With Halloween just lurking around the corner our week has been filled with skeleton decorations, scary movies and a trip to the pumpkin patch. Multiple conversations were had about going to a haunted house, but staying true to our adventurous spirit we thought we should do something out of the ordinary to be a little festive. We love stories of real life ghost towns and haunted areas so we researched one that was close to home in Helper, UT.  The Western Railroad and Mining Museum is in the old Helper Hotel built in 1914 that was fully operational well into the 70’s. We read tales of murders and deaths that took place here a long time ago and since then there have been a lot of people that claim to have strange encounters when they visit. So we decided to check it out for ourselves to see if the stories of ghost sightings held up.


The museum is still set up with an old hotel setting and there are multiple floors full of old antiques and artifacts that people have donated. The walls are lined with pictures and excerpts of the typical rowdy mining town of the Old West. There are even old wanted posters of Butch Cassidy!  I’m sure if the walls could talk they would have many stories to tell. We loved seeing the creepy, old jail cell in the basement and Todd just had to try out the bed to see what it would have felt like to lay in there day after day. I thought it looked horrible and didn’t dare walk in it, but I did occasionally hide and jump out to scare Gracie.. but she didn’t think that was too funny. Oops!

Our two favorite stories were of the old woman that has been seen on the top floor in an old fashioned dress staring back at people when they walk by, or the piano player in the basement mining room, where people claim to have heard him playing music.
We wandered around the floors and hallways admiring the sights hoping we would see something disturbing and paranormal! While we didn’t run into any ghosts there was definitely a strange feeling on the third floor, but I think our minds were getting the best of us at this point!

After we were done at the museum we walked along Main Street to see some of the other old abandoned buildings and then headed west of town up Spring Canyon to see where various old ghost towns and coal mining camps were once located.

Driving along this old road through the canyon allows you to see the crumbled buildings and brick ruins, as well the old railroad that once ran parallel to the road. We wanted to get out and explore a little more but unfortunately both sides were private property so we tried to admire from afar.


We’ve driven past this town so many times before while going somewhere else and have always wanted to stop but never had the chance. We never realized how much history this town has and how many cool sights there are that we didn’t even know about. It’s always fun to see the random places and old cities and towns one might think to drive right through. Even though we were a little disappointed we didn’t have any ghost encounters we all thought this picture below was pretty cool when we got home and started looking through them. Does anyone else see the creepy face in the corner?

37 thoughts on “A Helper Haunting

      1. I love wondering around them imagining the lives of the former residents. Love the buildings themselves too, so much more interesting than some of today’s modern buildings.

  1. When you say the creepy face in the mirror is that the slight discolouration on the bottom right? Or am I seeing things? Now I want to see that town. Love that stuff.

  2. This looks like a really interesting place to visit. I think it is sad to see towns become abandoned like this. Wouldn’t it be nice to see somebody go in and try to restore some of those old buildings.

    1. It would be really neat! That’s why we liked the museum so much too because it was an old hotel once. There are a lot of abandoned buildings on this street it would be neat to be able to see what more of them are like from the inside!

  3. I love visiting Jerome AZ during the month of October. They go all out with the Halloween theme and play up their history. If walls could talk, the stories we’d hear 🎃

  4. Thanks for visiting my blog, Mel. I’m looking forward to reading more about Utah, especially since we will be driving through briefly in a couple of days on our cross country trip from Annapolis to Sacramento!

    1. How cool!! That sounds like such a great trip! Road trips are my favorite! 😊 there are lots of cool places to see here so if you want some “must sees” just let me know! Happy traveling!!

  5. I love this time of year for spookiness too – though I was thinking that it seems to have crept up very suddenly this year! Old mines are fantastic for ghost stories, though you can’t beat a good castle in my opinion 😉

    1. I have never seen a castle before. I would absolutely love to go somewhere there is so much history! Halloween sure did creep up fast,I feel like before we know it Christmas will be here!

  6. This is such a cool idea. I loved that you decided to do something different and actually looked up a haunted place near you. But yeah, I probably wouldn’t have gone and laid down that in that jell cell either haha.

    1. Ya it was pretty creepy, especially knowing it was real and people really stayed in it! Ugh! Lol… super fun day though!! I would definitely recommend something like this to anyone! Thanks for your comment!

    1. Thanks for reading Shannon! We were pretty bummed we didn’t see any ghosts either! Lol 😉 it was definitely fun to walk around this town though and see all of the old sites!

Leave a Reply