Patients check in, but they never leave!
Hey all! Danny B. Stewart here, Utah’s folklorist extraordinaire, bringing you some spooky sightings and stories from the Utah State Hospital in Provo.
Over the years, I have heard varying anecdotes involving this haunted hospital from both current and former employees and patients. It wasn’t until recently, however, that I started paying closer attention to the hospital and the strange stories surrounding it. Here are three tales recently pulled from the hospital’s growing body of lore.
Not long ago, I was sipping a chai at Provo’s Juice and Java, when a gentleman named Jim (not his real name) recognized me. He abruptly sat down at my table and presented me with this tale. He used to work in what was called the “Medical Service Building,” and sometime in 2002 or 2003, he was working the graveyard shift.
It was a little past midnight, and Jim was headed down a long corridor toward his preferred bathroom, which was on a lower level and a good distance away from his section. As he was exiting the bathroom, he could see a woman standing in the corridor about thirty yards from his point of observation.
Jim yelled at her, “Hey, you’re not supposed to be here!” It was then that he noticed that she didn’t have any legs!
Jim immediately ran back upstairs to grab his security guard buddy. They both returned to the scene of the encounter and, get this . . . she was still there! The floating, legless body of some kind of “ghost!”
The second the security guard yelled, “You can’t be here!”
At that moment, Jim and his coworker turned their attention away from the apparition, looking at one another for just a second, only to look back and find that the spirit was now hovering directly in front of them, just a foot away! The story ends with both men bolting hysterically from the building.
The Utah State Hospital has many legends involving phantom kids in the Children’s Unit, from the laughter of children seemingly coming from nowhere in the middle of the night, to apparitions appearing in the hallways.
The following story was presented to me by another former employee who also wanted to remain anonymous. This person worked in the Children’s Unit. He was in the bathroom finishing up when a knock on the bathroom door startled him. “Be out in a minute!” he hollered.
A second knock followed, and as he turned to grab the knob and open the door, there was a third knock. He opened the door to find no one there.
“That’s weird,” he thought to himself. As he attempted to return to his unit area, he heard a child laughing behind him. He spun around to see a little girl in a white dress standing there giggling at him, yet no one was supposed to be in that hallway!
Needless to say, he doesn’t work in that unit anymore. The informant also mentioned encounters with “shadow humanoids,” which we’ll discuss at another time.
The final story comes from Kimberly Mitchell, who also worked the graveyard shift in the old State Hospital Children’s Unit 17 years ago. Late one night, Kimberly was performing her hourly room checks. She had positioned her chair at the end of a long corridor with rooms lining both sides. She was positioned so she could watch every room as she sat.
She saw nothing but sleeping children until about 2:00 am, when she noticed a little boy at the end of the hallway wearing a white sheet. It was wrapped around his head and face, with his face still showing, while the rest of the sheet acted as a makeshift cape.
The little boy looked at her after she shouted at him, then turned away and continued down the hall until he entered the last room on the right. (There was only one exit from this hallway, and it was next to where Kimberly was stationed.)
Following him, she used her master key to unlock the room he had entered. When she shined her flashlight into the dark space, it was completely empty! No bed, no bedding, no child, nothing! Just an empty room.
As she turned back toward the door, she realized there was no way to open it from either side without the master key. A cold chill enveloped her as she began to realize what she had seen. She fled toward the door, and as she did, a child giggled behind her back!
She ran up the long hallway, terrified and out of breath, to the offices where her fellow employees were gathered. They asked her what was wrong, and to her amazement, they weren’t fazed at all!
“Oh, that’s just Ghost Boy!” one of them said. “You met Ghost Boy!” said another. “He even plays jokes on the kitchen staff,” according to a third. “But he’s harmless. Just tell him to go back to his room and he’ll leave you alone.”
I”ll leave you alone to ponder these spooky tidbits! Until next time, take care!
Danny B. Stewart, The Utah Folklore God, can be found riffing on his folklore adventures on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, where he shares his daily insights into the world of folklore, mythology, and legend.
