The state of Utah is located in the Western United States and is bordered with Arizona, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, Colorado and a tiny corner of New Mexico. Utah alongside New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona make up the Four Corners which is signified by a monument and flags of each of the four states in their respective corner as well as some Native American flags representing Indian reservations and territories. Population is focused in the north-central and also a concentration in the south of the state. The state is known for its large Mormon population, a Restorationist Christianity religion a part of the Latter-Day Saint movement, likewise Utah is a politically conservative state.
Utah has quite a diversified economy that includes transportation, education, information technology, research, government services, mining as well as attracting many tourists who enjoy outdoor recreational activities such as ski resorts, national parks and monuments, mountain biking, off-roading and more. Utah also has diverse geography that includes arid deserts, salt flats, forests, a number of rugged and mountainous areas and wetlands. The state capital is Salt Lake City, named after the Great Salt Lake, the largest lake in Utah and 8th largest in the US and this lake is also said to have many strange goings on around it of which we will get to later.
Bigfoot does make a return in Utah with a number of claimed sightings of the sasquatch in the state’s forests and mountains, although again nowhere near as commonly seen as the Sasquatch is in California, Oregon and Washington. As recently as 7th February 2019 there was a video appearing to show a sasquatch captured on camera by local hunters in Provo, Utah, and was featured on a number of media outlets including the New York Post. The video appears to show a dark figure up on some nearby snowy hills walking within some shrubs. The man filming the apparent encounter kept commenting on how huge the dark beast looked. You can view the video here and judge for yourself.
A few months later on the same year another apparent sasquatch was caught roaming around on some snowy hills, this time in Lone Peak, Utah and appears to show a large dark figure once again, although not as clear as the video from Provo. The video which was captured by Tanner Hargis, gave it to the Rocky Mountain Sasquatch Organization who uploaded it to their YouTube channel with some analysis which you can view here and also judge for yourself.
But what about some cryptids more unique to Utah?
There is the Bear Lake Monster that has an interesting story to it. The Lake that this water cryptid is said to live in and of which it is named after is located on the Idaho-Utah border and is split almost equally between the two states, but the monster has more sightings on the Utah side than the Idaho side as well as more of a legend in Utah than Idaho.
The creature as usual has varying descriptions, but one such common description is that it is a light cream colour serpentine like creature, having a wide-head that looked similar to that of an alligator, short legs, and powerful tail. The legend of such a monster really picked up in the early mid-1800s when a person called Joseph C. Rich, an Idaho Territory settler who would later become a politician and judge, wrote a number of articles on it in the Deseret Newspaper.
One of the first articles in 1868 talked about how the Indians had a tradition that concerned a strange, serpent-like creature that was said to inhabit Bear Lake and that the Indians called it the water devil. The article went on to how the creature has “again made an appearance” and that a number of white settlers in the area had claimed to see the beast with their own eyes and that it had been dubbed the Bear Lake Monster.
The article stoked excitement and wonder into this apparent beast and had people coming to the area in an attempt to see the beast and some even went about trying to catch it. Further articles that would recite apparent sightings also continued to be released, further prolonging the momentum and awe around this phantom water beast.
One of these such sightings included in the original article was a white settler called Mr S. M. Johnson who encountered the monster. The article says that the man saw something in the lake and at first thought it may be a man drowning, but when he went to take a closer look he found that it was in-fact something much more strange, upon reaching the shore this creature, which was described as 2-3 feet long animal that he had never seen before, suddenly broke the surface of the water and literally shot water out of its nose, perhaps as some kind of warding off mechanism, the creature remained in the lake and the man said he could see a great bulk under the water which he assumed was the creature’s body.
Unfortunately though, Joseph C. Rich, after about two decades would recant the articles he had written as merely fabrication and so seemingly disproving the monster’s existence, although other people have claimed to actually see the Bear Lake Monster, even until as recently as 2004 and there were also a number of other reported alleged sightings of a water monster in Bear Lake before the Joseph C. Rich articles had come out and so some have still chosen to believe that some kind of water cryptid could have been or may still exist within Bear Lake.
Next up we will move on over the Great Salt Lake, certainly the state’s best-known lake and also quite the tourist attraction and of which the state capital is named after, the lake is the largest salt water lake in the Western Hemisphere and has no outlets of which helps to make it one of the most saltiest lakes and also easy to float in, giving it the nickname of “America’s Dead Sea”. The Lake is a major contributor to the state’s economy by mineral extraction, recreational tourist attraction and brine shrimp harvesting and exporting.
But the lake and the area in and around it, is supposed and alleged to have a whole manner of weird and strange happenings and legends associated with it. One of these such legends is about dolphins or whales, depending which story you hear, that were captured from Australia having been released into the lake by a James Wickham in June 1890 with a plan to form a breeding population so that they could be hunted by the locals for lamp oil.
The plan was said to have gone wrong though when a habitat constructed in the lake that was meant to keep the dolphins or whales confined to a specific part of the lake failed to work and allowed the dolphins or whales to break through it and access the entirety of the lake at the behest of Wickham. Apparently the dolphins or whales were later sighted in the lake frolicking around and playing, along with new editions and that they became one of the lakes fixtures at the time and some say they eventually went extinct from hunters/whalers – but it is thought merely to be a myth, although there have been alleged sightings of dolphins and whales in the lake from time to time, but it is thought that due to the lake’s high salt content they would not have been able to survive, even if the tale was real.
Other cryptids have also been reported in the lake as well such as aggressive alligator-like serpents, especially during the 1800s. One of these such sightings was dubbed as the North Shore Monster and happened in the early summer of 1877, several employees of the Barnes and Co. Salt Works Company alleged to see a large creature on the lakes north shore, describing it as having a crocodile-like body and the head of a horse. It was said that the creature made a fierce bellowing noise and then charged at the workers who in turn ran up a hillside and hid in some brush until morning. Some believe the monster could have been an American Bison, which once roamed the areas.
But that isn’t all, there have also been sporadic reports of giant creatures flying around and over the lake, such as that looking similar to pterosaurs, with such sightings made in 1903 and even as early as 2001. Again it could be said that these may be the famous Thunderbirds from Native American legend or that they could have been prehistoric animals that managed to survive in limited numbers, although this would be rather unlikely as it is highly likely we would have discovered something so big if that was the case – again there is also the belief that they are merely residual forms that pop in and out of our time now and again, as a way of explaining how these things can be sighted despite never being discovered.
One such report, the 1903 one, was made by hunters called Martin Gilbert and John Barry who reported seeing what they described as a prehistoric animal over Stansbury Island, one of the many tiny islands in the Great Salt Lake. The creature was described as about 65-feet in length, with horny scales, an alligator-like head, a large maw with saw-like teeth and glowing eyes along with bat-like wings that stretched as far as 100-feet and a tail similar to a fish. The hunters say the creature flew off at dusk and returned with a badly mangled horse in its mouth before it then flew into a cave to seemingly devour it, with the men saying they could hear the sickening crunches of bone echoing from within for at least an hour before they made their way back to camp.
To top it all off the lake is also said to be haunted by ghosts and spirits as well. One ghost legend is that of a grave-digger in Salt Lake City called Jean Baptiste from the mid-1800s. Baptiste was not simply just burying people though as it would soon be discovered after the exhuming of a man called Moroni Clawson, who had been shot dead by lawmen in January 1862. The family did not show up to bury him so a police officer paid for the body to be buried. After the burial the family did eventually show up as they wanted to move the body to rest at their family cemetery, upon the body being exhumed it was found to be stripped of clothes and naturally the gravedigger was quickly a suspect.
A search of Baptiste’s house would lead to the discovery of over 300 personal clothing and belongings of men, women and children who had been buried. Baptiste was arrested and thrown in prison to await trial. A lynch mod, disgusted at what he had done, soon formed up outside the prison he was being held in. Baptiste would be found guilty and due to all the outrage and anger towards him it was decided instead of imprisoning Baptiste, he would be exiled to Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake, although this was soon changed to Fremont Island as it was thought Baptiste may be able to swim back too easily from the latter.
He was provided with a shack and some provisions to live out the last of his days on the island in solitude. Two weeks later cattle ranchers showed up to the island to check on their herds and would also find that Baptiste’s shack had been knocked down and Baptiste himself was seemingly no-where around. Searches and manhunts failed to find Baptiste and he was never seen again and it was speculated by some that he had used wood from the knocked down shack to build a raft and escape the island and some say that the raft capsized and he drowned.
Ever since, there has been a popular local legend of his ghost that is said to roam the islands shores, dressed in old clothing and sometimes holding a shovel and even moaning for vengeance before vanishing into thin air.
This still isn’t all the seemingly mysterious things that the Great Salt Lake has to offer, but it is a glimpse into some of its local legends and unexplained sightings and phenomena.
Finally, we shall move on to a haunting in the state of Utah. One such place is the Capitol Theatre in the state’s capital city Salt Lake City. The theatre is a historical landmark of the city which was built at 50 West 200 South in downtown Salt Lake City in 1913 using an Italian Rennaissance architecture style and was back then called Orpheum Theatre and hosted vaudeville performances. The theatre was renamed to the Capitol Theatre in 1927 and in 1929 it was remodeled as a motion picture house. In 1976 it was purchased by Salt Lake County and restored as a performing arts center which continues to showcase opera, dance, ballet and musical performances and so remains a tourist attraction.
In 1949 a fire broke out in the basement of the Capitol Theatre, all of the 600-odd attendants were able to make it out alive, but two ushers were sent in to investigate, upon coming across the fire they grabbed fire extinguishers and battled the flames, one of the ushers left to update the manager on the situation while the other usher, Richard Duffin’s was unfortunately trapped after some oxygen tanks exploded and was overcome by the fire and was the only death of the fire.
Due to this incident many believe he is still there to this day, haunting the theatre as a ghost and causing much mischief to those that run operations and perform in the theatre. Such ghostly goings-on include doors slamming off their own accord, technical theatre equipment being messed around with, including failing to work properly or at-all and also lights turning off and on by themselves or also not working at all, which has on a number of occasions disrupted performances. Elevators have also operated by themselves without explanation.
Those who work there though experience the full brunt of the ghostly activity on a day to day basis and security guards who work there have also been often spooked and seemingly pranked and messed around with by the apparent ghost of Richard Duffin’s. Due to the old history of the theatre as well seemingly residual haunting activity has also been reported such as phantoms dressed in old-fashioned clothing walking around and then just vanishing into thin air and also unexplained shadows. The place was featured on an episode of Paranormal Witness on the SyFy channel as well.
And so there you have it, a taste of the paranormal side of the US state of Utah. Next up we will check out the strange happenings and things in the US state of Arizona!
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