Who Are WNCPRS Members?

Name: Nichole Hill

Position: Founder and Investigator

Astrological sign: Cancer. It is the fourth astrological sign in the Zodiac, originating from the constellation of Cancer. It is considered a water sign. The Moon rules Cancer. Chinese Zodiac: Element: Metal, Animal: Monkey. The Monkey possesses such character traits as curiosity, mischievousness, and cleverness. Forever playful, Monkeys are the masters of practical jokes.

I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah but I grew up in small farmhouse that was older than the town itself I think. I don't remember much from this house and have many not-so-fond memories. My mother (also a researcher/investigator) swears up and down that a little old man who liked to play with my brother and I haunted our house in the town. I do not remember him (the old man), or the noises she has described to me on many occasions. I blame this on my skepticism and too young mind.

One of my earliest memories is when I was four and very clear, my brother and I snuck out of the house to chop some firewood, he was eight, hence, not very good with an axe! Or strong enough to control it should his four-year-old sister decide that she should help. I was to place the piece of wood on the chopping block standing straight up. He was to bring the axe down over his head to chop the wood. The weight of the axe head would generate the force to split the wood in half. We had watched our father do this very same thing many times all summer/fall long. It was simple. Even my four-year-old brain could handle this. I had put the wood on the chopping block for my father all the time; generally, he remembered to tell me to get out of the way. My brother, however, did not. We could not find the actual axe that my father used, which was extremely sharp, as he had put this up in the barn. We instead found a "maul" which is heavy and shaped like a triangle for the head. It is less sharp than an axe as it is specifically used to split wood instead of chopping.

I placed the piece of wood on the chopping block, a large piece of tree trunk, as my brother instructed. I was standing directly in front of him on the other side of the block. He lifted the maul above his head, which was a considerable effort because the maul is not designed to chop but to split so it is very heavy. He was not used to the weight and started to stumble before bringing the maul up over his head. His shadow on the wood made it look to me that the piece of wood that I had placed on the block was about to fall. I reached out to stop it from falling, and the maul came down across my little wrist on my right arm.

I did not lose my hand that day, as you would assume from the story. The maul was not sharp enough to pierce through the bone, of even my fragile hand, and it was not heavy enough or used with enough force to separate the wrist from the arm bone. It sliced clean through the skin, muscles, and veins. The veins snapped up to my elbow like overstretched rubber bands, the muscle, and flesh looked like a side of steak and I bled...a lot. I was scared and I was crying. Just looking at my now non-functioning hand.

I was calmed by the voice of someone, I heard someone telling me it was going to be okay and I should go into the house as quickly as possible. The sweet whispers in my ear were enough to stop my tears and I simply made my way slowly into my house (I tripped a few times because I was naturally clumsy.) I was not able to look at my hand. I am not sure if my eyes were blocked or my wrist was. All I could see was the sidewalk and the stairs leading up to the front door. My mother found me standing at the bottom of the stairs. I must have been in shock because I do not remember pain; I do not remember much of anything after that moment looking up at my mother. It was a rush of activity after that, Paramedics, sirens, ambulances, and a two-hour trip drugged up in the back of the car to the plastic surgeon in Salt Lake. So yeah...not many fond memories of the "haunted" home I used to live in.

Name: Ian Carr

Position: Equipment Tech and Investigator

What got me interested in the paranormal: When I was ten years old my family lived in Deadwood South Dakota, if you anything about the area you know that, it was a popular stop for many during the time of the old west. Deadwood is located in the Black Hills; the most popular haunting in the area is the haunting of the Bullock hotel by Seth Bullock.

My story however is about a different ghost. The first encounter my family had with the ghost was on a Friday night, we were sitting watching TV and were recording the show we were watching which at the time meant we had the VCR set to that channel telling it to record (DVR did not exist). All of a sudden, the VCR started turning off then turning back on as if someone was up at the VCR pressing the power button repeatedly we at first thought someone was just sitting on the remote or something but it was sitting on the coffee table out of everyone’s reach. My dad finally became upset and yelled, “That is enough,” and the VCR turned back on and the incident stopped.

A few minutes later our coffee table began to shake very lightly like someone was shaking pushing it softly back and forth, it was shaking so lightly you could barely see it I put my hand on it and the movement did not stop. My parents thought this was weird but brushed it off as a strange occurrence, my sister and I both thought it was a ghost.

A few weeks later, my sister started screaming upstairs so my mom and I ran up to see what was wrong, she said that she saw a little boy in the mirror looking at her, and that he had said the word Sam. Over the course of a few weeks, we experienced strange things like radios turning on when there was no one there to turn them on, more furniture shaking and so forth. The events culminated when an entire can of my mother’s shaving cream was sprayed in a circle around the bathtub. This was our last experience with Sam, but I have been interested in the paranormal ever since and even suffered from my own haunting when I was 14.

Name: Brittany Carr

Position: Co-Founder and Investigator

Information coming soon!

Name: Lynn Briggs

Position: Researcher and Investigator

I was raised in Southern California and moved to Utah in 1974. I have been married twice and divorced twice. I have two children, Nichole Hill of Otto, NC and Brandon Briggs of Butte, MT. I have five grandchildren; four are girls and one boy. 

One of my first encounters with the paranormal came when my children were young and we lived in an old home that had been built in 1886. The home was in a little town in Eastern Utah called Orangeville. At the time, I had a very close friend visiting me from the Salt Lake area and she was extremely sensitive to paranormal activity. However, it came to me as no surprise when she told me our home had an entity living there. I can remember hearing footsteps descending the basement stairs sometimes, at night, and I would get up and check on the kids, like always, both were sound asleep. The day Judy told me of the entity, she stated he was a little old man and the reason he was here was because he enjoyed the children, and meant no one any harm. My husband at the time “pooh-poohed” the entire notion, but just as he was shaking his head in disbelief, our dining room chandelier started twisting around and around, not moving from side to side as if in a breeze, but twisting. Judy watched the chandelier and said, “Okay, you can stop that now, we know you’re here,” and the chandelier stopped. We never saw the spirit, but I always seemed to know when he was around.

Later on, after I became a Registered Nurse, I worked in a Nursing Facility in Salt Lake City. Here the paranormal was commonplace and I became more aware of them as I worked the graveyard shift. I started noticing shadow people. They would scoot from one room, cross the hallway and into another room. I’d watch them from the corner of my eyes and sometimes they’d linger for a moment. They were harmless and I think they were just lingering spirits that had passed on in that place. 

However, the most shocking and upsetting moment of my life was just before I became an RN. On the last week of Nursing College, one of our Nursing Instructors was killed in a horrendous car accident. She was a loving and giving person, and was raising her son after a bitter divorce. A few days before, I had invited some of the Nursing Instructors to my place for a potluck barbeque for Memorial Day Weekend. Her son cavorted all over the farm with my children and my other friends' daughter. Three days later, she was dead, struck head on by a pickup truck when the driver had fallen asleep at the wheel. Unfortunately, my best friend and hers, was the first one on the scene and she can remember when the ambulance came to pick up her remains, she saw her standing on the hill overlooking the accident. 

The summer came and went and our clinical’s at the local hospital started. On the first day back, around 6:30 AM, I was walking down the hall getting some fresh water for a patient, and just before I turned into the kitchenette, I happened to glance up – and there she was! I can still see her clearly, standing there at the end of the still darkened hallway, her head tilted, hands in her lab coat pockets and that quirkie little smile she always seemed to wear. It shocked me, I stood there for a few moments, and she faded away. I stepped in the kitchenette and started to bawl my eyes out. From then on, I started to see her either at the hospital or at the college in our clinical lab. Always smiling and always watching over us. We later learned that she was restless, since her son had gone back to live with his father after his death, but when custody was given to her sister, which would have been her wish, her apparition had gone onward and was never seen again at the college. 

The paranormal is here, despite what others might think, I have seen orbs, shadow people, and full-bodied apparitions. The world we live in has many mysteries and everyone who engages in Paranormal Research helps to enlighten us of the here and after.