10/31/2026
Every town has a house people walk a little faster past, and for Halloween we'd like to tell you the tale of the Spider House in Grand Lake. 🕸
It sits on a quiet lane in Old Grand Lake City, where Grand Lake's first settlers built. Warren "Watt" Gregg was a gifted woodworker. He built a log home there for his wife, Mary, and their children, wrapping it in the spider-like woodwork that gave it its name.
Mary never recovered from losing an infant son on the trail west in 1888. The long winters and isolation of early Grand Lake deepened her grief. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, while Watt worked in his shop and their oldest son Lloyd was away, Mary took the lives of the four children at home, then her own. Three boys, one girl, and their mother are buried together in one grave in the Grand Lake Cemetery.
Old-timers will tell you that if you pass by the Spider House after dark, the tall pines around it still moan their mournful song.
A town's history isn't all boat parades and summer cabins. The dark chapters get handed down too, from one generation of Grand Lakers to the next. They carry the weight of how hard life on this lake once was, and of the people who lived through it. Grand Lake has more of these stories, and Halloween is the time to go looking for them. Walk out to Point Park, where a fight over the county seat ended in gunfire on July 4, 1883. Wander the Grand Lake Cemetery, where Robert Plummer's headstone names the man who murdered him. Be on the shore at sunrise when the mist lifts off the water, and learn why the Ute Indians called it Spirit Lake.
Happy Halloween from all of us in Grand Lake! 🎃
