About this episode

This episode explores the legend of the Purple Lady at the Rio Grande Depot in Utah and the surprising truth behind her story.

For decades, employees and visitors at Salt Lake City’s Rio Grande Depot told stories about the Purple Lady—a young woman supposedly killed by a train after a disastrous reunion with her returning fiancé. People claimed to see her reflection in the women’s restroom, hear her singing after hours, and feel her presence moving through the building’s basement corridors. But when Utah historians finally dug into the story, they found something unexpected: there was no dead woman, no train accident, no newspaper coverage, and no Purple Lady before the state moved into the building in the 1980s. Tonight, we explore one of Utah’s most famous hauntings, the century-old building noises that may explain some of its ghostly reputation, and the remarkable possibility that an entirely invented ghost story became real enough for people to start experiencing it.

Topics covered

• ghost stories
• hauntings
• Utah history
• urban legends
• cultural folklore

Keywords

• Purple Lady
• Rio Grande Depot
• haunting
• ghost
• Utah
• urban legend
• train accident
• cultural folklore

Mentioned in this episode

Places: Salt Lake City, Rio Grande Depot, Utah

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