The Dead Below: The Haunting of Denver Botanic Garden
The Dead Below: The Haunting of Denver Botanic Garden (Investigating the Haunted)
By Richard Estep
The Sexton’s musings (spoilers are likely):
Photo: Little Hiccups
This location is a fascinating one for me. Many find peace and tranquility in places with nature and life abound. Places like gardens and parks. The same can be said for cemeteries, also places of peace and rest, a place where the dead are remembered. This location combines the two. Unfortunately the place of rest, due to the mistreatment of the departed, is not all that peaceful. Luckily, if one were to have to remain here in unrest after death, this is a beautiful place to be. An interesting difference between this location and the locations from previous books is that this is a local haunted location for Richard. This allowed for the investigation to be spread out over a longer period of time and with a few different team members on different nights/days/years.
Boettcher Memorial Tropical Conservatory
Photo: Modern in Denver
Inside the Boettcher Conservatory - Just WOW!
Photo: Denver Botanic Gardens on X
The first two chapters outline a brief history of the cemeteries/park/garden as well as Waring House which sits on the property as well. Some of the details pertaining to the house are crazy. The third, fourth and part of the fifth chapters are the re-accounting of experiences Paula Vanderbilt (visitor), Rose Glenn (Richard’s boss’s sister-in-law and visitor to the gardens), Emily Kline (employee) and Rose Garcia (employee) have had while visiting and working there. The rest of chapter five starts the team’s investigation.
Waring House
Photo: Denver Botanic Gardens on Facebook
Chapters five sees both the first and second night of the investigation with the second night concluding in chapter six with a really interesting set of results.
The second part of the investigation takes place over a year later. Richard takes full responsibility for the delay in the completion of the investigation. There are some familiar faces involved in this part including Robbin, Jill and Stephen. A lot happens in this second half and is definitely worth reading about. What an interesting location.
More current photo of Waring House - It’s absolutely beautiful both inside an out
Photo: Denver Botanic Gardens
This book is all focused on the history and Richard’s investigation of the location. I rather enjoyed this. While I think it’s interesting to hear about other investigative groups experiences (TV shows), which are included in many of the other books, I think that the focus of this book was a nice departure from that (not that the other is bad, it’s just different).
Photo: Denver Botanic Gardens on Instagram
Closing thoughts:
First let me say that the first thing that came to my mind when I read the description for this book on Amazon was indeed the film “Poltergeist”. If you know that movie how can it not spring to mind?! (I was glad that Richard had the same thought) The difference between the two stories are that one is fiction and the other is all too real. It’s heart breaking to think that, for the all mighty dollar, people would disrespect the departed in this way. Leaving them to be forgotten (in multiple ways). It comes as no surprise to me that there would be entities desperate to communicate within the confines of this location. Luckily it became a place of peace and beauty so I suppose they could have done worse (had an office complex or shopping mall built over them). A good rule of thumb is to simply be respectful (to both the living [as much as you can, the living don’t always make it easy] and the dead).
