FEATURING
- The Merchant Hotel’s Lady of the Evening
- The Witch’s Castle
- The Ghost of Russian Composer, Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov
- The Phantom of Cathedral Park
- Oregon’s Lizzie Borden
THE BENSON HOTEL
12 stories, 287 rooms, and several ghosts, including its original owner.
*taken about 1915*
Location: 309 SW Broadway. Downtown Portland, near the corner of W. Burnside and Southwest Broadway.
Status: Open to the public.
History: Built in 1913 by pioneer, Simon Benson, who made his fortune in timber. It was originally called the New Oregon Hotel but soon simply became known as the Benson. In 1919, Benson sold the hotel to William Boyd and Robert Keller. The pair successfully ran the hotel until 1944. The original hotel was demolished in 1959, combined with the former Oregon Hotel next door and redone. The Benson made it into the National Register of Historic Places in 1986 and was updated again in 1991. While the hotel itself has been rebuilt twice, much of the decor is original.
Simon Benson
B. 2 Oct 1852, Norway
D. 5 Aug 1942, Los Angeles, CA
He immigrated to America in 1868 at 16. His family moved to Wisconsin where they started as loggers. He eventually went to Oregon where he started his own company, Benson Logging and Lumber Company; it was very successful and would eventually allow him to amass a fortune. He is credited with helping Portland to become a noteworthy city. Some of his contributions to the city was donating money toward Prohibition and bubblers - bronze drinking fountains as seen in the photo above. Personally, I’d like the Benson Bubblers better if they dispensed alcohol ;)
Activity: Several ghosts have been reported to roam the Benson Hotel, most notably it’s former owner and namesake. Benson has been known to appear in meeting rooms and, as an advocate for Prohibition, has gained a reputation for knocking over visitor’s drinks. He has been seen in his formal suit floating down the main lobby staircase. He is known to dislike drunk patrons. Sometimes he is seen dressed as a lumberjack instead; Benson usually appears in the dining area this way.
A young boy is another frequently sighted entity; he appears at people’s bedsides and tries to spook guests. He seems to be around three years old and has brown hair; he doesn’t appear to be entirely solid. He likes mothers and women best and is most often seen in rooms on the 9th floor.
A woman in a turquoise dress and wearing red rings has been spotted in the gilded mirror in the lobby.
The 7th, 9th and 12th floors are reportedly the most haunted, as well as the grand staircase, meeting rooms and dining area.
A male entity dressed as a night porter has been known to assist guests before vanishing.
A lady in white wanders the hallways.
Notes:
The little boy is said to have a sweet tooth and may appear if candy is left out for him.
CATHEDRAL PARK
Location: 6905 N Philadelphia Ave. North Portland, on the Willamette River, beneath the St. John’s Bridge.
Status: Open to the public.
History: Built in 1980, 50 years after the bridge was put in (the bridge was built in 1931). The arches that characterize the park and from which it gained its name are part of the bridge itself. The site is said to be one of the landing spots Lewis and Clark camped at in 1806.
Most of the legends revolve around the 1949 murder of a Roosevelt High School student, 15 year old Thelma Taylor. Her body was discovered August 11, 1949 under the bridge, where the park now sits. Morris Leland abducted her, taking her to the park, where he attempted to rape her but apparently decided against it upon discovering she was a virgin. He kept her there overnight but in the morning when she began screaming for help from nearby workers, Leland killed her by striking her multiple times with a steel bar and then stabbing her twice with a knife. He collected the evidence, tossed it in the river and buried her in a shallow grave beneath some driftwood.
Thelma Anne Taylor
B. 12 Dec 1933
D. 6 Aug 1949
Activity: It’s said that Thelma’s screams can still be heard in the park at night.
Notes:
WHITE EAGLE SALOON AND HOTEL
Location: 836 N. Russell St.
Status: Open to the public.
History: Built in 1905; this historic 2-story building is Portland’s oldest bar. It’s said to have previously been a brothel.
*taken in 1905*
*taken in 1905*
Activity: According to a housekeeper at the hotel, room 3 is particularly active. Supposedly a psychic had trouble breathing while in the room and could only say that the entity was male. A spirit has been seen in the closet. Thumps and bumps have been reported as having come from under the bed and the water turns on and off on it’s own.
Room 4 is said to be nearly as bad; it is possibly haunted by the resident ghost and former prostitute by the name of Rose. Local legend states that she was shoved down the stairs by a client and has since roamed the hallways and appeared in room 4. Visitors claim to hear her sobbing.
The ghost of Sam Warrick; he was a cook and bartender before the Prohibition and his ghost has been known to fling condiments across the kitchen.
Old time dance music has been heard in the basement. People have reported feeling phantom hands on their bodies.
Supposedly former disgruntled prostitutes haunt the basement and tunnels below.
Notes:
OLD TOWN PIZZA AND BREWING
Serving pizza and ghostly activity.
Location: 226 NW Davis St. In the lobby of the old Merchant Hotel.
Status: Open to the public.
History: Built in the 1880s, it’s one of the oldest buildings in Portland. Old Town Pizza replaced the Merchant Hotel in 1974. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year and deemed a National Landmark in 1977. Orders can be taken at the original hotel’s reception desk. The hotel was originally owned by brothers - Louis, Adolph, and Theodore Nicolai and purchased by musician, Eugene Stebinger in the 1890s. It ceased functioning as a hotel in 1967 and was renovated between 1968 and 1969. Businesses in the building thrived in the 70s.
Activity: The hotel is home to a ghost named Nina, who is seen wearing a black dress; she was murdered in an elevator shaft that now serves as a converted seating area. Nina was a prostitute with an adolescent daughter she was trying to save from having a life like hers. But before she could escape with her 12 year old daughter, as planned, she was found to have been thrown to the bottom of the elevator shaft. Alternatively, another version of the story states that she fell in love with a client but refused to marry him for fear of her boss’s wrath. In a rage, her lover killed her.
People have seen a whisk flying across the room near the shaft and apparitions. Nina has been known to touch people gently, such as with a hand placed at the small of their back. Her appearance is often signaled by the strong scent of perfume. She has apparently also been seen in the basement of the building. If you sit downstairs, it’s said that you can sometimes hear her breathing by your ear. She has been spotted descending the stairs into the bar as well.
*seating area where the elevator shaft used to be*
Notes:
SHANGHAI TUNNELS
Location: 120 NW Third Avenue. Found underneath the Merchant Hotel and much of the city.
Status: Open to the public.
History: Rumor has it that bars like the one in the Merchant Hotel had trap doors (also known as deadfalls) in their basements which people would be thrown into and later collected from the tunnels below; they would be forced to work on ships docked in the nearby river. Historians do not generally believe this to be as prevalent a practice as legend would have you believe or at least, while the act of shanghaiing may be true, the connection with Portland’s underground tunnels has little evidence . Some bars did have these trap doors and the tunnels may have occasionally been used to shanghai men into service, it’s believed they were primarily used for moving goods and draining floodwater. During Prohibition, saloons also went underground to avoid detection. It is also rumored that women were shanghaied as well, only they were forced to work as prostitutes rather than sailors.
Activity: Reportedly, entering the tunnels, one begins to feel cold and uneasy. There’s a feeling of darkness. Voices and footsteps are heard in the tunnels.
The basement of the Merchant Hotel and the tunnel beneath is supposedly home to a mischievous ghost named Sam; he has been described as a Chinese man. He likes to flick off the lights and move the furniture. Screaming and moaning is said to be heard coming out of the darkness in the tunnels.
Notes:
LONE FIR CEMETERY
Location: SE 26th Ave at SE Stark St
Status: Open to the public.
History: The oldest and one of the largest and most intact pioneer cemeteries in the city, 25,000 people are buried within its grounds. It became an official cemetery in 1855 and faced serious neglect for decades. The cemetery is home to many unmarked graves, some estimates go as high as 10,000 people, including paupers, asylum patients and Chinese workers; much of the cemetery was covered in berry bramble until the mid 1900s. Some of it’s occupants boast particularly gruesome tales.
The cemetery itself was founded by James B. and Elizabeth Stephens following a steamboat accident that left the docks littered with body parts from 24 victims. James’s father, Emmor or Emmon, was the very first burial in the cemetery, when it was still the Stephens’ farmland. The founders are permanently memorialized in stone and watch over the fir tree for which the graveyard is named.
Nearby a large obelisk stands to commemorate Dr. James C. Hawthorne who cared for mental patients who were often abandoned by their families. He buried 132 patients in Lone Fir with his own money, but the graves are unmarked, although some are suspected to be grouped together in the segregated Block 14, which is where the unmarked graves of Chinese railroad workers rest. The records concerning these individuals were shotty at best. It was bulldozed in 1948 and supposedly all the bodies were exhumed, but it was later discovered that this was not the case. Near the obelisk are roses that were originally planted there in the 1800s and carried over in covered wagons.
The cemetery has a host of grisly characters who have been said to appear, particularly on Halloween.
Charity Lamb (interestingly named given her legacy) was the first woman to be convicted of murder in the Oregon Territories. Her husband and known cattle thief, Nathaniel Lamb, used to beat her. On May 13, 1854, Charity had had enough of that and snuck up behind him at lunch and swung an axe into his skull, supposedly in front of their children. She was nicknamed Oregon’s Lizzie Borden. In the poor woman’s defense, he’d forced her not to leave him at gunpoint and informed her he planned on killing her that weekend, so can you really blame her? I don’t. Fun fact, she was taken into Dr. Hawthorne’s asylum after her conviction and subsequent incarceration because he pitied her. She is one of the patients he had buried (following her death in 1879), although it is unknown precisely where. Around 1930, her grave was covered over. She and many other asylum patients were lost under a building and an access road in 1955; the office remained until 2005.
One of the most popular gravesites is that of Captain Daniel Wright. His grave is marked by four towering redwood trees. The Mason died during the gold rush in California and the native redwoods were sent with his body. 150 years later, the trees are massive. Sadly, his gravestone has been vandalized to the point of being nearly destroyed.
Anne Jeanne Tingry-Le Coz was known by the name Emma Merlotin; she was a well-known French Courtesan AKA a prostitute in early Portland. Just before Christmas, on 22 December 1885, she was brutally murdered. And to make her death that much worse, her eyes were supposedly removed for an experiment to see if they held an image of her killer. Her murder went officially unsolved. Her murder apparently was the first in a series of killings of sex workers in the area which went on for several years, even earlier than Jack the Ripper in London. “Shortly before eleven o'clock on the wintry night of December 22, a policeman discovered Merlotin's body in her cottage on Third Street, lying face down in a three-foot-wide pool of blood. Clothed only in chemise, boots, and stockings, Merlotin had suffered gruesome bludgeoning and slashing that the papers reported in graphic detail.Within a couple of days authorities arrested the "Finnish" sailor William Sundstrom, whom they found lurking around the murder scene. He had blood stains on his clothing and a hatchet in his possession. Yet the police charged neither Sundstrom nor anyone else with this vicious crime. During the next four years other brutal murders occurred in what was developing into a red-light district,” (Boag 63).
Michael Mitchell, a dancer, was found frozen to death on the front steps of his boarding house. The story goes that he was refused admittance when he arrived home drunk and so remained outside.
Activity: A woman is heard crying distantly in the night. The disembodied voices of two arguing men have also been heard.
Captain Wright’s gravesite is said to hold a special energy. People report feeling very spiritual there and are drawn to it.
A figure is seen standing amongst the stones. He is an old man with a long white beard in a white shirt and black pants. He stares up at the sky until approached or called to, at which point he looks at you with wide eyes and begins screaming.
Misty figures are seen wandering the cemetery during the day and at night.
A young woman in a red dress is seen strolling through the grounds, appearing to be happy; she does not respond to or seem to notice the living.
People feel as though they are being watched.
Notes:
ABANDONED STONE HOUSE
Also known as: the Witch’s House, the Witch’s Castle, the Trail House and the Forest House.
Location: In Forest Park, down the Lower Macleay Trail, near Balch Creek. (the rest of the forest is also said to be haunted).
Status: Open to the public.
History: Built in the 1930s, it served as a bathroom along the trail until the water-line was destroyed in the Columbus Day Storm of 1962. After it was heavily damaged, the city decided to gut it and remove all the fixtures and doors, leaving only the stone structure behind. It earned the name, the Witch’s Castle for its appearance to a group of college students who popularized it, rather than from any connection to witchcraft.
The location of the stone house plays a role in another story that is attached to it; in this case, one that is rooted in fact. It is said that the house is on or very close to the former Balch homestead that once sat in today’s Forest Park. “In the mid-1800s, well before the structure was built, a man named Danford Balch bought a large portion of land around the area while Portland was still in the process of being developed. It was a big enough area that he had to hire help to clear the area, so he hired a man named Mortimer Stump, who lived in the cabin on the property with Balch’s family of 10. Over time, Stump and Balch’s daughter Anna fell in love, and eventually Stump asked Balch for his Anna’s hand in marriage. Balch refused, resulting in Stump and Anna threatening to elope. Balch became infuriated and told Stump that he would murder him if they did. The young couple didn’t heed the warning, and decided to elope in November of 1858. When Balch learned of the elopement, he became deeply depressed, which led to days of no sleep and of heavy drinking. When the young couple returned to Portland, Balch quickly remedied the situation as he saw fit: He shot Stump in the face with a double-barreled shotgun while all were aboard the Stark Street Ferry. Balch was quickly arrested, but was able to escape from the wooden jail he was held in. This led to his execution in mid-October of 1859, which became the first legal execution in Oregon,” (atlasobscura).
Activity: Occurrences include strange lights, disembodied voices, and shadow figures. Laughter is heard, as well as screams and whispers. The feud from so long ago carries on and shadowy spectres are seen running through the trees and dart into the little stone building. Glowing lights have been reported appearing in it as well. The apparitions of young women and children have been spotted in the woods. These figures are primarily attributed to the Balch family.
Notes:
RIMSKY KORSAKOFFEE HOUSE
Location: 707 SE 12th Ave.
Status: Open to the public.
History: One of the city’s oldest coffee houses. Built in 1902, the building itself is a former Victorian style house. “Goody Cable started the business in 1980, having hosted classical music events in her home for years prior,” (revolvy).
Activity: The ghost of this establishment is said to be revolution-era Russian Composer, Nikolai Rimsky Korsakov. He has been seen staring out the front window and pacing the main room with his hands clasped behind his back. He seems to be attracted to the live music and has been spotted watching the performances. Why he’d be haunting a coffee shop, I have no idea. Maybe he’s just so flattered at having something named after him that he can’t help but pay the place a visit now and then.
Tables supposedly vibrate and rotate, moving your coffee to the other side. Local legend even states that sometimes the tables shrink or grow in size. Another is said to rise over a foot in the air and set back down every 45 minutes. Yet another shakes when a button in the kitchen is pressed. One is even said to occasionally disappear. The china has been known to creep around to different positions. You know, things one probably wouldn’t notice, right?
Loud sounds come from upstairs when no one is on the second floor, including footsteps and slamming doors and windows.
Notes:
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
https://roadtrippers.com/trips/14520330
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