Flo’s Grave: The Haunted Legend & Tragic Truth

According to local legend, if you flash the lights of your car onto Flo’s grave three times, her ghost will appear and approach you. Stories about how she died have circulated for years, with some saying she was waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up for a school dance at Ogden High when she was struck and killed by a car. Another version claims she choked on a piece of candy. But is there any truth to these tales, or is Flo’s real story even more heartbreaking than the legend?

Who was Florence Louise Grange?

Florence Louise Grange, known to family and neighbors as Louise, was born November 24, 1903, the second child of Dottie Susan Mumford and Ralph Manton Grange. She grew up at 2827 Grant Avenue in Ogden, embedded in the ordinary social life of a neighborhood where everyone’s kids showed up in the same newspaper columns.

In June 1913, nine-year-old Louise attended a birthday party for a neighbor girl named Melva Stuart, along with her sisters Dorothy, Leone, and Thelma. Three years later, in April 1916, she was named in the Ogden Standard-Examiner as a member of the Pingree School volleyball team that defeated the Lorin-Farr girls, the former champions, in three games. By fall 1918 she was a student at Ogden High School.

That’s the full documentary record of her life. A birthday party. A volleyball match. A school enrollment. She died at home at 5 a.m. on December 29, 1918, and three newspapers ran notices the same day. Her funeral was held January 2nd at the Larkin chapel, conducted by Bishop N.A. Tanner. Neighbors could view her body at the house on Grant Avenue until two o’clock.

She was fifteen years old. She left almost no trace. Ninety years later, a Weber State student newspaper was running a photo of her gravestone and describing her ghost rising in green light.

The Spanish Flu and Ogden’s Darkest Year

By early October 1918, the Spanish flu had arrived in Ogden. On October 5th the state health commission was already warning that closures like those ordered in Coalville, shutting schools, amusement places, and public gatherings, would be coming to other parts of Utah. By October 13th, Ogden cases had exceeded 400 and the city health board was reporting three new deaths a day. A week later, cases topped 1,000. The Red Cross was distributing gauze masks. People were wearing heavy veils on the streets. Clerks in stores were masked. Health Inspector George Shorten called the situation serious and asked citizens to redouble their vigilance. Entire families were being wiped out in days.

By November the schools had closed, been cleaned, and were being inspected for reopening. In early December, when city officials went looking for a building to use as an emergency flu hospital, the Ogden city school board was asked and refused, twice. The Elks club stepped in and offered their building instead, where thirty-five beds were immediately set up.

Louise Grange was fifteen years old and living at 2827 Grant Avenue while all of this was happening around her. According to Grange family history, the household contracted the flu after one of their tenants became ill. Most of the family recovered without serious illness. Louise did not. She had been sick for ten days when she died at home at 5 a.m. on December 29, 1918. Her death certificate recorded the cause as “died suddenly, probably of endocarditis,” with influenza as a contributing factor. The newspapers called it heart weakness. Utah ranked third in the nation for flu deaths. From September 1918 until June 1919, over 2,343 deaths in the state were attributed to the Spanish flu. Louise was one of them.

The Legend and the Record

The legend says Louise was struck by a car while waiting for her boyfriend to pick her up for a school dance, but that detail doesn’t hold up. Cars were neither common nor affordable in 1918. A fifteen-year-old girl with a boyfriend who owned a car in Ogden that year was not a likely scenario.

The car connection to the legend almost certainly comes from somewhere else. Her father, Ralph Grange, was one of the first auto mechanics in the state of Utah, well known throughout Utah for his knowledge of fixing, building, and even racing cars. The family home on Grant Avenue still stands, with the old garage where Ralph worked visible out back. Whether that association shaped the legend over time is impossible to say with certainty. But it’s difficult to ignore.

Visiting Flo’s Grave in Ogden City Cemetery

Flo’s grave is at the Ogden City Cemetery, east of Washington on 20th Street. Her plot is on 7th, just north of Martin, plot number 2A-13-32-5W. Nearby are the graves of her parents, grandparents, and at least one sibling. The Grange family is still there, together, the way they were in life on Grant Avenue.

The cemetery closes an hour after dusk and is patrolled by local police at night. If you go looking for Flo’s ghost, you’re on your own with that. But if you go looking for Louise Grange, now you know who she actually was.