Salt Lake City Cemetery: Lilly Gray, Emo's Grave and the Ghost Stories

The Salt Lake City Cemetery spreads across more than 150 acres of the Avenues, north of 4th Avenue and east of N Street, with about nine and a half miles of roads winding between the graves. The first burial here came in 1848, a year after the pioneers reached the valley, and today it holds about 120,000 people, including most presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the lawman and gunfighter Porter Rockwell and the pioneer Jane Manning James. It is one of the largest city-run cemeteries in the United States.

It is also one of the most talked-about cemeteries in Utah, though not for the reasons people expect. There are few classic ghost sightings here. Instead, two graves have drawn decades of late-night visitors: Lilly E. Gray’s headstone, which reads ‘Victim of the Beast 666’, and, just over the fence in the Jewish cemetery, the Moritz mausoleum that teenagers know as Emo’s grave. This guide explains what the records actually say about both, what the legends claim, and how to visit respectfully in daylight.

History of the Salt Lake City Cemetery

The pioneers who arrived in July 1847 needed a burial ground almost at once. The first grave on this hillside, in 1848, was for Mary Wallace, the young daughter of George Wallace, who became the cemetery’s first sexton. When Salt Lake City was incorporated in 1851, the 20-acre plot became the official city cemetery, laid out by surveyors including Daniel H. Wells and Joseph Heywood.

As the city grew, so did the cemetery. It now covers more than 150 acres, climbing the bench above the Avenues toward the foothills, and its roads and terraces give one of the best views of the Salt Lake Valley. The city’s Public Lands Department runs it, and the city’s own history pages show Depression-era WPA crews at work on its stone masonry.

The people buried here trace Utah’s whole story. Most presidents of the LDS Church are here, along with apostles and early settlers. So is Porter Rockwell, the Mormon lawman and gunfighter, and Jane Manning James, a Black pioneer who crossed the plains with the early Saints. Businessman Larry H. Miller is buried here too, and the cemetery even holds a single Commonwealth war grave, for a Canadian soldier of World War I.

Next door, the B’nai Israel cemetery serves Salt Lake City’s Jewish community. The Forward reports that Brigham Young gave the land to Utah’s Jews in the 1860s. It is owned today by Congregation Kol Ami and kept up by a volunteer cemetery association, and it is here, not in the city cemetery itself, that the Moritz mausoleum stands.

Today the city offers three self-guided tours: Fascinating Figures, covering gunslingers, outlaws, suffragists and business leaders; Pioneers and Church Influencers; and the Presidents of the Church. Park rangers also lead guided tours on dates posted on the Public Lands calendar, and volunteers from the Friends of the Cemetery clean up after Memorial Day, when families still decorate graves in the old Decoration Day tradition.

The legends of the Salt Lake City Cemetery

Lilly E. Gray, 'Victim of the Beast 666'

On the far northeastern side of the cemetery, in the section KSL lists as X1, is a plain headstone that reads ‘Lilly E. Gray, June 6, 1881 to Nov. 14, 1958, Victim of the Beast 666’. For decades people have wondered whether Lilly was murdered, cursed or caught up in something occult, and visitors leave pennies on the stone.

The Utah State Archives looked into it in 2017 and found a quieter, sadder story. Lilly’s death certificate gives her birth as June 4, 1880, in Canada, not the date on the stone. She appears in Michigan census records, moved to Utah around 1950 and married Elmer Gray in Elko, Nevada, on July 10, 1952, when she was in her seventies. She died on November 14, 1958, of natural causes after about a week in hospital, and Elmer was the informant on her death certificate.

Elmer is the more likely source of the ‘Beast’. Court and prison records show he was sent to the Utah State Prison in 1937 for burgling a confectionery in Kamas, under the name Woodrow Lamb, and served about 11 years before his release in July 1948. In one pardon application he claimed he had been ‘kidnaped’ by five Democrat officials. A common reading takes the inscription as Elmer’s verdict on the government he blamed for his troubles, or on whatever he believed had taken Lilly, rather than anything supernatural. He died a few years later in a rest home.

Emo's grave and the red eyes

The best-known ghost legend belongs to a tall mausoleum in the B’nai Israel cemetery beside the city cemetery. The story says that if you walk around it three times holding a candle and chanting ‘Emo, Emo, Emo’, red eyes will glow in its window. Other versions say you must walk backward, or that a face appears inside. Who ‘Emo’ is changes with the teller: Utah’s first Satanist, a giant, or a miner murdered by his wife and her lover.

The real occupant was Jacob Moritz, born in Ingenheim, Germany, in 1849. He came to America in 1866, worked in breweries in New York and St. Louis, and by 1871 was in Salt Lake City, where he founded the Montana Brewing Company and helped build the Salt Lake City Brewing Company. He served in the legislature and the 1895 convention that wrote Utah’s constitution, became president of Temple B’nai Israel in 1905, and died of stomach cancer while visiting Germany in 1910. His ashes were placed in the mausoleum but were later removed.

The legend caused real trouble. The Forward reported in 2019 that tour buses parked on Fourth Avenue at night and passengers climbed the fence to light candles at the tomb, even though the cemetery forbids entry after dark. The cemetery association finally covered the window with sheet metal, and the complaints stopped. A cemetery manager told the Daily Utah Chronicle back in 2005 that the grave is not haunted and that the legend is disrespectful to the families buried there.

Other stories on the hill

Beyond those two graves, the cemetery’s ghost reputation is thin. Local lists mention shadowy figures among the old pioneer sections and the feeling of being watched at dusk, but we found no named witnesses or reports behind them. Its night view over the city lights has made it a favorite with photographers, and that, more than any ghost, is why so many people want to be here after dark. Please do not: the cemetery closes at dusk.

Where to look

• Lilly E. Gray's headstone: on the far northeastern side, in section X1. A cemetery map or the city’s Find a Grave link helps; pennies on the stone usually mark it.
• The Moritz mausoleum: in the B’nai Israel cemetery beside the city cemetery, near Fourth Avenue. Its window is now sealed; see it from outside in daylight and leave no candles.
• Simon Bamberger's grave: across from Moritz, Utah’s first Jewish governor and Moritz’s old political rival, a pairing one local guide jokes may explain the legend.
• Porter Rockwell's grave: one of the stops on the city’s Fascinating Figures self-guided tour.
• The upper terraces: for the view west over the valley; come in the last hour before dusk.

Visiting the Salt Lake City Cemetery

The cemetery’s address is 200 N Street, just north of 4th Avenue and east of N Street in the Avenues, a five-minute drive from downtown. Its roads run for about nine and a half miles through the whole cemetery, so you can drive between sections and park at the roadside.

The cemetery is open every day from dawn to dusk, and the office at 200 N Street is open on weekdays from 7:30 AM to 4 PM if you need help finding a grave. The city publishes three self-guided tours and lists ranger-led tours on its Public Lands calendar, which is the best way to hear the history from people who know it.

Please treat it as the working cemetery it is. Families still visit and decorate graves, especially around Memorial Day. The city prefers live flowers, bans metal or wire decorations, alcohol and tobacco on graves, and removes decorations a week after Memorial Day. Do not climb fences, do not leave candles, and do not enter either cemetery after dark.

• Visiting City cemetery open daily dawn to dusk; ranger-led tours on set dates
• Hours and season Dawn to dusk daily

Tips for your visit

• Go in the late afternoon for long light on the stones and the valley view, and leave before dusk.
• Download the city’s self-guided tour before you go; the cemetery covers more than 150 acres.
• Leave a penny at Lilly Gray’s grave if you like, but nothing that could blow away or damage the stone.
• Visit the B’nai Israel cemetery with the same respect you would show any family plot; the Moritz window is sealed and there is nothing to see inside.
• Combine the visit with Memory Grove, City Creek Canyon or the McCune Mansion, all within a few minutes’ drive.

More haunted places nearby

• McCune Mansion: The mansion with a girl who steps out of the mirror, at the foot of Capitol Hill
• Fort Douglas: Clem the soldier and a post cemetery of prisoners of war
• The Peery Hotel: Stay downtown with Moaning Molly in the elevator
• Union Station, Ogden: Utah’s most haunted museum, 40 minutes north
• Haunted places in Utah
• Haunted places in Salt Lake City

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Salt Lake City Cemetery
• Salt Lake City Public Lands: Salt Lake City Cemetery
• Utah State Archives: For the record, Lilly E. Gray (2017)
• The Forward: In Utah, the spooky tale of a haunted Jewish mausoleum (2019)
• Salt Lake Magazine: Salt Lake Cemetery, Emo's grave
• KSL: 5 'haunted' places in Salt Lake City (2013)
• Daily Utah Chronicle: Haunted habitats (2005)