Even though Utah isn’t known for being overwhelmingly dangerous, monsters have a way of creeping-up where you least expect them. Utah has some creepy stories that might make you think twice the next time you go into the mountains. Here are a few of the stories that I find noteworthy.
The Bear Lake Monster
As a kid, I used to go boating at Bear Lake. This is the place where my fear of large bodies of water began. One day on the lake my grandpa told me about the monster. The monster had apparently been lurking in the waters of Bear Lake since before the pioneers came to Utah. I always assumed that it would look like a bear because it was Bear Lake, but not all accounts can agree on what it actually looks like. It has been speculated that the monster is 30-50 feet long with a serpent-like body. The natives even referred to it as a water devil. To this day, I still wonder what might be swimming below me.
Ted Bundy’s Cave
There is a cave in American Fork Canyon that is rumored to be the cave Ted Bundy used during his reign of terror in Utah. I’m not going to speculate whether he did use this cave or what he used this cave for. However, I have visited the cave, and I did not feel one good feeling while I was up there. You have to go into a forest and over a makeshift bridge to reach the cave. Maybe I was just reminded of what he did, but the place felt very dark. I even saw a bat in the cave, a bat!
Escalante Petrified Forest
Legend has it that if you take a piece of petrified wood from the Escalante Petrified Forest (which is beautiful, by the way) you’ll be cursed with bad luck. Workers from the forest even say that they have had past visitors send back pieces that they took after coming face-to-face with the curse. Maybe this is people being paranoid, maybe this is the parks way of stopping people from illegally taking pieces of the forest, or maybe the curse is real…
Asylum 49
The Asylum 49 is a haunted house, which is referred to by locals as the “haunted hospital.” What is now a haunted house that is open in the fall used to be a fully functional hospital. This place is most definitely haunted, how could it not be! It has been featured on Ghost Adventures and even those guys say it’s haunted. This makes the haunted house experience 10x more intense. This terrifying landmark is located in Tooele, Utah.
Immanuel David
Immanuel David was a fraudulent cult leader, who in 1978 he took his own life as the FBI got close to catching him for wire fraud. The real tragedy ensues the following day when his wife, Rachel David, threw herself and her seven children off of a hotel in Downtown Salt Lake. Amazingly, one of the children survived. Immanuel’s influence over his wife caused her to kill her family in order to be reunited with her husband and their father in the afterlife. The surviving child defended her parents’ actions.
It’s fun to talk about your state’s good moments, but it’s good to talk about some of the not so great moments as well. Honestly, Utah is a good place. Even though I found a lot of bad stories that are associated with Utah, there are also a lot of really interesting and good ones. It makes it easier to explore and understand the negative when there is so much good to fall back on. Plus, it’s fun! Tell us what we are missing!?
