SNOWY GHOST BOY
On March 5th 2023, a gentleman was walking home from Walmart on the south side of the street, when he heard footsteps behind him.
“There was heavy snow on the ground at the time and it was overcast, but it wasn’t snowing,” he explained. “I was walking home and I heard footsteps come up from behind me! I turned around, but nothing was there!”
He continued walking and the footsteps followed. The weather began to change around him. The wind began to blow in what seemed like multiple directions and “weird snow devils began twirling about the street,” he recalled. “I began hearing sounds like echoes of something crying around me!”
He started running as he was only a block away from his apartment. As he ran, he could hear the footsteps get louder as if growing in numbers. “It sounded like I was being chased by a group of people, or even some kind of large beast!”
When he made it to 200 East, he almost leapt across the road. When he finally arrived, he turned around to see that everything was normal. Dumbfounded, he quickly ducked into his apartment complex.
Over time, he brushed the event off as some kind of odd weather phenomena, however, a few nights later, around 8:30pm, he and his sweetheart were walking home along the same path. They had already crossed 200 East and were in the driveway of his complex. While walking, they passed a huge mound of snow piled up by plows. It was at least eleven feet high. He thought it was odd to see a little boy in blue kneeling and playing at the top of the pile so late at night. At first he thought it was a neighbor kid playing on the mound.
“I looked away and back again several times, and each time he continued to move and play. After I had passed the mound, I looked back and at the top of the mound there was a chunk of icy-snow that took the shape of a small boy! But I swear to you it was moving! MOVING! I was only ten feet away from it and I know what I saw!”
Did the footsteps and the snow boy have anything in common? We may never know.
DEATH PAYS A VISIT
I still get goosebumps when I think about this story. I had the pleasure of interviewing an absolutely delightful old woman who, although eager to share her story, wanted to remain anonymous. I was also asked to keep the name of her apartment complex a secret. But I can tell you this, the story takes place oddly close, a little too close actually, to the Ghost Baby.
It was a Sunday night around 11pm, and the woman was entering her complex and going up the first flight of stairs. “I was walking up the stairs when I saw my friend Mary coming down. She was in her nightgown, which was very odd. I spoke to her, but she completely ignored me. She was being followed by a large man in a black jumpsuit, like the kind a mechanic would wear.”
She said he was carrying a torn black backpack in his arms. “He had black hair, but was awfully pale, but my goodness he looked friendly!” She felt nothing odd about him. In fact, she said he seemed to have an almost pleasant feeling around him. However, the closer he got to her, the more she could smell a horrible odor.
“He smelled like death!” she continued. “I don’t know if you’ve ever smelled death, but times that by ten and that’s how bad he smelled.”
They kept moving down the stairs and presumably out of the building. The stench lingered all the way to the second floor, but disappeared completely once she passed Mary’s apartment. Mary and she lived on the same floor.
The next morning she found out that Mary had passed away that night. After she had finished talking, she paused for a moment, then leaned over the table, looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I saw Death escorting Mary out of this apartment and into the afterlife.”
Danny B. Stewart is a Utah Folklorist who has single-handedly discovered more than three hundred new pieces of Utah Lore. He is also the creator, owner and operator of The Original Provo Ghost Tour and The Provo Faerie Walk. He is currently in the process of wrapping up the creation of the Great Cache Valley Ghost Tour.
Featured illustration by Chris Bodily.
