Miramont Castle

A priest built this 14,000-square-foot castle in 1895 and somehow crammed nine different architectural styles into it — English Tudor, Romanesque, you name it. Now it's a museum in Manitou Springs.

Miramont Castle was built in 1895 as the private residence of Father Jean Baptiste Francolon, a French-born Catholic priest from a wealthy aristocratic family. Born in 1854, Francolon had traveled the world with his diplomat father before being recruited by Bishop Lamy of Santa Fe to serve at the Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi in New Mexico. After an attempted poisoning hastened his departure from Santa Fe, Francolon relocated to Manitou Springs, drawn by the town's famous healing mineral waters and clear mountain air. He channeled the architectural ideas he had collected from his global travels into a forty-room castle that incorporated nine different styles of architecture, from English Tudor to Romanesque to Venetian Ogee, making Miramont one of the most architecturally eccentric buildings in Colorado.

Father Francolon lived at Miramont with his mother, Madam Francolon, until 1900, when the family departed abruptly, leaving behind all their furniture. The suddenness of their exit has fueled speculation ever since. Madam Francolon returned to France, where she died in 1907, and Father Francolon spent his final years in New York City before his death in 1922. From 1904 to the late 1920s, the Sisters of Mercy operated the castle as part of their Montcalm Sanitarium, caring for tuberculosis patients. After the original sanitarium building burned down in 1907, the nuns moved all their patients directly into Miramont. The castle served as a sanitarium for roughly twenty years before being converted into apartments, and it was eventually restored as a museum by the Manitou Springs Historical Society.

The castle is reported to be haunted by multiple spirits connected to the Francolon family and the Sisters of Mercy era. A woman in a black dress appears as a reflection in mirrors and windows throughout the castle but is never seen standing in the room itself -- only in the glass. A male figure, believed to be Father Francolon himself, has been spotted in the upper rooms. A little girl has been seen by visitors and staff on the stairways and in the hallways, though her identity remains unknown. The most notorious spirit is Sister Henrietta, a nun from the Sisters of Mercy period who allegedly hanged herself on the property. Unsubstantiated local rumor holds that Father Francolon had gotten her pregnant and that her pregnancy was part of the reason the Francolon family left so suddenly in 1900 -- a theory that has never been confirmed but continues to be the most-repeated explanation for both the haunting and the mysterious departure.

Today Miramont Castle operates as a museum and is open for tours year-round. The Manitou Springs Historical Society hosts special events and paranormal investigations at the castle, and visitors regularly report pockets of icy air in the upper-floor rooms, strange sounds with no identifiable source, and the feeling of being watched where the sanitarium patients once convalesced.