Haunted Salt Lake City: the Ghost Tour You Have to Take
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This post is sponsored by US Ghost Adventures.
About Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City may be known for its soaring mountains, clean streets, and Mormon temples, but beneath that polished surface lies a history far less holy. Whispers of restless spirits and tragedies still linger in its downtown streets, waiting for those daring enough to listen (AKA you). On our recent Salt Lake City ghost tour, we stepped into that shadowed past and explored the haunted history of Salt Lake City.
Salt Lake City Ghost Tour
If you’re visiting Utah for the first time and love the creepy, spooky, and paranormal, why not add a ghost tour onto your things to do at night in Salt Lake City? And if you love true crime? Even better. One of the tour stops has its own Netflix documentary!
About the Salt Lake City Ghost Tour
This particular tour is run by US Ghost Tours/Lizzie Borden Ghost Tours. Salt Lake City isn’t the only place you can dive into the haunted past either. With tours in major cities (and some less major ones!) around the country, this is your premier company for all experiences paranormal.
On our Salt Lake City ghost tour, the vibe was historical and spooky, which I appreciated because I am a total scaredy cat. From what our guide told me, though, there are plenty of options around the country where you can visit haunted places, spend the night in rooms steeped in tragedy, and get that hair-raising, adrenaline-pumping experience for all of you out there who love to chase those thrills.
So when is the best time of year to go visit all the haunted places in Salt Lake City? Honestly, anytime! Since this is one of the top things to do at night in Salt Lake City, you aren’t competing with that precious ski time or hiking time. More on how to dress for every season here below.
Andy, our amazing guide!
What to Know Before You Go on a Paranormal Tour in Salt Lake City
How long is the tour? The regular tour is approximately one hour. The extended tour (highly recommend adding this on!) is a total of 90 minutes. Definitely go to the bathroom before you head over to the meeting point, as there won’t be places to stop along the way. It is all outdoors.
Where do you meet your guide? The guide will text you the exact meeting point, including what they are wearing or other helpful ways to find them.
What area do you explore? On our tour, we strolled through the heart of downtown Salt Lake City, where there are many historical buildings with creepy pasts. Since it is downtown and a pretty populated area, expect there to be some crowds, especially on weekends when people are out hitting up the hottest restaurants and bars.
Who is my guide? Your guide is a local expert on all things haunted in Salt Lake City. We had Andy as our guide, and he was fantastic. So passionate and knowledgable, and he had an iPad full of reference photos to really immerse us in the stories. I found myself captivated with every word and very annoyed when a loud car would drive by and I would miss an important bit of information. Thankfully, he was great about pausing and repeating as necessary.
What to Wear & What to Pack for Exploring Haunted Salt Lake City
So, what should you wear on your Salt Lake City ghost tour? It depends on the season, but you should definitely have good walking shoes since you’ll be on your feet and outdoors the entire time. Salt Lake City experiences all four seasons, and since your tour starts at 8PM, it’s going to be dark except in the late spring and summer. Winter tours will need a heavy jacket, gloves, and hat, plus some sturdy boots in case there is snow! For fall/spring, a light jacket or sweatshirt on top of your regular clothes is fine. For the summer, definitely bring a bottle of water, I was so thirsty by the time our tour was over! The dry air will really get to you, especially if you don’t live here.
What It’s Like on the Salt Lake City Ghost Tour
We arrived at our meeting point a little before 8PM, which was thankfully easy to find because Andy had a glowing green light hanging off his backpack. From there, we checked in and Andy handed us an EMF detector. Cue the excitement!
If you don’t know, an EMF detector like this one is designed to detect fluctuations in the electromagnetic fields around you. They have many practical purposes in fields like medicine or electrical engineering, but for our purposes, they’re for detecting nearby ghosts. You can read more about the EMF detectors available for your tour here.
At 8PM, we set out through the streets of downtown Salt Lake City to our first stop at the Capitol Theatre. Along the way, Andy explained a little history of Salt Lake City to people visiting on vacation and pointed out other notable landmarks they could visit. Someone even asked about Ted Bundy (yes, that Ted Bundy, the famous serial killer) who lived close by. He showed us a video he took outside the house where the front porch light dimmed and brightened, and then an orb appeared on the front lawn! It was SO spooky. Unfortunately it isn’t a stop on this tour, but you can seek it out on your own if you are interested in some serious true crime history.
At the Capitol Theatre, Andy told us the history of it and how a former worker had died there after a horrific fire. I’m not going to go into detail about any of the stories because I will not do them justice, and you definitely need to hear them for yourself, but trust me when I say, the way he haunts the security guards to this day would have me quitting in an instant! We got close to the glass with our EMF detectors to see if the ghost was visiting us after someone’s went from green to red. It was actually really exciting!
Afterward, we continued on our Salt Lake City ghost tour to the now Holliday Inn in which an entire family tragically died. After a raid by the FBI, the entire family jumped from the top floor, with only one of the children surviving. Apparently if you stay in the rooms on that floor, you can hear children running and playing in the halls late at night. 😳
Of course, many old buildings like city hall, courthouses, and banks are also haunted from tragic, passionate deaths of the past. At each stop, Andy showed us photos of the people who died or what the buildings used to look like during that time period. I loved all the references he had to bring each story to life!
We stopped outside of some bars on a street known for its lawlessness back in the day, where Andy told us that Whiskey Street Bar is actually haunted and the ghost will throw bottles off the massive shelves on the walls. And not even two weeks later, the bar and the adjacent one burned down! I’m not sure if the ghost started the fire, but based on what the bouncers said, I definitely can’t rule it out as a cause (even if the police and fire department already did).
By the end of the tour, I learned so much about the haunted history of Salt Lake City, and I think you will love it too!
Final Thoughts on Salt Lake City Ghost Tour
Have I convinced you to go on a Salt Lake City ghost tour yet? It’s honestly one of the best things to do at night in Salt Lake City, especially with its late start and short time commitment. Grab some dinner, grab a drink, and grab an EMF detector to see if some of Salt Lake City’s most haunted places will make your heart race!