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Urban Legend visit of my youth-revisited

Every year at this time, I find myself recalling some of my local urban legends, eerie locales, and stories of the creepy/odd, that I learned about as a kid. The memories of "investigating" some of them for the truth, and wanting to experience them personally when I was old enough.

Now, we all have our local urban legends, and possibly personal experiences with such urban legends. Whether it be a school faculty member haunting our stomping grounds, a haunted train station, a haunted highway, or even a grey lady haunting the local library.

Utah definitely holds it's own when it comes to these stories of fear, and eeriness. So of course, as a 16 year old teenager, 19 years ago, and a huge fan of horror, paranormal, and all things unexplained, I just HAD to see, and do, some of them for myself.

This is one of my most treasured, if not THE most treasured memory of my personal experiences with one of them. It happened in October of 1996.

Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, this is the most well known, and popular Utah urban legend of: 

Emo's Grave

Utah was first settled in July of 1847. A man by the name of Jacob Moritz came to Utah in 1871 from Germany.

There is little that is actually documented about him. He became an active member of the Chamber of Commerce in 1887, and that he founded the Salt Lake Brewing Company. In 1891, it was one of the largest breweries outside of Wisconsin, producing over 100,000 barrels of beer per year. Which is astonishing compared to the 30,000 barrels that are produced annually by the Uinta Brewing Company, and Utah Brewers Cooperative combined. He also owned 36 saloons in Utah.

So how was it, that he was such an accomplished man? Was it luck? Was it good business ethics? Was it the blessings of a higher power? Or was it something more dark, more sinister to account for the success of Mr. Moritz? That is where his story takes a turn, the undocumented, and the urban legend of Emo's Grave begins.

As the legend goes, after Moritz became a member of the Chamber of Commerce, and his businesses took off, odd things started to happen that could not be explained. Utah experienced an evil as never before. Children started to get sick, and also disappear, later to be found dead. Soon, Moritz was being accused of witchcraft, devil worship, molestation, and for the murders of the children. But they could never prove it. He was given the nickname of Emo. Where that came from, nobody knows. In 1910, Moritz moved back to Germany because he "became ill". He soon passed away. Because of his strong ties with Utah, and it's history, he wanted a family member to return his ashes. They were placed in an urn, and sealed in a crypt bearing his name, Moritz, at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.


It was said that if you go to his crypt at night, light a candle, walk around the crypt backwards three times while chanting repeatedly "Emo return", he may appear. Either standing outside his crypt, reaching for you, or his head appearing inside the window of the crypt looking out at you.

So my two best friends, and I, decided that this particular October of 1996, the year we all turned 16, and would get our drivers licenses, we had to go do it. We planned, and scheduled a sleepover at the house that we could sneak out of the easiest, and not get busted by our parents, or checked on by the parents at the house we stayed at, because they "trusted" us.

On the night of the sleepover, we quietly went over the plan. I still remember the excitement, and fear that we all felt while preparing. We thought that we were so cool, and such bad*sses. The parents finally went to sleep. The time had finally come. We quietly snuck out of the window. Luckily my friend's bedroom was in the basement, and had a small window well. My friend popped his car in neutral, and we pushed it far enough away so that when he started it, it wouldn't be noticed by his parents. We drove downtown to the cemetery, parked on the street, enough away from where the crypt was supposed to be, trying to not look suspicious, and get caught. We found the crypt easy enough.

We were the only ones there. We had made it. We sat there staring at it, not daring to speak to each other. We looked at each other, nodded, and pulled out the candles, and lighters. Stood in a line, one in front of the other, lit our candles, put the lighters in our pockets, placed our empty hand on the shoulder of the one in front of us to help guide each other, and started walking slowly backwards, around the crypt while chanting "Emo Return". After the third time around, we stopped in front of the door, turned to face it, and waited. Staring so intently on the window. It was dead silent, other than a chill wind blowing, and leaves rustling on the ground. 

What seemed like eternity, but was probably only about four, or five minutes, I thought I saw something move off to the side. I slowly turned my head to look at my friends, trying to confirm silently what I thought I had just seen. They were doing the same, and based off of how pale, and clammy we each looked in the glow of the candles, it confirmed that they saw it too. We were so scared out of our minds, we couldn't move. We sat there staring at each other for a couple minutes not knowing what to do. All of a sudden, there was a piercing scream, and a figure jumped out from behind the crypt. We were staring so intently on the crypt window, that we didn't see another small group of older kids walking up to the crypt from behind it, to do the exact same thing we were doing. All three of us screamed louder, and jumped higher than i had ever seen any of us jump before, turned, and ran screaming, while dropping our candles. We ran a good fifty feet, or so, and stopped after we heard hysterical laughing. At that point, we knew we had been had. We stood there. After the fear, and adrenaline subsided, we dropped laughing uncontrollably for a good five minutes. After we laughed all that we could, we looked and saw that the older kids had left. I guess they decided that we were enough entertainment for the night.

That was one of the BEST nights of my life, that I will NEVER forget.

Even though we did not have an actual apparition appearance, there was still a feeling of fear, hate, negativity, foreboding, and presence of evil surrounding that crypt. Whether it was just because we were psyching ourselves up so much, and with the urban legend, or it was actually there, it's hard to tell.  But there is definitely something going on with it. The following picture was taken in the negative setting. Who knows what that shadowing could be on the crypt.
 

The pictures of the crypt above, were how I remember it being from my first visit. 19 years later, the crypt still stands, but it has changed. I am assuming that some younger, disrespectful, different generation has paid a visit to this legendary sight, but in so doing, did something to cause the window to be sealed by a steel plate. It was sad to see.

 I have not been back to visit Emo's grave since that night, until the first of this month. Yes, October again. It was due time that I had revisited the place of one of my fondest memories, and what better month? This time, it was a date with my wife. Living here in Utah all her life, she had never been to Emo's grave. So I had to take her.

This time around, it was during the day. I just wanted to say hello, thank you, and pay respects to something I will always hold dear to my heart. Youth, innocence, and friendship. It was bitter sweet.



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NLogan Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 09:28 PM

I've been to all the places you mentioned except for Gilgal Gardens. I have a list of haunted places in Utah I have been to around 70 or 80 of them.

Drakkensky Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 07:26 PM

The Gilgal Gardens, Memorial Park, Hobbitville, and Gravity Hill are fun ones to visit as well. Did those the same month as Emo's. Lol. The new found freedom of getting your driver's license, and having a best friend that had his very own car. Lol

Drakkensky Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 07:23 PM

Hey NLogan, glad to know another Utahn. Lol. I have heard about the weeping woman tombstones, but haven't been to them. I know the exact place you are talking about, the Ophir ghost town, out by Tooele. I've been there, it was really cool.

echidna64, yeah, the Lily E. Gray headstone is pretty interesting. That is just more of an oddity than anything. The only thing that is really said about that, was just that her husband, and last living relative was the one that had it made, and that he was a loony, and was placed in an asylum.

Rick Ace Rhodes Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 07:20 PM

My hometown had all kinds of stuff like this growing up. I don't know if you ever read them, but the Ghost Investigator books that written by Linda Zimmermann were based out of my hometown (or at least the first few were). I remember in middle school would always get into the Halloween mood by reading those books. All those hauntings and urban legends would always creep us out.

Vaporman87 Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 06:58 PM

While traveling though West Virginia, a gentleman whom I work with and who has known my family for generations explained to me that somewhere in a wooded area off the highway was a now overgrown and hidden graveyard where some of my ancestors were buried. I remember this because he had told me that their last names had been either Corne or Korne or something like that, and that I also had ancestors with the last name Cobb. Korne, Cobb, ... corn cobb. Hahaha.

NLogan Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 06:49 PM

Being a Utah kid We have also journeyed to far off Graves in the dead of night. The Moritz grave was one of them. My dad said originally there was a ruby colored pane of glass and when the face came to the window it was actually your distorted reflection in the candlelight. Another thing kids do there is walk backwards on the small border stones until they fall off, giving them the years they have left. I have seen the weeping woman of Logan cemetery, the weeping woman of Spanish Fork, the car headstone since removed from Payson cemetery, and memory grove among others. One of the coolest cemeteries is just outside Ophir or Mercury can't remember which that is about 50 yards off the roadway leading to an old mining town. It has or had a little fence and upright pioneer era headstones that were crumbling.

echidna64 Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 05:49 PM

Thank you for sharing this great local haunt!

You sparked my curiosity and so I started doing some research and found that another gravestone at the Salt Lake City Cemetary might be related. The headstone for Lilly E. Gray reads "Victim of the Beast 666"

Vaporman87 Posted on Oct 14, 2015 at 02:22 PM

I can't imagine the fear you must have felt just prior to realizing the prank that had been played on you. That would definitely be something I NEVER forgot. A great tale of childhood shenanigans. It's great that you were able to revisit that "sacred" place in your memories. That too, would be quite memorable.

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