Some restaurants have dishes "to die for" and hauntingly good food. Although Log Haven in Millcreek Canyon usually wins "most romantic" dining awards, there may be more than romance in the air.
Over the years, staff members at the restaurant have reported seeing ghostly apparitions and hearing children's singing and laughter, footsteps and other noises.
If the 88-year-old log building really is a venue for ghosts, they're a good-natured variety, more similar to "Casper" than "Poltergeist," according to Ian Campbell, who has been the restaurant's general manager for 13 years.
"We don't feel threatened or that the ghosts are out to harm you or anything like that," he said.
There's been talk that one of the apparitions might be L.F. Rains, the steel baron who built the log hideaway in 1920 as a gift for his wife. According to the restaurant's history, the Rains family used it as a summer home. During the Depression, an insurance executive named Gleed Miller bought the home and turned it into a year-round residence for his family.
The property eventually passed to Stanley Sprouse, who converted it into a restaurant. By the late 1980s, it was in disrepair and slated to be destroyed. Margo Provost bought it in 1994 and renovated it into the restaurant it is today.
"Back when I was renovating, I would have to stay up there by myself a lot, and there were certainly signs that there were ghosts," Provost said. "I'd just talk to them and say, 'I believe my intentions are good, I'm here to restore this beautiful place, and I'm going to lie down now because I need some sleep, and I'm choosing to believe that you will protect me."'
She doesn't think the occurrences are related to the 1982 double murder that took place in Log Haven's driveway. Michael Patrick Moore fatally shot Jordan Rasmussen, who was going to replace him as the restaurant's manager, according to past Deseret News stories. When laundry truck driver Buddy Booth drove up with a load of laundry, Moore then killed him to eliminate a potential witness. Moore was convicted of the deaths and in 2000 he hanged himself in his Utah State Prison cell.
Provost says the apparitions that people have reported seem to be from the early 1900s. And she doesn't feel any malevolence in the goings-on.
One evening after everyone had left except Provost and one server, they heard the sounds of children playing.
"We thought that someone had left their kids," Provost said. "We looked everywhere but couldn't find anything."
Campbell said during his first year as manager, he took the menu to a copy company to be printed, and the printer said, "Oh, have you seen the ghosts?"
She told him she had worked there as a pastry cook and had seen a ghost float past her.
Then late one night when he was alone working downstairs, "I could hear footsteps going up and down the back stairs. That's the only time I left very quickly."
Another time, Campbell was walking past a freezer/storage area and out of the corner of his eye he saw a man with black and white clothing, similar to that of a chef. He stopped and went back, only to find the room empty. Several nights later he mentioned his story to executive chef Kevin Donovan.
"It turned out that Kevin had seen him, too, in the same area," said Campbell. Donovan described him as stocky and wearing a white shirt that resembled a chef coat. Donovan, who recently took a job with Park City Resort, said that he often sensed someone was watching him while he was working in Log Haven's dry storage area.
According to stories compiled by the restaurant, bartender/server Katy Sine heard a moaning sound coming from above her head in the dry storage area. She looked toward the back wall and saw a screen that had been put up in front of a crawl space. She hurried out of the area. When she came back the next day, the vent had been pushed out from the wall.
Then one night as Sine was in the library room collecting glasses for a guest, she felt a tingling sensation. She looked out the window and saw a tall bearded man with a hat walk across the room.
One New Year's Eve, a server was carrying a large tray into the library and suddenly screamed and shakily set down the tray, said Provost. "She said she had suddenly seen a ghostly figure, and she couldn't stop her momentum and walked right through it. She wouldn't work here after that."
Then there's server Chelsea Laufenberger's story of seeing a tall man for a few seconds when she was resetting the dining room tables. On another occasion while she was in the ladies' room, the middle bathroom stall began to rattle.
Event planner Joni Van Drunen reported that she and a bartender heard bells ringing one night as they were finishing up paperwork. Another evening she was downstairs and heard a young girl singing. She went upstairs, and as soon as she came into the kitchen, it stopped. When she went back downstairs, the singing started up again. While driving away after closing up and locking the restaurant, she looked up to see lights coming on inside.
And the ghostly sightings aren't just at night. A former housekeeper reported that while cleaning during the day, she saw a woman in vintage dress in the dining room. Another time, she was mopping and saw a pair of old boots with black laces. The laces weren't drawn up; it looked like someone had just slipped them on.
A former server reported running into a small child as she was walking through the patio carrying two plates. She hit the child so hard the plates flew out of her hand. She looked down to apologize and no one was there.
Provost said one of the regular Log Haven customers is a psychic who says she communicates with the spirits over dinner. "She said there was a woman in Victorian garb who wants me to start having tea parties. And one is an architect, a very tall thin man with a stovepipe hat, who told her that we had had a fire in the fireplace on the side of the building. She was right, we did have a fire there 10 years before. He told her that he was angry at me for a long time, but now I've fixed the fireplace correctly he feels better about it."
The psychic also told Campbell that she could see a ghost patting him on the shoulder, "which freaked me out," Campbell added. "Now when I come upstairs at midnight and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, I will call out, 'It's only me,' which I guess is kind of silly."
Neither Campbell nor Provost thinks there's any cause for alarm. "I guess it's part of my belief that we're in alignment rather than at war with one another," said Provost. "We don't have to judge any incident as good or bad — it just is."
E-mail: vphillips@desnews.com