Logan hosts annual historic ghost tours
Every Friday and Saturday night in October, the Logan Downtown Alliance holds ghost tours in Logan.
David Sidwell, a local drama director, teamed up with the alliance to bring to light infamous stories of ghosts and spirits in the community. The alliance said they work to preserve the commerce of Logan and strengthen businesses.
The tour is a family-friendly event and usually runs about two hours. The tour begins at the Bullen Center Carousel Ballroom, located at 43rd S. Main Street, or the Caine Lyric Theater on 28th W. Center Street depending on the night, and the tour guides lead the participants from there.
Lauren Shanley is a tour guide — or storyteller as they like to say — and has been since the tours opened. Shanley told the story of George W. Lindquist who, in 1913, was operating an embalming parlor and funeral service in the basement of a building that we now know as Stacked, a pancake restaurant on Main Street.
When Lindquist was out of town, his daughter, Paula, would run the funeral service in his stead.
“She was a kind woman. Little. Small,” Shanley said. “She loved the dead as much as she loved the living.”
While embalming a body on her own for the first time, Paula saw a large black cat with one white paw and a splash of white on its tail just outside the basement window.
Paula let the cat in and — with a combination of hissing, scratching and purring — the cat lead Paula through the embalming process.
Many years later, Paula died and the large black cat with a white paw, who they named Anubis, passed away shortly after in the basement. Shanley explained that people still say they can hear the scratching and hissing of Anubis, while others have seen the ghost of the cat stalking around downtown Logan.
Stacked is not the only building on Main Street where paranormal activity has lingered. A ghost named Emma roams the Ellen Eccles Theatre.
Emma was an actress in her family act known as the Mighty Millers. This was a time, in the mid 1920s, when traveling vaudeville shows were the most popular form of entertainment.
The Mighty Millers were known to put on a great show, but eight-year-old Emma could never get her one line right. As the story goes, one evening after messing up her line once again, Emma made a pact with herself that it would be the last time she was going to mess up that line.
The theater her family traveled to next was the Ellen Eccles Theatre in Logan. It was a chilly day in Logan and therefore Emma decided to practice her line in the warm and cozy boiler room.
The door slammed. Someone or something locked the door. Gas hissed into the room. No one could hear Emma’s cries. No one could hear her banging on the door. Her family found her lifeless the next day.
Ben Dawson, the facilities manager at the Ellen Eccles Theatre, has heard of the spine-chilling stories of little Emma haunting the theater.
“I’ve heard of multiple sightings of Emma, how she likes to play and have fun here,” Dawson said. “How she’ll watch people perform, and sometimes she’ll dance on stage”.
Dawson is not the only one who believes in spirits. Shanley has also experienced what it’s like to be in the presence of a spirit.
“I’ve seen them,” Shanley said. “They’re all around us. So, the question is whether or not you’re aware enough to see them.”
Another local storyteller, Leah Atkins, has been doing the tours since they started in 2012 and this year told the story of another performer who died in a fire.
Atkins has experienced her fair share of paranormal events as well and believes in ghosts.
“My whole life I’ve had experiences,” Atkins said, “I’ve lived in several haunted houses. With ghost tours, three years ago, I was telling over in the bottom of the old First Security Bank Building. Afterwards, we were doing a paranormal investigation in the J.R. Edwards Building. And with the paranormal investigation they have divining rods. And they asked, ‘Did anyone bring someone with them?’ And every divining rod in the room went straight to me, and I moved, and they moved with me.”
Despite the pandemic, the tours have been able to continue. The Logan Downtown Alliance said that due to the pandemic they had to reduce the size of the tour groups and increase the size of their venue locations.
Andrew Ward, a student at Utah State University, attended the ghost tour during the third weekend they opened. Ward said the tour captured his interest and the locations were really cool.
“It was eerie and intriguing all around,” Ward said. “I would definitely do it again, maybe even this year.”
-Brielle.Carr@usu.edu