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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Lehi Hospital: Gone but not Forgotten

The Lehi Hospital in Lehi, Utah was built around 1891 and used as a bank, with the second story being reserved as a ward house for the local LDS congregation.  By 1924, the basement of the building was being used as a crematorium business by a local autobody businessman...and apparently due to a lack of space, the bodies had to be cut into fourths to fit into the small cremation oven.

However, by 1926, the building became Lehi's first hospital, possibly since there were already cremation facilities on site, the perfect size to dispose of amputated appendages and other medical waste?  It is during the time of the building being a hospital is where it picked up its majority of legends and ghostlore:

It is said that the head doctor hung the head nurse from the flagpole.  And, being a hospital, many deaths verifiably did occur.  One such death happened in the elevator, where a patient died while being transported to surgery.

The hospital shut down by 1968 and remained vacant for many years until it was bought by Todd Vincze, who hoped to restore the building.  The costs of renovating such a building are tremendous, so the building was turned into a spook house attraction.  The 'haunted house' attraction was intended to bring in much needed money for repairs and upkeep, capitalizing on the building's macabre history, as well as some reported ghostly activity.  (Theresa's Note:  It always amazes me how many of these haunted Halloween attractions are ACTUALLY haunted, lol)

During its tenure as a haunted house attraction, many crew members had their own experiences, and paranormal investigators were allowed in to properly investigate and document such claims.  Unfortunately, by 2009 (3 years after I posted the orginal article on this site) the building was condemned and torn down.

Luckily, one of the paranormal investigators who had a long relationship with the ghosts of Lehi has documented her experiences.  Those can be found HERE.

Photo property of April Slaughter, from her website listed above

Much of the original historical information is from an ABC4 newschannel investigation

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