COLUMN: A ghostly tour so terrifying even the bus drivers are too scared to go
Utahns love Halloween, so much so that even the Utah Historical Society gets into the spirit.
For three years now they have been taking tours around Salt Lake City and Ogden to visit many of the city’s haunted spots. Story Tours, now in its fourth year, has accumulated ghost stories from many historic locations.
According to Kristen Clay, a tour guide, all the stories are first- or second-hand accounts of real events. So, they aren’t lying to me – sweet.
Senior photographer Callie Grover and I went to the capitol city to cover the tour on its opening night, Oct. 6. I think the ghosts had a hidden agenda. After that night, I think the spirits from the realm beyond don’t take too kindly to reporters.
We should have seen the signs, they were all there: a dark and stormy night, horrible traffic and we ran out of Milk Duds on our way down – stupid traffic. I think these phantom spirits were trying to make us miss this tour by making us late. The tour starts out at the historically haunted Rio Grande Train Station in downtown Salt Lake.
We arrived at a dark station. All the doors were locked and with the cool rain coming down, it gave the station an eerie feeling. Lucky for us, we found the tour group on the backside of the station. Score one for the reporters.
So far we have proved to these determined spirits that we are just as determined, but they still had a couple more curve balls to throw at us. We arrived as the group was getting prepped for the tour. Clay shared a little about the tour, like some of the sites we would stop by, including the Masonic temple, the Shilo Inn and the creepy Salt Lake cemetery.
Clay said the ghosts that haunt the station appear regularly in the basement and bathroom. I suggest just holding it until you can find a place somewhere else, since it puts a new twist to stage fright.
Our storyteller, Nanette Watts welcomed cameras on the tour for memories of the bone-hilling experience, and even perhaps catching a ghost’s lingering image. The phantoms struck again! Mysteriously, the batteries in the flash were gone. You can’t catch a ghost without a flash; coincidence? I think not.
I deduced the spirits on the excursion didn’t like being published in school newspapers. Score one for Team Ghosts.
Waiting for the bus we heard “true” ghost stories. One was of which is about the haunted Shilo Inn. Back in 1979, there was a mass suicide of a family who chose to jump out of the 11th floor of the hotel.
People, to this day, still say when they are alone and on the 11th floor they hear the pleas of children begging their mother not to make them jump. Chilling stories to go with the chilly night air.
Creepy. Yeah, that’s what I thought.
An hour and half and many stories later, the bus never showed! Those spirits must have done something to our bus. I just know it. We managed to get there in time and we were just going to make
On the bright side, they do these tours throughout the whole month of October on Fridays and Saturdays in Salt Lake and Ogden. Tickets are $12 for students and $10 for children. To make reservations, you can call Clay at 801-604-1218. On Fridays, tours start at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. and last around an hour and 45 minutes. On Saturdays, there is an additional tour that starts at 10 p.m.
For us USU students, we can catch a break by going to the Ogden tour, which should be lots of frightful fun, because according to Watts and Clay, Ogden is one of the most haunted cities in the nation. The tour in Ogden also starts out at the ghastly Union Train Station. If you are brave enough to go on this family friendly tour, as long as you are not a reporter, you should have a good time. It will at least make you think twice about the fact or fiction behind ghost stories.
Dallin Keocher is a writer for the Utah Statesman. Comments can be sent to him at dwkeocher@cc.usu.edu.