The best-known, most popular ghost in Cripple Creek has to be "Maggie," who is said to inhabit the big brick building at Third and Bennett, the Fairley Bros. & Lampman Block, named by the firm of undertakers who once had their business in the basement.

Maggie, however, doesn't hang around the former funeral parlor, now stacked with soft-drink canisters, empty ice cream buckets and other paraphernalia from the Sarsaparilla Saloon upstairs on the Bennett Avenue level. According to Denverite Katherine Hartz, who with her husband Kenneth opened the Sarsaparilla in 1968 and now own the building, most of Maggie's appearances are associated with the two top floors, once given over to medical offices and the ballroom of some long-gone fraternal order.

Before the Hartzes came, noted Western artist Charles Frizzell, who lives now in Victor, ran an art gallery in the building. "That was during the good old hippie days, and a lot of people coming through town would be looking for a place to 'crash' for the night," Frizzell recalls. Since the Frizzells used only a portion of the upper two floors, they sometimes let these casual visitors sleep in vacant rooms. They rarely stayed long - mysterious noises and voices during the night would have them looking for new lodgings next morning.

Much of the ghostly commotion centered on the top (third) floor ballroom, which extends the width of the building across its back side. The Frizzells and others say they have heard people talking and dancing in the ballroom, where tatters of old wallpaper from its heyday still cling to the plaster walls. At times, Frizzell says, mysterious blue lights danced down to the second floor, the living quarters. He and his wife tried to stop them by shutting the twin doors on the staircase, but someone else seemed to want those doors open.

"We would tie them shut with a twisted coat hanger because we couldn't lock them," he said. "We could go downstairs to the gallery and know there was no one upstairs, but we'd come back and find the hangers untied and the doors standing open.

It remained for Katherine Hartz to make a pact with the entity she calls Maggie. In the fall of 1968 she was on the same stairway between the second and third floors as she prepared to close up the building for the winter. She remembers, "I was walking down the hall on the second floor. As I walked I heard sounds like someone was upstairs with high heels on, walking above me. I realized that in order to do so, whoever it was had to be walking through the walls upstairs."

She started up the stairway to investigate, only to encounter the form of a young woman on the stairs. She said hello. Like telepathy, she said, she felt an answering hello form in her mind. At that point she told the ghost, "You are welcome to stay in this building as long as you protect it, take care of it, and as long as you're here only for the good."

The apparition resembled a woman in her late 20s or early 30s, a tall, good-looking brunette, with her hair pinned up in a turn-of-the century "Gibson girl" roll, wearing a white shirtwaist, an ankle-length dark brown print skirt and high-heeled boots.

"Everyone calls her Meg, Maggie, Margaret, Jo - some form of Margaret. It's almost automatic, before they realize what they're doing." Mrs. Hartz tells.