This week Kai and her dad Matt investigate one of the most important and most extraordinary neighborhoods in Denver history — and one that feels personal. Five Points was known as the Harlem of the West from the 1920s through the 1950s.
During a time in America when segregation kept Black artists and residents out of most Denver venues and hotels, Five Points was a place that belonged to the community. A place where people could live, create, and celebrate freely. And at the center of it all stood the Rossonian Hotel on Welton Street — a ballroom where Duke Ellington played, where Ella Fitzgerald sang, where Billie Holiday filled those second floor windows with light and music and life.
The Rossonian has been largely empty for years. But people walking past late at night have reported hearing jazz music drifting from the building for decades. Music with no source. A ballroom that hasn't gone quiet. Tonight Kai tells the story of Denise — a photographer who set up her camera across the street from the Rossonian one autumn night, heard something she couldn't explain, and discovered the next morning that her camera had seen something her own eyes had missed.
Plus the Creepy Colorado Fact of the Week takes us somewhere much bigger and much wilder than any building we've investigated so far. Some of Colorado's greatest mysteries don't haunt ballrooms. They roam the mountains. Stay curious. Stay brave. And stay creepy, Colorado.