Spanish Fork City Cemetery

The legend of the Weeping Lady of Spanish Fork Cemetery has circulated in Utah County for generations. According to the tradition—documented by the Deseret News (2005) and the BYU student magazine Stowaway (2020)—visitors who approach the Ferreday statue after dark may see tears streaming down the figure's stone face. Old water stains on the statue's cheeks are often cited by believers as physical evidence of the phenomenon, though these are also consistent with decades of natural weathering.

One version of the legend holds that if visitors walk around the cemetery with eyes closed, they can hear the statue weeping. Some tellings add that the statue cries out for her baby, a detail not supported by the documented history of the memorial: Laura Ferreday's statue was commissioned by her grieving husband Horace as an expression of marital loss, not maternal bereavement. The 'baby' element appears to be an accretion of folk narrative over time.

A longtime resident who had lived across from the cemetery for 44 years told the Deseret News he had walked every street in the cemetery during the day and never experienced anything unusual, providing a skeptical counterpoint to the legend. The statue's actual inscription—a grief poem adapted by Mark Twain for his own daughter's grave—lends a genuine pathos to the monument that likely sustains the legend's emotional resonance regardless of paranormal claims.