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)
What Was New in 2020
Archive of What Was New,
located at the
Bottom of This Page
My
Events for 2020:
Virtual Ghost Walks
For the last four years, I have been giving ghost walks
of the Vancouver Barracks, concentrating on Officers Row and the western
Barracks. Last year, I worked
with the Clark County History Museum as a volunteer, giving ghost walks of
Downtown Vancouver. Because of
the restrictions imposed in response to Covid, it was not practical for me
or the History Museum to give our tours this year.
Instead, we are giving virtual tours.
The tours start on the 9th of October and run
every Friday and Saturday at 7 PM, through Halloween.
Rather than making this an imitation of the original walking tours,
we are trying out new things that we could not do on a live tour, especially
after dark. We will have video
footage, not just of the outside of buildings, but in some cases, we have
gone inside as well. In some of
the tours, we have invited guests, who will talk about their experiences.
We will also have historic pictures to share.
In at least one location, the Vancouver Barracks Post hospital, we
will have video and audio footage of past paranormal investigations.
One advantage of these tours is that you won’t have to
worry about the weather, and there should be a bathroom handy.
So please register to watch our virtual ghost walk, hopefully with
the lights off and snacks and your favorite drink handy!
Our Virtual Walk
Schedule!!!
Friday, 9 October: Pat Jolotta’s Top Four Vancouver
Haunts.
Vancouver historian and author Pat Jollota will share stories
about her favorite four haunts in Vancouver, Washington with Clark County
History Museum Director Brad Richardson.
These haunts include the Interstate Bridge, the First National Bank… and
you will have to find out the last two yourself.
Saturday, 10 October:
Spooky Tales of Clark County’s CemeteriesBrad Richardson and Jeff Davis visit three of Vancouver’s
oldest cemeteries and share stories about some of the people buried there.
This is not a ghost walk, more like letting the tombstones talk to you.
The cemeteries include the Vancouver Barracks Post Cemetery, the Old City
Cemetery and the Fisher Cemetery.
People celebrated include duelists and musicians, heroes and misers, a murderer
and three ladies who died too young.
Friday, 16 October:
The Haunted Streets of Vancouver, WA
Brad Richardson and Jeff Davis walk along Vancouver’s oldest
streets, visiting such as the old Elk’s Lodge, the Hidden House, the
Kiggins Theater and even the Clark County History Museum itself.
We will share video footage and stories from inside at least one of
the buildings.
Saturday, 17 October:
Esther Short Park and the Hidden House
Featured on the television show, The Dead Files, Esther Short
Park may be the site of Vancouver’s first shootout.
Within Esther Short Park is the historic Slocum House, which has its
own spirits. We go inside with a
paranormal investigator who shares some of his experiences.
Friday 23 October:
Haunted Camas
The haunts of Camas,
Washington may date back to the period before European contact, involving
Native Americans, water critters, and many spirits haunting downtown Camas
itself. In addition to haunted
hotels, we have – a haunted parking lot!
Saturday 24 October:
Haunted Battle Ground
Battle Ground Washington
is unique among our haunted virtual tours, because of the spirits that seem
to walk its streets and roads. In
addition to these spirits, there are haunted restaurants and even… a brick
duplex of death!
Friday 30 October:
The Vancouver Barracks Post Hospital
The Vancouver Barracks
Post Hospital may be the most haunted location in the Portland/Vancouver
area. Built in 1904, it hosted
veterans returning from World War I and people suffering the Spanish Flu.
Learn about its history and watch seldom seen footage of a paranormal
investigation that took place there over 20 years ago.
Saturday 31 October:
The Ghosts of Officers Row
The former army
residences at the Vancouver Barracks were built from 1849 to the early
1900s. People and businesses
still live and work there today but many people seem to share with past
tenants who will not leave. With rare exceptions such as the Grant House, we
cannot tell you which buildings are haunted, but we can share many stories,
including a firsthand account.
Here is Where to Sign UP
As a special Halloween night, after the virtual tour ,
there will be live broadcast of a paranormal investigation from a location
somewhere in Clack County, called Those Who Would Not Leave. this event will last approximately 2 hours.
Watch real investigators as they explore a haunted location and share their
findings. More details to come!
News, Articles, and Opinions
Doing Death Backward
uploaded 7 October 2020
A Final Visit? Uploaded 7 October 2020
Doing Death Backward
uploaded 7 October 2020
The year 2020 has been stressful for most people, mostly
due to Covid and all its restrictions.
For me, the threat and thought of getting covid and dying (myself)
was overshadowed by the long illness and death of my father in 2020.
As I waited for him to pass, I had a lot of time to think, especially
at 2 AM. I thought mostly about
how our society now does death backward.
Until the 1990s, it was generally a surprise when someone
died of illnesses. By that, I
mean although many people were diagnosed with terminal illnesses, or chronic
health problems, medical science was not advanced enough to predict how long
someone had to live and diagnosis happened close to the point of death.
In the last few decades, diagnostic medicine has become quite
precise. Medical tools and
technology have also become efficient at staving off death from various
causes. However, early
diagnosis and new, innovative procedures are usually not a cure.
Instead, they let us know quite early that someone is dying, and then
prolong the illness, merely delaying death.
As in the case of my father, he had heart valve
replacement in 2014, followed by a cancerous kidney removal, cataract
surgery, pacemaker installation, increasing dementia, and so on.
Between dietary changes and nine different medications, he survived
into 2020 until his heart finally failed and he died in his sleep.
It was a long time to watch him fade away.
In the past, someone with my father’s medical conditions
would have probably been diagnosed with his health issues, and within a few
months, he would have died.
That person’s family would have had some warning, but they would have been
hopeful of recovery and probably been surprised when the person died, quite
suddenly. When that person
died, then the family would have grieved, perhaps for months, even years.
That was the natural order of things.
Now, in many cases, we know years ahead when someone is
going to die. It is a terrible
burden for the sick person. It
is just as severe for the family, in a different way.
For me, the grieving process began in 2014 and continued to the day
my father died. When he finally
died, it was a relief to me on so many levels.
I hope people reading this article are not offended.
If you are, you have probably not lost someone to a prolonged
illness. After my father died,
I spoke with some people, many of whom went through the same experience as
myself, and they echo my sentiments.
In the future, we are all going to have to get used to
the new order of death and grieving.
If you are on the outside, please do not judge any of the reactions
of the surviving family too harshly.
If you are one of the family members who has passed through this
ordeal, please do not judge yourself too harshly either.
For myself, when thinking about my future ending, I am
not sure if I would want to know years in advance.
Maybe it would be better to simply keel over, a surprised look upon
my face? Or, I could simply not
go at all…
A Final Visit? Uploaded 7
October 2020
Were I to write about my father’s death as a screenplay,
it would be a combination of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Wizard
of Oz. Or maybe Joel Orton’s Loot.
Please believe me when I say that I am not intentionally singling out
anyone in this comedy of errors.
I blame it on the Covid crisis and various government agencies trying
to find new ways of doing things.
My father died in his sleep in the morning of 29 April.
However, I did not get his death certificate until 12 May. Dad was in
an adult group home. He went to bed
for a nap at 11:30 am and when the care giver came in to wake him up for
lunch at 1:30 PM, she found him dead.
Or rather, not breathing, with no heartbeat. It obviously happened
some time earlier and there was no reviving him. She was not a doctor, and
so could not pronounce him dead.
She immediately called me and I called 911, who sent the paramedics.
I arrived and they agreed he was dead, but did not have the legal authority
to pronounce him dead either. Neither did the police officer who arrived
about 30 minutes later. It
reminded me of the Collector of the Dead from Monty Python and the Holy
Grail crying, “Bring out your dead!”
And the one plague victim saying, “I’m not quite dead yet!”
The police officer called the coroner's office, who
finally agreed (around 3:30 PM) that Dad was dead, but was could not come
out to sign any paperwork. You see,
he may have been biologically dead, but legally he was not quite dead yet.
The holdup was the death certificate. Because of Covid, there was no coroner
on the scene. They did all their work from home.
This hiccup reminded me of the
Wizard of Oz, when the munchkins are thanking Dorothy for killing the Wicked
Witch. Right after the song,
“We represent the lollypop guild”, the coroner comes out waving a death
certificate, and pronounces the witch, “not merely dead, but most sincerely
dead.” The magic was in the
piece of paper. Too bad it was
not as quick for my father.
In the meantime, I contacted a funeral home and made
arrangements for them to pick up my father at 4:30 PM.
The driver got lost or turned around and did not arrive until closer
to 6:30 PM. They held his body
at the funeral home until nearly mid-May, waiting for the death certificate.
I arrived at my home around 7:30 PM.
I put a few of my father’s belongings in the back bedroom, fed my two
cats and sat down on the couch in the living room.
I put my feet up and sat in silence.
About a half hour later, I noticed something very strange.
My two cats were sitting at the entryway between the living room and
the family room. They were
sitting next to each other, looking intently into the family room, or down
the hall, at the end of the house.
This surprised me for many reasons.
At that point, the two cats did not get along.
My senior cat, Lucifer was the alpha male of the house.
He was easy going, but did not have personal boundaries.
My second cat, Ping originally belonged to my father, I adopted her
about three months earlier. My
father LOVED cats and Ping was his last surviving pet.
She was a typical ‘fraidy’ cat, and hissed at Lucifer whenever he got
within three feet of her. I was
startled to see them both sitting, shoulder to shoulder, looking down to the
far end of the house. I watched
them silently for several minutes.
Slowly, Ping got up and walked almost hesitantly into the
family room. She disappeared
from my view, but I am guessing she went all the way to the end of the
house, where the back bedrooms were located.
I am sure of this, because I heard her rapid footfalls, and saw her
suddenly appear, galloping through the main portion of the house, where she
nearly crashed into the refrigerator.
Then, she walked back to the family room entrance and sat down next
to Lucifer.
A few minutes later, he got up and walked into the family
room, and suddenly reappeared, running just as Ping had done.
Then he returned and sat down next to her.
They both repeated this performance twice more, then walked away to
other places in the house. The
next time they came near each other, Ping hissed at Lucifer again.
So, what does this all mean?
Could it have been my father, returning home to try to contact me?
At one point Dad lived in the house with me, and his bedroom was the
same one at the back of the house, where I stored his clothing.
What would have happened if I had the energy to get up and go into
his old bedroom again, following the cats?
Or was he saying goodbye to Ping?
Sometimes he preferred his cats to humans.
I do not know.
There are a couple more mundane explanations for what
happened. Cats have a very
powerful sense of smell and when they want, empathy for their owners.
Did Ping smell my father’s clothing, including some pheromone that
warned of his death? I read
about a nursing home, where the facility cat jumped on the beds of several
patients, who died shortly after the feline visit.
On the other hand, could my cats smell pheromones from me, after
going through the ordeal of having my father’s body taken care of, following
it on the clothing I stored in the back bedroom?
The incident was never repeated.
It was another four months before Ping would let Lucifer come within
six inches of her. Now they
have a feline friendship and look out for each other, within limits.
It’s just the three of us right now.
Ghosts, or cats smelling death and despair, I am not sure which I
would prefer.
Other
Local Events:
Vancouver
Informal Paranormal Pub
Temporarily on
Hold Due to Covid
I really enjoy going to ghost hunter/paranormal
conferences. One bad thing is, most conferences are only once a
year. Although we share and interest in almost anything paranormal, we are
also people. Oftentimes, I enjoy the talk at meals, or in the
hallways between classes more than the discussion or classes themselves.
There are some paranormal groups, mostly in Portland who hold monthly
meetings. However, as a Vancouverite, I am reluctant to attend some
meetings. Show of hands please, who hates driving in and around downtown
Portland, even on a weekend? While I cannot see all the hands, I suspect
that there are many of them in the air right now. I also wanted something in my home
town of Vancouver, Washington. In 2016, I decided to
start an informal discussion group in Vancouver, where people could just hang
out and talk ghosts, ghost hunting, and related topics. We
moved a few times since then, and currently hang out at the Underbar We eat, we chat, and just hang out. Thank
you Tara-Ann
for pictures of my gatherings! There
is no formal schedule of who will talk, and about what. Some people have
shared pictures of their recent paranormal vacations, or investigations.
Oftentimes in sharing experiences, though informal discussion, people have
learned different strategies for their ghost hunting investigations.
Although there are over 40 people on the Facebook members list for the Vancouver
Informal Paranormal Pub, there is no requirement to attend all meetings. Click
this link to visit the page, and send us a request to join. I
recommend people try out this arrangement in their own home town, or come
visit us some time. We meet once a month, on a Sunday at 5 PM. You
can drop in, or send me an email to let me know you are interested in
attending.
email
Jeff
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Jeff
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