Molly Brown haunting Denver home

With Halloween nigh, it's time for my annual column on haunted houses, eerie places and other things that we mere mortals cannot easily explain.

We'll look at the home of the Titanic's legendary heroine, plus one of America's most "spirited" cemeteries and ... a haunted piano?

Q. When I was a young girl (I won't tell you how long ago it was), I went to see "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" on Broadway. I know that she died a long time ago, but now I heard a brief piece on the local radio station that she's haunting her old home. Do you know anything about this?

A. Yes. Molly Brown -- her real name was Margaret Tobin Brown, a child of Irish immigrants -- amassed a fortune in Colorado silver mines in the late 1800s and moved to Denver in 1894 with her husband. But she really didn't become famous until the spring of 1912, when she was credited with saving dozens of lives as the Titanic sank into the murky abyss of the Atlantic Ocean.

Though Molly Brown survived the Titanic's sinking, she seemingly can't "row away" from her old home in Denver. The handsome house on Pennsylvania Street in the upscale Capitol Hill section of town is said to be haunted by both Molly and her husband, Joseph.

Many visitors to the house, which is now a museum, have complained about the smell of cigar smoke in both the attic and the basement. The facility has a strict nonsmoking policy, but those were two of Joseph's favorite areas to "light up."

Molly, meantime, is reportedly still working hard to care for strangers, even though she might be in a strange sort of place herself. Older visitors to the home often say how they were helped up the stairs by an "invisible hand," while younger ones marvel at how they've looked down at their shoes and watched as their untied laces were put magically back into a pretty bow.

Several visitors to the house also claim that they've seen an apparition of Molly darting around corners, but no verifiable videotape or other scientific evidence has been submitted to support those claims.

Q. I've heard that Graceland Cemetery in Chicago is one of the most haunted parcels of land in the United States. What do you know about it?

A. The 150-year-old cemetery in northern Chicago is indeed said to be haunted by a variety of spirits, as well as being the site of many other strange events.

Perhaps the cemetery's most lavish monument is the 30-foot-long, 12-foot-high tomb of millionaire Ludwig Wolff. Countless visitors have reported seeing a green-eyed ghoul who likes to howl at the moon while patrolling the front of the vault, which is built into a hillside.

Not far away, an eerie statue of a menacing hooded figure of death marks the grave of hotelier Dexter Graves. The statue was originally black, but the elements have turned it almost all green through the years -- except for the black face that has been protected by the sculpted hood. Legend has it that peering into the face will give the viewer a glimpse of his or her own upcoming demise.

And then there's the case of little Inez Clarke, who was struck by lightning and killed at the tender age of 6 more than 100 years ago. Her parents commissioned a life-size statue of the girl to mark her grave and also had a glass box made to cover it in order to protect it from bad weather.

Inez, though, is apparently still afraid of the lightning: Several guards have reported through the years that the statue literally disappears during thunderstorms and then reappears when the clouds go away.

Q. I believe in haunted houses. But is it true that a home's furniture can be haunted too?

A. Yes, if you believe what many experts on the paranormal have to say.

One of the best examples is the case of William Mudd Jordan, a much-beloved local doctor who practiced for decades in Birmingham, Ala. Dr. Jordan purchased a Steinway piano about a century ago for his children and also wanted to learn to play it himself. But being a very busy man (or perhaps just "musically challenged"), he was only able to learn a pair of songs.

The doctor died in 1951, but the Steinway stayed in the family. It eventually made its way into the hands of his great-grandson, another respected doctor, who lived about 5 miles away.

Nearly two decades came and went without incident, but then his great-grandson and neighbors alike started to complain about late-night music coming from ghostly hands at the old piano. The keys tinkled, but there was no one on the bench.

The songs were "Maple Leaf Rag" and "Stars and Stripes Forever" -- the only two tunes that Dr. Jordan learned before he passed away.

© 2007, Cowles Syndicate Inc.