Ghosts. The disembodied spirits of the dead. The lingering intelligence that refuses to rest when flesh gives out and hearts fall still. Do they walk among us? Are they real?

When I was younger, I was sure of it. Now? I don’t know really.

But one night I found myself in ghost central – a crossroad in the realm of the living dead.

Welcome to Holy Cross

In 2004 I was working at Holy Cross Hospital in downtown Salt Lake City. My office was tucked away on the fifth—and top—floor in an office building on the property. That building, known as the Moreau Building, was built in the 1940’s and was originally used as a dormitory and living quarters for the nuns who previously ran the facility.

By the time I got there, the Moreau Building was mostly abandoned. The accounting department (that’s us—living the dream) occupied one dusty corner of the fifth floor. The rest of the building was a graveyard of forgotten rooms and broken file cabinets.

One night, about a week into the job, I was working late. It was around 9 p.m.—that spooky, too-quiet hour where fluorescent lights hum louder than your own thoughts. I was certain I was alone in this massive, almost abandoned building. I knew I was alone.

Then somewhere down the hallway, I heard a door slam.

The First Encounter

Now, that might not sound like much, but when you’re on the fifth floor of an abandoned convent in the middle of the night—trust me, it’s plenty. I froze. The sound was sharp, angry, echoing through the corridor.

No footsteps. No voices. No elevator.

I crept into the hallway, the kind that looks like it’s never been redecorated since the Truman administration: Beige paint flaked from the walls, doors stood like tombstones in a row—each one locked tight. The air smelled faintly of old paper and disinfectant.

I checked them all. Every door was locked tight. “Probably the wind,” I spoke to no one, lying even to myself. I went back to my office and being only slightly unsettled I dove back into a spreadsheet.

Then came the second slam—harder, closer, and definitely not the wind. This door-slam had intention. It wasn’t random. It felt aimed.

That was it. My brain instantly went from “rational professional” to “final girl in a B-grade horror flick.” I pictured spinning heads, bloody fangs, and floating nuns with unfinished business. Within seconds, I was out the door, car keys in hand, dignity left behind somewhere near the copier.

It was the last time I ever stayed after dark by myself.

Meet Sister Augusta

A few days later, I told the story to William, the night security guard—a man who looked like he’d personally witnessed the invention of electricity. Tall, thin, always in the same black suit. Think Lurch from The Addams Family if Lurch had a 401(k).

Without even blinking, he said, “Ah. You met Sister Augusta. Don’t worry. She’s harmless.”

Excuse me—”met”?

“She’s the resident ghost,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Used to be head nurse here when it was still run by the nuns. Died on duty, or so they say. Never really left.”

People had seen her wandering the East Wing, gliding through hallways, sometimes entering patient rooms. Some said she spoke. Others said she just stared. Often Sister Augusta’s silhouette could be seen in the windows at night, nun’s habit clearly visible. William himself claimed to have followed her once—though, knowing William, I wasn’t sure which of them was haunting whom.

A Haunted Hospital

The place had history. Holy Cross hospital was built in 1875, rebuilt in 1912, then twisted and patched together for decades until the place felt more like a labyrinth than a hospital. It was operated by the Sisters of the Holy Cross, a group of nuns who ran the facility for over a hundred years. 

The Moreau building was added to the grounds along with an underground tunnel connecting the nun’s dormitory to the hospital. In the area of the tunnel were weird rooms and chambers, with a maze of abandoned hallways going off in every direction. Water dripped, pipes clanked, and weird smells emanated from each subterranean hallway. No one liked going down there. The air was stale and heavy, and sometimes—just sometimes—you’d hear the faint drag of footsteps when you were alone. When Elizabeth Smart was missing for a year we joked that she was probably wandering in the tunnels of Holy Cross, unable to find her way out.

Above the ground, the convoluted buildings were just as strange. Stairways terminated into solid walls. Dusty storage rooms filled with ancient records and unused furniture went seemingly untouched for years. The Moreau building (“The Building of Dr. Moreau” as one of my accountants called it) also had its quirks and secret places. On the way to the roof was a large creepy black room with no windows we called the “tower dungeon”. On the lower level was the huge room, previously utilized by the nuns as a cafeteria, now remodeled into a conference room. Behind the back wall in the conference room was another dusty, abandoned dungeon filled with moth-eaten documents and records. Little did I realize a year from that time, we’d be looking for, and finding, a ghost in that very room. If any buildings on earth harbored an army of the dead, it was these. Weirdness and strange rooms existed everywhere.

If I were a ghost, I thought, Holy Cross Hospital would be my Cancun.

The East Wing

The East Wing, along with the Chapel were the only remaining buildings from the 1912 reconstruction. The restored Chapel is absolutely beautiful, with amazing original artwork and stained glass. It is on the historic register and is a place everyone should visit if they get a chance.

But the East Wing… the East Wing was wrong. After relocating the business office to the Moreau building, about the only remaining hospital department in the East Wing was the sleep lab. It was perfect for the sleep lab as it was always quiet and rarely would anyone bother the few staff and their patients. Patients often complained about “a nun” who occasionally came into their room late at night, saying nothing, then leaving quietly. No video of such a person, or thing, ever showed up on the sleep lab recording equipment.

The third floor of the East Wing formerly used as a psychiatric ward. Several of the rooms had heavy steel doors with tempered glass inserts. All exterior windows had been all replaced with unbreakable plexiglass. There was a padded “quiet” room.

The most bizarre feature of the East Wing was an interior spiral staircase that wound clockwise from the basement up to the third floor. One could stand at the top of those stairs and look down through the building to the floor three stories below. Legend has it—a psych patient once jumped over the third floor railing to the concrete below, on the way down his skull clipping the brass staircase railing, leading to his death. I saw the dent in the railing. It was still there, so I may as well believe it happened.

Sometimes the main hospital switchboard would gets calls from the abandoned third floor psych ward—from phone extensions that hadn’t existed for decades. Naturally, when the operator answered the line, nothing was heard but static.

The Ghost Hunt

In 2005 the hospital announced plans to demolish the East Wing. In the days that followed the press release I got a call from a woman claiming to be a “paranormal investigator” whose last name, I swear, sounded like Morticia. She explained that spirits become more active when their home faces destruction. It seemed now would be a perfect time for a ghost hunt.

Sounded absurd so naturally I said yes.

If we were ever to find Sister Augusta, this was the time.

Morticia arrived on a chilly October night, fall leaves were rustling in the wind.  She arrived with two helpers, cameras, tape recorders, divining rods, and a variety of electromagnetic equipment. Like Freddy, Shaggy, Scooby and the rest of the gang we were going to catch us a ghost. Zoinks!

For three hours we went from hall to hall and room to room in search of the undead. We prowled the East Wing, the catacombs, the morgue, the chapel, taking hundreds of pictures and hours of recordings. Occasionally, Morticia would stop us, ask for silence, and verbally call forth the dead. “Show yourself Sister Augusta!”  We listened intently for a reply from ghosts we knew were there. They taunted us by remaining silent. I felt the ghosts were laughing at us.

The Shadow

Eventually we found ourselves in the old nun’s cafeteria (now conference room). We turned on one bank of fluorescent lights and stood in the center of the room. Morticia handed me two divining rods. “Walk until they cross,” she said. “That’s where the energy is strongest.”

Divining rods are bent at a 90 degree angle with swivel handles. “What happens when they cross?” I asked. “It means you’ve reached a location exhibiting psychic energy” she explained. “It means something important happened there”.

Cool. I’ll do it, I thought. I took hold of the rods and followed them as they led me in a lazy right-handed arc across the large room. As I approached the wall on the right side, they crossed!

Morticia took a photo.

“That’s strange. Look at your shadow.” said Morticia. “It’s in the wrong place”. We all came to look. As we crowded around the tiny viewing screen we saw my shadow on the wall to the right of me. Wait, isn’t that impossible? The only lights that were on in the cavernous dimly lit room were behind her when she took the photo.

On the camera screen, my shadow wasn’t behind me—where it should have been with the flash—it was beside me. Like something else was standing there, casting a shadow of its own.

Someone had a good idea—go take another picture. So we did. This time the shadows appeared in their expected places. Everything looked normal except for a glowing orb floating above one person’s head. Cute. Just your standard spectral photo bomb.

We then wrapped up our search for the walking dead. It gave us much to talk about for the next week, both about what we found, and what we didn’t find. We were somewhat disappointed that we seemed not to encounter Sister Augusta as she would have been the prize. I was hoping to get a clear picture of our ghostly nun that we could mount on the wall like some trophy elk head. But it was not to be. 

The Discovery

A week later Morticia emailed all the photos to us. We scanned through them one at a time and talked about what we saw. We carefully examined my picture with my walking shadow. To this day we cannot explain why my shadow seems to be at a right angle from the light source. Then we carefully looked at the next picture. Other than the orb nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

Then we saw it.

One of my staff screamed. Right out loud.

A chill went through the room as we saw it – a human shaped shadow! A man’s outline standing where no man should have been. A shadowy dead man. A man that had no business being in that place or on that picture. But he, or it, was there. Waiting. Watching.

The Verdict

Do I believe in ghosts?
I don’t know.

But I do know this: late at night in the Moreau Building, doors slammed when they shouldn’t. Shadows moved when nothing else did. And sometimes, when you stay too long after hours, you get a little visit from Sister Augusta—just checking your timecard from the other side.

So, do ghosts exist?
You tell me.

As for me, I’ll take my Scooby Snack and work days, thank you very much.