Revisiting Denver's "Changeling" House

Research News

The Changeling

ghosts

haunted houses

Building History

Russell Hunter

Last week, I was asked to be a guest on Mile Hi Radio's "Good Living By Design" to talk about the Denver house that inspired the 1980 horror film The Changeling (listen to the interview, which begins at the 46:00 mark, here). For the full, terrifying story of the house that once stood at 1739 East 13th Avenue, check out our two blogs from October 2013:

Revisiting the history of this home made me think about our brand-new Denver Building History Tutorial created by our own Bruce Hanson. With the tutorial, you can easily discover how old a home is, who built it, and who lived there. These are questions building historians AND ghost hunters alike ask when they do research.

1899

Willits farm map

Another tool that came to my attention recently is the Willits Farm Map, which shows land ownership in 1899 in Weld, Boulder, Arapahoe, and Jefferson counties. This map came in handy when researching The Changeling house history. Using the map, I discovered that the home's owner, Henry Treat Rogers, did in fact own farmland in southeast Denver. The author of The Changeling, Russell Hunter, claimed that the original owners of the "Changeling" house secretly buried their deceased son in an unmarked grave on their farm in southeast Denver.

A card from our digitized Western History Subject Index

Scared yet? Delve into more accounts of Denver ghosts and haunted houses by first consulting our Western History Subject Index. Type in the topic of your choice and you'll be directed to citations for newspapers, local histories, biographical works, newsletters and journals. We typed in "haunted houses" and were directed to citations for newspaper articles from as early as 1900!