Great Salt Lake Ghost

The Legend of notorious Salt Lake City grave robber Jean Baptiste

Oct 28, 2022

person in white shirt and brown pants standing on gray rock formation near body of water — Photo by Yihong Chen on Unsplash

Following his exile to an island in the Great Salt Lake, the notorious grave robber Jean Baptiste vanished from history and entered the realm of legend and folklore.

Baptiste’s ghost is said to haunt the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake. He vanished without a trace following his exile to Fremont Island in 1862. Authorities exiled Baptiste to the island after he confessed to looting more than 300 graves in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. Shoes, clothing, and assorted valuables pulled from dead bodies were found in his home.

From Gravedigger to Grave Robber

Baptiste’s origins are unclear. His birthplace is said to be in Ireland, France, or Italy depending on the source. He eventually settled in Australia and boarded a ship bound for Hawaii in 1855. From there, Baptiste eventually reached San Francisco by 1856.

After emigrating to the Utah Territory by 1859, Baptiste married a woman named Dorothy Jennison and found work as a gravedigger. He quietly plundered graves, collecting pairs of shoes, clothing, and other possessions in boxes throughout their home. Authorities discovered Baptiste’s lurid activities when they exhumed the body of Moroni Clawson in 1862 for reburial in his hometown. Clawson’s corpse had been stripped clean of clothing. Their investigation eventually led them to Baptiste where they discovered the boxes of clothing and other items stolen from dead bodies.

Word of Baptiste desecrating graves reportedly fueled public outrage throughout the Utah Territory. Baptiste was thrown in jail but then quickly moved amid fears that his fellow inmates were planning to lynch him for his crimes. During a sermon given on February 9, 1862, Brigham Young suggested exile for Baptiste. The Mormon leader suggested that executing the grave robber or letting him serve life in prison were not harsh enough punishments.

Strangely, no court records or contemporary newspaper articles make mention of Baptiste’s crimes. Other than Young’s sermon, there is scant historical evidence of this episode.

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Great Salt Lake Exile

Baptiste was eventually exiled to Fremont Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake during the spring of 1862. The island was used at the time for cattle grazing and had a small shack stocked with provisions. Legends state that Baptiste’s ears were cut off and his forehead was branded with the words “Grave Robber” in indelible ink before he was taken to the island.

Within six weeks, Baptiste vanished from the island never to be seen again. The shack had been partially stripped of timber. The carcass of a heifer was also discovered with strips cut from the animal’s hide. Some authorities believe Baptiste fled the island and resettled in a mining camp in Montana or found his way back to California. Others believe the grave robber never made it past the Great Salt Lake and he drowned near the mouth of the Jordan River while trying to flee on a makeshift raft.

Skeletal remains alleged to belong to Baptiste were found near the Jordan River in the 1890s. Stories reporting sightings of his ghost started cropping up soon after this discovery. Visitors to Fremont Island claimed to hear inhuman cries at night and awoke in the morning to discover numerous items had been stolen from their camps. Sightings of a gaunt lonely figure stalking the Great Salt Lake’s southern shore often accompanied these stories.

If you believe stories recounting sightings of Baptiste’s ghost, then he never escaped from his exile. His restless spirit roams the shores and islands of the Great Salt Lake as an ongoing punishment for his crimes more than a century and a half ago. The odd tale of Jean Baptiste serves as an unforgettable and unsettling chapter of Utah folklore.