There are haunted cemeteries where the young couples go when they want to be alone and just a little bit frightened so they can fall into each other’s arms for comfort.  There are cemeteries where young friends sneak through the gates on Halloween night and dare each other to run across the graves because they’re too old to trick or treat and too young to stop the fun.  Bingham Hill Cemetery may very well be one of those places, but that doesn’t mean it’s not haunted...

When I lived near Bingham Hill, it seemed as if only a handful of people knew it existed, but those who knew of the cemetery had also heard that the inhabitants, on occasion, make nightly appearances. The cemetery has since been mentioned in a few ghost story collections and Colorado resident Rose L. Brinks, whose kitchen window faced the cemetery for many years, eventually researched the cemetery’s seventy eight inhabitants and published her findings. This must have required a mind-boggling amount of research considering many of the graves do not list dates of birth or death. Through her research, Brinks uncovered more than one heart-wrenching tale of life on the Colorado prairies--there is a large number of children buried in the Bingham Hill Cemetery, which is understandable considering the harsh conditions in the 1800s.

Bingham Hill Cemetery is located in Laporte, Colorado, near the Wyoming border. The Laporte area was well-traveled by French-Canadian trappers who gave the town its name in the mid 19^th century.  By 1862, the town had grown large enough to warrant its own post office. Camp Collins was soon established nearby as a U.S. Army outpost with soldiers assigned to protect stage coaches and wagon trains moving west. When a flood wiped out the outpost, the soldiers moved to an area further east and established Fort Collins, which is now a popular college town. Laporte, however, continues to offer its services to travelers to this day. With a history like that it’s easy to imagine the dramas and disasters that might leave a spirit bound to this earth.

The Bingham Hill Cemetery and its seventy eight graves has been cleaned up and restored as much as possible with the help of Rose Brinks. The disruptions from the restoration might have also brought an increase in paranormal activity in the area and who’s to say when such things settle back down for a spirit who has no sense of time and place? When my children were in high school, they reported seeing lights at the cemetery. Of course, at the time, I was more focused on discovering what they were doing at the cemetery in the first place, but it did pique my curiosity!

Night visitors to the Bingham Hill Cemetery have reported seeing lights flicker among the gravestones. There has also been more than one sighting of a well-dressed woman walking the grounds. She is apparently wearing a leather dress, which would be the logical choice of a woman married to a trapper. Some say they were pushed by unseen hands, others that they’ve heard the sounds of crying. And yet, there are many who say it is all based on urban legends, that there are no ghosts at the Bingham Hill Cemetery. But those who have been there, those who have seen and heard the strange sounds in the dark would never say such a thing.

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