The bundy ritual house : Bountiful Utah

Melissa Dawn
Jan 10, 2024
6 min read

There is a house in Bountiful, Utah, with a dark and twisted mythology about infamous serial killer Ted Bundy attached to it, so naturally, I had to research this and go to the location.

A Serial Killer On The Loose

It's 1974, and a young, witty, and rather handsome man from Washington State has moved to the beehive state of Utah. He's there to attend the University of Utah for his law degree. When he arrives, he blends in with the local population, socializing, skiing, and even joining the Mormon Church. His well-dressed conservative presentation makes him an ideal figure to promote the Republican party, and everyone knows he will make a fine lawyer one day. What they don't know is that they are in the presence of one of America's most brutal serial killers, Ted Bundy.

When Bundy had left Washington State and moved to Utah, the onslaught of missing young women area stopped. Abruptly. No one in Washington state knew who the killer was; all they had was a description of the man, which they turned into an artist sketch, a description of the VW Bug he drove, and a first name somebody heard uttering to one of the missing girls: Ted. Now Utah was about to experience the same horror young college-age with long brown hair parted in the middle in the Seattle area had experienced. Bundy admitted to over 30 murders overall when finally caught, 8 of those being in Utah, though one of his lawyers has claimed Bundy told him confidentially that it was probably over 100. Today, we focus on one murder with many myths and paranormal claims surrounding it.

Kidnapping in Bountiful

Debra Jean Kent was 17 years old. Young, beautiful, and with long hair that parted in the middle. Debra left an event she attended with her parents at the high school to pick up her two younger brothers at a skating rink. She would take the family car for the short drive to the skating rink. After an hour, her parents became concerned and went outside and saw that the car hadn't moved an inch. They went and found a payphone and called the arena. Her brothers were still there waiting for a ride, but Debra was nowhere to be seen.

Ted Bundy was an unknown figure at the time, and communications between police stations and states were not as well developed as they are today. So, police waited over 24 hours before they did anything. However, several people witnessed a man hanging around in the school parking lot, and that description matched the description of a man seen with missing women in Washington state. Eventually, after many women in Utah went missing, everyone knew there was a kidnapper/killer on the loose. Bundy would subsequently be identified by Carol DaRonch, one of his targets who escaped, and he was charged with kidnapping. Sadly, the body of Debra Kent wasn't found until years later when Bundy was buying time to stall his execution. He admitted to Debra's murder and that he had dumped her body at Fairview Canyon. All that police found of her was a piece of her patella bone, which wasn't identified as Debra until 2015 with DNA.

The House Becomes A Portal To Hell

The tragedy that ensued from the brutal murders of Ted Bundy had left its mark on the Salt Lake City area of Utah. Fortunately, Bundy met his end in 1989 by execution via the electric chair in the state of Florida. Shortly after his death, stories of his ghost began circulating in several locations across the country. One, of course, was the execution chamber itself, where correctional officers allegedly saw Bundy in the chamber smirking at them from the electric chair. However, it was a haunting story from Bountiful Utah surrounding the murder of Debra Jean Kent that caught my attention. A house in Bountiful has come to carry mythology surrounding the Bundy and Kent abduction over time. This house, called The Viewmont House, has become known as The Bundy Ritual House.

"I could feel it, so I do believe there is a very dark portal, or gateway at the house.." – Zak Bagan's interview with Esquire

The House of Bundy: Bountiful Utah

When talking about famous, or in this case, infamous figures, one has to be careful to sort fact from fiction. I will first start with the story, and then we will parse it out from there.

The tale told about The Ritual House is that after Bundy abducted Debra Jean Kent, he took her to his house and kept her there for over 24 hours. Because no one was ever sure where he murdered Debra, locals have said that it was in another house where Bundy murdered his young victim. The BR house is supposedly an evil portal to hell and had beckoned Ted Bundy to do his evil work within the premises. Bundy completed his evil work as a ritual that opened the portal to hell. People extracted the myth from interviews Bundy gave while on death row, where he declared that he felt an evil presence come over him that influenced his crimes.

They built the two-story house in 1897, and it sits on .38 acres of land. According to my research, it became a duplex rented out in the 1980s. It is not on sale, though valued at $ 454,782, even in its current dilapidated condition. The inside walls are punctured with holes and full of graffiti. There is an abundance of satanic markings from people trying to emulate dark rituals they think will connect them to Bundy's spirit or open the same evil portal. But the real question is, was Bundy ever there?

Was Bundy Ever There?

First, we must understand where the myth came from. I was looking across statements made on the internet; there were no reports of a haunting when it was rented out as a duplex in the 1980s; some even claim it is the wrong house and that Bundy used another house on the corner of 200 West to murder his victims. It suffered through a fire in the 1990s and has sat vacant ever since, building the myth of being a dark location. But still, how did it become associated with the Bundy murders? I'm sure we have Ghost Adventures to thank for that and the house location in reference to the Kent abduction site.

The parking lot where the abduction of Debra occurred at Viewmont High School, which, if you look at the map below, is a 5-minute walk from the house. Over time, this close proximity, combined with an old creepy house, has helped fuel the story. After the fire in the 1990s, it is clear young kids have heard these rumors and have used the abandoned house as a canvas for their teenage angst. But what about Ghost Adventures? Well, that is where the crux of the myth lies, primarily as a modern audience knows it.

In 2019, the paranormal investigation TV show Ghost Adventures, with host Zak Bagans, did a 4 part series on an infamous serial killer and haunted locations associated with them. Of course, one of the killers was Ted Bundy, and Bagans concluded that the Viewmont House was the location where Bundy created an evil dark portal to hell. What was Bagan's evidence? When Bundy was on death row, he gave many interviews, and in one of those interviews, he claimed that an evil entity would overtake him during his crimes. Bagan has combined this element with the history of the house and the claims of devil-worshipping being performed here and decided that Bundy may have created the evil portal. At the same time, he ritually murdered his victims here.

The problem is that Ted would likely never have stepped foot in this house. Bundy did admit responsibility for Kent's death and gave the location of her body. He also claimed to have taken her to his rental suite in Salt Lake City to do his evil work. Another element that Bagans doesn't consider is that serial killers often tell elaborate stories of demonic possession or make confusing statements in a trade for more time to avoid their eventual fate of execution. It is also a defense mechanism to distance themselves from the guilt of their crime. Does this mean the house isn't haunted? Well, if it is, it's not likely by Ted Bundy or the soul of Debra Kent.

An Evil Created By Sub-Culture and Projection?

Often, the myth becomes more potent than the actual event. I think we can point to the case of the Bundy Ritual House as one of those myths. Over the decades, we, as curious humans, have created the negativity surrounding this location. Sadly, we have a subculture of people who idolize Bundy and do rituals in his name with the intent of opening portals. Maybe they are seeking some power, as Bundy was when he attacked and murdered these innocent women. Perhaps they are just silly thrill seekers curious about dark history. Whatever the case, if it is evil in that location, I believe the current people, through projection, have created it to be. Our minds are influential, and we are often unwitting creators of bleak realities. In this case, I can see how this myth has been built and created to become a natural phenomenon by those minds over time.