By Rachel Steffensen
You remember ghost stories told in high school and the dares your friends gave you to knock on the door at old abandoned houses. This Halloween, you can spook yourself again with a few local ghost stories. Share your new haunted knowledge with friends or take a risk and check them out for yourself.
The SCERA movie theater on State Street in Orem is rumored to be home to a hard-working haunt in the basement. Employees call the ghost Eleanor - a middle-aged woman who glows blue or green - but they don''t have any information on her or know her real name.
Because she is only seen on Wednesdays, it is thought she must have worked a Wednesday shift. They said she must have died before coming into work one day and, not knowing she''s passed on, continued to work her regular shift. However, Adam Robertson from the SCERA said there''s not a ghost, and these stories are all false.
If you take a trip to downtown Salt Lake City this weekend, you may drive past the old McCune Mansion. The mansion was built in 1900 and has been restored today for group events.
Employees have reported mysterious happenings such as doors locking that don''t have locks and lights coming on all hours of the night. Witnesses have seen footprints begin and then unexplainably end in the middle of the room.
To find a special haunt on BYU campus, just walk to the library. The librarians in the Music and Dance collection in the Lee Library have heard their share of spooky stories from student employees.
Librarian Janet Bradford said a male student was finishing up a few jobs after the library closed, and as he walked past the reading room, he saw a woman through the giant glass window.
'He caught a glance of her out of the corner of his eye,' Bradford said. 'He went in to tell her that the library was closed, and then she wasn''t there.'
The student told librarians he saw the woman two more times through the glass.
Another event occurred in the Viola Archive of the library when a student walked in and witnessed a mess being made.
'Scores were literally falling off the shelf as if somebody was pulling them off,' Bradford said the student reported.
The librarians said they believe there is a reasonable explanation for this occurrence because somebody could have put the score sheets away improperly and the student walked in just as the sheets began to fall.
The harp room is home to a 'ghost chair' which is said to have just appeared one day, and the librarians don''t know where it came from.
'It was probably a janitor at some time, moved the chair over from another floor, but we don''t really know where it came from,' Bradford said.
Annie Erickson, another librarian, said librarians have tried to move the chair out before because it doesn''t exactly fit with its surroundings.
'It''s not just any ordinary chair,' Erickson said. 'They''ve moved it five times and it always comes back to this spot.'
Weird noises are made in the reading room and students have said they sound like voices.
'You have to remember that this is the oldest part of the library,' Bradford said.
She said they have had vents repeatedly checked out and the noises still exist, but reminds students that the library is an older building.
If you want to read about more local ghost stories or find stories from your hometown, look online at theshadowlands.net/places and scroll down to check out the haunted places index.