The year was 1927, you are just hopping off the train at the crossroads of the west, Ogden Utah. The union station is a magnificent brand-new building made of beautiful stone with intricate tile work and murals all along the upper walls. The station is full of people, and no surprise there, it’s Ogden after all. As you come out onto the front lawns you get your first real glimpse of the city not from a moving train.
And it is breathtaking.
From the hustle and bustle of 25th Street as people move quickly too and from the station and to the shops and restaurants around the area, to the amazing views of the Wasatch mountains beyond. Even the air seems clearer here than in the city you’ve just come from. You haven’t been in Ogden long, but you already love it.
The street before you is lined with shops and buildings bearing a variety of names. But none of that catches your eye. No, you are looking down the end of the block at the beautiful, magnificent stone edifice of the brand-new Bigelow Hotel. It’s cream-colored stones, the amazing details, even visible from this distance. It is by far the tallest building around and she is an absolute wonder to behold.
You hurry down the street, exited for this, your first day in Ogden.
Welcome back everyone to the long, long long, long, over due next episode of Strange and Unexplained Utah.
In this episode we are going to be covering the famous, if not downright infamous Ben Lomond Hotel/ Bigelow Hotel/ The Reed/ The Bigelow Apartments. Now, I know this hotel has had a lot of names over the years and you will still hear a different name depending on who you ask about it.
Me, personally, I met the hotel under the name of Ben Lomond during spring break of 2015 when me, my mom, and my older sister drove to visit my grandmother in Ogden and she took us all through the city talking about the history of the buildings, who had built them, which one’s my great-grandfather had helped to build, which ones used to be known under different names.
She told me a little about the Ben Lomond and the kinds of things they did there. My mom filled in about the haunted nature of its past, knowing me and what I’m like, she knew that would peak my interests. After we got back, I convinced my husband at the time that he needed to see Ogden. October the following year we booked a stay in the hotel, and we got our own experiences, first hand.
But first, let’s talk history.
While we’re talking about names, let’s discuss the name of the first hotel to ever occupy that space.
The Reed Hotel.
After the Union Pacific set up the Union Station of Ogden it signaled that a new era was coming to what had previously been the quiet, quaint farm town of Ogden Utah. Ogden had, almost overnight, become a junction city for anyone trying to ride the rails west. They weren’t kidding when they said that “You can’t get anywhere without coming to Ogden.”
With all of this new travel coming through northern Utah, it was time to build a new, classier hotel to help serve higher paying customers that were used to more luxurious accommodations.
One man, E. A. Reed esquire saw that need and designed a plan to fix it. A $75,000 plan to build a 5 story tall, 130 room luxury hotel at the corner of 25th street and Washington. It even had a restaurant on the 5th floor. And while it may be hard to visualize now. I imagine at the time, the views of the valley and the Wasatch mountains must have been just magnificent. All the way up, no other tall buildings around, a limited amount of artificial light . . . It must have been a sight to see.
As beautiful as it was, it was certainly not an easy time.
Even from before the Reed opened it’s doors, it was plagued with issues. So many in fact, the original opening was delayed, getting pushed all the way back to the 4th of July 1889. After that the Reed continued to struggle, experiencing it’s first death less than a year after it opened.
A clip from the Ogden Standard had this to say about it:
“W. B. Steele, Esq of Lexington, Missouri died at the Reed Hotel, Sunday night at 10 o’clock. Mr Steele was a brother -in-law of Mr. McMillin, one of the proprietors of the hotel . He Had been in California for his health but found no relief. He retuned to Ogden, where he succumbed to the dread enemy of mankind, consumption.”
Now, while we may be confused by the word consumption, we would know this disease by a different name. Tuberculosis. You see Mr. Steele move to Ogden in hopes that the drier climate of Utah would help slow the progression of his disease. Unfortunately, by this point in time, the disease was too far advanced and little could be done for the man.
And things only got worse from there.
The Reed continued to struggle, attempting to make the most of its place at the end of 25th street. Things got decidedly worse in 1893 when the Reed actually had to close its doors for a few months. But they got things up and running again and by 1902 the hotel encountered its first suicide, but by no means it’s last.
At one pm on the 8th of September, Mr. William Van Allen came home to find his wife, Mrs. Tide Helen Van Alen, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
According to William he left his wife in their rooms at the Reed, (numbers 205 and 206 on the third floor.) at approximately 0645 that morning. Around one pm he headed back to the Reed to spend his lunch with his wife. He went to the rooms and found both doors locked. Unable to gain entry into his apartments and receiving no reply from his repeated calls to his wife, he went and spoke to hotel staff. Where upon he learned that Tide hadn’t been out of her room for breakfast.
William, who was apparently a man not to be deterred, gets out through a window at the end of the hall, and then literally shimmied his way across the ledge and into the window of their rooms they occupied. William is up there, knocking on the window calling out to Tide. He finally manages to get into the room and threw the curtains, and there she is. Laying on the bed, a pillow covering her face.
He walks up to his wife, and you have to think that at this point all the worst things are going through his mind. Maybe some part of him knows what he’s about to find, but there’s always that little voice of hope, praying for the best. Pulling the pillow off her face he described her face as “pale in death.” All the bed clothes to the right of her head are just saturated in blood. Blood that came from a wound just below her right ear. Laying next to her was a .38 caliber revolver.
I don’t know what I would have done in that situation. How do you think, how do you function, or even keep breathing in the face of something like that?
The paper said that he immediately told the hotel staff and authorities. But you have to wonder, how long did he sit alone with his grief? How long did he allow himself to mourn the loss of his wife, alone?
It came out later that she had been “ill” suffering from heart palpitations, and nervousness. Which sounds a lot like depression and panic attacks. But a lot of these old medical terms were tossed around quite wlly nilly. She’d also made an attempt on her life earlier that week using laudanum but was resuscitated. A letter to her mother, along with her will, was found. One paper said that she had this in her hand and another one stated that it was found later. Either way, both the will and the letter were addressed several days prior when she first tried to take her life.
The next few years saw about 8 more deaths at the Reed, but these all seemed to be of natural causes and barely had a mention in the local papers.
As things started to pick up and Ogden became a bustling transit town, ownership of the hotel passed to H. C. Bigelow and is Ogden State Bank in 1916. But the Reed continued to fall further and further into disrepair. Made all the more evident by the first accidental death on record for our illustrious hotel.
On September 26th, 1921, at around 1150 pm, (I’m assuming) a newly hired chef at the restaurant on the fifth floor, Asugi Nakano, made the fatal error of not looking where he was walking. While on the third floor Nakano waited patiently for the freight elevator to arrive. When the doors slid open to reveal an empty shaft, he stepped in. It’s not known if this was accidental or intentional, though most have ruled it an accident. It’s hard to understand how a 42-year-old man could walk into an empty shaft and not know.
Maybe if it was nighttime, and near midnight after a long shift . . .
But still.
Here are some things we know about Mr. Asugi Nakano. He was born in Japan on March 15th, 1879, to Kisuke and Sude Nakano. He immigrated to the US at the age of 26, which meant that he had been living here for just over 16 years, 12 of which were in Ogden, and the three story fall down the elevator shaft did not kill him right away.
According to a clipping taken from the Salt Lake Telegram, Nakano fell down the freight elevator shaft with no witnesses around. Staff on the ground floor, however, heard him fall and quickly rushed to get him out. He was loaded onto an ambulance and rushed to Dee Hospital where he was pronounced dead less than an hour after his fall. He never regained consciousness. Unfortunately, the paper got a lot of things wrong about Mr. Nakano. Including his real name and his age.
As you can see from the clip I’ve posted up to the webpage, they named him Harry Makoma and list his age as 34. There is no other newspaper mention that I can find. Which, if you think about it, is really sad. The only mention in the paper of his death and they don’t get anything about him right. Except the date, of course.
A few years later in 1926 the son of H. C. Bigelow, A. P. Bigelow, decided it was time for change. He wanted to build a new, modern, first class, fireproof hotel, right where the Reed was. The name and the hotel were failing, if Bigelow wanted to attract higher paying cliental, then he would need to reinvent the whole building.
Which meant that it was time for big change.
Now I have read that some people think the whole of the Reed was “raised to the ground.” And that is simply not true. They did, however, cut the top two floors of the reed off, including the iconic tower that rose off its northwestern side. They also expanded the lot, buying up nearby buildings like the Utah theater, and demolishing them, creating a newer, larger L shaped hotel with what remains of the Reed nestled in the crook of the letter. And while they did a major overhaul of the remaining parts of the reed, the fact remains, if you’re standing in the lobby, you’re standing in the original 1890’s era structure.
When it came time for the remodel A. P. and his newly formed corporation of 300 stockholders would settle for nothing but the best. They wanted a luxury hotel that had to not only catch the eye of would be guests but hold it. So, they turned to the biggest names in architecture in Utah at the time. Hodgson and McClenahan.
Now if you feel like those names are familiar, then you’re right. Leslie S. Hodgson and Myrl McClenahan are responsible for some of the most renowned buildings in Ogden. A few examples of their fine work, excluding old Ben, Peery’s Egyptian Theater, Ogden High School, the City and County building, and the Regional Forest Service Building, to name a few. And while they may have done work all over the west, their best and most lasting work will always be in Ogden.
In less than a year, the construction on the Italian renaissance revival building was complete. To quote the National Register of Historic Places registration form, completed by Allen D. Roberts on November 14th, 1989, “its exuberantly and voluptuously eclectic style was a monument to the taste and business mentality of the time. Visitors were to be overwhelmed by the sophistication of Ogden’s showplace.” Along with the striking outside Bigelow wanted the inside to make just as big of a statement.
So they incorporated a coffee shop that was done in Arabian style, a ballroom that echoed the styles of Florence, an old Spanish meeting room, just for men, of course, a Shakespeare room full of beautiful murals done by a local artist by the name of Le Conte Steward, and a ladies rest room that was said to be “as feminine a room as one could imagine a room to be.”
The newly minted Bigelow Hotel was said to be “a fit home for presidents, kings, and emperors.” It opened its doors on June 3rd 1927 boasting 350 rooms each with its own private bathroom, a concept that was still gaining traction with the rest of the industry. Our beautiful hotel even took on the national lime light when the convention of the Western Democrats held their national convention there. (A night that resulted in a “Smith for President” campaign. Smith would later go on to be the democratic front runner for the 1928 election)
Tragically, it was only a few short years later that the Bigelow saw it’s first death.
While both the Reed and the Bigelow had tragic deaths shortly after opening, where the Reed’s was natural, this was murder.
It was the evening of March 9th, 1929. The Utah Canners Association had decided to host their annual convention at the Bigelow. It was the nicest hotel in all of Ogden and the only location that had enough room to house the entire association at the time. During this evening people were drinking, partying, and going from the main event downstairs to their rooms spread throughout the building. Dan Rowland, a man attending the convention, invited a few friends up to his room on the 12th floor to keep the party going.
Amongst the group was a man by the name of Edward Spelman. How he came to be introduced to the group, as he was a guest separate of the Canner’s Association, is unknown. Maybe he heard the party and decided to join in, maybe it was the alcohol that Rowland had smuggled away in his room, we may never know the how.
What we do know is that prohibition was still in full swing in 1929 and would remain so until 1933. We know that while Rowland was a local, Spelman was not. Edward Spelman was a government engineer who had been employed to work on the Echo Dam out near Coalville. Spelman was a Colorado native who was staying at the Bigelow while he completed his work on the dam.
He joined in with Rowland and headed to his room for a little on the sly drinking in between rounds of dancing. Near to elven that Saturday, Rowland and his gang were headed back down to the main level to dance some more, when Mrs. Lawrence Russell, not accustomed to strong drink, became ill, or overly drunk depending on how you look at, and went into the bedroom to lay down, where she promptly passed out.
About 25 minutes later Rowlands and a Ms. Marcella Dinsdale returned to the rooms to retrieve Dinsdale’s wraps, which she had left behind. Here’s where things get dicey.
Several papers reported this story and while things were mostly the same, their wording on this part did differ some. A few papers stated that Spelman was caught by Rowland and Dinsdale “attacking” Mrs. Russell. Another paper stated that he was in a compromising position with the unconscious woman, and other papers stated that he was in this position and Mrs. Russell’s clothing was in disarray.
My take: Spelman joined a party with drink and pretty ladies while he was away from home for work. When all the other people he’d just met decided to go back down and do some dancing, he decided to stick around in the room. He’d seen Mrs. Russell head to bed and knew that she’d passed out. He saw an opportunity and took it. I believe that Spelman was either in the middle of raping Mrs. Russell, or about to.
Given the level of anger Rowlands had toward him, I’m guessing it was the former.
That’s why Rowlands chased him from the room, wouldn’t let him go, and swung on the man despite his trying to leave. Lawrence Russell was a good friend of Rowlands; it makes sense that he would want to protect his friend’s wife.
Rowland tried to get Spelman down to the lobby, in an attempt to have him detained until police could be summoned. Spelman swung at Rowland and missed. Rowland struck back, hitting the other man square on the chin.
It was a rather unlucky blow.
Spelman fell backwards, slamming his head into the wall rupturing an unknown aneurysm, killing him instantly.
Let us take a moment to imagine the myriad of emotions Rowland must have been feeling in that moment. On one hand, his actions were fully justified, especially considering that he most likely caught that man raping his friend’s unconscious wife, and that fact that he swung at Rowland first. That blow was more than justified.
On the other hand, that one blow, that single punch, tore the fabric of his life apart, and took another man’s life.
A huge trial ensued after that. Spelman’s wife Mabel took the train from Colorado to Ogden, demanding an inquest into her husband’s death. They went from homicide to involuntary manslaughter to manslaughter, until Rowland was finally acquitted. He was charged and plead guilty to the liquor charge and paid a $150 fine. Which is about $3,200 by todays standards.
But for more than a year he was in and out of courtrooms and jail waiting to find out what his fate would be. Once he was acquitted, two days later he married his fiancé, Ethel Louise Planta, and after a small party, the newlyweds promptly left Utah for the sunnier climbs of California, where they planned to build their new life.
I can’t find any records of Mr. or Mrs. Lawrence Russel after that day. I’m not sure what happened to the couple after that night. Did they stay together? Was Mrs. Russell okay? Even though she was out cold for the attack, it doesn’t change the fact that it happened and that a man lost his life for it. How does one go on from that?
The stock market crash of that same year hit Bigelow’s interest like a freight train. His bank folded and went under, and he was forced to sell the hotel to Marriner Eccles in 1933. Completely bereft, Bigelow retired to California. Once source I have stated that Bigelow died in California, and while that’s true, that’s not where his story ends.
Archibald Pierce Bigelow died on Christmas Eve in San Francisco Ca with his wife by his side. After his death, his wife took him home to Ogden, where he was buried on December 28th, 1942. Once back home, she and the rest of the family stayed, no longer feeling the need to be in California and so far from their extended loved ones. Their exile was over.
The hotel, now in the possession of the Eccles family, was renamed the Ben Lomond. Now I had always thought the name came from the mountain at the Northern end of the valley, but there is some reading that suggests they named it for the original Ben Lomond in the highlands of Scotland.
This next period of time for the hotel is also full of a ton of controversy. As is most of 25th street.
As previously mentioned, Prohibition was still reigning supreme throughout the land. And people had a lot of things to say about that. Mainly through booze running and illegal drinking halls. And 25th street is notorious for this kind of behavior. Drinking, gambling, mobster, prostitution, you name it, 25th street had it in spades.
In fact, one of the best-known secrets in the whole of Ogden’s sordid past is the tunnels that ran from Union Station all the way under 25th to the Ben Lomond. They were used to move everything from booze to girls, or worse. The tunnels went to just about every shop along the street and then some. Despite all of this, the newly named hotel saw a few quiet years. Things settled into a gangster moonshine smuggling normal, and the only deaths were due to old age and natural causes.
Until 1939.
Now, as far as weird stories about the hotel go, this one is contender for the top.
On January 23rd, 1939, two men, Glen “Bonnie” Jackson, and Elmo Griffin Chapman boarded a taxi at the Union Station, and traveled down 25th street toward the Ben Lomond. The men appeared to be in good spirits. One of the men, and we may never know which one, but my money is on Elmo, asked the cabbie to say a prayer for them. As they pulled up to the curb that same man looked to the driver and stated, “We’ll be seeing you,” before exiting the vehicle and climbing the steps to the hotel.
There was a slight altercation with a bellboy at the steps, and none of the papers I’ve pulled will tell me why or what happened. Only that they met a bellboy at the entrance to the hotel, some kind of scuffle ensured, and the men continued inside. Once inside the hotel, the men by passed the front desk and came to an elevator car operated by a young woman named Mary Brown.
Mary, while young, could sense that something about the two men was amiss. The Ogden Standard-Examiner stated that she sensed a depressed feeling between them and became very concerned about them based on the conversation they were having.
Once they got to the 13th floor, (the highest floor you can reach before you hit the penthouse), the girl refused to let them out of the car and took it back down.
Obviously at this point the two men were very upset, they argued with the girl, but she kept going down. You see, Mary was hoping that she would get back to the main floor, find another, older employee with more authority, and enlist their help in getting the men to leave.
But when the doors opened, there was no one around.
With no help to speak of, and two full grown men demanding to be taken up, Mary had no choice but to take them back up. This time, when they got to the 13th floor, Jackson and Chapman exited the elevator. They traveled down a southern hallway until they came to the window at the end. Together they unlatched the window and climbed up until they were seated on the ledge. They opened a bottle of whiskey to share and cracked open a pack of cigarettes.
For an unknowable amount of time, they sat together on the window ledge, drinking and smoking. We’ll never know what they spoke about, in those last precious moments together. Did the speak about their families? About the dreams they had for themselves that would never be realized? Maybe they spoke about what brought them to that ledge in the first place. Did they laugh then, in the end. Or did they cry about the lives they would never see fulfilled?
We’ll never know.
What we do know is that at approximately 3:30pm they jumped.
Bonnie went first, hurtling into the air, and Chapman followed almost immediately afterward.
Several people witnessed the fall, a woman driving down 25th street, a young newsie on the corner selling papers, and a mysterious eyewitness who told police that the two men fell at the same time.
Bonnie died instantly, the six and half story fall to the roof below crushing his body. Chapman, unfortunately, did not. He was alive long enough to look at the detectives and be loaded into an ambulance. He died enroute to the hospital.
I know the question you’re all thinking right now.
Why?
Why did they do it?
What made them jump?
We just don’t know.
Here are some things we do know.
Elmo Griffin Chapman was born on March 17th, 1907, to Anthony and Kate Chapman at about one in the morning. He was the 10th of 11 children born to Kate, (who lost her own mother, Mary, when she was eight years old when Mary died in childbirth. Kate was immediately put up for, and adopted.) He was the second child Kate had to bury, but he was not the last she laid to rest that year.
He started working for Ogden Iron Works at the age of 21 in 1929. At this job he worked at intervals as a molder. He lived at 1950 Jackson ave and was a member of LDS Ogden 7th ward, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel and Tin Workers, local No. 181. He was also laid off five days before he made that fateful trip up the elevator.
He was 31 years, 10 months, and 6 days old, the day he died.
He was also single.
Now Glen, he’s a little harder.
His history is not as well documented. And ancestry has his birthdate listed wrong it is driving me slightly insane.) Anyway, Glen was born on June 19th, 1909. He went by the nickname Bonnie, and he lived at 422 16th street in Ogden. He was also a member of the 7th ward, from what I can tell. He lived in Ogden his whole life, without ever moving away.
The last job he worked was as a helper for the Ogden Arsenal. He ceased working there approximately two weeks before he joined Elmo on the ledge.
He was 29 years, 6 months, and 4 days old when he died.
And like Elmo, he was also single.
Now you have to ask yourself, again. Why these two men?
I have a theory. I’m sure a lot of you have arrived at a similar conclusion, but I think these two men were lovers.
Now hear me out. These two men lived about 5 minutes away from each other, they attended the same Ward for church, and I’d wager, though I can’t prove it, they were both in a singles unit for that same ward. Glen, his nick name was Bonnie, he had a hard time holding down work, and he was a single Mormon in his 30’s. And while no single one of those things is evidence in and of itself, all together . . .
Here's what I think.
I think that Glen always knew what he was, and that he more readily embraced himself and the fact that he loved and was attracted to other men. It’s why he went by a feminine name, it’s why he couldn’t hold down a job, and why he never left Ogden. He was probably lonely, bouncing from job to job, and maybe even crush to crush.
Until he met Elmo.
Elmo was the opposite. He was a guys guy, he always had a hat on, worked a hard job, and never hesitated to get his hands dirty. He left the small town he was in headed for a larger city hoping to fit in and find a way to hide what he was. And then he met Glen.
They lived nearby, went to the same ward, they met and despite what they may or may not have wanted, they fell in love. Maybe they resisted it, I feel like Elmo would have fought against it the most. But over time . . . I think Elmo is the reason Glen got the job working in munitions, and I think their relationship is why the both got fired. They were seen, or something was overheard, and the truth of what they were got out.
Being gay has never been easy. Even now in 2023 there is so much hate and bigotry in the world. I can’t even imagine how much harder that would have been back in 29. And just the year, but Utah of all places? Utah is known for many things, its great snow, the beauty of it’s mountains, Zion, Moab, the Wasatch, the list goes on. But openness and forward thinking, not high on the list.
I don’t know what would have happened to them, what their families would have done or said, or threatened. But I feel like it had to be bad enough that they decided to head to the Ben Lomond that day. Maybe they were being separated, sent to live with distant family. And that was just more than they could take.
Instead, they decided to end things in a very Romeo and Juliet fashion.
After the loss of these two, things really quieted down for the hotel. The Eccles family continued to operate the hotel, surviving the struggles of WWII and helping provide accommodation for those waiting for news of their loved ones, people getting shipped from one base camp to another, and those just looking to be close to family as the world was at war. After combing through newspaper and death certificates, I can’t find another death happening at the hotel for the next eleven years.
Until we get to July of 1951.
I am going to let you guys know right now, this lady’s life upsets me, a lot. Or, maybe it’s better to say that the way her life was reported upsets me.
For starters, the newspapers all reported her at different ages, (Not thankfully, her obituaries), and her name is also incorrect. The papers say that on July 16th, 1951, Mrs. Donna Penney Anderson leapt from the window of her 9th story hotel room at approximately 1130 that morning. Several of the papers said that she was nervous, and in ill health. But there’s nothing concrete about what was wrong with her.
First and foremost, her name was Reta Indonna Penney Anderson. I’m not sure if she went by Donna, or not, but regardless, the papers could have taken the time to report her name correctly. Secondly, she was 53. Not 41, not around 45.
She was 53.
Reta was born on June 10th, 1898, to Charles T. Penney and Ida Hopkins Penney. She was the youngest of five children, one brother and three sisters. For some reason, one of papers reported her as having three sisters and no brother and that’s just not correct. She was likely the last child because her father passed away when she was two.
Her father, Charles Tanner Penney, was one of the original Utah pioneers who traveled the Mormon trail to Utah when he was seven. He died at the age of 40 and I can’t seem to find out why. I know her mother died of rectal cancer on September 6th, 1939. But very little is written about her fathers’ death. Nothing in the paper, no death certificate that I can find, and I have been scouring the internet for it.
I digress.
Here’s what we know. We know that Mrs. Anderson had been a long-term resident of the hotel. We know that her health had apparently been on the decline, and that she seemed really nervous all day that Monday. We also know that her friend Leora McBeth went to check on her that morning. She was able to get into the room without a key, as the door was unlocked. And she could never have prepared herself for what she saw.
I don’t know for sure exactly how things went down at this point, but this is my interpretation of these events.
Leora shows up to check on “Donna.” They were friends and Donna’s health hadn’t been great for a while, and besides that, Her friend had sounded really nervous and just not like herself that morning on the phone. So she gets in her car and heads over. It’s summer, its hot, and I mean really hot. Ogden was flirting with triple digit temperatures that day, and it had been all week. Given that Ogden wasn’t known for temperatures at that time, most places, like the Ben Lomond, didn’t have AC.
The heat just made all the more reason to go and check on Donna.
She gets up to the 9th floor and stops at Donna’s door. Did she knock? Didn’t she?
I don’t think she did.
I think she had a bad feeling and tried the door. When it came open easily, she stepped inside to find her friend either in the process of, or having just cut her wrists. Shocked, Leora rushes in to help, she doesn’t understand why her friend has just done this, but she’s going to help. She tells Donna, “I’m going to help you.”
But Donna doesn’t want help.
Donna wants to die.
There’s a thing they teach you when you’re learning to be a 911 dispatcher. Sometimes when you take a call from someone stating that they want to kill themselves, it’s a cry for help. This person is in a bad way and they need help.
Other times, they are letting you know where to find their body, they are asking you to deliver a message to their family for them.
They tell us, if I person is committed, there’s nothing you can do to stop them.
Donna was one of those people.
She had made her choice and she would not be deterred.
Pushing past Leora, Donna ran down the hallway and threw herself out a 9th story window. She landed on the roof of the 4th floor, face down and died instantly.
Donna had no children.
She had a husband, if you could call him that.
Donna married Andrew Alma Anderson on June 2nd 1945. He was 68 years old, and a widower. He had just lost his wife of over 40 years two years beforehand. Andrew and his first wife were married in the temple, and share a headstone in the Provo cemetery. It took me a long time to find out Andrew’s full name because the two were married for such a short time, a lot of the record sites don’t even count their marriage.
Which is another reason why I’m so annoyed for this woman. How could they not count her? Andrew was the only man she ever married. And he died less than a year later.
They were married in June of 45 and he died in May of 46. He was in Vernal Utah for work when he had a massive heart attack and died. In the obituary I found for him, they list his late wife before they listed Donna. Was there’s a Vegas wedding, yes. Does that make it less valid? No.
I wish I could find out more about Donna. But there is precious little mentions about her out there. What was wrong with her? Why did she want to kill herself?
There are so many unanswered questions.
By this point in time the hotel is starting to show her age. She’s the only luxury hotel in Ogden and the last several decades have been hard. Word War II was particularly hard on the old girl. And then with road travel becoming more and more popular and more people taking to the roads, rail travel hit a serious decline. And without a steady stream of customers to keep the hotel going, things started to go down hill rapidly.
People were no longer traveling through Ogden looking for high end accommodations. These were families, post WWII, motoring families that didn’t have the want or the means for luxury rooms. Ogden was no longer “Junction City” and the hotel began to fall victim to the shifting landscape of the country. For a while, trying to combat the falling revenues, the Hotel opened up the “Ben Lomond Motel” which was just big sign on the side of building.
When the building stopped making money, and when the cost of needed repairs, (the roof and plumbing leaked and the elevators were always having issues), not to mention upgrades to keep with the changing times and demands of travelers, Ben Lomond was no longer turning a profit. Now over the past several years ownership had changed hands a number of times between various companies that were all owned by or worked for the Eccles family.
But now then end had come.
The Eccles sold the hotel in 1965 to the Woodbury Company of Salt Lake City. And then it was sold again in 1977 to Weber County. At this point most of the hotel was converted into office buildings and storage. And then it was sold again in the mid-1980’s to Ben Lomond Suites, ltd out of Ogden.
But more on that sale in the minute.
Now we come to our last unnatural death. The murder of Henry Topping, Jr, a 65 year old lifelong Ogden resident and grandfather.
It was late, or early depending on how you look at it, on Sunday October 24th. At about one fifty in the morning, Johnny Angelo Perez, fifteen years old at the time, came into the hotel, we think, to rob the place. He comes upon Topping and a fight ensues. Perez pulls out a large hunting knife and proceeds to start to stab Topping, resulting approximately 44 stab wounds to the elderly man’s body.
Perez made off with about $370 dollars both from the hotel and from Topping’s own money. IT took the police a few days to find him, but once they did it didn’t take them long to decide to try the boy as an adult. Perez is still the youngest offender to be put into an adult prison in Utah.
Johnny Angelo Perez was paroled on April 11th 2006 after serving more than half his life in prison.
With the 80’s came a whirlwind of renovations. And while as they were converting smaller spaces into bigger condos and rooms, some of the original character was lost, most of what made the Hotel visibly the Ben Lomond remained intact. Including most of the 20’s era brass and crystal chandeliers, the ceilings, the ballroom, and the amazing floors, all remained the same and are being preserved.
Finally, in 2019 our old girl was converted into an apartment community, and her name was changed again. Not The Ben Lomond, but the Bigelow Apartments. No longer can you rent a room for a few nights and stay. After the Utah Hotel ceased operations in 1987, Ben Lomond was the last of Utah’s three great hotels to remain functioning for its original purpose. And while it is sad, and the end of an age, you can rent one of the one- or two-bedroom apartments, and that might be even cooler if you think about it.
So, is this the end of our Girl? Or does she have more name changes and function shifts in the future?
And now that we are done with the history, let’s get down to the spooky.
There are as many stories about ghosts, sightings, and unexplained phenomenon in that building as 25th street had hookers in the 20’s, which is to say a crap ton.
There are a lot of stories out there about old Ben. Most of them center around the 11th floor and a lot have to do with either a bride that takes her life, or a mother that takes her life and is followed by her son. After reviewing what several sources say online, as well as what the newspaper archives have to show, no such death has ever occurred at any hotel that ever occupied that corner. Unless there was some huge cover-up back then to keep it from the papers. And while I’m not saying that impossible, it is highly unlikely.
Before I started writing this episode, I reached out to several groups on Facebook and the like dedicated to Utah history and haunted stories from around the Beehive state.
I definitely didn’t imagine that my own cousin would share an experience with me.
This is cousin Niki’s story:
“When I was 15 I worked for the catering department for the holidays as a server for parties. I had to go to the kitchen on the 4th floor next to the ballroom and fill up the water pitchers for a big party. I was the only person in the kitchen at the time and was standing at the sink when all of a sudden, a food cart went across the room all by itself, at a rate of speed like it was being pushed and not just rolling on it’s own.”
Niki goes on to say, “That was the only thing I personally experienced in my time there, but a guy name JJ that I worked with had something happen to him in the service elevators. He was coming down to the 4th floor from the Skyline room. He wouldn’t tell us what happened. But when that elevator door opened to the kitchen, he came stumbling out in fear as white as a sheet. He never rode in the that elevator again.
Instead, he would push the food carts in and hit the button and make sure someone was on the other end to receive it.”
Another woman named Stephanie had this to say:
“I worked the bar alone most of the time and sometimes it sounded like someone would come in but no one was there. One day there were these two kids in the main elevator talking to some guy not there they kept calling him Oscar. This elevator was notorious for going up and down on its own and taking you to floors you didn’t put in.”
Apparently, there are a lot of reports out there about a strange man in the elevators that only the kids can see or speak to. Another man I spoke to stated that there are wormholes in the building and that a lot of dark and malevolent things pass through those walls.
I was also told that staff were told directly not to mention ghosts, or anything related to hauntings to anyone for any reason. They were told that the hotel didn’t want to “attract that kind of crowd.”
I am fortunate enough to have been able to stay that the hotel in late October 2016.
My then husband and I were headed to Utah to celebrate our second anniversary, and I wanted to try and convince him to make the move to Utah. His brother was already living there and I wanted to be close to family and the place where so much of my history came from.
Knowing that we would be in Ogden to visit my grandmother, I booked our stay at the Ben Lomond.
I wanted a room higher up, one that I could see all around the valley in, and one as close to the hotspot areas as I could manage. We even got a corner room, one that faced west and looked down 25th street toward the Union Station. I didn’t know much about the history of Ogden at the time, only what Grandmother had told me about the town as she drove us around.
But I had heard the stories about the Hotel, and I wanted to explore.
When you pull into Ogden the way we did, coming up the highway as it rounds the bend in South Ogden and becomes Washington Blvd., you can see the Hotel, it stands out. And even at a distance the architecture catches your eye.
We parked and went in and I about lot my mind at how jaw droppingly beautiful the interior is. If you haven’t ever seen the inside, google it, head to the website, look at the photos. I know a lot was lost when the 80’s remodel happened, but there’s still so much beauty left in there. Form the ceilings to the floors and even to the details in the elevators, the beauty of that building cannot be overstated.
That being said. The place has a vibe.
Our room was down a weird hallway that didn’t make a lot of sense until you factored in the remodel. Our room was really two rooms, a bedroom and a living room complete with sofa, tv coffee table, and fridge. At first, it wasn’t so bad, we were busy, bustling around, trying to get things unpacked and put away. But that night, when everything quieted down and my husband when to bed, I laid there, unable to sleep.
I got up and paced the little room and felt . . . off.
When I heard the noises coming from the room next door, I didn’t think anything of it. The parking lot and garage were full of vehicles, it made sense that there would be a other people near by. These rooms were really nice.
But when the volume didn’t go down after a while I found myself getting annoyed. What was going on with these people that they were this loud on a Monday night? When the noise still didn’t decrease, I got up and opened my door and looked at the opposite door. You have to understand one thing about the hotel. It wasn't set up like a normal hotel would be, there wasn't a long hallway with doors placed every couple of feet in a long straight line. Because the hotel had been renovated so many times, a lot of the hallways sort of turned in on each other with a door or two facing each other before leading back out into the main hallway.
So when I opened my door I was looking at the door to the room next door.
The only problem being, that once I opened the door, the noise stopped.
Now I am not a light person by any means of the word. And I don't doubt that the sound of me getting up from the little couch and stomping over to the door probably carried. But was that enough to warn the people next door that I was coming? I don't think so.
But the noise had stopped, there was no danger of it waking my sleeping husband, and I decided that would have to be good enough for tonight. And returned to my room.
The next morning over breakfast I talked to my husband about what I had heard the night before. I didn't say anything about ghosts, or anything relating to the paranormal. I simply griped about how rude some people could be. Going on and on about how loud they were for a Monday night. My husband asked me if I thought it was loud people, or if I thought it was something else.
I told him it was just people. It sounded like a man and a woman having a conversation that was getting a little heated. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing supernatural or spooky about it.
This first full day in Ogden, we were planning to meet my grandmother around lunchtime, but I wanted to spend a little bit of time exploring the hotel. By this point, the restaurant on the top floor had been closed. So we weren't able to go up and check a whole lot out up there, but the elevator still went up so we did as well.
We checked out all the windows, now no longer opening windows, we took pictures we wandered, and we just tried to get a feel for the hotel. I did anyway, my husband simply indulged my weirdness as he always had. Not actively participating but not belittling my curiosity.
Nothing on this floor really seemed amiss to me, until we came around to the back side of the building and I wanted to take pictures from the windows. I am not a person prone to Vertigo, and while I have a healthy fear of heights, they do not scare me over much. But when I looked out that back window to the mountains beyond, I felt the room spin, and I felt my head start to pitch forward and it wasn't until my husband's hand was on my shoulder pulling me away that I even realized how close I came to falling down.
The windows up there are very thick reinforced glass, and it would take much more than a simple fall forward to put me through them. So at no point was I in any danger of any real harm, but for whatever reason that window made my head spin. No other window I approached caused the same issue. I'm not sure what it was, and no other window in the entire rest of the hotel made me feel that way.
My husband suggested that maybe I was standing there for so long, trying to get a picture with an older cell phone, because I did not own a good camera, and that I had locked my knees causing myself to almost faint. But I never lock my knees. I spent nine years in choir in school and one of the first things they teach you is not to lock your knees when you're performing. Because you will literally fall. I tried doing research about that part of the hotel, to find out if maybe something had happened there, but there doesn't seem to be any recorded happenings in that area.
Then we got on the elevator to go back down. And that's when things got very strange. As previously mentioned I am not a small person, and my ex-husband is 6 foot 7 and weighs in at about 350 pounds. Combined we are quite hefty. So, when the elevator lights started to blink and the car seemed to jostle I chalked it up to us being heavy in an older elevator carriage. But when the elevator stopped on the 9th floor, neither the floor we were staying on or the floor we had requested I was both confused and alarmed.
I made a comment to my husband about maybe we were too heavy, to which he countered saying that the acceptable weight for the elevator was posted on the inside and that together we didn't weigh anywhere near enough to be a hazard. I countered with comments about how old the elevator was which he waved away.
He stood in the elevator door one arm keeping the door from closing and waited for me to get back on. A funny thing about the elevators, they're mirrors. Inside the elevator cars it's pretty much mirrors from two feet up all the way around the elevator car. When I got close, I looked up. I'd had my eyes downcast from the time I accepted what my husband was saying and started back toward the elevator.
As I looked up, it looked like something moved behind him. It was just a flash, it happened so quickly I could almost have believed it didn't happen at all. But, when you've spent as much time living in the world of the paranormal as I have, and as I'm sure many of you have, you will learn not to ignore the things you would normally write off. I rushed forward and looked around but there was no one inside the car I took my phone out and immediately took pictures of the mirrors.
As you can see on the website, there's nothing in the mirror. But I know what I saw.
The rest of the stay continued very much in the same fashion, little things seen out of the corner of my eye, neighbors too loud at night, and the elevator never quite working the way it was supposed to. On our last day, as we were going to exit, we climbed in the elevator luggage in hand. And the elevator was frigid.
Not just cold, not just like an elevator on the Fritz, but cold like standing out in a snowstorm cold. It had been a relatively warm October, and at the time I was dressed in Capri pants and a tank top. By the time we got to the lobby I was shivering.
Originally, I hadn't planned on saying anything to management about the things that I had experienced. Knowing from what I had read online that they didn't like to talk about the ghosts they would probably shut me down. But between the loud neighbors, and the freezing ice box elevator, something needed to be said.
As you could probably guess by now, according to the girl at the counter there was no one booked into or staying in the room next to us for the duration of our stay. They also had no reported issues with the elevators. Is all of that true?
Maybe.
Did that girl have any reason to lie to me as I was checking out of the hotel? None that I could see.
There was so much about the hotel that I never got to do or explore. Once I moved to Utah, I told myself I would find the time and the reason to stay at the hotel again. And this time I would make sure to be better prepared for an investigation.
But as so often happens, life got in the way and I never got the chance again.
I've spoken to a few people who live inside the new Bigelow apartments and from what they've told me, this newest round of renovations has done nothing to slow down or hinder the experiences in the hotel. Quite the contrary in fact. As you often hear about with older buildings and homes being renovated, experiences, events, and sightings all increased.
Leaving me to wonder what other secrets does the Ben Lomond hotel hold.
I want to thank you guys again for all of your continued patience and support of the show. I'm happy to finally say that I'm back in a place where I'm able to start putting episodes and content out again. I'm also happy to announce that along with strange unexplained Utah we will be in the near future launching the newest chapter of strange and unexplained titled strange and unexplained Alaska. Keep an eye out for this and more and of course for all the latest news updates photos and videos you can check us out at www.strangeutah.com
Thank you all again so much for continuing to listen I can't tell you what it means to me. Until next time keep it safe, keep it spooky, and as always, keep it strange.
A little side note here my guys. We talked a lot about suicide on tonight's episode, and I want you all to know, if you or someone you know is suffering, or having thoughts of self-harm, you’re not alone.
There are people out there who love you and want you around. And there is help out there for you. I encourage you, dial 988, talk to the people there. There’s help and hope out there, if you’ll just accept it.