GRANT-HUMPHREYS MANSION
A popular wedding venue, Grant-Humphreys mansion is a gorgeous three-story historical site built in the neoclassical architectural style. Commonly rented out to excited couples for thousands of dollars, the current perception of the mansion doesn’t always reflect the building’s mysterious past.
Originally built for Colorado Governor, James B. Grant in 1902, it was bought by the Humphreys’ family after Grant’s death in 1917. The Humphreys family was very wealthy, thanks to the oil tycoon patriarch, Albert Edmund Humphreys. Due to his exploits in Wyoming, Texas, and Ohio, A.E. Humphreys was nicknamed the “King of the Wildcatters,” and held an estimated fortune of $30 million dollars.
With his considerable wealth, A.E. Humphreys, alongside other oil barons, was able to funnel his money illegally into his own account through a series of dummy corporations and insider deals. This money was then used to help elect then President Warren G. Harding, in what is commonly known today as the Teapot Dome Scandal.
The story goes that when exposed, A.E. Humphreys was overcome with embarrassment and on the third floor of his palatial home in 1927, he blasted his head off with a shotgun. At the time, it was officially ruled as an accident- that Humphreys’ shotgun had misfired while cleaning. However, rumor has it that it was not a mechanical error, and to this day visitors still claim that they see the ghost of A.E. Humphreys wandering the halls of the mansion. (A) (B)
YUREI
"You ever hear of a thing called a yurei?" Chester (Derek Mio) asks in the fourth episode of The Terror: Infamy. If we haven't, we're about to. A yurei, Chester's friend explains, is a ghost on a mission. "It has a crazed hunger for something. Maybe somebody wronged it in his lifetime. But whatever it is, it spends the rest of eternity trying to satisfy its end," he says, before writing off the yurei as a legend. In The Terror: Infamy, Japanese legends are as real as the world war causing upheaval. Yuko (Kiki Sukezane of Westworld), the yurei in question, is vastly powerful: She can possess people and drive them to take their own lives. (C)
Yurei are commonly found in graveyards, houses, or near their place of death. They remain stuck in this world until they can be put to rest. This might require bringing their killers to justice, or finding their lost body, or something as simple as passing on a message to a loved one. Some yūrei are reluctant to accept their own deaths and haunt their living family, bringing misfortune and unhappiness for the rest of their family members’ lives. Each haunting is as unique as the person it originated from. (D)
Topics: Grant-Humphreys Mystery, Teapot Dome Scandal, Yurei
Important Dates: 1902, 1927
Sources:
The Humphreys mansion as photographed from one of the Curtiss-Humphreys Airplane Company planes. In the foreground is Pennsylvania Street and on the right is Seventh Avenue. Denver Municipal Facts. Denver Public Library from History Colorado.
Manga is an umbrella term for a wide variety of comic books and graphic novels originally produced and published in Japan. (F)
In Japanese, "manga" refers to all kinds of cartooning, comics, and animation. Among English speakers, "manga" has the stricter meaning of "Japanese comics", in parallel to the usage of "anime" in and outside Japan. (G)
