The Grant-Humphreys Mansion

Posted: 10.25.2025 | Updated: 10.18.2025

Some historic buildings come with more than just memories. Something darker stirs in the shadows of such places, especially at night.

This is certainly the case at the Grant-Humphreys Mansion in Denver, Colorado. One of the many historic mansions that have been restored in the downtown area, it serves as a wedding venue today. But why do so many photos taken there contain strange faces in the background? Pale faces of people who were not actually present… or at least not among the living.

Some say it’s because the old mansion is quite haunted. What do you think? Keep reading to discover the place’s dark history and judge for yourself. And when you are ready to visit haunted places in Colorado for yourself, book a ghost tour with Denver Terrors!

Is the Grant-Humphreys Mansion Haunted?

The Grant-Humphreys Mansion has inspired many stories of unexplained phenomena. As a result, many locals believe the place is haunted. Experts have identified at least five ghosts, including:

• The spirit of Albert E. Humphreys, who died under mysterious circumstances.
• The apparition of a little girl, whose identity remains unknown.
• Other manifestations such as lights flickering, alarms sounding, and cold spots.
• Numerous voices from beyond conjured during a séance at the mansion.

History of the Grant-Humphreys Mansion

In the quiet farmlands of Alabama in 1848, James Benton Grant was born into a world of privilege that would soon vanish in the smoke of the Civil War. His family’s plantation fell into economic hardship after the war, forcing James to carve out his own future. Drawn to science and industry, he traveled to Germany in the 1870s to study mining at the renowned Freiberg Mining Academy, an education that would shape the rest of his life.

In 1877, Grant moved west to the booming mining town of Leadville, Colorado, where fortunes were being made in silver. There, he founded the Omaha and Grant Smelting Company, a business that would make him one of the most successful industrialists in the West. Four years later, he married Mary Matteson Goodell, granddaughter of Illinois governor Joel Matteson.

By 1882, the couple had relocated to Denver, where Grant moved his company headquarters and began his ascent into state politics. That same year, he was elected Colorado’s third governor, serving from 1883 to 1885. 

The Grants became prominent social figures in Denver’s elite circles, hosting lavish dinners, teas, and dances in their elegant mansion. Their home was a center of culture and conversation, and they’d likely be ecstatic to see the grand gatherings held there today.

After the death of James Grant

After James Grant’s death in 1911, Mary sold the mansion in 1917 to another wealthy entrepreneur, Albert E. Humphreys, and his wife, Alice Boyd Humphreys. Born in 1860 in the South, Albert was a daring businessman who made and lost two fortunes in lumber and mining before striking gold again, so to speak, with speculative oil ventures in Oklahoma, Wyoming, and Texas.

The Humphreys’ son, Ira Boyd, and his wife, Lucille, also lived in the mansion. Ira was a gifted inventor and early aviator who received an engineering award for creating the Humphreys spiral concentrator, an innovative device that revolutionized ore processing during World War II.

Death In and Around the Mansion

But the grand home also has its share of tragedy. Albert E. Humphreys died in a mysterious shooting accident on the mansion’s third floor. For some, the event still stirs whispers of foul play.

Just steps away from the mansion lies Cheesman Park, built over the old Mount Prospect Graveyard, later renamed City Cemetery. When the city decided to turn the burial ground into a park in 1893, hundreds of bodies were never properly moved. The botched exhumations led to graves being desecrated and remains scattered across the site.

To this day, an estimated 2,000 bodies still rest beneath the park’s grassy lawns, lending an eerie stillness to the beautiful grounds surrounding the Grant-Humphreys Mansion. Many believe that the echoes of the past still linger there, both inside the mansion’s ornate halls and beneath the soil of Cheesman Park itself.

Hauntings of the Grant-Humphreys Mansion

When the nearby City Cemetery was relocated in the late 19th century, not every body made the move. Bones were left behind, graves unearthed, and spirits — angry and displaced — were set loose. Locals whisper that those spirits drifted through Denver’s soil until they found a new resting place inside the mansion’s walls.

Paranormal experts say at least five ghosts now call the Grant-Humphreys Mansion home. Chief among them is Albert E. Humphreys, the oil magnate who met a violent end in 1927, killed by a gunshot wound under suspicious circumstances.

Was it an accident? A suicide? Or something darker? No one knows for sure. But those who’ve encountered Albert’s ghost say he still roams the mansion, seeking someone to tell his side of the story, only to drive them away in terror.

He isn’t alone. Visitors have reported the apparition of a small girl standing silently in doorways, her expression vacant, her eyes reflecting nothing but shadow. She vanishes the moment you blink.

Then there are the cold spots that drift like unseen figures, the flickering lights, and fire alarms that wail in the dead of night without cause. Many believe these disturbances belong to spirits from the old cemetery, unclaimed souls who found sanctuary within the mansion’s decaying grandeur.

In the 1970s, Denver’s KNUS radio station held a séance inside the house as part of a Halloween broadcast. But what began as entertainment became something else entirely. Witnesses claimed to hear multiple voices: some pleading for release, others growling threats from beyond the grave. 

That night, the station’s recording equipment captured a chilling whisper. Two simple words that strike fear in the heart of anyone who has ever heard them: “Still here.”

Haunted Denver

The hauntings of the Grant-Humphreys Mansion create a frighteningly fun chapter in the canon of Denver ghost stories. But this is only one of the many haunted places in Colorado’s capital.

Ready to discover authentic hauntings in the Mile High City in person? Book your Colorado ghost tour with Denver Terrors today and prepare for a fun and spooky adventure! 

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Sources:

• https://www.historycolorado.org/ghm
• https://www.hauntworld.com/real-haunted-house-in-denver-colorado-grant-humphreys-mansion-in-denver-colorado
• https://www.historycolorado.org/haunting-grant-humphreys
• https://hauntedhouses.com/colorado/grant-humphreys-mansion-2/