Central City Cemetery

On the cemetery hill above Central City, Colorado, the story goes that a woman in a black satin dress climbs up to a single grave twice a year and lays flowers on it. The grave is in the Masonic section, marked with the Freemason square and compass. It belongs to John Edward Cameron.

Cameron came to the gold-rush town at seven, grew up respected, and rode with the fire and rescue squad. He died on November 1, 1887, at 28, after a short illness. The cause on record was given as paralysis of the heart. Some retellings drift the year back to 1885, but the genealogy record and most accounts hold to 1887.

The Lady in Black comes on that date, November 1. She also comes every April 5, and that is the part no one can answer. Cameron wasn't born on April 5. He wasn't buried on it. In more than a century of telling, no source has ever explained what the date is. The legend keeps it and can't account for it.

The flowers changed over the years. Roses first, then columbine, the wildflower that grows in the meadows above the town. Locals say she is the woman Cameron loved, who lived near Bald Mountain, though no name and no photograph of her has ever surfaced.

One sighting gets repeated more than any other. Twelve people once gathered at Cameron's headstone on a November 1 to wait for her. She appeared at sunset. When one of them stepped forward to grab her, she flew off the hillside and vanished toward Bald Mountain, the same mountain where her sweetheart was said to live.

The four cemeteries stacked on the hill carry other stories too. People tell of a faceless woman in a red and teal tracksuit who turns up at your right shoulder, and a grave where a green mist is said to settle. Those are told as folklore, by one source each.

But the woman in black is the one they keep coming back for, on the day he died and the day no one can name.