Meet the Spirits

Last Sunday I attended the Meet the Spirits program at the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder. Actors recreated the lives of a number of the celebrities buried there. The victim of a 1954 murder, who remained buried as “Jane Doe” for many years, was only recently identified after her body was exhumed and DNA testing performed to match with a relative. This case was documented in Silvia Pettem’s book, “Someone’s Daughter.” As an aside, Silvia gave an excellent presentation at the last Rocky Mountain Mystery Writers of America dinner in Denver about her research into finding the identity of Jane Doe. Some other reenactments included Tom Horn, a gunslinger; Rocky Mountain Joe Sturtevant, a photographer who took pictures of Boulder at the turn of the nineteenth into twentieth century; Mary Rippon, the first woman professor at the University of Colorado; and Dorothy Gardiner, mystery writer. This was a great preparation for Halloween and an excellent way of learning more of the history of Boulder.