The Grand Canyon Is Haunted: Vanished Honeymooners, a Buried UFO File, and the Hotel Ghost Who Still Shows Up for Christmas
A You Two Scare Me Podcast deep dive into America's most mysterious national park
When most people picture the Grand Canyon, they picture postcards: sweeping red-rock views, a sunset over the rim, maybe a mule ride down to the river. What they don't picture is a mile-deep canyon with a body count in the hundreds, an unsolved honeymoon disappearance, a century-old cover-up theory, declassified FBI files on UFOs, and a hotel where the founder allegedly still shows up to invite guests to Christmas parties…in the middle of July.
A Mile Deep, and a Long History of Loss
Before the ghost stories, some context. The Grand Canyon stretches roughly 277 miles long, up to 18 miles wide, and over a mile deep in places, carved out by the Colorado River over millions of years. The land has been home to Indigenous peoples, including the Havasupai, Hualapai, Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, and Southern Paiute, for thousands of years before it became a national park in 1919, and parts of the canyon are considered sacred by these communities.
It's also, quietly, one of the deadliest national parks in the country. Estimates put total deaths within the canyon's boundaries somewhere between 700 and 900 people since the 1800s, and that number doesn't even include the 128 people killed in a single afternoon in 1956 (more on that below). Add in one of the highest numbers of unresolved missing-persons cases of any national park, and you start to understand why the Grand Canyon has as many ghost stories as it does gift shops.
The Vanishing of Glen and Bessie Hyde
The episode's centerpiece is one of the most famous unsolved disappearances in National Park Service history.
In October 1928, newlyweds Glen and Bessie Hyde set out to run the Green and Colorado Rivers straight through the Grand Canyon in a homemade 20-foot wooden boat. If they made it, Glen would set a speed record, and Bessie would become the first woman known to run the entire canyon by river.
The trip went smoothly for almost a month. On November 16, the couple stopped to restock at Grand Canyon Village, spoke with a reporter, and visited the well-known Kolb brothers, who ran a photography studio on the canyon's edge. Everyone who saw them said they were in good spirits. Two days later, on November 18, 1928, they said their goodbyes and walked back down to the river.
They were never seen again.
When search parties found their boat nearly two weeks later, it was upright, undamaged, and still packed with all their gear, including Bessie's diary and camera. No struggle. No bodies. No answers, then or now. Nearly a hundred years later, historians still debate whether they drowned in an uncharted rapid or met some other fate entirely.
The Cave That (Probably) Never Existed
Next, the episode digs into one of the oldest conspiracy theories in American history: the claim that a Smithsonian-backed expedition discovered a massive underground cavern in the Grand Canyon in 1909, filled with mummies, hieroglyphics, and artifacts that looked Egyptian in origin.
The story ran on the front page of a small Phoenix newspaper, and it appears to have been entirely fabricated. There's no historical record that the archaeologist or explorer named in the article ever existed, and the Smithsonian has repeatedly stated it has no record of any such expedition or artifacts. Still, the story never fully died. It resurfaced in "lost civilization" books throughout the twentieth century and found new life online, where it's often framed as a government cover-up. The evidence for that framing? None. But it's a great campfire story anyway.
Declassified FBI Files and Two Grand Canyon UFO Cases
From folklore to actual government paperwork: the episode covers two documented UFO cases tied to the Grand Canyon that show up in declassified FBI files.
The first dates to June 30, 1947- just two weeks before the Roswell incident, when a pilot in training reported seeing two circular objects descending at high speed over the canyon and altered his flight path to avoid them. The second comes from a 1954 account near Peach Springs, Arizona, recorded in an interview with a University of Arizona physicist who was one of the era's most serious scientific UFO investigators.
Neither case has ever been explained. Neither has ever been proven extraterrestrial. But both are part of the documented historical record, not internet legend.
The Deadliest Day in the Canyon's History
Not every story in this episode is folklore. On June 30, 1956, two commercial flights, a TWA Constellation and a United Air Lines DC-7, collided in midair above the Grand Canyon after both requested permission to fly above cloud cover in the same airspace. All 128 people aboard both planes were killed. At the time, it was the deadliest aviation accident in history, and the disaster directly led to the creation of the FAA in 1958.
The crash site was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014, and wreckage is still visible on the canyon walls today. It's also become part of the canyon's ghost lore. Visitors and rangers report unsettled energy, apparitions in 1950s clothing, and mysterious lights near the site, which sits close to a sacred Hopi location believed to be a gateway between worlds.
The Hotel Ghost Who Loves Christmas
If there's a "greatest hits" haunted location on the South Rim, it's the El Tovar Hotel, built in 1905. Guests and staff have reported decades of encounters tied to founder Fred Harvey, who died four years before the hotel even opened, including sightings of a man in old-fashioned dress on the front stairs, and stories of a spectral figure inviting guests to a holiday party, sometimes in the height of summer.
Beyond Fred, the episode runs through a long list of guest accounts: an unseen presence tugging at clothing, a face appearing in a turned-off TV screen, a child's voice calling out in an empty lobby, doors that won't open until you ask politely, and a bartender who says a falling knife nearly missed him the moment he stepped back from the bar for no reason he could explain.
More Haunts Along the Rim
The episode rounds out with several lesser-known but equally eerie spots:
Hermit's Rest, tied to the ghost of a French-Canadian prospector known as "the Hermit," complete with unexplained footsteps and the smell of pipe tobacco.
The grave of Rees Griffiths, a trail foreman killed by a rockslide in 1922 and buried where he fell, whose gravesite is still linked to sightings of a mysterious figure and hovering light.
The North Rim's Transept Trail, home to a recurring story about a woman in a white dress seen wandering near the rim before vanishing.
Firsthand accounts from Marjorie "Slim" Woodruff, a naturalist who has hiked the canyon for over fifty years and still can't explain everything she's experienced out there.
Listen to the Full Episode
Between the vanished honeymooners, the century-old conspiracy, the declassified UFO files, the deadliest air disaster in history, and a hotel that apparently never stopped celebrating Christmas, this episode covers a lot of ground…literally and otherwise.
El Tovar Hotel
Grand Canyon Sunset Panoramic Photo
