Emma Crawford Coffin Races Guide

The strangest race in Colorado runs the weekend before Halloween up Manitou Avenue: teams of costumed “mourners” push decorated homemade coffins — each carrying a live “Emma” riding inside — in a heat-by-heat sprint down the historic main street, cheered by thousands in full costume. It honors Emma Crawford, a real tuberculosis patient who came to Manitou’s mineral springs in 1889, died in 1891, was buried atop Red Mountain per her wish, and then — after erosion — infamously slid back down the slope in the 1920s. The town turned the macabre into a party more than three decades ago, and it’s now one of the most gleefully weird events in a state that specializes in them.