               
__________
|
2002 - 2003 Archive
In recent weeks it has come to my attention that certain parties are using my ghost stories and those of my contributors as references for their own commercial enterprises. If you or someone you know is writing a book on ghosts in the Pacific Northwest, PLEASE DO NOT!!! copy or use the following stories or any other materials within this website as references. Jefferson Davis (25 April 2003)
Northwest UFO Paranormal Conference Posted 2 June 2003 Notice of Personal Appearances Posted 20 May 2003 Haunted Hot Springs Hotel Visit Posted 20 May 2003 Page of Mysteries Activated Posted 21 April 2003 Oregon Tourism Conference Posted 16 April 2003 A Night with AGHOST Posted 4 April 2003 Update Notice: I've added something elsewhere on this site Posted 2 April 2003 A Friend visits the Mission Mill Museum in Salem Posted 17 February 2003 Haunted House visit in Olympia Posted 11 December 2002 Salem Wool Museum Visit Posted 19 December 2002 Update Notice: I've added something elsewhere on this site Posted 26 December 2002 Starvation Heights Posted 27 December 2002
Northwest UFO Paranormal Conference Over Memorial Day Weekend, in May 2003, I spent several days at the 3rd Annual UFO Paranormal conference, at the Raddison Hotel in Setac, Washington. I have not attended too many paranormal conferences recently, let alone a UFO and Paranormal conference. My friends at AGHOST were attending and were kind enough to let me share their exhibitor table. My primary contact with the conference organizers was Charlotte. She was very kind to me and even gave me a free pass to attend all of the speaker's seminars. The staff at the Radisson were very helpful. When I found out that they had a haunted room, they switched me to it and gave me a free upgrade. While I was there, it was from that room, 268 that I gave my interview on Coast to Coast AM.
The AGHOST display table I was a little curious about the conference, since many people who study UFOs do not study ghosts, and vice versa. I found this to be true to a certain extent. AGHOST had a seminar that was attended by about 15 people. The keynote speaker was Travis Walton, a former timber worker who was abducted by a UFO in 1975. His talk was overflowing with the curious and questioning! There were a lot of different topics discussed over the weekend. They included more UFO testimony, crop circles, remote viewing, philosophy and many northwest related topics. Some of the northwest speakers included Red Elk and Johnny Moses who both shared traditional Native American stories of the northwest as well as their unique spiritual insights. I have traded emails and stories with Red Elk over the years. This was my first time to actually meet him in person. He is one of the funniest, most real person I know. Loren Coleman was the keynote speaker on Cryptozoology. In this case he spoke about Bigfoot and the Mothman.
In 2002, there was a rain storm with some moderately high winds. The door leading from the lobby to the swimming pool swung open on its own. That had never happened before. A low bench-like chair near the open door slid across the floor, toward the main lobby entrance. After sliding several feet, it tipped over. The main lobby doors, which have an automatic switch, swung open, then closed. It seemed as if someone walked into the lobby from the pool, bumped the couch and dragged along the floor as they walked through the main lobby door. The night manager examined the couch for any wires attached to it, in case someone was trying to pull a trick on him. He did not find any. He recreated the movement of the couch, which took him a lot of effort. More than a gust of wind might have had. So, freak wind or unhappy ghostly guest? My room, number 268 is also haunted. The ghost or ghosts there have not been seen, but they are very noisy. Several times guests in the adjoining rooms have complained to the management that people were speaking loudly either in discussion or argument late at night. The manager decided to investigate when the register showed that there were no guests staying in the room. As he walked up the stairs toward the room, he could hear the voices on the stairwell. There were several people, all talking loudly. As he approached the door, the voices became louder. When he opened the door with his pass-key the voices became muffled, as if the people in the room had moved behind the wall separating the speakers from the manager. When he went further into the room, the voices stopped and he found that the room was empty.
Unfortunately, on the first night I stayed there, I was too sleepy to wake up and hear any voices. On the second night, my friends at AGHOST came to my room and we hung out there until around 3 AM. The only loud voices were ours. All in all, this was a very worthwhile conference and I would recommend that if you are curious in UFOs and ghosts, that you might want to attend the next conference, which will be held in the same time and place.
On Saturday 24 May, I will be a guest on Coast to Coast AM. This will be the longest radio broadcast I have ever done. It will begin around 11 PM Pacific Time and I will be on the air for four hours, until 3 AM on Sunday morning. For those of you not familiar with Coast to Coast AM, this is Art Bell's radio program, revamped and renewed since his retirement. My host will be Steve Mason. Wish me luck. Personal Appearances Memorial Day Weekend, May 2003 The first one is Seattle's Northwest UFO Paranormal Conference 2003 in Seattle this coming Memorial Day weekend, from 23 - 26 May. I will not be a keynote speaker, but I will be sitting with my friends at A.G.H.O.S.T. There are several different speakers talking about a variety of subjects.
Haunted Hot Springs Hotel Visit
The Carson Mineral Hot Springs (Carson, WA) I've written about the Carson Mineral Hot Springs Hotel, in the Columbia River Gorge, elsewhere in this site. To recap, the hotel is haunted by the ghost of Isadore St. Martin, who was accidentally killed in his old age, in a struggle with another older gentleman. St. Martin was throwing the second man off the property, after the two men argued about the hot springs health benefits. St. Martin died in the hotel, and his wife died of grief shortly after him. Either or both of them still haunt the hotel. If the maids do not clean up the rooms well enough, then Mrs. St. Martin lets them know. Mr. St Martin may be the person walking the the hallways of the closed off third floor. I worked for the US Forest Service north of Carson, WA for several years. It is a beautiful place, and the people are very friendly. Since my father retired to the Gorge a few years ago, I try and make it out there every month or so for a visit. A few months ago I received an email from one of the employees at the hotel, informing me that the haunting there were still going on. It was a small enough note, but I eventually made it back out for a visit. My friends Brent and Jennifer came with me. We had tried to arrange to meet other people there, but they never showed up. Which was good, because I paid for the soak. The hotel still has a bathhouse, built in the 1920s or so, which gives a traditional European style soak. There are two separate areas for men and women. The customer sits in a large cast iron bathtub filled with hot springs water, which is pumped up from the Wind River. After a half hour or so and perhaps a dip in another tub full of icy water and a glass or two of the mineral water, the treatment continues. The customer moves into the changing room where they lay down on a bench, covered with a hot towel. The attendant then wraps them in sheets and blankets. The goal is to sweat out all of the natural toxins through the pores. After a half hour of this, the customer finishes with a cleansing shower or if you are lucky, a massage. Before the soak, we stopped at the front desk and talked to Jennifer, the one who sent me the email about the ghosts. She told us that the ghosts were still active in the third floor and on the second floor as well. She also mentioned the owners plan to restore the hotel, including the third floor. This should begin either late 2003 or 2004. This would make ghost hunting there easier. In addition to the hotel rooms themselves, there are several bungalows near the hotel. They were build in the 1920s as well. One of them was used as a set for a movie staring Jane Seymour a few years ago. But we did not see any ghosts... sadly.
There is really not much of a mystery here. This is my attempt to give back a little bit to the visitors of this website. The button leading to this page will appear and reappear periodically somewhere in ghostsandcritters.com. Probably. I will ask a series of questions relating to ghosts or the paranormal. If you send me an email with the correct answers, I will send the winner or winners a free gift. This could either be a book, a ghost-inspired card or ghost print.
Posted 16 April 2003 In 2001 I was contacted by Sandy, who works with the Lincoln City tourism people. She was planning an event for their winter program. In a few weeks a community haunted house turned into a 30 minute video that still airs on local and cable television from time. The resulting publicity and interest this created worked out very well for their autumn tourism. In 2003, Lincoln City hosted the Oregon Governor's Conference on Tourism. The ghost video was so successful that she asked me to come back in April 2003 to give a mobile workshop to other tourism professionals. I am used to visiting with paranormal groups or book publishers. This conference was different for me. There were several travel magazine publishers, hotel/motel owners and representatives of many of Oregon's public tourist agencies. It gave me a different perspective on getting out the word on public haunts. I talked with many of them, and most were personally interested in ghosts but had not thought about promoting haunted locales or lodgings. I made contact with some of them, and I hope that they will give me permission to make new additions to my haunted tour map as well as links pages.
When I go to Lincoln City, I usually stay there, and we always have new ghost stories to swap. For that reason I would say that they Captain Cook is a ghost hunter friendly environment. Another reason is that Tim periodically offers a ghost hunter's discount!!! Check out their website: www.captaincookinn.com On Monday, the 14th of April I gave a guided tour of some of the haunts of Lincoln City to about a dozen interested tourist representatives. One place we stopped was the Water's Edge, a condo/hotel located on the north bank of Schooner Creek. While we were there I stopped to get something out of my room and to see the creek. Every room has a view of the creek. Several times people have reported seeing a ghostly sailing ship heading up the creek to shore. It may have been a ship raided by the local Native Americans in the 1850s. The remains of a wooden ship were visible under the sand in the 1970s. One place we did not stop at was the Inn at Spanish Head. This is another hotel with permanent residents. It has been there since the 1970s. One of the people in management told me a story of a ghostly girl who has been seen at the swimming pool and the beach nearby. One of the residents is somewhat of a recluse. He has called the managers a few times after he has found a child's footprints in his living room. I'll post more on that story soon. We had a series of discussions about how to give guided tours and writing pamphlets and other ways to promote tales of ghosts and other supernatural activities in the northwest. I have hopes that places like Astoria will be giving Underground Tours and that RAZ transportation company may be starting large scale tours of Portland's Underground as well as Vancouver's Officer's Row. There will be more interest from local tourist agencies if more people traveling through talk to them and ask for information on local haunts. So if that is you, tell them to forward information on haunts to me, and I will do my best to post it and promote it as well.
Posted 4 April 2003 Meeting with AGHOST On the 23rd of March, I visited AGHOST with my intuitive friend Janet. AGHOST is an acronym that stands for: Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle and Tacoma. At that time, they were holding their twice-monthly meetings in a bookstore in Redmond called the Psychic Spectrum. I was their guest speaker. As often happens, I learned as much from them as I think they learned from me. I was thoroughly impressed with AGHOST. I do not want any of my friends and acquaintances that are members of other paranormal groups to feel insulted that I am singling out AGHOST for my praise. In all of the groups that I have visited, I have been impressed with the ethics and professionalism of its membership. At the same time, one group or person has to stand out. And so far that is AGHOST. I was truly impressed with AGHOST. The AGHOST people really stand out. For one thing, their membership is around 50 people. Most Paranormal Investigation groups are much smaller. The smaller groups usually grow from an extended family or group of co-workers who along with work and family, share an interest in the paranormal. Because they are family type organizations, these small paranormal groups are sometimes a trifle… cantankerous within their ranks. Of course, in bigger groups, the leadership has to deal with the dynamics and jealousies of people who share nothing except a common interest in the paranormal.
Crystal and Kendra of AGHOST Buying books I think that this is where AGHOST benefits from the leadership of it’s founder, Ross Allison. Janet and I arrived in time to attend their regular business meeting. We listened to the (sometimes) boring reading of the minutes, plans synopsis of the last ghost hunt and plans for upcoming investigations. This was really no different than at say’ the Trails End Paranormal Group meeting I attended several weeks before. So, what was different? I don’t know. I think it might be the dynamic of having the talents and interests of a much larger group of people. If that is so, Ross and the other officers of the AGHOST group are able to rein in the enthusiasm of their members and channel it in many ways that would be impossible for smaller groups to do. And they laugh a lot. That open attitude extends to “outsiders” too. As (I hope) people who visit this website know, I have been writing about the paranormal Northwest for about five years now. In that time, I have seen many groups appear and disappear. Because I have been doing this for so long, I am relatively well known within our community. I have been welcomed by many of the scattered organizations. On the other hand, some ghost hunting groups have staked out their territory and guard it from other paranormal groups. I can understand how and why this happens. I have had my stories plagiarized out of my books before too. In the end, this defeats the purpose of the free investigation of the paranormal. Staking territory and keeping secrets stops the results from getting out to the general public. (OK, I’ll get off this soap box.)
Janet, Ross and other AGHOST members discuss the paranormal at Denny's When I spoke with Ross, he told me he had taken efforts to befriend other paranormal groups. That is what has caused his organization to grow. Over the next few months, AGHOST will be working on two separate Conferences. A UFO/Paranormal conference in May, and a dedicated Paranormal conference in August. In both cases, they are working with other groups to make this happen. I am sure that AGHOST and the Ghost Hunter Alliance of Vancouver, Washington would welcome input and any other contributions to the August Conference. OK, I promised I would stop soap. So, what do you think happened when it came time for my talk? I was not the star. This time my “intuitive” friend Janet was the star of the show Unexpected Spirit Visitors After their regular business meeting, AGHOST has what they call, Ghost Hunting 101. This is where they have guest speakers talk about the techniques of ghost hunting, or a particularly interesting haunting. For my talk, I brought the audio tape from my experience in the Vancouver Barracks Hospital. The audio bits are available here in my website in the Sounds of Ghosts. I was worried that it would be boring for the AGHOST members. I was relieved (sort of) when I found out that only two AGHOST members had visited my website. After my presentation, we talked about ghost photography as well as having psychics scan the location. Several members of AGHOST have termed themselves Sensitives. That is, they can detect the presence of a paranormal entity. However, they could not get any readings as to the spirits gender, focus or any other details. Janet has visited many haunted locales with me, and she is more than sensitive. She is what I jokingly call, intuitive. She not only detects paranormal entities, but she can tell gender, why they stayed behind and usually the difference between a self-aware spirit and some kind of psychic imprint of a traumatic event. There have been some times when Janet has come up with some very VERY strange readings from various locations. I have to say that she is not 100% accurate all the time. If she were, she would be on television with John Edwards and I would be her agent, raking in 10%. However, there have been some times when I have been skeptical of her information and she has been proven correct. So I have learned to just accept her readings. The truth will out. In this case, almost as soon as she walked into the Psychic Spectrum Janet felt the presence of an angry spirit. She pointed toward a nearby corner of the room and said, “There’s an angry man there.”
My "Intuitive" friend, Janet Janet had told me that the spirit was attached to someone attending the meeting. She began to get a headache. It grew as the AGHOST meeting went on. Usually headaches start in the forehead and eyes. In this case, her headache was worst in the back of her head. It was so bad that I asked if Janet wanted to leave. At one time I had her go outside with me when I got some materials out of my truck. When it came time for my presentation, I brought Janet up front with me. This was in part to give her credit for the help she has been to me. It was also to get her away from the spirit. As the talk went on, she began to feel a little bit better. At least she interrupted me several times to mention some of the places we had visited together. At last we were almost finished and I took a chance. When I came to close out my presentation, I said: “Just when I think Janet is wrong, she turns out to be right. She told me that she has detected a spirit in this room and it is following one of you around.” I looked at a woman, who had mentioned that her ex-husband had died recently. I asked her if something had happened to his head. It turned out that he had died of an injury to the back of his head. What happened next was strange, wonderful and eerie. Sitting next to me, Janet conducted a reading for this woman; about the tragic death of her ex-husband and its aftermath. For me, it was like sitting next to John Edwards while he was on camera. As often happens, many personal details came out. Bear in mind that this was all happening in a group of around 20 people. I eventually suggested they go to a more private room to finish. This was cut short by the owners of the Psychic Spectrum. They complained that Janet was conducting a reading without paying them a toll or something like that. I never heard the whole story. We all left shortly after that All in all it was an interesting evening with a fun and dedicated bunch of people.
Posted 2 April 2003 I have updated several portions of the website. The update includes the addition of some new ghost hunter groups in the Pacific Northwest, links to websites of haunted locales within the northwest. I have also posted notification and links to two upcoming paranormal conferences in Seattle within the Appearances section of this site.
A Friend Visits the Mission Mill Museum Posted 17 February 2003 Several months ago, my wife Janine and I visited the old Salem woolen mill, which is now a museum. To read the story of our experience either scroll down or click here. We were accompanied by our friend Christina. While we were there, we had some pretty bizarre experiences with children's voices and malfunctioning camera flashes in the Jason Lee House. Later, Christina returned to the Mission Mill Museum to see what she could find. Her story is below:
Mission Mill: You will have to for give me but the dates escape me. When first getting to Mission Mill, my friend Malia and I had our digital cameras and recorder ready to go. We went to the front desk and checked in, saw the historic video, and then we were on our own. We first went to the missionary house. We walked around there and took pictures feverishly. Malia was like her own personal lightning storm. When we first started taking pictures, I noticed my camera batteries in my digital camera were low. I did not bring extra ones with me, because I did not think I needed them since the ones I put in were brand new. So, we had to give up our hunt and go to the store, get batteries and come back. It was a hassle but well worth it since it happened to at least 3 pairs of batteries. On the audiotape, you can hear me mentioning the batteries were “sucked dry”. We did get one nice orb photo downstairs. I took a few pictures in the same direction, so we are able to effectively see the orb moving throughout the pictures. We did not however get any strange audio sounds. We did not let the audio go for very long in that house. We were more excited to get to the Jason Lee house instead. We sure were not disappointed when we did! The second stop, the Boone house. We had an excellent experience here! Walking through we encountered a picture of an elderly stern looking lady, which we called Mrs. Boone. I took a picture of the picture, and my flash did not work. This I thought was weird so I turned around, and the flash worked. I again turned back, took a picture of the picture, and the flash did not work. All of this is backed up by our audiotapes. I did this 10 times! Back and forth and each time my camera would not flash on “Mrs. Boone”. Malia also tried this with her digital camera and the same this happened!
This is the photograph that Christina and her friends could not take picture of This was definitely unexplainable because neither of us had had problems with our flashes before. Malia also tried like 10 times with her own digital camera and each time it would not flash on the picture. Not only that, but in the audio after we discuss how weird this is to happen, I hand Malia the tape recorder and say “ here you go, say something” and there is a woman’s soft voice, definitely NOT Malias saying “NO”. Later on, after talking with a friend of Malias who worked there, she told us that the picture was NOT Mrs. Boone, just someone who fitted the time frame. Could this of been the real Mrs. Boone not happy about us thinking that picture was her? The third stop, the most exciting stop, was the Jason Lee Apartments. This is where we had our best experiences. We first arrived and I went upstairs to place the recorder on the floor while we took pictures of the downstairs. Again, we had low battery signs go off on our cameras. I had some excellent ghost pictures. One is from the picture of Jason Lee. The picture shows some sort of light streaks coming from his head.
There is an orb in the upper left hand corner of the cabinet and the picture of Jason Lee in the upper right corner of the frame has lines over Jason Lee's house.
This is a close-up of the Jason Lee photograph in the upper right hand corner of the picture above. Is it the light reflected from the camera flash? Outside light or ectoplasm? I also have some great orb pictures. One where I actually said, “OK stand here and ill take your picture”. My flash continued to have problems off and on. I had a strange sensation the ghost was playing with us. Like it was going from room to room saying, “Come find me”. I would experience orbs in pictures, then nothing. I would go to another room and there it was again, then nothing. I thought I saw a white figure cross one of the doorways, however it was in the corner of my eye, it looked like a tall woman hair pulled back with a white dress on. Again, I was not sure if my imagination was getting the best of me, so I did not mention it to Malia. However, in that same room there was a dramatic temperature change shortly after I saw that. The whole place is a museum so it is set at a specific temperature. One room while we were in it. The same room from which the electricity was coming from the picture, it got suddenly ice cold. We could almost see our breath. I was amazed and like a monkey I would jump from one room to the other completely in awe in the definite temperature change! Malia also experienced this. After the temperature suddenly changed to normal, I decided its time to go upstairs. Thinking that the ghost had lead us around the entire downstairs, now they probably went upstairs. Upstairs there were children’s shoes. But only three. I found this odd because last time I was here with Jeff there was only one pair. This time there was an extra bigger shoe. We proceeded to take pictures and suddenly my camera started to turn on and off by itself. This was witnessed by Malia and her friend that decided to join us after we went upstairs. She was the one who worked there at that time. My camera must have turned off and on at least 5 times. Then the flash did not work, and it would not take pictures and the batteries were low. AGAIN! So finally, after commenting on the ghost messing with my camera, I took a picture of the room we were in and sure enough, there was a nice sized orb there in motion going towards the other room.
This photograph shows three orbs in the center of the frame So again, I followed to the other room. By this time, we were getting ready to wrap up since it was getting dark. Before we left, I placed the recorder in the room with the temperature change and we left the building. We were only gone like 5 minutes because they were starting to close the mill. There were no significant sounds on the tape. Just a few tapping noises in the background that were hard to distinguish. There was no one in the building at the time. At the end of the tape the last thing I say as we are picking it up is “its warm in here”. In conclusion, Malia and I definitely got what we were looking for. We experienced things that are not explainable and we have sound and pictures to prove it. I have not had a chance to see Malias picture yet. She has jetted off to faraway lands. But I am sure when she gets back we will be able to update what she has on her photos. I am guaranteeing she has something.
Posted 29 December 2002 A few days ago I spoke with Janet, a member of my psychic friends network. She reminded me of a promise I made over a year ago, to post an article on a visit we made to a haunted house in Olalla, Washington. This house was once owned by a woman named Linda Burfield Hazzard. In addition to living there house, she also used to rent it to her patients. Although she was not a medical doctor, Hazzard acted as an Osteopathic doctor to promote her program for good health. It was touted in a publication she wrote, Fasting for the Cure of Disease. Hazzard's said her treatment could cure everything from cancer to fatigue. It involved having the patient eat only a small bowl of tomato soup daily. In addition to fasting for several weeks, the patient was required to take long walks and be given enemas and a vigorous massage one or more times a day. In the years between the 1890s and 1912, it is hard to tell how many people died under her "care." But estimates run from two dozen to over forty. It is hard to tell how many people died, because her patients came from all over the world. Many who died fell into a black hole as far as record keeping goes. She finally took on the wrong people when she rented out the attic space of a cottage in Olalla to two British heiresses, Claire and Dora Williamson. Over a period of weeks, both young women lost nearly 50% of their body weight. Claire died, but Dora was rescued by her childhood nurse, Margaret Conway. It took Conway weeks to come from Australia to rescue her. When she arrived, Conway found Hazzard and her female employees wearing Claire's clothing. Claire's uncle and the nurse found that someone had forged checks and embezzled money from both of the women's bank accounts. With constant care from Margaret Conway, Dora was able to regain enough strength and weight (she weighed 50 pounds) to go from Olalla to Seattle. Her uncle and the British Consul tried to have Hazzard prosecuted for murder or manslaughter.
The small house where Linda Hazzard "practiced medicine". At that time, the town of Olalla was very small. The Kitsap County government was too poor and rural to take notice of her activities. Authorities in Seattle and King County probably assumed that the appropriate paperwork for Hazzard's medical practice was being handled in Kitsap County and Olalla. And vice versa. Hazzard acted as the attending physician while her patients were alive. After some of them died, she also acted as the autopsy surgeon. She seldom filed death certificates with the authorities. She had a special arrangement with a discrete funeral home in Seattle, across the Puget Sound from tiny little Olalla. Somehow, many of the patients who died, left all of their property to Hazzard... Few people knew that her husband, Sam Hazzard had been cashiered out of the United States Army for forgery and embezzlement. Or that he had also served time in jail for bigamy, when he neglected to divorce his former wife when he decided to marry Linda Burfield. After an expensive and lengthy trial, Hazzard was eventually convicted of manslaughter. She was sentenced to two years in prison. She was released early and traveled to New Zealand, where she continued practicing as an Osteopath. After several years, she returned to Olalla and built a large sanitarium and nursing home where she practiced her fasting cure. According to most people, she was watched by local authorities to make sure that none of her patients followed Dora and Claire Williamson's examples. It is hard to tell whether Linda Hazzard actually planned to murder her patients ahead of time. It may well be that when some of the rich patients (with no connections) began to sicken from the treatment, Sam and Elisabeth decided it was best for business to take over their dying patient's estates. There were several assistant nurses and care givers. Did Sam or Linda give them instructions to help the patients die a little bit quicker? Some patients were kept there by force or intimidation until they died or survived the "cure" and were released. I believe that Linda Hazzard did not understand the reality of her behavior. She was more of a mass murder, rather than a serial killer. She firmly believed that she was doing the right thing. Her fasting cure was right, and people died because they were meant to. The proof of that came when she became ill in the 1940s and died while taking her own cure. The full story of Linda Burfield Hazzard and her sanitarium in Olalla, known as Starvation Heights has been researched and written about by Gregg Olsen. Hopefully it will be made into a movie soon. In 2001, my "intuitive" friend Janet and I visited the little cottage, which is all that remains of Hazzard's health sanitarium complex. We stopped at Gregg Olsen's house for a chat. He was quite surprised when Janet told him that Linda Hazzard was drawn to him and his house. When Olsen started researching and writing about Hazzard, somehow he reached a kind of connection with her. A small family lives in the Hazzard house, which has not changed very much from the time when Hazzard and her husband lived there. Strangely enough for such an old rural dwelling, Hazzard had indoor plumbing installed in the house for the enemas and autopsies she performed on her patients. The present occupants have experienced many different phenomena over the years. Their teenage son used the attic room where so many of Hazzard's patients died over the years as his bedroom.
Note the low ceiling in this attic room When they first moved into the house, they knew they had to replace the front porch, which was rotting and squeaked when people walked on it. Before they replaced the porch, the husband and wife were sitting in the living room. They looked out through the kitchen window and saw a young girl in an old fashioned print dress standing on the porch. They started to go out to warn the girl, but she had disappeared by the time they went outside. He was puzzled because he did not hear her walk upon the porch or off of it. Anyone else walking on it caused a lot of noise. On another occasion, the wife was in the kitchen cooking dinner. She was standing in front of the stove, against one wall. The bathroom door was behind her on the wall opposite the stove. The sink, kitchen counters and main entrance were located to her left. She moved back and forth from the counters on her left to the stove, occasionally turning around to look at the rest of the kitchen behind her. During her cooking, she spent a few minutes standing at the stove, cooking. When she turned around, every chair in the kitchen, and a few from the room next door had been piled up against the bathroom door, behind her. She had been alone in the house at the time. Given the creaky nature of the house, it is hard to believe that someone could have snuck in and in a few minutes silently piled all the chairs up against the door. Gregg Olsen is right to be a skeptic, but he did suggest that if there were any ghosts, they might want to close off the bathroom where they were tortured by the enemas, hard massages and then dissected by Hazzard. The kitchen seemed to be a focus for mischief. One day after setting the table for dinner, they left the kitchen for a few minutes. When they returned there was an extra place setting at the table. A rusty and corroded knife and fork were placed at the table. This set was unusual because it was small, like a special set for children. This suggested to Janet that for some reason, in addition to the souls trapped by Hazzard's actions, there was a playful girl somewhere on the property. But there were still several other less happy souls in the cottage. The owner's son uses the upper floor as his bedroom. He told me that it did not bother him too much to think about spirits sharing the space with him. The upper floor was a converted attic, where the walls were fairly steep where the roof pitch went from the peak to join the house walls. There were several low "ledges" where you might store things, but could not comfortably sit. We went upstairs, with the owner's son, a film producer named Joshua and Gregg Olsen leading. Janet came next and I went last. As we walked up the narrow, stairs Janet came up to the first little ledge alongside the stairs. I watched her pause, look at the ledge, reach out her hand and then burst into tears! I had never seen her do anything like that before. She had to leave. I walked outside with her until she stopped crying.
The stairs are on the bottom left of the picture, and note the ledge along the right of the stairs She told me that she could see several people sitting, hunched into the ledge. They were all old and thin. They were kind of bobbing up and down in place. They were all confused, not realizing they were dead. Even if they had been aware of this, they would not have left to go to whatever other plane of existence awaited them. They were too brainwashed by Hazzard's psychological influence to try and leave. While they had been alive, Hazzard had told them to stay in the attic. And they were not going to move until she told them to move on. Strangely enough, Janet felt the presence of a young girl, around 9 years old. This girl "lived" in a kind of closet room in the attic. She was well fed and not a prisoner like the other souls. Janet felt she was looking for someone. I do not think that Janet could feel Hazzard at that time. A few days later I was surprised when Janet told me that she had some insight into Linda Hazzard, and felt sorry for her. Normally Janet does not have sympathy for mass murderers like this. After the visit she was able to sort through some of the impressions she had received. Janet feels that there is a connection to the spirit of the little girl, the dishes and Linda Hazzard. According to Janet's impressions and the help of some of her other intuitive friends, she believes that Linda Hazzard had a daughter as well as a son. Her son was born legitimate, while her daughter was illegitimate. She hid the secret of her daughter's birth and send the girl out as an "orphan". This was a common practice among many families in the 19th century. And even today, I am sure some families hide illegitimate children in similar ways. The girl was raised by her natural father and stepmother, who did not know about the girl's origin. When the girl was five years old or so, she was sent to live with Hazzard as a foster child. The young girl did not know that Hazzard was her natural mother. Through some kind of accident, the girl died while she was still a child. Linda Hazzard felt so badly about this that it actually warped her sanity and sense of reality. Janet felt that this led in part to Hazzard's treatment of her patients. She also feels that Linda Hazzard and the little girl are still searching for each other and to have their story told. This is also part of the reason that Janet is still calling me, to post this story on my website.
Posted 26 December 2002 I have updated some portions of the haunted Map of Washington and Oregon. This time I have updated portions of the map in Eastern Washington and Oregon as well as Western Oregon. Over the next few days I'll try updating Western Washington and the Portland, Oregon area.
Posted 19 December 2002 On the 10th of December 2002 my wife Janine and I took a trip to Salem to visit the Mission Mill Museum in Salem, Oregon. We met one of my friends, archaeologist Christina B. Christina and I have visited over the past few years when she was a student in Corvallis. She visited the Prisoner of War infirmary at Camp Adair last year and got some interesting Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP).
A display on the ground floor of the woolen mill The Mission Mill Museum is located (not) strangely enough on Mill Street, in Salem. The facilities there were originally opened in the mid-1960s to show the public the interesting history of the Thomas Kay Woolen Mills. Through some creative financing and lots of hard work from volunteers, the museum has a warm and friendly visitor's center, cafe and gift shop. There are several different groups sharing facilities there, including traditional weavers, quilters and fans of the Industrial Revolution. I particularly like the still operating water powered turbine. The original Kay mill was built in 1889. Many of the surviving structures, including a dye house, a drying house and a picking house date to after 1895. Many of the mills wooden buildings were destroyed in a catastrophic fire then and rebuilt in brick. The original water turbine which provided energy to run the mill is still in operation. On weekends volunteers sometimes demonstrate how to make woolen goods on many of the still operational equipment. I have been told by a museum employee that if you are on the third floor of the Woolen Mill Museum and stand in the right place, you will feel vibrations of the water turbine. Even if the water wheel is not turning and the mill is not operating.
Some people claim that they have heard the ghostly echo of a murder committed by a past employee when he drowned his wife in the mills stream near the Mentzer Machine Shop. It is a little eerie when you go into the Machine Shop and the hidden switch starts the machinery working around you. Nothing paranormal there, just a surprise. With these ghostly stories, we all expected to have something strange happen when we visited the mill portion of the museum. I have found that the spirits hardly ever comply with my wishes. We had our own ghostly experience in the pioneer portions of the museums complex of buildings. Over time, several historic homes and a church were moved to the museum grounds to protect them from demolition. They include the Methodist Parsonage, originally built in 1841. The John D. Boon House, built in 1847. The Jason Lee House, dating to 1841 and the Pleasant Grove Presbyterian Church, which was consecrated in 1858. I received information that at least one of the staff heard a mass being said in the old church. Once he entered he saw a ghostly light suspended in mid-air. Another person told me that there were some ghostly goings on at the Jason Lee house. Another staff member told me that the night watchman is constantly pestered by a spirit that haunts the John Boon house.
Four families lived in the Jason Lee House at one time. On certain days the museum provides tour guides, who lead visitors from building to building. On weekend and special events, there may be live volunteers to interpret the machinery and exhibits as well. During most weekdays, visitors are free to roam the museum grounds and look at the outside of the brick and wood buildings. If there are no tour guides, like during weekdays, paying visitors are loaned a pass key that will let them into the various historic buildings. Visitors can then take their time looking at the period furniture exhibits. This is what we did. We were lucky enough to be the only visitors with the pass key that Tuesday. It was raining hard as we walked along the paved trail from house to house. We hit spiritual pay dirt at the Jason Lee house. In the 1830s, Jason Lee was sent to the Oregon Territory by the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Church. He originally set up his mission in a place about 11 miles north of Salem. It was called Mission Bottom because it flooded during the winter. In 1840, several other missionaries and their families joined Lee. They moved their mission to a better site, opposite the Indian village of Chemeketa. The new missionaries brought a sawmill with them and construction began on several new mission buildings. The building known as the Jason Lee house, built in 1841, was actually a kind of family dormitory. Lee and his family had their own separate apartment, as did the Parrish, the Judson and the Raymond families. Although the building is quite large, each family was allotted only one or two rooms each. The Reverend Josiah Parrish and his wife had four children. Together they shared two rooms. The two rooms doubled as dining/living/kitchen and bedrooms as the day demanded. The Lee apartment was also used as the meeting place for planning the Oregon Provisional government and Post Office. The house was threatened by developers in 1962 and moved to the Mission Mill Museum grounds. It was furnished with some artifacts belonging to some of the early missionaries as well as historic items by many local families. It is hard to tell whether the spirits or spiritual remnants in the house come from the actual original inhabitants or are attached to the many historic artifacts furnishing it. It was raining hard when Janine, Christina and I stood on the front porch of the Jason Lee house. We paused while I fitted the key into the lock. For those people who know me and my Scottish sense of thrift; Yes, I actually paid the full admission price for the self guided tour. I did not talk the key out of the volunteer at the front desk for free! We paused on the front porch to shake the rain drops off of our coats. I fumbled a bit at the lock. I paused a few seconds, because I thought that I heard a child or children's voices coming from inside the house. There were a few clunks, as if someone was walking up the stairs inside. I turned and looked at Christina to see if she had heard. She said to me, "Maybe we should knock?" She told me later that she had not heard any noise, but was wondering why I paused. I opened the door and we filed in. I looked around and stopped, listening for the sound of a child. Nothing. I said a "hello" to empty air. No answer, we were alone. I looked at Christina and Janine and asked them if they had heard any noises before we entered. Christina replied no. Janine had heard children's voices, but assumed that they were outside somewhere on the grounds. We walked around the ground floor for a few minutes. Christina and I both took some photographs. Rather I took some photographs. Christina tried, but her flash had stopped working.
The stairs at the Jason Lee House. Where did the children go? While Christina complained and tried adjusting her camera to take pictures without a flash, we walked toward the back of the building. Toward the stairs. We paused near the foot of the stairs and looked up the narrow wooden stair case. There was a kind of Thump directly over our heads. I think it came from the Raymond apartment. Christina and Janine looked at me... I guessed that I was elected to go upstairs first. I heard Christina begin saying, "I should have brought my tape recorder." She said that several times. She has had success with Electronic Voice Phenomenon several times in the past. She just forgot her tape recorder. Later she told me that she was going to come back on a weekday and sit in the Jason Lee house with her tape recorder. There was no one upstairs. We continued looking around and I took several more pictures. I made a joke about Christina's camera and the ghost. She also made a joke and requested the ghost let her take pictures. She was looking at the flash of her camera when it suddenly went off in her face! Even though she was partially blinded by the sudden light, Christina began taking pictures feverishly, before the camera stopped working again. When we finally finished our tour, Janine and I talked with two women who turned out to be part of the museum staff. One of them told me that several weeks earlier, they had a visit from a psychic, who turned out to be my friend Martina. I knew that Martina was going to visit the museum, but she did not tell me about her visit. Martina had paused a the Jason Lee house during her visit. She told the museum staff who were with her that she detected the spirit of a young girl inhabiting the house. This girl spent most of her time on the second floor, where she had lived. She had a mischievous sense of humor, and would sometimes play with visitors. Martina also said that the girl ghost would laugh when the tour guides got the historic facts about the house wrong. My informant told me that several museum staffers had also had some strange experiences in and around the Jason Lee House. One of the security staff was closing the houses and setting up the security systems in each house at the end of the day. It was night time and he paused outside the Jason Lee House when he saw a light shining from the second floor windows. He had turned the lights off earlier. He entered the house cautiously and found the house empty.
The Raymond Apartment. This room was used as a dining room as well as the place where the children slept. He turned off the lights and set the alarm system. The alarm system is set up to detect motion or heat within the "living" space within the houses. After he left house, he paused to look up at the second floor windows again. He watched as one of the curtains was pulled aside, as if someone was standing in front of the window, and wanted to get a good look at him. Although he saw the curtain move, the man did not see anyone standing inside. The curtain fell back over the window after a few seconds. Strangely enough the alarm did not go off. Even though this was in the portion of the house monitored by the burglar alarm. He did not go back into the house to check out the curtain. So who is it that still inhabits the Jason Lee House? Is it one of the many children who lived there over the years? What about Lucy Thompson Lee, who lived there and died shortly after giving birth there? Or did the ghost of the child come to the house with the display of children's blocks and toys set up in the rooms in the second floor. I do hope that there is more than one child there, so that they have someone to play with on those lonely days.
The Olympia Handyman Stays Behind Posted 11 December 2002 On the 26th of November I went up to the Seattle Area on business. I stopped in Olympia to visit my friend Janet. She wanted me to see a special house. For Janet, a special house means: haunted. I was not disappointed. This house was built by a man in the 1950s. It is a two story home with a full basement. Part of the unique character of the house is that the builder was a part-time builder and construction worker. He built the house behind his shop where he built and sold various household products to the general public. Perhaps because he was handy with his hands, he tinkered with the building a bit over the years. Some projects were begun and never finished and others were ripped out and redone as soon as they were finished. It is currently rented out to a group of young men, who are living out the "single guy" fantasy life. They all rent the house and have their own bedroom, with common kitchen and living room and a large rec-room in the basement. The rec-room has some not too scandalous pictures of women who help advertise various brands of beers, a foose ball table and lots of free weights. It's the kind of bachelor pad that 40+ year old married men wish they had lived in, when they were younger. One of the men, Jason has his bedroom in the basement. He also has a large... no a vast collection of action figures, including several from SPAWN (tm) and ASH from Army of Darkness (tm). My kind of place!!!
Ash is one of my favorite movie characters!!! Janet took me to the house and told me some of the history behind it. The owner/builder had lived there with his wife for many, many years. He died about five years ago and his wife moved out soon afterward. She is still alive. Janet had worked to try and set up the rental agreement. Jason was the tenant who had been there the longest. He had lived there about four years. She told me, and he agreed that it would be months between spirit happenings. It was like the ghosts would run down their batteries. Oftentimes when Janet visited, the spirits in the house would re-activate. It would also happen if someone new moved in. This happened to Jason shortly after he moved in. When he first moved in, Jason brought his own kitchen pots and pans. He found that he did not need his toaster; there was already one there. He stacked the extra dishes, including the toaster on the top of the refrigerator. About two weeks later, he was sitting in the living room with his room mates, when they all heard a scraping noise. It came from the kitchen. They all went into the kitchen and found that all of his dishes were now stacked neatly on the floor, a few feet in front of the refrigerator. The back kitchen door was locked. There was no way anyone could have snuck in, moved the dishes and snuck out. There are some spiritual activities tied to the previous owners. Several weeks later he was babysitting his girlfriend's dog at the house. He was sitting in his bedroom with the dog when he saw himself, his girlfriend's dog and a second dog in a mirror hanging on the wall. The strange dog was not physically in the room, but rather seemed to be inside the mirror. It looked at him and the dog he was watching, turned way and walked further into the mirror and disappeared around a corner. He talked with the niece of the previous owner and found out that the dog he saw matched the description of the old owner's dog. It had died some years earlier and was buried on the property.
Janet and Jason in the basement. Overhead are some globes of light that were caused by the indirect track lighting. There have been several different ghostly happenings over the years. Janet detected several different ghosts and spiritual impressions over the years. The major spirit seems to be the ghost of the original owner. Jason and his friends frequently hear a heavy man's footsteps walking around the house when no one is there. The least favorite bedroom was originally used by the builder's wife as a business office. Apparently he was not as good a business man as he was a builder. The couple used to fight over money matters for hours in that room when the end of month bills came due. Most of the people who sleep there have trouble sleeping there. Apparently they sense the hostility that seems to have sunk into the walls of the room. When Janet first started visiting the house, she sensed several other adult spirits. Over the years she has tried to cleanse the house of these ghosts. She succeeded in some cases, but new, younger ghosts have moved in somehow. She now detects younger, childish spirits. This has been borne out by the experiences of the tenants. Now instead of heavy footsteps all the time, the tenants have had their feet grabbed while in bed. In one case, the posts and rails on a brass bed were "strummed" by a playful spirit. One of the things the previous owner did not do too well was insulate the space between the second floor ceiling and the attic. When we went up to the attic to look around it was warm from the heat bleeding up from the second floor. At least is was when we first went up. Janet had detected several spirits in the attic spaces. The attic itself was unfinished and used for storage. No one lived there. It was quite warm when we went up there. We stayed there several minutes, while Janet gathered impressions. I took several pictures with my camera. I use a Yashika FX-D camera. I usually take pictures with manual settings. I never use a flash, for two reasons. One reason is that flashes frequently don't work around really haunted places. The second is that the flash can sometimes create false ghost images or globes of light when the flash light bounces off reflective surfaces. That night I was shooting with Fuji 800 ASA color film, using a 24mm lens. It was dark in the attic, with a single 100 Watt light bulb lighting the end of the attic. I set the camera for a 1 second exposure, propped it on a box and used the timer to take several pictures.
Janet with four globes surrounding her body As I said, the attic had been quite warm when we first went there. In a few minutes it became cold. Much colder. At the same time, Janet said that she was detecting several spirits around her. I was not surprised that something came out in this picture at least. So, are these globes caused by a combination of light from the single light bulb bouncing off the camera lens during a one second exposure? Or is Janet really being bombarded by spirit energy? If you believe that this is a lighting effect, what caused the sudden temperature drop?
If you like my book's cover art or any of the artwork inside my books, please visit my friend Su's website at Stone Crow Graphics. Su is a talented artist with a full line of Horror and Native American inspired art. She sells both original artwork as well as affordable prints. If you would like to see some examples of her more macabre artwork, available in cards or frame able prints, go here:
If you have a story to share, or any comments about my work, please feel free to: email me
Copyright © 1996-2002 by Jeff Davis | Maintained by J. Goodman |
As
I said earlier, the staff at the Radisson were very helpful and
friendly. The hotel is haunted and the management are not afraid to
admit it. There is a ghost of an older gentleman who was a frequent
visitor to the hotel. He has been seen several times by the desk clerks
in the lobby area standing near the front desk. On another memorable
occasion, the night clerk and bellboy were both surprised by an invisible
guest.
I
found that my friends Tim and Veronica, who manage the Captain Cook Inn
in Lincoln City were very interested. Although the Captain Cook Inn
is not haunted, Tim and Veronica are AVID ghost hunters. 
There
are several bridges running across the stream that supplies water to the
mill. Which one is haunted?
