The Origins of the Horror Film "The Changeling"
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
In 1980, the film The Changeling, starring George C. Scott and Trish Van Devere, unleashed unrelenting dread on audiences. Yet few know the movie draws its icy grip from real events that composer Russell Hunter (1929–1996) endured in a sinister Denver home near Cheesman Park during the late 1960s.
The Terrifying Origins of The Changeling
Hunter, a musical arranger for CBS-TV in New York, relocated to Colorado in the mid-1960s to help his parents, Pearl E. and Russell H. Ellis, run the Three Birches Lodge in Boulder. He soon searched for a quiet Denver apartment where he could compose in peace. He rented the sprawling house at 1739 East 13th Avenue for a shockingly low $200 a month—because no one else dared to live there.
From February 9, 1969, onward, pure horror engulfed Hunter. Unseen forces unleashed deafening bangs and crashes at exactly 6 a.m. every morning—only to fall silent the instant his feet touched the floor. Invisible hands twisted faucets on and slammed doors. Paintings crashed from vibrating walls. At a social gathering, a stranger revealed that the house concealed a third-floor garret accessible via narrow, concealed stairs behind a second-floor closet wall.
Hunter and an architect friend tore open the wall and discovered the hidden room exactly as described. Inside a small trunk lay a disabled boy’s century-old schoolbooks and journal. The boy cherished a red rubber ball—also tucked inside the trunk.
Days later, a red rubber ball tumbled down the spiral staircase in front of more than 30 horrified witnesses. Hunter held a séance. The channeled spirit revealed a heartbreaking tale: the sickly heir to a vast fortune, hidden away by his parents. When the boy died, they buried him secretly in a remote field southeast of Denver and replaced him with a healthy orphan—a true “changeling”—who grew up to claim the inheritance.
The restless boy guided Hunter to his shallow grave beneath a house on South Dahlia Street. With permission, Hunter dug up bones and a gold medal engraved with the child’s name. The current owners of that property also owned the old farmland where the remains surfaced. Yet the discovery only enraged the spirit further. Glass doors exploded in Hunter’s face, severing an artery in his wrist. Inner walls above his bed imploded violently.
Hunter fled to a house on Kearney Street, but the entity pursued him. Terrified friends urged him to seek help. A priest from Denver’s Epiphany Episcopal Church performed an exorcism on the Kearney Street home (the priest requested anonymity). Hunter never called the priest again.
Soon afterward, wrecking crews demolished the original Treat Rogers Mansion. Hunter watched the destruction. As the bedroom wing collapsed, the walls suddenly burst outward and crushed the bulldozer operator to death.
In its place, a condominium building was erected in 1975 with a new eerie address of 1313 Williams Street.
The Bloodstained Ground Beneath the Mansion
The cursed land beneath 1739 East 13th Avenue carries far older darkness.
It all started in 1858, when Mr. Biencroff came to mine with his two sons and a son-in-law, a Hungarian named John Stoefel. They built a cabin at Vasquez Fork. At this time, Colorado was part of the Kansas Territory.
The enterprising German family not only panned for gold, but also owned livestock. One day, Mr. Biencroff and two of his sons went off to look for lost cattle at Clear Creek, along with Stoefel. When evening fell, one of the sons, Thomas Biencroff, failed to return to camp. Suspiciously, Stoefel headed to Denver the following day and cashed in a bag of gold dust at “Uncle” Dick Wooton’s trading post. Then he went off to drink in different saloons.
In the meantime, neighbors came to help look for the missing man. He was found behind a log out in the woods, shot through the head.
The family caught up with John Stoefel in Denver, and he was arrested and brought to Auraria (West Denver). He confessed to the crime, having taken the bag of gold dust from the dead man.
On April 8, he appeared before a temporary magistrate and admitted he murdered Thomas Biencroff. But his reasons were far from ordinary. He described how he followed his brother-in-law from the East for the purpose of murdering him. What he was avenging was never known.
In those days, there was no cell to hold him in, nor a place to try him. The people gathered for an informal deliberation, with a jury of 12 men. Since he had confessed, his attorney had little standing to defend him with. He was found guilty and sentenced to hang. All that was needed was rope, a wagon, and a yoke of oxen. He was executed at a large cottonwood tree near the intersection of Tenth and Wazee Streets, close to the banks of Cherry Creek. Noisy Tom, an eccentric and well-known character, played the part of executioner. Soon, the tree was cut down.
John Stoefel became the first burial at Prospect Hill Cemetery, staked out by General William Larimer at the corner of Cheesman and Congress. The informal names of the graveyard were Bone Yard and Boot Hill.
An undertaker named Mr. Walley took over the cemetery and, by 1866, had buried 626 persons there.
In 1872, the cemetery became the property of the United States due to a treaty with the Arapaho. The city of Denver then bought it for $1.25 per acre.
It was renamed the Denver City Cemetery.
By 1890, it had fallen into disuse, and the local government decided to convert it and renamed it Congress Park. Families were instructed to move the graves of their loved ones. They were offered a free plot as an incentive, but after three years, only 700 were moved.
E.P. McGovern, a local undertaker, was hired to take care of those unclaimed. For every box he delivered to Riverside Cemetery, he received a $1.90. He was found trying to cheat the city, and his workers were robbing the graves for any personal effects found inside the coffins. There were allegations that they dismembered corpses so they could be placed in child-sized coffins. McGovern was fired even though the work was unfinished. No one else was hired to complete the work.
Some estimate that as many as 4,000 bodies were left behind, but the true number has not been ascertained. Every time irrigation work is started, bones are found.
In 2010, while completing irrigation work at Cheesman Park, city employees unearthed four skeletons. The coroner found they were over a century old. If there was ever a tombstone to commemorate them, it was long gone. Perhaps they were criminals or paupers, and they were anonymous from the beginning. They were re-interred in Mt. Olivet Cemetery.
Besides the forgotten dead, located just south of the cemetery, a “pest house,” or pestilence hospital for contagious patients, received thousands of souls that were left there to die. Some think the fear of contagion, especially smallpox, was another reason why so many bodies were left behind.
In 1907, the land was renamed to Cheesman Park. Soon, whispered rumors circulated that the park was haunted, no doubt fueled by the memory that it occupied land that once served as cemetery grounds.
On the heels of the conversion of the cemetery grounds, private homes were built. In 1892, Henry Treat Rogers (1837–1922), a prominent lawyer, and his wife Kate Rogers (1865–1931) built an elegant brick home designed by architect Henry Ten Eyck Wendell at 1739 East 13th Avenue.
Best to forget that what had become a fashionable neighborhood in Denver once belonged only to the dead.
The Rogerses had no children of their own, but their niece, Frances Clarke, and nephew Henry Treat Rogers II lived in the mansion at times. The cousins were 11 years apart, but neither was destined to reach old age.
Frances Clarke Ristine (1881-1934) came from Illinois to live with the Rogerses when she was 10 years old and stayed until her marriage to George Ristine in 1910.
Frances’ cousin, Henry Treat Rogers II (1892-1918), graduated from Yale in 1914, where he excelled in mathematics. He worked in his uncle’s law firm, Rogers, Ellis & Johnson, starting in 1916, but within a year, he enlisted in the aviation section of the army and was sent to France, where he saw active service during WWI. After attaining the rank of lieutenant, he was honorably discharged on account of what appeared to be a lack of sense of direction, an ailment he developed while in Europe.
In 1918, his sweetheart Mary Louise Rickey died after a long illness, possibly consumption. The wake was held at a family friend’s home, and while kneeling next to the casket, the 25-year-old shot himself through the head.
In his suicide note, he asked to be buried next to her in Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati, but his wish was denied, and instead, he was interred in Cleveland.
After living in Chicago for several years, Frances and her husband returned to Denver after the death of her uncle Henry Treat Rogers in 1922. They lived in the 13th Avenue house with her aunt Kate, who, for some reason, waited until 1927 to formally adopt Frances as her daughter.
Frances became the longtime secretary for Denver Orphans Home and the president of the Globeville Day Nursery. This offers a tantalizing clue to the story told years later by Hunter Russell that the changeling was an orphan installed in the place of the disabled boy locked away in the garret.
Was Henry Treat Rogers II the author of the journal?
Frances Clarke Ristine inherited the Treat Mansion and $250,000 after the death of her aunt in 1931. She followed Mrs. Rogers to the grave three years later when she was 52 years old. She was childless, and the entire inheritance passed to her husband, George Washington Restine. He died in 1966.
The mansion later housed the Bombay Club before its final days.
Some researchers question whether Hunter truly lived in the mansion, noting gaps in city records. Unfortunately there are no records explicitly putting him at the house.
Whatever the precise truth, the mansion’s malevolent aura lingers. In a strange coincidence, Peter Medak, the director of The Changeling, became fascinated with the story because of recent deaths in his family. His older brother died, and in 1971, his wife, Katherine LaKermance Medak, 28, committed suicide by jumping from a fourth-floor apartment in Harley Street, Marylebone (London). She fell into a basement area and was pronounced dead upon her arrival at Middlesex Hospital. Her husband was away visiting his mother.
Medak drew on his personal tragedies and transformed Hunter’s nightmare into cinematic terror.
In 2015, a blogger (Larry), posted the following:
My family (parents with 7 kids) moved into this house in ’59, when I was 8 yrs.-old. It was a huge house with two separate staircases leading to the second floor, one with a halfway landing, and the other was an enclosed spiral coming off the kitchen (for servants). I never experienced any paranormal activities (perhaps the ghost enjoyed the company of all the children).
In 2021, blogger Frost MCC wrote:
When I was 9 or 10, I used to bag Mr. Hunter’s leaves. He lived down the street from my family, with his black dog “Loki”. His house was filled with antiques and a large piano, which he played well. I witnessed a few interesting situations at his home. The story he told me, was of a little boy who was killed by a coal cart, in front of the mansion. The boy’s name was “Eric”. That was the spirit that haunted the mansion and supposedly followed Mr. Hunter to his new residence, near me. Great individual. I moved in 88. Never saw him again. I believe he passed in 94.
Russell Hunter Ellis (renamed to Russell Hunter) died in August, 1996 at the age of 67. He was a musical arranger for CBS for five years before he became a nightclub performer in St. Louis. He toured around the United States, appearing in different supper clubs.
The story of The Changeling started as a musical written by Russell Hunter, titled Little Boy Blue. It centered on the supernatural experiences he claimed to have while living in the mansion on 13th Avenue. It was made into a screenplay, but the musical remained unpublished.
There was no mention of a wife or children in his obituary.
The red ball still bounces through our collective fears—proof that some houses refuse to let their dead rest.
Step inside the shadows of Cheesman Park… if you dare. The past never truly dies.