Get Your Spookiness On and Join the Fun

By Natasha Lovato

Aside from corn mazes and haunted houses, Colorado is home to a collection of bizarre, obscure and downright scary sites perfect for those of you looking to meander off the beaten path. No matter where you find yourself in the Centennial State, stranger things await your arrival this Halloween season.

The Art Cartopia Museum - Trinidad

Dressed in crazy costumes of their own, a Trinidad-based museum houses over 25 cars with eccentric looks. Enjoy the manifested ideas designed by cartists in the completely wild, colorful and bizarre looks they’ve designed.

The Room of Lost Things- Denver

Whether you have the yearning to explore your curiosity or expand your macabre collections, this Denver shop of horrors holds unusual oddities and strange curiosities. Taxidermy creations, jar-preserved creatures, mutated dolls and more sit on the shelves for those daring enough to explore the spooky sights themselves.

The Stanley Hotel Ghost Tours- Estes Park

The Stanley Hotel embraces their illustrious history with tours hovering around the supposedly haunted halls. Millions of visitors travel to the hotel made famous by the Stephen King horror novel and movie adaptation of “The Shining”. The Stanley offers 75-minute day or night tours covering over 110 years of history as well as paranormal stories of the 47-acre establishment. During her experience as a tour guide at The Stanley, Kira Vuolo has grown to believe the folklore and paranormal experiences of hotel guests. “One of my favorite stories was this past July,” Vuolo said. “A couple on the fourth floor said their child crawled into bed and told them he didn’t want to play with the kid in the closet. We are known to have a lot of child spirits here.”

The Ouray Alchemist- Ouray

This historically fascinating pharmaceutical museum holds a collection of remedies and artifacts dating back throughout most of the span of human history. Roam through the rows of downright scary concoctions that were once believed to remedy various ailments.

Emma Crawford Coffin Race- Manitou

Like many, Emma Crawford ventured to Manitou Springs in 1889 searching for a cure for her tuberculosis after hearing of the mineral springs. Unfortunately, in 1891 tuberculosis took her life and she was buried at the summit of Red Mountain. After years of harsh winters and spring rains, Crawford and her coffin came racing down the mountainside. Now, over a century later, the town of Manitou celebrates the Halloween season with a festival featuring coffin races. The festival bearing the name of the accidental originator is on Oct. 26 this year.

May Natural History Museum- Colorado Springs

Immerse yourself with over 7,000 species of creepy crawly butterflies, moths, beetles, spiders, scorpions and more in an immense collection of insects. Known as the Bug Museum, the May Natural History Museum is a place for families, bug enthusiasts, scientists and anybody wanting to explore the bizarre.

Alfred Packer’s Grave- Littleton

During the winter of 1873-74, Alfred Packer joined a group of five other men in search of gold in the Rocky Mountains. Deep into their journey, they found themselves alone in the wilderness, trapped in heavy snows and without food. According to Packer’s testimony in 1874, he claimed he was forced to eat the other men, or otherwise starve to death. Pay tribute to Colorado’s cannibal at his gravesite located at the Littleton Cemetery.