Best of the Springs Winner!
Cripple Creek was named "Best Day Trip" by the Colorado Springs Gazette!
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TALE OF THE HAUNTED JAIL HOUSE
The Teller County Jail in Cripple Creek was recently discovered to have been used as a temporary holding area for Colorado’s criminally insane. The news comes as a shock to local residents, whom for many years believed that the jail was simply a local jail from 1901-1992, and was eventually transformed into a museum in the fall of 2007.
“I know that the jail held people who were killers and robbers from the old days, but I never knew that it held crazy people who committed crimes. That’s just scary!”
Cripple Creek Resident
“I pass by the jail everyday to go to work and I always walk on the opposite side of the street. Well, because I get a strange feeling that someone is watching me.”
Colorado Springs Resident
“Once I stopped on the side of the building to fix a flat and thought I heard someone screaming inside. I don’t know much about the place, but I heard that those paranormal teams have been inside and have gotten some strange recordings. What? No, I don’t want to go inside.”
Cripple Creek Resident
“I tried to tour the museum when it opened, but I couldn’t make it around the entire building. I got sick and ended up leaving in the middle of the tour. That night I had nightmares about the place. I’ll never go back”
Colorado Springs Resident
When you first walk into the museum, former jail, it looks like a house but then you pass through a steel door and the next room is filled with a large steel frame that encloses fourteen cells. On the second floor of the building are another three cells which I have been told housed women and children. As I walk from cell to cell, I have a feeling of discomfort and uneasiness about me, which later I am many people experience when visiting the museum. The paranormal team later played the recordings they had captured on different visits to the museum, and frankly this reporter got chills.
One can only imagine the things that have occurred here over the years and until recently no one knew but, recently the manager of the museum discovered old papers in the basement that contained information about twenty or more criminals, who had stayed in the Teller county jail between 1901 and 1941. These papers indicate that these criminals had been lodged in the jail, temporarily, on their way to a prison hospital in Canon City. This was a common practice of law enforcement and is still done to this day when transporting convicted criminals across counties or state lines.
The names of the criminally insane that had stayed the night or multiple nights in the old jail are not being released by the City of Cripple Creek, who now owns the documents. The documents are rumored to indicate that on more than one occasion these criminals escaped at least twice, captured later, and that some were even murdered or committed suicide in the jail. The City will not confirm or deny any of these statements at this time; until the papers are authenticated, the City will remain quiet and continue to run the jail as a museum and later this month a haunted house, yes a haunted house.
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