In 1871, General Palmer & Associates were listed on the deed as owners, until they sold it to the city of Manitou Springs in 1882. In 1895, Father Jean Baptiste Francolon bought the land, and ordered construction to begin on his new home for himself and his ailing mother. The stories around the Father are strange by themselves, including that no one knows exactly how long he served the parish, and exactly how long he stayed in Manitou. The last document involving the Father, was dated Dec 1898. It has been rumored that the Father left Manitou Springs under distressing circumstances to return to France. Father Francolon died in New York City on the 4th of December, 1922. His mother who had previously returned to France around 1900 died shortly after her arrival.
As for the building itself, there were never any architechtural plans drawn up for the building, Father Francolon and Angus Gillis would sit at the table in the Gillis household until the wee hours of the morning, explaining to the builders exactly what each room should look like. They felt that a plan written on paper would not give the proper examples of the styles that the Father wanted in his house.
Translated, Miramont means ,"Look at the mountain", and that is eactly what it does. It is a four level house covering 14,000 square feet, has 8 fireplaces, and boasted both electricity and running water. An addition was put onto the house sometime after 1896, but records seem to have been misplaced as no one can confirm the actual date of the addition. The new addition included a chapel, the Grand Staircase, and the solarium rooms. (A solarium was a room that was mainly made of windows to allow lots of light to flow in. There were always lots of plants and it resmebled a greenhouse quite a bit. They were used as "health" rooms.) One of the Solarium rooms in Miramont Castle was also used as a surgery ward by the Sisters of Mercy, but we will get to that later.
The Sisters of Mercy were operating in Manitou Springs in another building that was donated to them by Father Francolon called Montcalme. In 1904, a fire destroyed the boiler room in Moncalme, so the Sisters then purchased a very vacant Miramont Castle (Father Francolon had already returned to France). They renamed the building Montecalme and announced it was to be used as the new sanitarium (tuberculosis was very high in the US and people from all over the country would come to Colorado known for its high recovery rate due to the altitude and sunny weather) The Sisters of Mercy ran the Sanitarium until 1928 until financial difficulties caused them to close it. Two Sisters remained in the castle, maintaining Montecalme for Sisters visiting from other parishes.
In 1946, after the war, hard times were found everywhere, including Montecalme. Alex Gardiner purchased Montecalme in 1946, only to sell it two months after he purchased it to Mrs. Cora Wood. She then restored the name back to Miramont Castle. In the following twenty-two years the castle changed owners nine times. It was turned into apartments and suffered a fire in the upper levels in 1972 causing well over $10,000.00 worth of damage.
The Manitou Springs Historical Society bought the castle in 1976 for $60,000.00. Not a bad price for the size of the castle and the time frame it was in. Unfortuneatly, the MSHS didn't have $60,000.00 sitting in a bank account. The historical society was given a grant by the Colorado Centennial-Bicentennial Committee that gave them an enormous boost in the right direction. Through many years of donations of time and money, the castle has been restored back to its former self with all of its splendor.
The castle is now a museum and serves tea during the summertime. It is open to the general public, and I believe admission is still $4.00. If you are in the Colorado Springs/Manitou Springs area, I would highly recommend taking the tour. Even if you don't see the spirits that linger in the doorways, you can most certainly feel them. If you would like more information on Miramont Castle, please feel free to e-mail me here.
There is a section of the museum that houses the remains of the Jackson house . It is in this area and the rest of the floor which happen to be the strongest "hot spot" of the museum.
The Jackson house display is located on the top floor of the museum. Visiters and employees alike have seen the apparitions. I don't know who they are supposed to be, or why they are there, but I have seen them myself out of the corner of my eye, when no one else was on the floor. My husband has also seen them.
While we know that there are paranormal activities in the Museum, we don't believe, and have never heard, that these apparitions mean any harm.
It wasn't until about a week ago that weird things started happening there. Some time ago, my husband had an incident with one of the tombstones that involoved loud hissing coming from one of the headstones. We decided to go back and check it out. We got there after dark, and mind you, we weren't breaking any laws.
We didn't find the headstone that time, but dedided that since we were there, we might as well have a look around. Throughout the evening nothing big happened. We just walked around and took some photographs in various places.
When we got to the top of the hill that has the urn mausoleum, there were a couple of gusts of unusually warm air. I decided to take a picture and then we had to leave, due to the cemetery closing hours.
It wasn't until we got the pictures developed that we realized we were not alone on top of that hill. I still have the picture to prove it, as it was just about a weeks ago that it was taken. I will upload it onto this site when I have a chance to get it scanned.
A few days later, we went back to the cemetery, during the day, to see if there was anything that could have possibly made my picture come out the way it did (i.e. other objects in the background). We went to the hill, and did not find anything that could have reflected into the photograph, so we continued to walk around the cemetery.
We found the headstone that had hissed at my husband, and some unusual material tucked underneath it. I am going to have it analyzed to see what it is. While we were walking around the cemetery, we kept seeing people, where no one was bef
