The Broadmoor

At the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, the story the staff reach for first is the one about the foot. A guest in an upper-floor suite wakes in the dark to the covers being peeled off the bed. Then a hand closes around her foot and drags her toward the edge of the mattress.

They have a name for who does it. They say it's Julie Penrose.

Spencer Penrose, the mining magnate who made his money in gold and copper, bought the site in 1916 and opened the resort on June 29, 1918. He hired Warren & Wetmore, the New York firm behind Grand Central Terminal, and they gave him pink stucco, red tile roofs, and about 350 rooms. But it was Julie who outlasted the place's founding. Spencer died in 1939. Julie ran the resort for the 17 years she lived after him, and died here in 1956, at 85.

The woman guests describe isn't 85. She drifts the upper hallways and up the front staircases at night in 1930s dress, the way she looked in her prime. FrightFind puts it plainly: "A woman in a period 1930s dress has been seen floating down the hallways and up the front staircases at night."

The penthouse, where Julie stayed, is where the most happens. Lights turning on and off. Deep cold spots. Objects moving on their own. Guests saying they felt watched. Room 408 is the other fixture: staff report furniture dragged across the floor and lights flickering when no one has checked in.

As the legend has it, about a week before she died Julie wandered into the woods near the lake and was found "unrobed, shaking, and not fully aware of how she had gotten there." No record outside the ghost stories confirms it.

The Broadmoor has never said a word about any of it. There's nothing on the website, no plaque, no acknowledgment. Just the resort she ran for 17 years, and the guests who keep describing the woman she used to be.