Eighty Pounds of Dynamite: The Haunted Kay’s Cross, Utah

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated October 8, 2026 · How we verify

Most ruins get there slowly. The haunted Kay’s Cross, tucked into a secluded fold of ground called Kay’s Hollow outside Kaysville, Utah, was reduced in a single night by roughly 80 pounds of dynamite, and nobody has ever been charged for it. What is left is a broken stump of masonry with an unusually tangled backstory: a polygamous religious order, a California messiah who was later murdered by his own followers, and a decade of 1980s rumor that turned a quiet hollow into a supposed site of ritual sacrifice.

Where: Kay’s Hollow, Kaysville, Utah. What it was: a stone cross roughly 20 feet tall and 13 feet wide. Condition: partially destroyed by explosion in 1992. Access: guided visits have been offered by the reported landowners since 2013.

A Cross With No Agreed Builder

The origins of Kay’s Cross are genuinely uncertain, and the sources that discuss it offer competing explanations rather than a settled record. One prominent theory holds that the cross was built in 1946 by members of the Kingston family, the polygamous group led by Charles Elden Kingston that founded the Davis County Cooperative Society. The Kingstons, commonly called “The Order,” are a fundamentalist offshoot of the LDS Church, and they own the land the cross stands on. That much is a matter of property, not folklore.

Before its destruction the structure was substantial: approximately 20 feet tall and 13 feet wide, a serious piece of stonework for an out of the way hollow. Whatever it was for, somebody meant it to last.

Krishna Venta and the Letter K

The second theory ties the cross to Krishna Venta, born Francis Pencovic, a California religious leader who claimed to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and who reportedly had ties to Utah. In a 1992 interview reported by the Deseret News, Merlin Kingston said the cross was built in Venta’s honor using plans Venta had drawn himself.

Even the family accounts disagree on the detail. Merlin Kingston said the “K” on the cross stood for “Kingdom.” A journal kept by Malvern Hansen, another descendant of the family, records that it stood for “Knowledge.” The design is described as including grooves meant to hold religious texts, which were to be covered by stained glass, an ambitious plan that was abandoned when Venta left Utah to establish his movement in California. Venta’s own end was violent: he was killed in a bombing orchestrated by two of his followers in 1958.

February 15, 1992: The Night the Cross Came Down

On February 15, 1992, approximately 80 pounds of dynamite was ignited at the base of Kay’s Cross. The explosion caused extensive damage and scattered debris across the surrounding ground. No culprit has ever been identified. The theories run from straightforward vandalism to deliberate demolition by the landowners or local authorities wanting to put an end to trespassing and to the occult rumors that had attached themselves to the site.

One further grim note belongs to the record rather than the legend: a suicide was reportedly committed in 2005 on the property directly adjacent to the cross.

Buried Wives, Werewolves and the Satanic Panic

The legends around Kay’s Cross are numerous and should be read as folklore, because that is what they are. One story claims the cross was built by an unnamed polygamist who murdered his wives and buried them around its base. A variant insists that the body, or in some tellings the heart, of his seventh wife was sealed inside the top arm of the stone.

In the 1980s, during Utah’s Satanic panic, rumors spread that the hollow was being used for ritual sacrifice. Those claims were fed by allegations of stolen livestock and by animal remains reportedly found at the site, said to include chickens, dogs, raccoons and squirrels. Animal bones in a secluded hollow are not evidence of a ritual, but in the climate of the time they were treated as such.

What People Report in Kay’s Hollow

The phenomena attached to the hollow are unverified reported experiences, not documented events. Visitors have described unexplained glowing lights and voices in the area, and there are long standing claims of werewolf sightings in the hollow itself. The most commonly repeated account is also the vaguest and the hardest to argue with: people say they feel uneasy or physically unwell near the cross. A dark, isolated ravine with a ruined religious monument in it is already doing a great deal of that work before any spirit is invoked.

Seeing the Remains of Kay’s Cross Today

The site is on private land, and for decades that meant trespassing. That changed in 2013, when the reported owners of the land, members of the Kingston family, opened the site to the public as a business venture advertised as “Haunted Kay’s Cross.” Visitors are guided to the remains of the cross and told the history and the legends along the way, which is the honest arrangement: the stories are part of the attraction and are presented as such.

The site’s profile grew again when it featured on the paranormal series Ghost Adventures in an episode titled “Kay’s Hollow,” which aired on July 14, 2018 and explored the hollow and its alleged activity. Anyone making the trip should go through the organized visit rather than wandering in. The land has an owner, the ruin is fragile, and the only thing the hollow has reliably produced over the years is trouble for people who turned up uninvited.

Address: Kay's Hollow, Kaysville, Utah

See Kay's Cross for Yourself

Sources

• Mysterious Kaysville cross opens to the public
• The Strange, Awful Truth Behind Utah's Eerie Stone Cross (Atlas Obscura)
• Haunted Utah: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Beehive State
• Krishna Venta killed in bombing
• Kay's Cross
• Wikipedia: Kay's Cross