St Elmo

St Elmo is a ghost town in Colorado. The discovery of gold and silver in 1880 brought many people to the area. One of those people was Anna Stark and her children, Annabelle, Roy and Tony. The Stark family owned the Home Comfort Hotel.

When the gold and silver mines began to dry up, people began to leave the town. Soon the only people left were the Stark family.

In 1934, Roy Stark passed away and his mother, Anna, died a short time later. The only residents left were Annabelle and Tony who lived in the crumbling ghost town. Their minds and sanity began to crumble as well. They lived without indoor plumbing or electricity, rarely bathing or changing clothes. They neglected the old hotel, letting the place pile with trash and discarded items. To the residents of the area, Annabelle was known as “Dirty Annie”. She would often be seen in filthy clothing and with her hair in a tangled mess.

Annabelle died in 1960, and since then, her ghost has been seen wandering through the old ghost town. Some children were playing in a room of the hotel, when suddenly all the doors in the room slammed shut and the temperature dropped nearly 20 degrees. The terrified children ran outside and refused to ever play in the hotel again.

Workmen who were cleaning the hotel put away their tools and cleaning supplies, only to find them in the middle of the floor when they returned the next day. After this continued to occur, they started placing the items in a padlocked closet, but still they would be in the middle of the floor when they came back.

On another occasion, a visitor saw a woman in a white dress standing in the second story window of the old hotel. The woman nodded to him, then turned away and vanished. When he searched the building, he found it was totally empty.

The legend of Annabelle’s ghost lives on and the residents of St. Elmo believe that she continues to protect her property from vandals or trespassers.