Haunted Utah

Roadmap of the most haunted sites in Utah

Usually mentioned in tales around the campfire or at late night sleepovers, haunted houses and towns are a point of interest for everyone from schoolchildren to hardcore ghost hunters. Whether they're based off science or just a fun tale, Utah is home to multiple locations of potential supernatural interest. Using geospatial statistics tools to analyze for significant clusters of graveyards, ghost towns, and other locations of paranormal activity, the following project examines the sites most likely to be haunted throughout the state of Utah.

1

Ogden Stockyards Exchange Building

Built in 1931, the Ogden Exchange Building was one of the biggest livestock markets in the West, moving millions of sheep, cattle, and horses each year until it closed in 1971. For the next decades, the building then went through sporadic use as a trade school, community mental health treatment center, and most recently a haunted house from 2005 to 2014. Today, the city of Ogden plans to restore the building as part of a new business park.

2

Old Bountiful Museum

Originally used as a mink farm, the building was purchased by Wilford C. Wood in the early 1900s to house a collection of Latter Day Saints church artifacts. Fascinated by the church’s Prophet Joseph Smith, Wood spent his life acquiring and preserving church historic sites and artifacts, creating the museum “to allow the Saints to view the items [he] collected.” The museum has since moved locations, but religious artifacts are said to still remain in the building, along with any accompanying sprits.

3

Salt Lake City Cemetery

The first burial on what would become Salt Lake City Cemetery occurred in 1848, when pioneer George Wallace buried his child, Mary. Wallace then offered his land to the growing pioneer city and by 1851, the cemetery was officially incorporated into the city with Wallace as the first caretaker. 

4

Halloween 5 House

This Salt Lake City Avenue’s house was featured in the 1989 film Halloween 5. The house was originally built in 1886, has 10 bedrooms and 5 bathrooms, and is currently valued a little over $900,000. Since the release of the film, the house has been painted with much more vibrant and happy colors.

5

Cottonwood Paper Mill

The Cottonwood Paper Mill was built in 1883 to grind logs from the nearby canyons into pulp. However, the mill was short lived, with its indoor paper stockpile catching fire on April 1, 1893. Many thought the fire alarm was an April Fool’s Day prank, so only the stone framework remained by the time the fire was contained. The building was partially restored in 1927 and used for seasonal open-air concerts, boutiques and haunted houses until it was condemned in 2005.

6

Jacob City

Jacob City, UT was established as a mining town in 1865. Once the ore deposits began to run out in the early 1900s, both the town and the mine were abandoned. In 1989, a boy scout got lost in the mine and while the boy was found alive 5 days later, the event prompted the local government to block mine entrances with iron grates.

7

Diamond

Upon the discovery of diamonds in 1870, Diamond, UT was settled and grew to around 900 people. However, the “diamonds” turned out to be quartz and the last of the town’s residents left in 1890. Despite its brief history, the town was around long enough to establish a cemetery, some graves of which are still maintained today.

8

Silver City

Silver City, UT was founded in 1869 at the site of an old Native American mine. The town saw sporadic periods of prosperity, but the mines were plagued with flooding problems and the ore mills eventually could not compete with the prices of larger towns. Residents had left by 1930, with only building foundations remaining today.

9

Royal

Royal, UT was a coal mining town in operation from 1880 to 1947. The town underwent a series of name changes depending on which company owned it. Today, remnants of stone buildings and mining quarters can be seen.

10

Castle Gate

Established in 1886, Castle Gate, UT has been home to multiple coal mining operations and is the site of one of the top 10 mining disasters in the United States. In 1924, an explosion due to coal dust killed all 171 miners working in the mine. Despite the explosion the mining town remained active until 1974, with a new power plant being built in 1953. Mining activity persisted until 2000, when another explosion took the lives of two more miners and marked the end of the last mine in the area. The power plant remained active until 2015.

11

Rains

Rains, UT was founded in 1915 on coal seams that were up to 18 feet thick. The initial mine closed in 1930, but a new company bought the town and expanded operations into the nearby Mutual Mine former site until 1956.

12

Mutual

Mutual, UT began in 1912 and was a hub for multiple coal mines in Spring Canyon. Production declined with the Great Depression and a series of worker strikes, with the town shutting down in 1938. Today, walls of the general store and remnants of mining facilities remain in the canyon.

13

Kenilworth

Kenilworth, UT began as a coal mining camp in 1904, with the actual town established in 1908. Despite coal supply slumping in the 1950s and the town being unincorporated when reclamation work finished in 1984, a small residential community still remains and the town still has a post office and zip code.

14

Grafton

This site was originally settled under the name of Wheeler in 1859 as a cotton growing township. However, the town was completely destroyed during the Great Flood of 1862, an event that affected territories across the West following a period of 44 days of rain. The town was then rebuilt as Grafton, but continued flood troubles and high levels of silt in the nearby Virgin River forced residents to dredge irrigation canals on a weekly basis. The flooding and fear from the Black Hawk War made most residents move to less remote settlements, and nearly everyone was gone by 1890.

15

Silver Reef

While silver was originally discovered in the early 1860s, the geologic unlikelihood of silver occurring in the sandstone dominated area made miners and investors dubious and the town was slow to grow. By 1875 the town was well established, producing silver until a combination of a crashing silver market, labor strike conflict, and flooding mine tunnels caused the town to be abandoned in 1908. Today, a museum has been built on the site, showcasing the mining history and lifestyles of the late 19th century.

16

Harrisburg

Similar to Grafton, Harrisburg, UT is the rebuild of a town destroyed by the Great Flood of 1862. The town was settled as an agricultural community and ended up supplying agricultural goods to the nearby mining town Silver Reef. However, a grasshopper plague and frequent drought caused the town to decline in the late 1800s, being fully abandoned by 1895.

Overview route map for the above interactive map tour.

How were the sites chosen?

Haunted sites were chosen based off the distribution of cemeteries, ghost towns, and reported paranormal activity across the state. First, a heatmap was made for the density of the cemetery and ghost sighting point locations. Graveyard proximity and ghost activity are used as analogs for how likely a site is haunted, so the hot spots from this geospatial analysis are where the rest of the project focused. The full list of potential sites was then reduced to only those which fell within the areas of highest heat map density. Final sites were then chosen from this reduced list based on distance to the nearest graveyard and the general tourism value of the stop. The below sliding map shows the original collection of locations and a reduced number of sites within the areas of high point cluster intensity.

Site distribution used to find the areas of Utah most likely haunted. Final sites were chosen based on location within the heat map and tourism value.

ArcGIS Process

  • While the cemetery and ghost town data are available in GIS-ready format from the state, paranormal activity locations had to be geocoded into a usable format. Addresses and coordinates of reported sightings were collected from various ghost enthusiast websites and forums, then geocoded into the ArcGIS project using the Geocode Addresses and XY Table to Point tools.
  • All of the point data were then Merged into a single shapefile and the Hot Spot Analysis (Getis-Ord Gi*) tool was used to create the point density heat map. The heat map was then Reclassified into a second layer of only the highest density areas. This new raster was then converted into a polygon delineating the boundaries for the areas most likely to have ghost activity.
  • The full list of potential road trip stops was then reduced to just those falling within the previously set boundaries of high ghost and cemetery point density. A new list of cemeteries was created filtered to just those that were abandoned. Using the Near tool, the distance to the nearest cemetery and nearest abandoned cemetery was calculated for each site in the reduced list. The final collection of stops for the road trip was then chosen based on which were closest to a cemetery (and thus most likely haunted).

Route Creation

Once the final list of stops was determined, they had to be ordered into the most efficient drivable route. To make this optimized route, the data points were uploaded to ArcGIS Online, and ArcGIS Navigator Find Routes tool was used to map the roads between the points. Totaling 615 miles and taking an estimated 14 hours and 20 minutes, the turn by turn directions from the Ogden Exchange Building to Harrisburg, UT can be found through the following link:

*note: ArcGIS Navigator must be downloaded on your device and a licensed account is necessary to use the route.

Data Limitations

The largest assumption within this project is that a density of cemeteries equates to a haunted location. Error arises with this assumption because areas of high population density create high cemetery density. While an argument can be made that areas with higher population likely have longer history and more chances to become haunted, this method loses any locations that have high haunting probability but are remote from other locations. Further analyses could weigh ghost sightings based on the source reliability or amount of reportings made.

Data was collected from the following sources:

“Ghost Towns in Utah.” Utah State Geographic Information Database. Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, 9 October 2019. Web. 7 March 2021.

“Utah SHPO Cemeteries.” Utah State Geographic Information Database. Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, 9 October 2019. Web. 8 March 2021.

“Utah Monuments and Markers.” Utah State Geographic Information Database. Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, 28 September 2020. Web. 8 March 2021.

“Land Ownership.” Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, Bureau of Land Management, State of Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration. Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center. Web. 7 March 2021.

“Roads and Highway System.” Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, Utah Department of Transportation. Utah Automated Geographic Reference Center, 5 March 2021. Web. 7 March 2021.

“Haunted Places in Utah.” The Shadowlands: Ghosts and Hauntings. The Shadowlands: Ghosts and Hauntings, 1 January 2010. Web. 12 March 2021.

Jim Sullivan. “Places That Were.” Jim Sullivan, 5 May 2016. Web. 14 March 2021.

Historical descriptive information used in the map tour was collected from various pages of legendsofamerica.com , americansouthwest.net , silverreefutah.org , film.utah.gov , onlyinyourstate.com , and worldofurbanlegends.com

Map layouts, geospatial analysis, and route analysis were made using ESRI ArcGIS Pro 2.7.3 and ESRI ArcGIS Online.

Overview route map for the above interactive map tour.

Site distribution used to find the areas of Utah most likely haunted. Final sites were chosen based on location within the heat map and tourism value.