As many know Idaho isn’t your typical state. We have summers that get to a hundred degrees and then winters with below freezing temperatures, we have rural places like Arco and big cities such as Boise and Idaho Falls. But as this spooky month starts to get to its peak I decided to research more about the fabulous city and surrounding areas and found that not everything is as sweet and typical as it seems. 

Now granted our city isn’t as bad as it used to be, but we aren’t perfect, No. Not by a long shot, however we aren’t as bad as Pocatello, no seriously. The more research I did the more I started to remember, and I’m here to tell you of all the spooky stuff that no one. And I mean, no one else can tell you on a haunted ghost tour or anywhere else. Some of these accounts are from my own personal experiences, some I heard from my set of professionals. My mother and some help from Scott Brian, local author and avid ghost hunter. Thank you both.

Firstly, we have Rose Hill Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries here in Idaho Falls dating far back that most people who have been here for generations can say have family buried there, including me. But there is a particular set of graves that spark a lot of controversy. Now, it is said that there are two old tombstones that sit next to each other, one by the name of Wolfe and the other “is a last name that sounds German, like weismen or something like that” and it’s also said that if you stand between the two tombstones at exactly midnight that you are supposed to hear people walking and following you, then they start to run. Then yelling and screaming as they chase you out. However I don’t advise trying this one since it is trespassing to go in there after dark.

Next, we will chalk up schools all in one go. We have Dora Erikson, where the old one sat. There were always rumors of a girl that had died and haunted the basement/ boiler room there and it’s said that it was so bad that they kept the boiler room and put a concrete slab over it before covering it up and building the new school. It’s also said that Pocatello high school is one of the most haunted in the entire united states with a video to go along with it. Even our own Skyline High School has its own ghost stories from custodians, then there was, key word being was, O.E Bell Jr. High that I had never heard of, but is said to have had a hallway that belonged to a group of seniors that died tragically in a bus accident, but if you said their names in the hallway you would be followed by their spirits. 

And final school is Lincoln High where I have heard anything and everything: murders, disappearances, hauntings, possessions. I mean you name it and this school has it, now I talked to a student and ex faculty member that used to go there and none of this was confirmed to be real. But there is a big rumor that the gym is severely haunted and that you can get possessed there, also that “the building caught fire and part of the roof collapsed from devil worshipers who were memorializing a kid who killed himself up there” 

Next are some buildings here in Idaho Falls, the locations I will not disclose, but there is one in particular that I know is seriously haunted, it’s got photographic evidence that I have copies of and eyewitness accounts and everything. The one person that I know that went there alone in the middle of the night and admittedly snuck into has seriously changed them, they now have constant nightmares about the building and say that they get a sick feeling whenever they even look at the building. They said that after they were walking around, they hit their head and don’t know how they did and woke up outside the building and face down in the grass on the opposite side they came in on, which they claim was impossible since they got in via climbing in through a open window and aren’t a small person by any means so how did they make it out? Workers of the building have claimed to hear their names called out with no one there, being scratched and grabbed. Real creepy stuff.

There are so many things here that you just have to look out for and go looking for, out at craters of moon there are so many rumors of old ghosts waiting to lead you to their forgotten graves, in the woods outside of Heise Hot Springs are said to be strange creatures and cults that worship aliens that will chase you and ‘sacrifice’ you to the aliens were you can be taken away and even bigfoot sightings. When I was a kid I was told stories of an old city being at the bottom of the snake river near Idaho Falls and that you could swim down and see an old pole sticking up out of water where they used to hang the flag at the church. Or even a house here in town where supposedly a guy used to live and was trying to tell people of conspiracies of aliens and secret government work out at the site in Arco that ended up going missing without a trace. And other houses that are supposedly haunted to the point where you can get pushed up stairs and have found severed goat’s heads in their basements. 

I hope you all have fun and are thinking of different places you’re going to check out this spooky season, remember to be safe and look around for the supernatural that might be in your own backyard, you might just be surprised at what you find.