Dozens of intruders gathered in the former children’s nursery of the Molly Brown House Museum on Friday the 13th, held hands and invited spirits of the dead to haunt them.

At times festive and at others, solemn and downright chilling, the séance unmasked a sarcastic spirit by the name of Pedro, who confided that he was partial to sourdough bread. 

“But how do you feel about Wonder Bread?” asked Cameron Allred, and then interpreted a low and Exorcist-like “hard no!”  

The mystery of Pedro the kitchen help persists. Is he an unsettled spirit who was murdered and missing? A stowaway on the Titanic who found his way to Denver?

Molly Brown House Museum Director Andrea Malcomb said that she knows the names of most of the servants who worked in the home, but city directories and census records show that “no one from Mrs. Brown’s time was named Pedro.” 

Allred was one of a group skeptics and believers who paid to join a medium-led séance on the third and rickety top floor of the 135 year-old home where the Brown’s children and house servants slept. 

The experience was a special late-night offering from the the historic home as part of its annual Victorian Horrors line-up for the Halloween season. 

Some in the group were convinced that the voices they heard were spirits and others not so much — but there were more gasps and shivers than eye rolls.

Spirit Box

Pedro was one of seven voices of unseen energy that interrupted the white noise radio frequencies of a ghost-hunting contraption called a Phasma or Spirit Box.

The box, Devon McKinney of Otherworld Paranormal said, is merely a tool to communicate. 

“That’s all séances are. We are trying everything we can to talk to somebody who might be passed on,” she said. 

As the minutes crept toward midnight, Pedro the Wonder Bread–hating kitchen worker became a recurring joke, but not everyone was laughing.  

His Exorcist voice was silly enough to be fake but garbled enough to make one, well, wonder. 

Twice, a woman with a sensitive sixth sense said she felt something brush the back of her neck.  

Another woman heard voices the other 29 séance participants did not. She reported the spirits told her that they didn’t have a sense of time, so they didn’t know how long they’d been in the house, and “they (the spirits) don’t want to tell us why, but they’re here for a reason,” she translated, and the room got increasingly uncomfortable.  

There was talk of something in the basement, a phantom cat and a little girl who played upstairs.  

Adriana Lopez’ mama told her not to come. 

Shrugged Lopez, “I’m a Catholic. Yet, here I am.”  

Guinea pig ghost communicator

Rebecca Reyes bravely volunteered to connect with the spirits. She wore a burgundy blindfold and strapped on a pair of noise-canceling headphones in preparation for a conversation. Because the headphones blocked out questions, which were asked by various members of the group, she could only hear the spirits.

“How many are there of you?” one person asked.

Reyes did not hear the question, but repeated the answer she heard.  

“Seven.”  

It may have been a so-what moment, except that this was the second time the voices had acknowledged that there were seven of them in the room, a fact that wowed the faithful.

“I heard their words loud and clear,” she said later.  

Otherworld Paranormal

The séance was hosted by a two-woman team called Otherworld Paranormal, which is very busy this time of year connecting the living with the dead. Though she is a presenter and operates the ghost-hunting equipment, McKinney is not convinced it’s the voices of the dead she hears.  

Her partner, Andrea Maday, grew up in a 200 year-old house in Minnesota, where a man took his life before her family moved in.

Unlike McKinney, she is certain that ghosts exist because “there are only so many times you can wake up with someone standing over your bed.”

Fortune tellers and talking boards

Like her 7,500 square-foot house, Molly Brown’s life was unpredictable. She was never known as Molly when she was alive.  

Margaret “Maggie” Tobin Brown was born in Hannibal, Missouri and, at the age of 18, relocated to Leadville, Colorado with her brother, Daniel. It was in Leadville that she met a mining engineer named James Joseph “J.J.” Brown, fell in love and married him. She did this despite the fact that he was not wealthy. 

But J.J. Brown literally struck gold. 

The couple became millionaires after Brown discovered the largest gold vein in North America at the time and in 1894, the two decided to move north to join Denver’s high society. They bought the home with three stories and a basement at 1340 Pennsylvania Ave. (now Street).  

Inside the historic building today are Brown’s beloved silver-plated punch bowl, the original furnished bedrooms, the socialite’s dining room table laid out with her china, period clothing and what is one of the first Ouija Boards, made in 1891. 

Every year, stone lions perched on the front columns of the Queen Anne house keep watch over hundreds of visitors, but Halloween season is special. And Denver’s famous Titanic survivor and suffragette Brown only adds to the spookiness because she was a believer. 

At the turn of the century, ghouls were cool. 

Brown was fascinated with the unknown. She sought out fortune tellers and summoned the dead via “talking boards,” which were created as part of the spiritualism movement of the time. Talking boards offered ways for families to connect with their dead loved ones lost in the Civil War.  

Talking boards were later named and marketed as a “Oiuja Board” by a medium named Helen Peters Nosworthy, who, coincidentally, lived just down the street from the Browns. 

A little known fact about Margaret Brown and relayed by museum staff is that she carried a tiny mummy talisman in her pocket onto the Titanic, which she likely acquired in Egypt.  

After Mrs. Brown’s incredible survival, she told curious reporters about an Egyptian palm-reader she visited who foresaw the disaster, warning of “water, water, water” and predicted a sea of bodies surrounding a sinking ship. 

Ghosts float 

The Molly Brown House harbors its own secrets and spirits. 

A nephew of Brown’s named Frank died in the house, as did her mother, Johanna Tobin, and, later, several renters.  

Visitors have reported sights of Johanna gazing out of an upstairs window, felt cold spots  in Margaret Brown’s room, smelled whiffs of J.J. Brown’s pipe and cigar, and some ask about the cat they saw in the kitchen, except “we don’t have a cat,” said Malcomb, the museum director.  

During Friday’s séance, Otherworld’s McKinney placed a sentry device on the stairs leading to the séance room called a Rem pod ($189.99 on Amazon) — a ghost investigator tool designed to monitor invisible energy through changes in room temperature. It registered a tone as the ritual went underway, beaming a bright green light, which lit up the hallway. The fact that it may have recorded a ghost entering the space freaked out everyone, including skeptics. 

Just before midnight, Reyes concentrated, eyes closed, in her blindfold and headphones as dead people answered questions from the audience.  

“Spirit, were you a drinker?”  

“Not that much.”  

“Do you feel safe tonight?”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel about Wonder Bread?”  

Silence.  

Maybe someone should have asked if the guests had worn out their welcome.

At the end of the night, McKinney sensed that the spirits wanted their house back.

“Say good night to the spirits, everyone!” she instructed the group. 

“Good night!” they cheered. 

The quick response from Reyes?

“They say ‘GO, already’!”

No one had to be told twice.