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Titanic survivor Molly Brown is one of Colorado’s few celebrities. Her historic home holds tours, where she is said to make ghostly appearances.

NOT ALL HAUNTED SPACES HAVE THEIR STORIES soaked in gore, violence, and death. The Molly Brown House Museum, which is possibly haunted by its namesake, provides a good example of this.

Margaret “Molly” Brown did many notable things in her life—the most famous of which was surviving the sinking of RMS Titanic in 1912. Arguably one of Colorado’s most beloved celebrities, she left her mark on the Mile High City in many ways. Better known for her unofficial nickname, “The Unsinkable Molly Brown,” she inspired both a musical and later a film starting Debbie Reynolds in the ’60s. According to one of the Molly Brown House Museum’s tour guides, Catherine Trumpis, the fiery and passionate woman never went by Molly in her lifetime, just Margaret or Maggie. Impressions she left on the world go beyond her sense of spirit, her activism, and the tragedy of the Titanic. Her house, now a historic landmark and museum, may hold her ghost as well.

She was born Margaret Tobin in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1867. Her family was very poor, and Margaret dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help care for her five brothers and sisters. During my tour of the Molly Brown House Museum on September 18, 2014, Trumpis said that Margaret made her way to Leadville, Colorado, hoping to find a husband after receiving a letter from her brother Daniel, who lived there and alluded to her impending future as a spinster. She would later wed James Joseph “J.J.” Brown in 1886. Margaret was 19 when they were married, and J.J. was 32. They had two children while living in Leadville, Lawrence and Catherine.

Although they married poor, J.J. would later help create a technique to shore up mine walls. This enabled his mining venture, Ibex Mining Company, to hit what was the largest gold strike at the time in Colorado, the Little Johnny Mine. As a reward, he was given shares of company stock, and the Browns bought and moved into their home at 1340 Pennsylvania St. in Denver 1894 after coming into this fortune. They purchased the house for $30,000, the equivalent today of about $833,300. Unlike many Victorian homes of the period, their house had electricity, a phone, three central heating units, and indoor plumbing.

Once the Browns had settled into their home in Capitol Hill, Margaret started throwing parties to take part in the higher society that Denver offered. Allegedly, J.J. did not approve of these parties and would spend all his time during them in his study smoking cigars. This leads to the first item on the list of possible hauntings in the house: the lingering smell of cigars. Although no one has been allowed to smoke in any area of the house for several years, guests of the museum’s daily tours have noticed the odor of cigars, specifically on the second floor where J.J.’s study was. It should also be noted that while J.J. and Margaret’s mother, Johanna Collins Tobin, enjoyed smoking, Margaret herself did not, saying it smoked up the house and that she did not like the smell. In 1910 she converted J.J.’s smoking parlor where he entertained guests into a library.

A big reason Margaret was able to convert J.J.’s parlor was because the couple had separated in 1909. The couple never formally divorced due to their religion, but they never reconciled either. Trumpis said that their relationship may have crumbled due to Margaret’s activism for miner’s rights, to which J.J., who served as a mining official, was in direct opposition. While Margaret’s campaigns may have caused some of their marital issues, Trumpis also mentioned that J.J. was frequently seen with other women.

Once Margaret had separated from J.J. she began to travel the world. Aside from her house on Pennsylvania Street in Denver, she had homes in Lakewood, Colorado, and Newport, Rhode Island, and an apartment in New York City. She was in Cairo, Egypt, with her daughter during one of her many trips abroad when she received a telegram from her son, Larry, saying her first grandchild was very ill. She decided to head back to the United States on the first vessel on which she could obtain passage: the Titanic.

Most know the background of the sinking of the Titanic, and some even know Margaret’s role aboard it, as a result of James Cameron’s 1997 film, in which actress Kathy Bates played this chapter’s heroine. When Margaret discovered the chaos above deck while the ship was sinking on April 14, 1912, she immediately took control. She began ushering people onto lifeboats and, according to Trumpis, did not get on one herself until forced by some of the ship’s crewmen. She was put onto lifeboat six, which was filled with 24 passengers, less than half of its 65-person capacity. Twenty-one of the lifeboat’s passengers were women and the other three were men. Among those men was the one who actually steered the Titanic into the fatal iceberg, Quartermaster Robert Hichens. According to Trumpis, originally there were only two men aboard the lifeboat, but a third was added because Hichens refused to do anything.

Some accounts say that as people in the lifeboats watched the Titanic crack and finally sink, several passengers jumped from the sinking ship into the frozen waters below. Where accounts differ is whether or not Margaret had the men rowing her lifeboat go to help those people. Other lifeboats did not go to the aid of the people in the water because they feared the sinking Titanic would pull the smaller vessels under with it. While there is no record of whether Margaret was able to save any people in the water, many attribute the “unsinkable” part of her nickname to her brave attempt. Once the ship had sunk and the survivors were picked up by RMS Carpathia, Margaret was put in charge of the survivors’ committee on the trip back to New York. She was picked for several reasons: People were able to relate to her spiritually as a Catholic in their time of grief; she was fluent in English, German, Russian, and French; and, finally, she was skilled at fundraising. In fact, she was able to raise $10,000 before the survivors disembarked in New York. Upon her return to New York, reporters asked why she did not sink with the Titanic, and Margaret is reported to have answered, “Hell, I’m unsinkable.” The rest, as they say, is history.

The library in the Molly Brown House was used more frequently by Brown’s husband, who favored cigars. Allegedly, the smell of cigars can be detected within the house even though smoking has not been allowed for some time.

Margaret’s amazing story continues from there. She volunteered as a nurse with the Red Cross in 1917 during World War I, which earned her a French Legion of Honor medal. One of the other notable things that she did in her life was to help create a juvenile court system in Colorado. She also ran for a seat in the senate three times, all before women had the right to vote, and she was one of the first women to do so, with a campaign that promoted domestic rights for women and children. She also acted on the stage in London and Paris.

During tours of the Molly Brown House Museum, guests can walk through almost the entire home, with the exception of the third floor, where she used to throw parties. Several of the hauntings, though, actually occur on the second floor of the house, including the aforementioned cigar smoke smell from J.J.’s study. Another common episode involves a rocking chair that sits in what used to be Margaret’s room, which several people claim to have seen rocking back and forth of its own accord. Daily tours take place approximately every 30 minutes during the museum’s operating hours. The museum also hosts special exhibits pertaining to Margaret’s history, as well as special Halloween tours—called Victorian Horrors—and other holiday events. Guests of tours have also claimed to see apparitions that looked exactly like portraits of Margaret that are found throughout the house. One guest even claims that the ghost of Margaret kindly, albeit silently, pointed her in the direction of the bathroom.

“Mrs. Margaret Tobin Brown lived in this house during the Victorian era, which was a time when people were obsessed with spiritualism,” said Museum Director Andrea Malcomb. She also talked about some of the things Victorian-era people would do to attract ghosts, such as conducting séances, consulting with psychics, and using Ouija boards. She added that, while the museum prefers to concentrate on what Margaret Brown did during her lifetime, psychics have conducted their own investigations there.

“There have been independent psychics who have visited the museum who claim that Mrs. Brown’s mother, Johanna Tobin, roams the second floor, that J.J. smokes cigars in the back hallway, and that a maid is dusting the library shelves,” Malcomb said.

After Margaret’s death in 1932, the house was sold for $5,000 (approximately $86,200 today). During the time of the Great Depression, people in the city were selling houses for anything they could get, according to Trumpis. The house would later change hands several times, even becoming a home for wayward girls in the 1960s. In the early ’70s, the city looked at demolishing the house in favor of something new and more urban. This is when the idea of Colorado’s Landmark Preservation was born. The organization Historic Denver was created and purchased the home in 1970, making it the organization’s flagship property. The Molly Brown House Museum would become the first home to gain landmark status (ordinance number 113, March 30, 1971).

When the home was first purchased in 1970 for use as a museum, none of the Browns’ original belongings were still in it, and the girls home had updated the kitchen to 1960s standards. Fortunately, Margaret not only loved to throw parties, but she also loved to take pictures of them to share with friends who could not make it. Trumpis said the museum now has several pieces of the Browns’ original furniture thanks to the curators’ use of these photos. Trumpis also mentioned that none of the items in the house are younger than 1910; she estimated that the curators were able to obtain 35%–40% of the Browns’ original belongings that were in the house.

In the absence of violence, the Molly Brown House Museum has acquired the ghost of a fiery, strong woman, and maybe the occasional sign of disapproval from her husband. But her presence does beg the question of what makes her stay. Maybe she feels as if her work of fighting for the rights of others is not yet over. More than likely, of course, we will never know.