest spots from the comforts of a kooky wood-covered school bus featuring a couch, five La-Z-Boy recliners and five saddles. Banjo Billy (aka John Georgis) draws his stories primarily from the books, Haunted Boulder: Ghostly Tales from the Foot of the Flatirons and Haunted Boulder 2: Ghostly Tales from Boulder and Beyond, but also provides plenty of fun history about the city. (Did you know that Boulder has had more than 80 couch fires and a dozen riots since 1997?)
• Guide style: Like the town he guides visitors around, Banjo Billy takes an easygoing, lighthearted approach to his job. He knows the right details, but also adds a dash of humor (“On the right-hand side of the street, you’ll see Tom’s Tavern,” he says. “Before it was Tom’s, it was the morgue. So, they’ve been serving dead slabs of meat for over 50 years.”) Though he’ll cater his tour to the audience (offering a racier version for college students), he says he’ll never include JonBenet Ramsey’s story. And yes, he does play banjo music on the bus.
• Scariest site: It isn’t difficult to imagine ghosts occupying the foreboding red brick Castle House. Located in Boulder’s University Hill neighborhood, the house has been the subject of ghost stories for decades. Former resident, artist Ruth Savig, says her daughter once awoke in the middle of the night to report a large man shaking her heavy bed. When she checked on her daughter’s story, she found the nearly-impossible-to-move bed a foot away from the wall. She later discovered that a large man had died in the room. On another occasion, while sketching alone in the house, she heard a woman telling her to “get out.” Not easily intimidated, Savig explained that it was now her house and she had no plans to leave. When she looked down at her sketch, she found that she had drawn the portrait of a previous owner.
• Most gruesome tale: It doesn’t get much more horrifying than the murder of Elaura Jaquette. In 1966, a janitor killed the zoology major in the west tower at Macky Auditorium, smearing her blood against the walls of a small rehearsal room for the music school. Legend has it that the young woman’s screams sometimes fill the building at night.
• Rating: Three and a half ghosts”
“Tour de Fright” – Rocky Mountain News
