In the shadows of the Wasatch Mountains, the cityscape of Salt Lake is filled with echoes of its dark past. From abandoned factories where workers’ lives were ripped away by heavy machinery to opulent social clubs tainted by violent acts—sinister circumstances have created a tapestry of haunted locations throughout our city. As stories of the unexplainable become folklore, we seek to uncover the tales of untold and restless spirits. Welcome to a phantasmic journey through the darker corners of Utah history. Welcome to Haunted Salt Lake.
Portland Cement Factory (Aka The Fear Factory)
Sarah Jamieson, owner of Grimm Ghost Tours, leads monthly paranormal investigations of the Portland Cement Factory, now the haunted attraction Fear Factory. “There’s so much activity there, we haven’t had a single night where some event doesn’t occur.” Jamieson and her team of investigators have recorded EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) of chilling voices warning them to “get out,” heard rattling chains scraping across catwalks and become familiar with a playful entity in the underground tunnels. Demonic animatronics and gory torture scenes set up throughout the haunted house add to the site’s disturbing tone, and Jamieson believes they might even amplify the very real paranormal phenomena she has witnessed.
During the Portland Cement Factory’s manufacturing heyday in the 1800s, the expansive site was an industrial hellscape for workers. Employees could fall prey to the dangerous working conditions left and right, from boiling vats of chemicals to bone-crushing grinders and live wires. The agonizing manner in which victims died is nothing short of excruciating, none more so than Frank Holmes. In 1903, he was pulled into a revolving shaft, limb by limb, until a coworker finally shut off the machine. Holmes lost an arm and broke his leg and jaw in the accident before finally succumbing to his injuries.
Just a few years earlier, a 35-year-old worker named George Howe was descending a ladder when his sleeve got caught in a coal crusher. With a shout of agony, his arm was ripped from his body and Howe fell onto the coal tower, where his mangled corpse was later found.
Tragic accidents continued for years until the factory finally closed its doors. Even still, death continued to find a way into the abandoned factory. In the years following, The Salt Lake Fire Department responded to calls of train-related suicides and bodies of unhoused folks seeking shelter inside the factory, further shrouding the site in a heavy aura of despair.
However devastating Fear Factory’s past, the site is a renowned point of interest amongst the paranormal community. “The fact we can’t even know how many deaths occurred here is pretty intriguing from a supernatural perspective,” Jamieson says. Sudden acts of violence leave behind a residual energy that Jamieson believes enhances the unexplainable, like the shadows her group often sees pacing the factory’s catwalk or sudden illnesses experienced by women inside the so-called “hell” silo. In the underground tunnels, the spirit of George Howe often reaches out to investigators with a phantom brush or playful ankle grab, “He’s a very touchy-feely entity,” Jamieson laughs.
Word of these encounters even brought Ghost Adventures own Zak Bagans to the scene in 2014, where his team investigated loud bangs, dark laughter, bright floating anomalies and foreboding statements like, “It’s coming,” and “I did it!” Zak summarizes their findings in typical Ghost Adventures style: “This factory might be a Halloween funhouse, but what’s happening inside is no laughing matter.”
Of all the activity recorded at Fear Factory, Jamieson always notes a significant uptick right after the haunted house opens for the season. “Anytime you get a lot of emotions in a place, it tends to enhance the paranormal,” she says. “Fear and even excitement act as an amplifier.” It’s not hard to imagine why the screams of thrill-seeking attendees might rouse the entities whose own lives ended in shouts of surprise and pain. Maybe they are reaching from beyond the veil to warn the living of the perils that await them in the Portland Cement Factory.
The Capitol Theatre
On a summer evening in 1949, Salt Lake’s venerable Capitol Theatre welcomed 600 guests to watch a Rita Hayworth double feature in honor of Independence Day. During the screening, a fire broke out in the basement and the entire theater was evacuated. Thankfully, nearly every guest made it out unharmed. All but one. A 17-year-old usher named Richard Duffin became trapped in the building while helping people evacuate and succumbed to the smoke in the basement. Duffin’s life was cut far too short in an instant—perhaps why his spirit lingers to this day.
The entity, nicknamed “George,” has become well-known for his displays of teenage angst that include tampering with a freight elevator and producing the smell of smoke when there is none. While Capitol Theatre representatives contend that Mr. Duffin officially left the building after their most recent renovation in 2019, stories of strange phenomena live on.
Designed in a stunning Italian Renaissance style, the 111-year-old theater exudes tranquil luxury. But far below the velvet-laden balconies and luminescent stage, Capitol Theatre’s catacomb-like basement has become a paranormal hotspot for George’s antics.
Former resident stagehand Doug Morgan had dealt with the supernatural resident for years during his nearly 40-year tenure. “I feel his presence every once in a while,” he told the Deseret News in 1999. The specter becomes even more active during his favorite annual production of The Nutcracker—and he keeps the stage crew on its toes. During the show’s opening night one year, the stage lights began to malfunction. Morgan had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t a case of faulty wiring. “I bellowed out, ‘Damnit George, knock it off or I’m going to have you exorcized!’” The playful poltergeist seemed to take the hint. “My stage lights came right on.”
Perhaps George’s spirit is holding on to a youthful mischief, but his run-ins with the living aren’t always so innocent. In an episode of SyFy’s now-canceled show Paranormal Witness, two Salt Lake City officers share their testimony of unexplainable events while working security at the theater in 2006.
Officers Morgan Matthews and Dave Murphy were tasked with after-hours surveillance, a job that frequently brought them to the windowless basement. One night, Officer Murphy heard a door slam near a basement rehearsal room and rushed to investigate. He hesitated when his sixth sense flashed warning signs. “A cold runs right through me like I’m freezing to death. It’s a feeling of evil,” he recalls. Alarming noises, disembodied whispers and the scent of smoke continue to plague the officers for months until Matthews had enough. While routinely checking the footage from an infrared camera, he notices a lone figure sitting in the auditorium. Suddenly, the apparition streaks across the screen in a blur, and Matthews makes out a fiendish scowl staring back at him. “From that point on I would not work in the theater,” he says. “If there is something that demonic, I don’t want to be around it.”
Former Senior Accountant Blair Fuller shares another encounter with George during a late-night work session. When the elevator across from his office mysteriously opens, he steps in the elevator to investigate. Without warning, the door closed and the elevator began its slow descent to the basement. “Hello, is anyone there?” Fuller called out to the dark basement hallway. The only answer was an impending sense of dread and the faint acrid smell of smoke.
While George’s elevator escapades may have come to an end when the theater installed a new freight car during the remodel, who’s to say that his restless spirit doesn’t remain in the building? After all these years, perhaps Mr. Duffin has developed a penchant for theatrics in the afterlife.
Fort Douglas
Lying silently along the East Bench near the University of Utah, the Fort Douglas Cemetery is teeming with whispers of the past. Soldiers, military working dogs and prisoners of war all share this plot of land as their eternal resting place—but not all rest in peace. In the southwest corner, near the POW graves, cemetery visitors have heard indelible German murmurs. Across from the entrance, a photo taken by a ghost hunter shows a towering apparition of a man on a horse. Throughout the gravesite, the boisterous barks of a German Shepherd sound off in warning. And it’s not just the cemetery. The entire Fort Douglas base is a hive of paranormal activity, making it a favorite stop on ghost tours and Halloween field trips.
Ogden Ghost Tours’ Kristen Clay brings groups of Girl Scouts to the Fort Douglas Military Museum to learn about Utah’s first army base and to hopefully catch a glimpse of the museum’s resident specter. During one tour, a scout sees an oddly dressed man give her a flirtatious wink and asks Kristen who might be behind the prank. Meet “Clem,” a short, bearded man many thought to be the ghost of 1st Sgt. John Jackson, who was shot and killed in 1899 by a fellow brother-in-arms.
“Immediately, I knew what happened because Clem thinks he’s quite the ladies’ man.” Clay recalls responding to the girl, “You saw our ghost!” Clem received his nickname from a group of Boy Scouts, but sightings of Clem have been documented for decades by investigators and museum employees. Most often sighted in the museum’s basement, formerly used as the barracks, Clem stalks the hallways in an unhurried step and sometimes breathes down an unsuspecting museum goer’s neck. The entity is so ubiquitous, Fort Douglas has even hosted events in his honor during October—ensuring Clem’s fame even in death.
Clem is Fort Douglas’ most well-known ghost, but he is far from the only man to have died on the base. On Feb. 18, 1896, Pvt. Marshal Mitchell shot himself, leaving a note that said, “A pang is in all I feel, there is blight in all I see.” Another soldier hanged himself in October of 1901 and, in 1869, Corporal William Foster murdered Lucius O’Brien.
During WWI, Fort Douglas became a German internment camp and confined more than 300 prisoners during the conflict. Twenty-one German Soldiers died while imprisoned, along with 12 Italian soldiers and one Japanese soldier. All are buried in the Fort Douglas Cemetery, along with the man who founded the camp in 1862.
Col. Patrick E. Connor became well known in his tenure at Fort Douglas as a commanding officer of an anti-Mormon garrison, sparring with Brigham Young himself, and leading the brutal ambush on the Shoshone in the Bear River Massacre. He died in 1891 and was buried with his men, but he can’t seem to let go of his authority over the base. Grimm’s Ghost Tour guides have interacted with Col. Connor through spirit boxes and dowsing rods—often when a member of their tour is misbehaving. “He watches over the cemetery and military museum,” Sarah Jamieson says. “If an investigator is goofing off, he will get your attention through the spirit box or tapping in the room to let you know, you don’t act like that on his land.”
In a photo taken during one of her tours, a figure appears to hover above a gravestone. Wearing what appears to be a cavalry hat, his legs are spread wide as if straddling a horse. Like Clem, the Colonel’s spirit is intertwined with Fort Douglas and doesn’t seem to be leaving anytime soon.
The Alta Club
Before Utah became a state, 81 mining barons founded a private gentleman’s club in the heart of Salt Lake City inside the Dooley building. While the club was created to host the state’s finest social gatherings, during Prohibition and the Great Depression, the Alta Club would invite transgression through its doors as they hosted makeshift speakeasies and even a few slot machines.
In the 1950s, one overindulgent member fell asleep in a third-floor bedroom holding a lit cigar, resulting in a fire that nearly destroyed the building and took the man’s life. The floor was closed off for decades and the Alta Club adopted a firm no-smoking policy, but some members still attest to seeing an apparition of a dapper gentleman puffing on his cigar in the main room.
Another wraith-like entity seen by clubgoers and employees is a dark-haired woman dressed in white. Known as the “Lady of the Evening,” the ghost makes herself known in the basement with the smell of her lilac perfume wafting through the air. Although her origins have been lost in time, some believe she may be connected to the double murder-suicide that occurred at the Alta Club 64 years ago.
On July 23, 1960, Jay Bertleson entered the kitchen and fired three rounds into pantry maid Lucille Van Gerren’s chest. After the 46-year-old woman fell dead, Chef Edward Sasaki pleaded with the shooter and hit him over the head with a large mixing spoon until he was killed by gunfire. The gunman, whose motives are unknown to this day, fled to a basement bathroom where he turned the .38 caliber pistol on himself. The meaningless deaths shocked Salt Lake City residents and have added another sinister stain to the Alta Club’s history.
The McCune Mansion
While preparing for an upcoming wedding, a piano player sits at McCune Mansion’s grand piano and begins to play. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a young girl dressed in a long nightgown float through the room to the sound of his music. The musician becomes frustrated and finds the wedding planner to wrangle the child, but to his surprise, they respond “We’re the only ones here.”
Firsthand accounts of a little ghost girl, like this one relayed by Grimm Ghost Tours’ Sarah Jamieson, are not uncommon at the 123-year-old mansion. “She’s a bit mischievous and likes to rearrange wedding decorations,” Jamieson says. Called to partake in the events at the mansion, the young spirit has been seen emerging from a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the drawing room and mingling with guests.
Her predilection for dancing draws many to believe she may have been a student when the building was the McCune School of Music and Art in the 1920s. Those who see her attest to her innocent comportment and protective energy—other than one electrician who claims the girl emerged from the mirror to observe his work with coal-black eyes and gave him such a fright he refused to return to the mansion again.
The Salt Lake County Building
Washington Square Park is the site of the original Mormon pioneer camp in 1847 and has since hosted cattle drives, medicine shows, circuses and even jousting tournaments. When the Salt Lake County Building was built on the square in 1894, residents would visit the hall to get married, sit trial and receive sentences.
“There’s so much emotion and history,” says Jamieson. “It results in a lot of activity inside the building.”
During the building’s construction, tons of rough-hewn sandstone were hauled up to the spires by rope. One day, a rope snapped and the heavy materials went plummeting where two young boys happened to be playing, killing them both.
during this century. Photo courtesy of Utah Division of State History.
Thought to be brothers, the boys’ spirits have remained on site and have been spotted by Jamieson and her group of investigators on multiple occasions. “They are very interactive,” she says. “They’ll play with toys and balls, rolling them up and down the hallway.” The County Building is also visited by the ghost of the boy’s mother, who Jamieson believes found them after her death so they would not be alone in the afterlife.
Two more entities seen roaming the grounds include past Salt Lake City Mayor George Montgomery Scott who roams the third floor near his old office. The loud sounds of a gavel have also been reported, and an apparition of a man with flowing robes. Perhaps an old judge wishes to pass more sentences on the living? Far below the building, the unused tunnels that connect the County Building with the then Salt Lake Jail (now the library) carry a menacing aura that some ghost hunters attribute to the evil men who passed through years before, including none other than serial killer Ted Bundy.
Looking for more Halloween fun? Check out 10 scary good haunted houses in Utah!
