Red Rocks Amphitheatre

Backstage staff see a bearded ghost miner. The Hatchet Lady hunts young couples in the park. Native American ceremonial ghosts predate the 1941 venue.

Staff at Red Rocks say the miner shows up in restricted backstage areas where no crew member should be. He's about five foot five, long white beard, battered brown hat, bottle in one hand. He doesn't speak. He doesn't stay. He's just there, then gone.

The amphitheater sits in a 640-acre park outside Morrison, cut into sandstone slabs that tilted up out of the Colorado plain hundreds of millions of years ago. Concerts have been held there since the early 1900s. The venue as the world knows it, with the terraced stone seating and the CCC-built backstage, opened on June 15, 1941. It is one of the most famous outdoor amphitheaters in America, and people who work there say it is also one of the most haunted places in the state.

The famous ghost is the Hatchet Lady. Most accounts describe her as an old woman with gray hair, yellow teeth, and a hatchet she swings at anyone she catches on what she considers her land. The origin story people tell most often is that she was "Old Ms. Johnson," a homesteader who lived on or near the formation around the turn of the century and had a property dispute with John Walker that is said to have caused her demise. There is an older, folkloric version that is almost certainly the source of the hatchet. In that one, Johnson was a mother who pulled a coat over her head and chased off her daughters' suitors with the blade. A few stories put her in a cave on the property into the 1950s. All the versions agree she moves fast, she hunts young couples, and she does not care whether you believe in her.

The Trading Post, which opened in 1931 next to the amphitheater, has its own list. Employees have reported cold spots in the basement, voices when nobody's there, and the sense of being followed through the retail floor at closing. The Denver Channel sent a crew in 2009 and came back with enough on-camera reports to put the story on local news.

Then there are the Native American spirits. The formation was a gathering place long before it was an amphitheater. Ghosts in ceremonial dress have been seen in the park, sometimes performing ceremonial dances. The venue doesn't market this story the way tour operators market the Hatchet Lady. It doesn't need to.

The Red Rocks reports are worth listening to because they come from people who spend real hours there. Crew members setting up for shows. Rangers on dawn patrol. Trading Post staff locking up. These are not tourists looking for a ghost. They are people who work at one of the busiest outdoor venues in the country, and a surprising number of them will tell you a specific story about a specific spot if you ask.

The most honest take is that Red Rocks was sacred ground a long time before anybody decided to sell tickets. The stones are older than the miner, older than Ms. Johnson, older than the amphitheater, older than Colorado. If something stays there, it is not surprising. If you go to a show, stay in your seat. Don't wander into the restricted backstage areas. And if you see an old woman with a hatchet, the consensus among staff is simple. You run.