Sometimes, Henrie embellishes on the ghost story listed on the Web: You can see a family, if you gaze long enough, within the bricks at the end of the 200 hall — part of the original building, Henrie says. But as you approach, the image disappears.

"I tell my students my stories are all true — and they are, to a fashion," Henrie said. "They all know what's exaggerated, but they buy into it anyway."

Cyprus High associate custodian Robert Goble has the same experience.

Students often ask him to tell what he calls "the old stories" of the basketball bouncing in the gym, the dark figure at the top of the stairwell, of the mysterious crying many teachers have heard, supposedly, when no one is around. He even reveals the lore of the auditorium's ghost, Edgar, who was packed up from the school's old building some 20 years ago so the students could release him in their new digs.

"The first thing I tell them is, there is no ghost ... I walk these halls at night, I'm the last person to walk out of this building, and there's nothing more spooky than myself, I guess," Goble said. "Yet they'll walk away believers. Some of them take it real seriously."

Henrie has a way of turning even skeptics into believers.

Once, when things went missing from the auditorium, Henrie says his stage crew students set up an infrared camera to catch the thief overnight. The tape was quiet until about 2 a.m. when a floating light appeared. Then another and another. Soon, the lights, or orbs, began to interact. The camera made a sound as if it had a technical glitch, and the orbs stopped. The camera made another sound, and they all disappeared.

"We all saw," Henrie said, "and it really was kind of spooky."

Utah colleges and universities also are part of Haunted Utah. Southern Utah University's Old Administration Building, as the story goes, is haunted by the spirit of a popular young pianist, known for her rendition of "Deep Purple" in the 1930s, according to a student newspaper article penned in the 1980s. Her music supposedly can be heard from the building's top floor in the night, and lights often flash on and off in the night without reason.

Former President Gerald Sherratt, now mayor of Cedar City, said the story has been retold for ages, but he never did have a ghostly encounter. "You'd have to stay out until midnight," he chuckled. "I could never last."

Brigham Young University officials had never heard of that school's ghost story, which claims its new music library reading room is home to odd noises resembling voices or is always too cold or too hot. And in the harp room, a mysterious chair appeared out of nowhere, and no one has accounted for its origin.