ITEMS

The Nunnery

Narratives from legend-tripping at St. Anne's retreat ("Nunnery").

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THE NUNNERY
Tristin Merkley
Utah State University
Fife Folklore Archives
Logan, Utah
Mythology; Folklore
Mr Brad Gibbons
Fall 2014
Mountain Crest High School
Hyrum, Utah
• Table of Contents
Release Forms
Cover Essay
Autobiographical Sketch
List of Informants
Item No. Informant Title
1 Rylin Baby Crying
2 Rylin Halloween Guards
3 Dawsin Nunnery Location
4 Dawsin Nun Killing Herself
5 Strattin Dog Story
6 Ryan Selling It
7 Ryan Trespassing
8 Ryan Shotgun Wielding Guards
9 Ryan Built in the 20th Century
10 Ryan Hatch Family Donation • 11 Ryan Private Ownership
12 Ryan Movie Stars
13 Ryan Aborted Children
14 Ryan Fined
15 Ryan USU Students
16 Ryan Pool Cold Spot
17 Ryan Names
18 Ryan Offerings
19 Ryan Handcuffs
20 Ryan Guards Going to Jail
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• Tristin Merkley
Mr. Gibbons
Cover Essay
11/7/2014
Nunnery
I did my report on the Nunnery. I selected this topic because me and all of my friends
have gone up to the nunnery several times before. And it is a pretty popular place for lots of
teenagers to go, and takes their girls. Or dates up there with them to get a good scare and to
get their dates to cling tightly to them. That is probably the main reason a lot of the high
school students go up their. To scare the girls so bad that they need to hold on to them super
tight and the guys really like that so they keep on doing it over and over, and therefore it will
always remain a popular attraction for all of the kids to go up there. • The method that I used to collected all of my materials for this report is that I had a
bunch of my friends come over and then I selected one of them to tell me a few different
stories that they had heard about the Nunnery. After getting interviews from one of them I
would move down the list and interview the other ones about different stories, and myths or
legends that they had heard or read about on the internet or they were told by their friends.
And then they retold those stories to me while I recorded them on my phone in the Voice
Memos, then later I emailed all of those stories to myself. After doing that I downloaded them
on to my computer and moved them all into a new file that I created. Upon doing that I then
put the CD in my computer and went into the new folder and selected all of my recordings
then I moved them all over onto the CD and burned them on to there and added that to my
packet.
After finishing all of my interviews there was a conclusion that I came to. Listening to
all of the haunted stories I decided that the Nunnery is not haunted. Even though there is all of •
• those myths and legends about the place. But I feel that most of them are just myths. They
are just stories about the place that people have made up. Or they have just changed
dramatically over time and now they are corrupted and aren't even close to the stories that
they were originally. Thats why I think that the place isn't really haunted there was just a lot of
things that happened there and people think that it is this old creepy compound of buildings
with all of these murders and ghost stories that happened there but really it is just a bunch of
old buildings nestle in the trees across the river up on the mountainside about seven miles up
logan canyon. And it isn't haunted it is just an old retreat used by the Nuns that is now
abandoned and isn't in use anymore and that is what makes it so creepy because it is just old
and abandoned. And then people came up with all of the scary stories to go along with it.
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Mr. Gibbons
Tristin Merkley
11/6/2014
Autobiographical Sketch
My name is Tristin Merkley. I am seventeen years old, and I am a senior at Mountain Crest
High School. I was born in Mesa Arizona but grew up in snowflake, about three hours away
from there. I have a deep passion for my dirtbike and I love to go and tear it up on the track
doing huge jumps through the air. My passion for dirtbikes started early when I was little and
started riding a little fourwheeler, and when i moved up to my first dirtbike I totally fell in love,
and I have been doing it ever since. In my report about the Nunnery I interviewed lots of my
closest friends, and they told the stories that they personally had, happen to them. They
actually had all of these things happen, and sawall of these while they were at the Nunnery.
My friends like to go up there and experience a really good scare, and I am always right there
with them. The first time I went up there I had heard about the place but didn't really think
anything about it because I was seventeen and nothing could scare a senior on the wrestling
team, but that night at the Nunnery I got really scared. My friends had gone up lots of times
previously but i had never gone with them, my first time, my friends picked the "perfect" time
to go they said. Late at night on a friday evening after we all got off work and met up to hang
out. Once we arrived at our spooky destination we started up the path that went up to all of
the abandoned buildings. After walking up there in the dark with little crappy flashlights on our
phones, we were all on edge, walking really close to each other. We walked past a few
buildings then over to one of the bigger ones, opened the door, and we all went inside. Shortly
after entering the house one of my friends claimed to see a ghost walking on the upper level
of the building along the stair railing, thoroughly freaking all of us out. We all looked up there
but nobody saw anything, after that we were all really scared and went through another
building and that did it for us, we had to get out of there. We all ran down the trail back to the
car and took off. Not really knowing what happened but we could all feel ghosts at the
Nunnery .
• Ryl i n- Rylin Merkley is a sophomore at Mountain Crest. He is currently on the wrestling
team wrestling in the one hundred and fifty two weight class. He likes to hang out with his
woman and can always be caught texting her and he can never not text her because she
means the world to him.
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Dawsin- Dawsin Merkley is currently in the eighth grade and likes to mess with pvc pipe
and melt it into different objects axes and swords. He is also a pyromaniac and can always be
found wit matches ready to burn or melt something to bits.
Stratti n- Strattin Merkley is a very weird little guy. He is currently attending the 5th grade
at Mountainside Elementary. He likes to run around with no shirt on most of the time and is
always good for a great laugh because he is always doing dumb stuff and makes everybody
laugh at how dumb he is.
Ryan- Ryan Parkinson is currently graduated and he is now working at Thompson Electric
and he doesn't really do anything but work and save up money to go to Utah State University
and he wants to become a surgeon and do lots of surgeries on people and get lots of money
because doctors make bank.
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Item 1
Baby Crying
Rylin Merkley
Petersboro, Utah
November 8,2014
Context: Me and my little brother rylin were sitting at our kitchen counter and i asked him to
tell me a story that he had heard about the Nunnery and this is what he said.
Text: Ok tell me a story about the Nunnery. So supposedly there was a bunch of pregnant
nuns that went there and they got their babies and drowned them in the pool. So when you
walk by the pool you can hear babies crying.
Texture: Rylin said that this as just a story, or kind of a rumor that /'Ie had heard about the
Nunnery in the past.
We both thought about how true the story seemed and by the en~ we decided th~t it se~med
false and that the nuns wouldn't have killed their babies like that.
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Item 2
Halloween Guards
Rylin Merkley
Petersboro Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: Me and rjlin were again sitting in our kitchen when I asked him to tell me another
that he had heard or been told about the Nunnery and he told me the Halloween Guards
story.
Text: Another story 1 heard about the Nunnery, the owner of it, hired some guards and some
kids went up there on Halloween. And the guards captured them put them in the pool and
then they shot all of the execution style.
Texture: Rylin said that he heard this story from one of his friends and after thinking about the
truthfulness of the story we came to the conclusion that this story couldn't be true .
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Item 3
Nunnery Location
Dawsin Merkley
Petersboro Utah
November 8,2014
Context: I interviewed Dawsin and I asked him if he knew where the Nunnery was at and if
he did if he would describe it, or tell me where it was.
Text: So the Old Nunnery about 3 miles up Logan Canyon if you don't look for it you would
never see it, it's on the other side of the river. And it is se back into the mountains and fenced
in, there are houses and an old chapel and a swimming pool. The only thing noticeable as you
drive by is the huge gate that is locked and barbed wired. They have guards stationed up
there at all times. the Catholic church used to use it as a place to send nuns that were having
troubles mainly the ones that had gotten pregnant.
Texture: After pondering the story me and Dawsin drove up Logan Canyon and found the
Nunnery and after much more than 3 miles it was on the side of the road where he had
described it at.
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Item 4
Nun Killing Herself
Dawsin Merkley
Petersboro Utah
November 8,2014
Context: I asked Dawsin If he had anymore stories from, or about the Nunnery that he knew
about and that is what brings us to our next story.
Text: Tell me the Nun story. Ok so the story goes that a Nun tried to escape with her baby
late one night. She left her baby in the bushes, to lead the dogs away from her child When
she returned to the spot the baby was missing, so she returned to the main houses. And saw
her baby floating in the swimming pool dead. The Nun then killed herself in the pool, the
whole area was then sold years later to a private family. A group of kids got in there once
before security was beefed up and they swore the empty swimming pool was freezing even
• though it was a july night.
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Texture: Dawsin said that he had red this story out of some article that he had seen then read
off of the internet.
And after hearing the story I decided that this story could not have happened up at the
Nunnery .
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Item 5
Dog Story
Strattin Merkley
Petersboro Utah
November 8,2014
Context: I asked my little brother Strattin to tell me a story that he heard from our brother
Dawsin about the Nunnery, which was the Dog Story.
Text: Tell me the Dog story, ok there is a rumor that if you go up there at night and pull off of
the shoulder of the road, you can see the eyes of the dogs sniffing for the babies of the nuns
that were trying to keep their kids.
Texture: This story goes along with the previous story that dawsin told about the Nun killing
herself in the pool and then the dogs are still running around up there looking for the babies of
the Nuns.
• After he told this story we both decided that it couldn't be a true, or real story.
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Item 6
Selling it
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: I interviewed Ryan and told him to tell me what he knew about the nunnery and was
up with the place.
Text: Ok so tell me about the Nunnery, it's a bunch of cabins, also known as Saint Anne's
Retreat. the owner is basically trying to recover what he spent on the place it was listed for 2
million dollars in july of 2010 the price has gone down now to about 600,000.
Texture: after critically thinking about this interview we decided that this story was real. We
researched what it was listed for now. And we even took a drive up there and saw that there
was a for sale sign on the gate that went up to it.
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Item 7
Trespassing
Ryan Parkinson
Providence, Utah
November 8,2014
Context: So me and ryan were talking and I asked him what the grounds look like and stuff
like that from everybody trespassing, and that is what he told me about which takes us to his
story.
Text: So there is a lot of people trespass there, there is always crap on the ground like,
garbage and stuff, and most of the cabins are usually locked but there is a lot of people that
break in a lot up there.
Texture: We both thought about the story but after we went up there and walked all over the
grounds and then when we looked around but we didn't really see a bunch of trash or
anything like that but we did see that a lot of the cabins had been locked but had been broken
into so you could still enter them if you wanted to .
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Item 8
Shotgun Wielding Guards
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8,2014
Context: Me and Ryan were sitting in my kitchen doing an interview and I asked him if he had
heard about the halloween story with the guards and he said that he knew that story and
decided to tell it to me.
Text: Ok tell me the swimming pool story. Ok n like 1997, 38 kids trespassed and the guards
found them and then they herded them into the swimming pool, then the kids were tied up and
threatened by the guards until the police showed up, anyways a bunch of people got mad
about it and the resulting trial that followed made national news .
Texture: After reviewing and researching the story we decided that the story had to have
been fake because we couldn't find a reason why the guards would have reason to tie them
up and threaten them while they were in the swimming pool.
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Item 9
Built in the 20th century
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8,2014
Context: I asked Ryan if he knew the general area of the Nunnery and if he knew when it was
built or made. And a lot of general information about the place.
Text: Where is the Nunnery at. It's about 7 miles up Logan Canyon, Its privately owned and it
was built in the early twentieth century by the Hatch family. And the land is owned by the
forest service.
Texture: We researched on the internet for stories like this and we found almost all of this
general information on there. And this story is true and real and he was a really reliable
source for this.
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Item 10
Hatch Family Donation
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: I asked Ryan about how the Nunnery ended up with the Catholic Church and what
they ended up doing with it.
Text: So what happened to the Nunnery. The Hatch Family Donated it to the Catholic Church
in the nineteen fifties. And they re-named it St. Anne's Retreat. The Nuns from Sisters of the
Holy Cross, vacationed there until it was turned into a youth camp in the eighties.
Texture: After validating the truthfulness of the story and finding out much more research
about the place .
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Item 11
Private Ownership
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: He is telling me the story of what happened to the Nunnery after it was turned into a
kids youth camp.
Text: So what has happened to the Nunnery nowadays. So in the early nineties the Catholic
Church, turned the Nunnery into a private ownership. And that is how it has been ever since.
Texture: Ryan said that he heard this story from an online internet source that he had read
about.
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Item 12
Movie Stars
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: Ryan decided to tell me some history of the Nunnery and what it was used for
before the Nuns used it and it was turned into a summer camp. And that is what brings us to
this story.
Text: So what happened with the Nunnery before the hatch family donated it and it was used
by the catholic church. So before it was used by the Catholic Church it was used as a hotel for
lots of famous movie stars.
Texture: Ryan told me this story and he said that he had heard it from one of his friends that
he was hanging out with them and then they told him this story. and we both thought about it
for a while and decided that the story was pretty truth full.
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Item 13
Aborted Children
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: I asked Ryan why the Nunnery was still haunted or like what still haunts the
Nunnery and why everybody is scared of that place.
Text: So what still haunts the Nunnery like why does everybody think that the Nunnery is
haunted and everything like that. There was rumors in the nineteen fourties that the Nunnery
was an abortion clinic for unwed teenagers. And these aborted children still walk the grounds.
Texture: Ryan read this off of the Old interweb and he found that it is actually not a real storie
and it wasn't completely truth full.
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Item 14
Fined
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8,2014
Context: I was still continuing my interviews with Ryan and I asked him what would happen to
you, or any other person if they went up there and were caught by the police for trespassing.
And he told me this story.
Text: What happens when you walk around up at the Nunnery and get caught by the police.
Well so it's private property so if you trespass and get caught the cops will give you a citation,
and you will get in trouble and fined for it.
Texture: This is a really legit story because i have some friends that went up there and got
caught by the cops and were cited and fined for trespassing on private property and they got
in big trouble.
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Item 15
USU Students
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: I was asking Ryan if he had ever heard of any stories of people that had gone up to
the Nunnery and had been caught by the cops and got in trouble for trespassing and were
fined for it.
Text: So do you know of any stories where people have gotten fines and have been
trespassing up at the Nunnery. There was a bunch of USU students that were caught up there
at the Nunnery and they got ticket and fines and everything.
Texture: Ryan is currently going to USU and he said that he heard it from one of his friends
that goes to school with him and they told him the story, so when it comes to the validity of
this story it is one hundred percent truth full.
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Item 16
Pool Cold Spot
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: Ryan told me this story because he had a cousin of his drown in a pool and it really
has a personal connection with him so this next story he told because he could relate to it
very personally.
Text: Ok tell me about the cold spot in the pool, ok so there was a little boy who drowned
there in the pool, and the cold spot is because of the little boy, and he is haunting it. The cold
spot is about two or three feet in diameter.
Texture: This story is one hundred percent true I really believe deep deep down in my heart
that a little boy might have actually drowned in the pool and did die there and he is now
haunting it because the is a coldspot in the pool I felt it when we went up there .
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Item 17
Names
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: I asked my friend Ryan to tell me all of the different names of the Nunnery and so
that is what brings us to this next interview or story that I have recorded.
Text: Ok so tell me all of the different names of the Nunnery that you know of. Ok so the first
one is Hatch's Camp, the second one is Forest Hills, the third one is Pine Glen Cove, and the
fourth and final one is just the Nunnery.
Texture: Ryan stated that he had seen all of those names off of some website and he told
them to me. And we both concluded that this story is completely true.
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Item 18
Offerings
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8,2014
Context: Ryan told me this story after me asking him to tell me more about the Nunnery and
basically just a bunch more of background information and other things about the Nunnery.
Text: So when the family stopped using the Nunnery, who did they try and give it to first. Well
in the nineteen fifties they offered it to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Then
they offered it to Utah State University but neither one of them were interested in it, that is
when they handed it over to the Catholic Church.
Texture: This is a true and reliable story because they Hatch Family did try to give the
Nunnery to all of those different places before the Catholics took it from them.
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Item 19
Handcuffs
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: Well one day Ryan was looking on the internet and he was just reading a bunch of
stories about the nunnery and he came across this story and then after he had read it he
decided to tell it to me.
Text: Ok so what is one of the big myths or legends that surrounds the Nunnery. Well
according to the article one boy was butted by a shotgun and the little girls were molested and
they all had wristmarks from fake plastic handcuffs.
Texture: This story I think is a myth because the people couldn't just do, all of what they did
to those kids. They would have to go to jail for that.
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Item 20
Guards Going To Jail
Ryan Parkinson
Providence Utah
November 8, 2014
Context: This Interview goes along with the previous story but it tells the after the fact part.
Like how that other story ends and what happens after.
Text: So what happened to the kids after they were found. Well the cops showed up and they
replaced the plastic hand cuffs with real metal ones then they took them to the sheriffs office
and they were given tickets for trespassing. But then the victims parents found out what
happened and the charges were dropped and the guards went to jail for a few months for their
crimes against the kids.
Texture: As for the truthfulness of this story I believe that this one is a real, and a very true
and honest story that for the most part is pretty accurate.

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Utah State University Folklore in the news collection, 1973-2012, FOLK COLL 55

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St. Anne's Retreat

http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/p16944coll20/id/57

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