Evergreen Cemetery

Colorado Springs' oldest cemetery, established in 1871. Contains the graves of many early settlers, military veterans, and notable figures. The 1910 chapel was built to store caskets and hold services.

Evergreen Cemetery is Colorado Springs' oldest continuously operated burial ground, established in 1871 shortly after the city was founded by General William Jackson Palmer. Palmer deeded the cemetery to the city in 1875, though some of the earliest plots date to the 1860s, predating Colorado Springs itself. Spread across 220 acres, Evergreen Cemetery holds the remains of more than 90,000 people, including pioneers, miners, Civil War veterans, and some of the city's most prominent early citizens. In 1993, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, only the second cemetery in the state to receive such recognition.

The paranormal activity at Evergreen Cemetery centers on the small chapel built in 1910 to store caskets and host funeral services. Most of the documented haunted encounters take place inside this building. Dark figures have been seen near the casket-lifting device and by the staircase leading to the chapel basement. Visitors and staff have reported strange, unexplained noises emanating from within the empty chapel when no services are being held.

One particularly striking incident occurred during a 2011 television investigation for the Biography Channel's My Ghost Story. A heavy wooden crypt door in the middle of the chapel basement opened on its own and then closed by itself, with the entire event captured on camera. Cemetery staff confirmed that the century-old doors are difficult to open even with effort and typically stick in their frames, making the spontaneous movement all the more inexplicable. The footage showed no evidence of ropes, wind, wires, or any mechanical explanation for the door's movement.

The cemetery's massive size, its century-and-a-half history, and the sheer number of burials -- from infants to centenarians, from tuberculosis victims to mining accident casualties -- have made it a destination for paranormal investigators and ghost tour groups operating in the Colorado Springs area. The Biography Channel feature brought national attention to the cemetery's haunted reputation, and it remains one of the most documented paranormal locations in El Paso County.