At the University of Utah, the lore runs deeper than the rumored network of tunnels beneath campus. There’s the ghostly soldier who roams Fort Douglas. The fountain that supposedly grants athletic powers. The friend of a roommate who narrowly escaped a notorious serial killer.
Like lichen spreading over headstones, tall tales and spooky stories have taken hold throughout the university’s 176-year history. Some are legend. Some are fabrication. And some are very much true.
We set out to find which is which.
Students failed a morality test after ignoring a man in need.
RATING: LEGEND
This tale, fittingly, comes from the very man who coined the term “urban legend.” Professor Emeritus Jan Harold Brunvand, who taught folklore at the U for 30 years before retiring in 1996, popularized the concept of these tales that “fit in between traditional folklore and modern exchanges.” Brunvand published several compilations of urban legends, some of which he heard from U students. A young man shared the following campus lore with Brunvand, who retold it in his syndicated column in May 1989.
Students in a religion class showed up for their final exam on the subject of compassion. On the chalkboard, the professor had left a note saying the test had been moved across campus. As the students headed to the new location, they saw a man begging for help but rushed past him in their haste to get to the exam. When they arrived at the classroom, the professor asked if anyone had stopped to help the poor man outside—who, he revealed, was an actor planted to test the students’ true understanding of compassion. When he learned no one had stopped to help, the professor failed the entire class. An alternate version tells of one student who does offer aid and therefore earns the only A.
“ ‘The Lesson in Compassion’ has three typical features of a campus legend: It’s unverifiable, it teaches a lesson, and it’s told with slight variations,” wrote Brunvand. “It’s likely that this one is told on campuses nationwide.”
A human skull was unearthed at Presidents Circle.
RATING: TRUE
In April 2016, renovation work on the Crocker Science Center in the George Thomas Building came to a halt when U historical architect Charles Shepherd found something unexpected at the site.
“There was what I thought was a large cobblestone over to my left. I walked over to it…and immediately could tell that it was not just a big rock,” Shepherd said in a podcast chronicling the story. “I’ve never had an anatomy class in my life, but I could recognize a skull when I saw it.”
The skull was one of several human bones found at the site. As U writers Paul Gabrielsen and Brooke Adams BS’91 MS’12 BS’21 reported, the state’s forensic anthropologist was brought in to analyze the remains. After discovering a neatly cut section of cranium, she determined the remains came from “anatomical specimens”—aka cadavers. More than a century ago, the building housed the U’s School of Medicine, although it’s unclear how the bones ended up in the soil beneath the foundation. After the investigation, the remains were given to the Anthropology Department to serve their original purpose—educating students.
There’s a secret network of tunnels under campus.
RATING: TRUE
Ask around about campus rumors, and “the tunnels” comes up frequently. It seems everyone has heard about a supposed network of underground passageways .
According to a Fall 2002 Continuum article, the rumors are true. Ann Floor BA’85 lived near the U and explored campus growing up. In the summer of 1958, she and her brothers discovered the entrance to a tunnel in the basement of a campus building and ventured in.
“The tunnel was warm from the steam, and musty smelling, with a little water on the floor. And it was very dark…. We eventually came to a lighted intersection where four or five tunnels converged, like the spokes of a wheel. For the rest of the summer, we’d wander the tunnels.”
To a kid, it’s a secret subterranean world. But in the cold light of adulthood, the reality is pretty mundane—they’re utility tunnels for water pipes and electrical wires. And to anyone other than maintenance workers in appropriate gear, they’re potentially hazardous. Today, the tunnels are gated and accessible only with badge access.
A U law student escaped the clutches of Ted Bundy.
RATING: TRUE
Randy Dryer BS’73 JD’76 still can’t believe he went to school with one of the world’s most notorious serial killers. Ted Bundy “was the most gregarious, well-liked person you could ever imagine—the last person you’d suspect,” says Dryer, now a professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law and Honors College.
Dryer was president of the Student Bar Association (SBA) at the time. One day, the law school dean called Dryer into his office and told him the Salt Lake police suspected Bundy of multiple killings. He wanted Dryer to be present when the police brought an escaped victim to campus to identify Bundy. On that day, however, Bundy failed to show up for class.
But Dryer saw Bundy the next day at an SBA-hosted party. Earlier, Dryer had asked the SBA secretary to set up the party since he would be late. In return, he would stay to clean up and she could go to the after-party at the Green Parrot nightclub.
As the SBA party wound down, Dryer and the secretary were talking when Bundy walked up and offered her a ride to the bar. Alarm bells went off—but the police had sworn Dryer to secrecy. “So I said to her, ‘I really need you to help me clean up.’ ” She protested. Hadn’t he promised she could leave? But Dryer convinced her to stay, and Bundy drove off alone.
Soon afterward, Bundy was arrested and charged. “No one could believe it,” says Dryer. Many students assumed their likable classmate had been mistaken for the actual perpetrator. “But as the facts came out, it was obviously not a case of mistaken identity. He was a true Jekyll and Hyde.”
A statue at the Park Building entrance was stolen.
RATING: FALSE
The alcove to the right of the Park Building entrance has been conspicuously empty for decades. Only photo-taking grads at commencement occupy the spot opposite the statue of first university president John R. Park. Are the rumors true that BYU students snuck onto campus and absconded with a bronze figure of Brigham Young? Alas, we can’t blame this one on the Cougs. According to a 2015 Daily Chronicle article, the U simply ran out of funds after installing Park’s statue in 1941. Subsequent renovations have come and gone, with “no concrete plans for the empty pedestal on the right—seemingly a riddle with no answer.”
The “Fountain of Ute” bestows athletic gifts.
RATING: LEGEND
You may have driven past the padlocked brick structure at the south end of the Rice-Eccles parking lot and never given it a thought. But legend says a secret lies within: a fountain that grants athletic prowess to anyone who drinks its waters.
The tale begins with a fact—a culinary well drilled in 1931 that earned the name “Fountain of Ute,” according to photos of a bygone sign—then gets murkier. Per a 2009 U blog post, a group of biochem students known as the “Rad Scientists” claimed the well building for their lab sometime in the 1950s. These athletic students would tote their own water to competitions and “went on an intramural sports run that has yet to be rivaled at the U.” In 2004, football coach Urban Meyer supposedly gained access to the building. Had he found the literal key that explains the team’s undefeated, BCS-busting season? Most likely, it’s just an Urban legend.
Campus is haunted.
RATING: LEGEND...OR IS IT?
Before the old School of Medicine building was torn down, it had earned a reputation for eerie phenomena, like elevator doors opening on their own. “This would happen only during graveyard shifts. Everybody who works graves can attest to it,” says Matt Turner, a U of U Health Security supervisor. “Every single time you’d go to the C elevator, as you were turning the corner—ding. It opened.”
The Life Sciences building housed the medical school after the end of World War I, so maybe the ghosts of cadavers caused the alleged paranormal activity. U Facilities employees have reported voices, strange noises, and lab gurneys moving on their own.
During the years he worked in Special Collections at Marriott Library, Walter Jones heard several reports of a spectral soldier around the rare books room. “An employee came to me one time and told me he had just seen a ghost. The person was wearing a Civil War-era army uniform,” Jones recounts. Another time, a janitor, pale and shaking, told Jones an entity had shoved her. Later, a library visitor who’d heard about the ghost asked Jones where it had been sighted. “I took her down to the room, and she got this weird look on her face,” says Jones. “Finally, she said, ‘There was a ghost here, but it’s gone.’ ”
And then there’s Fort Douglas, home to some of Salt Lake’s oldest buildings—and, some say, its most restless spirits. “It can get weird sometimes,” says Fiona Robinson, administrative manager of the Fort Douglas Military Museum.
One night, Robinson was working late. “I heard a woman talking, almost like a whisper,” she recalls. Assuming it was a wayward visitor, she walked through the rooms, announcing the museum was closed. “But still, she kept whispering.” That is, until Robinson approached a display case containing a World War II parachute dress. The gown possibly belonged to the sweetheart of a soldier who’d sent the precious silk back home. A paranormal expert who later toured the museum told Robinson, “The woman who owned this dress is still here. And she’s upset.”
On another occasion, Robinson was awaiting a donation of vehicles from the National Guard. “I heard the back door slam shut and the sound of footsteps,” she says. It must be a Guard member, she thought. She followed the sound of footsteps throughout the museum but no one appeared. An hour later, the Guard showed up.
Fort Douglas’s most frequent spectral sighting is the full-body apparition of a Civil War soldier named Clem. The name, according to a 2014 Daily Chronicle article, comes from a Boy Scout troop who spent the night in the museum. “The boys claimed to feel the breath of Clem, hear his footsteps, and see objects move,” the article reports. Robinson believes Clem is just one of many ghostly soldiers who like to unsettle visitors. “When you’re least expecting it,” she says, “that’s when they like to have their fun.”
Lisa Anderson is associate editor of Utah Magazine.
I’m not a ghost hunter or real into the supernatural. However, if the former Carlson Hall had been proven to be haunted, I wouldn’t be surprised. Unfortunately, the building was where the current law school is now. Old buildings often have weird vibes, the quieter and the more empty they are, the more “alive” they seem.
I love Sam Kalda’s illustrations. Good call, U of U Magazine.
The old Fort Douglas Hospital is creepy. Doing just a little bit of research says that the second floor was part of a temporary insane asylum. There is even a picture from like 20 years ago that someone took during a ghost hunt that looks exactly like someone wearing a straitjacket.
I was living in North Bend WA when a gregarious young man named “Ted” asked for help loading his boat at Lake Sammamish State Park. The helpful young woman he asked disappeared that day, and her body was later found in the woods on Tiger Mtn with another victim. Good job, Randy, you definitely saved your friend’s life. I am proud to call you classmate and friend.
When I was a student (last century), I worked in the Pioneer Theatre wig shop that was in the old ward on University Street. Late night hours there could be extremely weird – odd footsteps, phantom voices. Definitely haunted.