[2002-02-11] GHOSTLY GOINGS-ON by Pam North Ghost stories seem to abound in the Central City/Black Hawk area. Just when it seems that most of them have been heard, conversations here and there with local residents yield tantalizing new ones. A Black Hawk couple (they will be called George and Martha in this article) were blissfully unaware of the ghostly inhabitant in the home they purchased in 1998. One morning, Martha's 17-year-old daughter told of awakening in the night and seeing a little girl sitting on the floor by the window, playing happily by herself. Martha's daughter had been sleeping in a small upstairs room that was one of the remaining original portions of the house, which had been expanded and remodeled over the years. George and Martha happened to recount the odd story to a friend of theirs who had once stayed with them and slept in the same room that the daughter later had occupied. The man somewhat hesitantly confided to them that he had had a similar experience of his own. Not wishing to alarm the family (or stir up their doubts about his sanity), he had said nothing, but he, too, had waked from sleep to see a little girl contentedly sitting in a nearby chair. George and Martha were forced to give even more credence to the stange happenings when a couple visited them shortly thereafter. The woman stopped immediately inside the door of the house, saying, "There's a spirit here." She explained that she had a gift for sensing presences; her grandmother had even told her that she had this sensitivity. At the end of the couple's stay, the woman, on her way to their car, turned and saw the figure of a child at the window of the upper bedroom. The woman described her as a little girl about five years old, with a sweet, friendly and playful disposition, and she was wearing a yellow dress with a white pinafore. The woman also said she felt the occurrence of a past fire. Afterward, George and Martha, without divulging what the woman had related, separately asked both Martha's daughter and their friend to describe the clothing worn by the little girl they had seen. Both corroborated the yellow dress/white pinafore attire. Later, when George was doing some digging out behind the house to facilitate drainage, he noticed an area about two feet by five feet where the ground was soft. Investigating, he dug up several pieces of burned wood, similar to the lathing found in old homes. He surmises that there was, perhaps, a fire at the rear of the home sometime in the far past. George and Martha still have had no personal encounter with their ghost, although they have noticed that their cats sometimes watch something invisible, turning their heads to follow the path taken by some unseen presence. George also tells a story about when he briefly officed in a small house on Lawrence Street. He was asked by someone familiar with the structure if George had ever seen the ghostly male figure who sometimes appeared in the kitchen there. Apparently a man had died in that kitchen long ago, and was known to revisit the scene occasionally. George never saw the ghost, and the kitchen was remodeled, seemingly ending the visits by the male spirit. While Black Hawk and Central City seem to be the main focus for ghostly activity, a couple out in north Gilpin County occasionally have seen an ethereal male figure standing in the foundation of what was once an old cabin. The ghost only appears on snowy nights, and was glimpsed again in recent months. One ghost story always leads to another, and next week another local resident tells about several experiences with the unseen world.