By Carolyn Campbell

Matt Jensen sees spirits. One night, working alone in a Southern Utah mortuary, he prepared to lock the outside door. Then he saw a man standing in front of the elevator.

"He was all dressed up in a black suit and tie—as if he were a funeral director or someone attending church," Jensen said. "But I just knew he was a spirit in body form."

The man was short and appeared to be in his 70s or 80s. Jensen locked the door and, moments later as he started to walk up a flight of stairs, he saw the man again.

"This time, he looked down at me from the top of the stairs," Jensen recounted. "We made eye contact, and I felt chills."

Another day, Jensen said he saw a similar spirit while working in the basement file room. Again, the spirit wore a black suit, white shirt and black shoes.

"We kept looking at each other," Jensen said. "He turned around and walked out the door. Then he disappeared."

Once, when Jensen was alone in a darkened viewing room where there was already a body in a casket, he saw a bright light, about chest high, that surged across the room in half a second.

"Then it was gone," he said.

It's not just Jensen who has experienced strange phenomena in a mortuary setting. A funeral director once told Jensen about a time when she was alone in the prep room preparing to embalm a man who lay on the table.

"She was wondering about his facial hair," he said. "If people recognize someone for having a mustache, you want to keep it for the viewing. It could lead to monumental problems with the family if you shave it off."

While the funeral director pondered how best to proceed, she heard the man's voice. He told her to leave his beard alone, saying that was how people knew him.

For this story, Jensen asked to be referred to through the use of a pseudonym because mortuary personnel are reluctant to discuss spiritual encounters.

Jensen doesn't want to alienate his colleagues in the funeral business; yet he affirms such spiritual encounters happen and says they are unforgettable.

He recalled a time when a woman passed away, and her relatives—including a mentally challenged daughter—came to the viewing.

"The mom asked the daughter if she would like to walk to the front of the room, where her grandmother lay in her casket," Jensen said. "The mother asked, 'Would you like to walk up to see Grandma?' The daughter replied, 'I can see her from where I'm at. She's standing right next to the casket.'"

Close to Home
Salt Laker Don Cannon lived in a mortuary with his family for 34 years. It was a typical house when they purchased it, but was later remodeled to double as a funeral home.

"I never thought about being a mortician when I was younger," Cannon said, "but the work-from-home lifestyle appealed to me."

The Cannon family—which has owned Cannon Mortuary for 43 years—said that they have not seen any ghosts, but they do often feel spiritual presences as part of their work.

Cannon remembers seeing a glow appear around the body of his wife's grandmother after she passed, like a halo.

And while that's the only visual manifestation that he said he has experienced, he recalled feeling a similar presence after his wife's grandfather died.

"In that brightly lit prep room, when you're preparing the body of someone you know—you're feeling it," Cannon said. "You're really feeling it."

The Cannons once received the body of a little girl who died in Utah. She was from Texas, and Jackie Cannon—Don's wife—explained how morticians are legally required to embalm bodies before shipping them across state lines.

A part-time employee who worked for the family embalmed the girl. Afterward, he told the Cannons he'd never felt like this—while he knew nothing about the child, he felt her presence the whole time. Like she was sitting there and watching him.

The Cannons told him the girl was from a Texas town and the embalmer replied, "Oh? I'm from Texas. Where are you sending her?"

It turned out that the employee and the young girl were from the same small town.

"It blew our minds," Don Cannon said. "He felt he had never sensed someone's presence while preparing them. And now it was this little girl who was from his hometown."

Reaching Out
With more than a decade of experience as a paranormal investigator, as founder of Advance Paranormal Services and as a bagpiper at funerals, DeAnn Thomas said that she often encounters phenomena similar to those that morticians reportedly experience.

"When a man in his early 30s died under suspicious circumstances, at the funeral, you could feel the energy of spirits in the room," she recalled. "It wasn't a peaceful feeling; it was angry and frustrated."

She knows of a local mortician who finished preparing a body for a viewing several hours before the family's arrival. As he closed the door to shift to a different task, he saw a man sitting in a chair.

"Looking closer, he saw it was the deceased man he had been working with," Thomas said. "They looked at each other before he finished closing the door."

Hraefn Wulfson (he pronounces his Anglo-Saxon name as "Raven") said he knows that the spirits of dead people exist. They're part of how his gifts work during his readings as a medium, rune reader and intuitive at Golden Braid Bookstore in Salt Lake City.

"Surprisingly, the spirits of people's deceased pets show up to the point where I can describe their characteristics," he said. "I often get loved ones or deceased friends. I'll describe their attributes and attitudes, and I'm never wrong."

One client told him she felt a woman's presence when she was in a particular place.

"I feel like she is your aunt," said Wulfson.

The client said her mother had a twin sister who died at age 14—the same age that Wulfson's spiritual manifestation appeared to be.

Michele Victoria is an Irish psychic medium who does readings for Elysium Evanescents, a metaphysical supply store in Ogden. In her readings, the spirits of her clients' loved ones emerge like a TV screen in her mind.

"While they don't want us to become dependent on them and give away our power, our loved ones know how tough life is here," Victoria explained, "and they come through to provide guidance, love, and support."

She said she does not doubt that there is an afterlife. After people die, she asserted, their souls continue.

"They're not just hanging around us; when you think about a loved one, it's a direct call. It only takes a thought, and they're there," she said. "Thinking about them draws their energy to you."

Memento Mori
Beside brushes with the beyond, morticians have a unique view into how people say goodbye to their loved ones. The Cannons receive many unusual requests. Customers have asked to have their cremated pets buried with them, they said, or that a Latter-day Saint temple recommend be placed in a pocket.

"We've had people put a Diet Coke or a Doctor Pepper in the casket," Don Cannon disclosed.

As a bagpiper who plays at funerals, Thomas said she once saw a casket filled with so many mementos that you could barely see the deceased. She remembers someone calling, "Does anyone else have anything they want to put in?"

She saw a corpse with a thimble on his finger and a tape measure beside it. Her husband's family buried her father-in-law with a Diet Coke and his poker chips.

"When I die," Thomas said, "I wonder what my kids will put in with me."

She added that she will never forget seeing a casket that was draped with a flag emblazoned with the sentiment, "I Love Boobies."

But Dan Ellis, president of Atheists of Utah, says that the concept of heaven, hell and an afterlife never made sense to him.

If he heard someone from heaven was watching people here, he wondered if they were lurking in shadows or had nothing better to do.

"So, Grandpa is watching me poop?" he speculated.

Responding to the idea that people will see their relatives in heaven, he wondered how he might recognize them, or whether his pets would be there as well.

"Pets get a free ride and don't have to attend church," he says.

Further, he wonders what would happen if he wanted to spend time with people from Earth who didn't make it to heaven.

"Do they live in some purgatory?" Ellis questioned.

He adds that some religions' afterlife views are mutually exclusive with those of other faiths, and considers all the points do not match up.

"It's all just so weird," he expressed.

But after working with many cultures and faiths, the Cannons say most people with a religious background believe in an afterlife of some sort, even though the specifics may vary.

"They attach different names to the person in charge and do different things, but they feel there is a great truth out there that we are all part of," Don Cannon said.

"This web of connections might not be exactly what we think or someone else thinks," he added. "We don't know. But we'll understand someday, hopefully."