Museum Haunting Details

Ancestors of Mormon Pioneers are justifiably proud of the heritage and history of the brave people who settled Utah, Nevada and California in the 1800s.

Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum

One terrific organization devoted to preserving that heritage is the Daughters of Utah Pioneers. Website for DUP.

Maureen Smith, the vice president of the Daughters of Utah Pioneers took a few minutes to talk with me about the recent ghost sightings at the museum.

On October 10, 2007 Utah Capitol State Police saw an image on the monitors which come from the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum.

One of the officers actually took a photo of the image in the monitor, and gave the photo to the Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum.See the image here.

The monitors are in the Utah Capitol building, and the images come from the cameras in the Museum a few blocks away. State Police watch the monitors, and respond if there appears to be an intruder.

The image appeared four times over an 8 day period, and always appeared between about 11:00 PM and 3:00 AM. During these hours the Museum is closed and empty, no one is inside accept cleaning or maintenance.

During this 8 day period the motion detectors in the Museum were set off several times, and the image appeared 4 times. The ghostly image appeared without setting off motion detectors sometimes, other times motion detectors went off without showing the image.

Each time the image was seen it looked like the same person, and the image always persisted for several minutes.

Capitol State Police are the security for the Museum so they sent Officers to investigate and found the Museum secure each time they saw unusual images or motion detectors went off.

In an interesting side story, the Museum Director speculates that she may know who it is in the image. She thinks it could be the ghost of a girl who made a sampler that was on display in the museum.

20 Years ago the “sampler” was stolen from the Museum. A “sampler” is an embroidered piece of cloth that students of embroidery used to prove that they knew all of their stitches, because the cloth had a ’sample’ of every stitch.

A Museum staffer recognized the Sampler listed for sale on eBay, and that staffer contacted eBay, and sent documentation that the item was stolen, so eBay contacted seller. The eBay seller, who’s family had purchased the sampler in good faith years earlier, immediately returned the sampler to Daughters of Utah Pioneers.

During the interval of the images appearing to the State Police, and the return of the sampler, a Custodian reported that on one night he saw a young lady, dressed in black, sitting on a bench in the museum foyer.

The custodian explained that the museum was closed and she must leave, he unlocked and opened the front door for her, she never spoke but arose and walked out the door, BUT NOT DOWN THE STEPS! The girl floated above the steps, and sidewalk, until she disappeared!

Daughters of Utah Pioneers Museum Ghost

This story was brought to our attention by Carolyn Richardson, a Daughter of a Utah Pioneer. The story originally appeared in their newsletter.

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Lagoons Haunted Gingerbread House

This beautiful cottage keeps the housekeeping staff jumping because a very active haunting keeps them remaking the bed! Even though there are alarms on the doors the bed gets messed up, and often has sleeping depressions on the mattress!

The ghost is active, and workers have to clean up the spooky mess very often, even people who’ve only worked for a few months here know about the ghost.

St. Charles Hotel, Carson City Nevada

This is a picture of the St. Charles hotel in Carson City Nevada. It is the site of lots of creepy stories and events. Soon the restaurant ‘Firkin Fox’ will open here, and you HAVE to see their website, it’s funny!

This hotel was popular in the 1800s and that’s why it’s so haunted. One man that stayed at the hotel used to wear a top hat. Years later people who stay in his room often encounter him, this ghostly spirit was soon known as the Top Hat Ghost.

The manager of the hotel showed us a picture on the wall that every so often tends to jump clean off the wall!!! We inspected the picture and took it from the wall. It seems to be firmly attached, and we agree with Linda that it flying off the wall every year or so is strange.

We found a picture in the manager’s office taken when the St. Charles was new, the picture has the number ‘216′ on it. That number became more important as we investigated.

I asked her what they meant but she didn’t know later I realized that 216 was the number of the room that the man in the top hat stayed in. the scary ghostly visits seem to happen for a reason here!

In the hotel me and my dad both felt feelings of presence and scary feelings like you’re being watched.

We took many pictures of this scary hotel and almost all of them had orbs and ghost’s glow in them.
Only one things for sure in the 1800s the room of 216 was soon to be haunted by the Top Hat Ghost

Top Hat Ghost

The Top Hat Ghost occupied room 216 in the 1800s, and he visits people today.

You can stay in room 216 today if you have the courage because the top hat ghost still thinks it’s his room.

A famous boxer, Larry (Irish Pat) Duncan, stayed in room 216 for many years, until he died November of 2004. Larry often told the St. Charles manager (Linda) about the Top Hat Ghost, and how the ghost thought room #216 belonged to him.

Read more about room #216.

This is the most persistent and active ghost at the St. Charles Hotel, so if you stay in room #216, you have a good chance of meeting a ghost!

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216

Room 216 is the room of the top hat ghost, who stayed there in the 1800s, and still haunts the place today. Years after the man died Larry Duncan stayed there and kept on seeing the top hat ghost. He often told friends at the St. Charles Hotel about the ghost.

Image courtesy of Thin Veil Investigations, Carson City, NV.

After Larry died the room was rented to Hair Stylists who installed an extra sink in what is now a closet. The sink was removed and the room is now rented to a new tenant. The new resident keeps hearing running water from the closet.

After Larry Duncan left a new guest sees the same ghost, so this is sheer
fact that the top hat ghost never left!

Jumping Picture at St. Charles

This painting of a mountain meadow is secure fastened to the wall with a nail and a strong wire, yet once a year or so it jumps, doesn’t simply fall, right off the wall and lands several feet away.

The manager has experienced this several times, and it never seems to have a cause, such as an earthquake, wind through an open door or anything. This was the main eerie event that Linda has personally experienced while managing the St. Charles.

Grandma’s Piano

The piano came from Virginia to Nevada by rail in the 1940s, and the piano fell from the train to the depot platform and landed on its back, cracking the hinged lid in two pieces lengthwise. My grandfather was an excellent cabinetmaker and he repaired it. Unless you knew where to look, you would never suspect it was damaged.

My mother learned to play, and she taught me to play on this same piano. I loved the old piano with its genuine ivory and ebony keys, its dark wood, and ancient sound. My family inherited the family piano when Grandma died, and I began teaching my daughter to play the very same day it arrived at my home.

Quickly my little girl, Sarah, was playing simple melodies with one finger, and I enjoyed hearing her practice while I did other projects around the house.

One night, after we’d all been asleep for a couple of hours, I heard the piano playing. I got up and walked to the top of the stairs where we had a view of the family room below. I could see Sarah plinking out a simple tune, and decided to leave her alone since she seemed so happy to be playing.

After returning to bed and sleeping until almost dawn I suddenly awoke with a shock. Sitting up in bed, my husband could sense my agitation and asked what it was.

I said “Sarah was playing ‘Red River Valley’ on the piano last night!”
He said “So?”.
I said “Sarah doesn’t KNOW ‘Red River Valley’, I haven’t TAUGHT her the ‘Red River Valley’!”

Neither of us could sleep, we talked and waited for Sarah to wake so we could ask her about the song. When she finally came downstairs I could hardly wait to ask how she knew that song.

“Sarah, I heard you playing a pretty song on the piano last night.”
“Yes mommy, I love it, the pretty lady taught me.”
“What pretty lady?”
“The pretty lady in white.” she said.

I felt dizzy, and went I to the living room in a kind of stunned disbelief, but I got out the old album with photos of my mother and grandmother, who both had gone to heaven years ago.

I showed Sarah the album, and as I slowly turned the pages, she was interested but not reacting at all. I realized that the pictures showed my grandmother and mother at younger ages, and as I neared the end of the album, where the newer pictures were, and where my grandmother would have been over 60 years old, Sarah jabbed excitedly at her picture and shouted “That’s the pretty lady!”.

I pretended that it was wonderful.

It made me want to scream, and cry, and laugh all at the same time! Was my grandmother really showing my daughter how to play her old and beloved piano? Emotions flooded over me like a waterfall. All day I moved mechanically through my tasks, absent-mindedly thinking only of the strange events the night before.

For several more nights, nothing happened at all. I began to think it was an interesting miracle. A once in a lifetime conversation piece that people would coo over, and secretly disbelieve.

Then one night, as I was comfortably sleeping, I heard “Red River Valley” and it sounded better than it had before. My heart raced as I climbed from the bed, noticing my husband doing the same, he commented that the playing sounded very good.

We walked to the top of the stairs and looked down at Sarah, and just before I called out that she was really getting better I noticed that she wasn’t touching the keys at all.

Submitted by Jeff Peterson

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