Woodburn Independent Online

Living in a haunted world – The ghost stories around us

Tales of haunts throughout the area

• By: Amanda Newman  
• Published: 10/28/2009 2:35:35 PM

Photo By: Josh KullaHaunting
Graveyards, such as this old pioneer cemetery in Wilsonville, are a rich source of paranormal activity ... though not necessarily haunted.

Halloween is coming and the ghosts are floating out. But if a site is really haunted, ghosts may be seen, heard, or felt any day of the year.
 
Cemeteries are common haunting sites throughout the area. At Austin-Jackson-Larkins-Dibble Cemetery, in east Molalla, it is said that strange howling can be heard, coming from nowhere. At Canby’s Baker Prairie Cemetery, on Knights Bridge Road, an old man in a black suit with a brown leather hat, carrying a leather pouch, has reportedly been often seen standing in the graveyard and staring straight ahead. He walks slowly down the street, turns a corner and disappears.
 
Phantoms don’t confine themselves to traditional places; they have been reported in parks, schools, hospitals and more throughout the area. There are accounts of a ghost appearing in Feyrer County Park, outside Molalla, hauling a dead body over the grass. Bald Peak State Park in Newberg has its share of ghost stories, such as the woman in flames gripping a petroleum bottle or the girl in a blood-spattered wedding gown smoking a cigar. A man who shape-shifts into a vampire has been reported fluttering across Dickey Prairie, near Molalla, around midnight.
 
A Carl Road orchard in Woodburn is said to be home to a “strange presence” -- those walking into the orchard hear leaves crunching behind them and may see a white shadowy figure darting between trees and disappearing. Under a full moon at Gervais High School, supposedly built over a Native American burial ground, there have been reports of people hearing Indians yelling and feeling them crowd around. In the school’s parking lot, it is said a priest was murdered one night while getting into his car -- some nights, you can hear him scream.
 
When haunted places are torn down, the strange reports often stop. Wilsonville’s Dammasch State Hospital, an old insane asylum, was said to house a male phantom who walked around at night looking for enemy soldiers. Similarly, the previous office of The Newberg Graphic was known for apparition sightings and, rumors had it, employees experienced strange time lapses. Since both buildings were torn down in recent years, the reports have ceased.
 
On the other hand, Meridian United Church of Christ in Wilsonville once had a graveyard next door but, when it got too full, those buried there were exhumed and moved to a larger cemetery. According to legend, one grave without a marker was left behind. Since then, paranormal activity – moving objects and strange noises – has been reported on the church grounds ... the work, rumor has it, of the “one left behind.”
 
The supernatural is not only found in rumors and ghost stories -- there are organizations dedicated to finding and verifying paranormal activity. They take their work seriously, and they have haunting tales to tell.
 
Martina Baker of the Pacific Paranormal Research Society said her group recently investigated an old farmhouse in Wilsonville. The house’s owner, who rents it out, reported that when it was unoccupied lights would turn on and off and windows and doors would open and close. She told Pacific Paranormal the property’s last owner had hanged himself in the master bedroom.
 
“We found that the master bedroom of the farmhouse, as well as the upstairs hallway in between a bedroom and the bathroom, had high EMF (Electromagnetic Field) readings, as well as a lower temperature reading than the rest of the home,” Baker said. “We also received two voices on our digital recorder during the investigation. At one point, while getting the EMF readings in the upstairs hallway, we spoke aloud about how the hallway seemed to be of interest to this ghost. He replied, ‘I pass up here,’ and then ended the statement with a light chuckle. Downstairs, we received his voice again, telling us to ‘Help Bobby.’”
 
They asked the owner who Bobby was and she said her previous tenants were a married couple who split and fought over who would keep their cat, Bobby. The woman, who told her landlady she had built a “special psychological relationship” with the house’s ghost, lost the battle, Baker said.
 
Another group, the Paranormal League of America, investigated a Molalla house this month. The woman who lived there said the unusual occurrences in her home were only experienced by women -- her husband and sons had never seen or felt anything, but she and her daughter had, said Dave Galvan of the Paranormal League. The daughter played with an “imaginary” friend when she was four; a decade later she still claims the little girl was real. Her mother told Galvan of spotting bright green orbs and feeling someone trying to crawl in bed with her. Once, she saw a man in old western clothes hanging around the chicken coop; she went to ask who he was and he disappeared.
 
Three other groups had investigated the house in the last year and gotten “amazing” EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena, inaudible sounds that can be picked up with audio recording equipment). In one investigation, something flew off a shelf and hit the group leader in the head.
 
Galvan’s group sensitive, Zoe, “was able to relive a residual haunting that is ‘burned’ into the land,” he said. “Around 1865 there was a family that lived in that spot that got massacred by a band of ‘rogue bandits.’ These are the ghosts that these people have been experiencing. Also, she was able to communicate with a small child, about 8, who was a victim of a kidnapping in the mid-’60s and is buried on the land somewhere.”
 
Pacific Paranormal also investigated a house in Newberg, next to Providence Newberg Medical Center.
 
“It appears that living next door to a hospital may increase your chances of experiencing paranormal activity,” Baker said. “Most hospitals are notorious for some type of paranormal activity, due to the constant aspect of life and death within their walls. They are not always haunted, but just busy places.”
 
Apparently, the house’s residents saw people walking outside and disappearing, heard spectral knocks inside and outside the home or disembodied voices when no one else was there, and felt invisible people rushing past.
 
“All of the activity ... had begun once the new hospital had opened its doors,” Baker said, adding that her team couldn’t find evidence of haunting. “Our speculation is that the residents are just intermittently bothered by those whose visiting hours on Earth have been finished and who may just take a shortcut through the house on their way ‘home.’”
 
Paranormal investigators make a distinction between haunted places and those with “paranormal activity.”
 
“The Butteville Cemetery is not haunted,” Baker said of another investigation. “Most cemeteries aren’t. What people experience in cemeteries are just the visiting spirits of those who have passed on. Ghosts, on the other hand, are people who are either confused or refused -- they do not go where they are supposed to go. Ghosts are attracted more to locations than to people. Sometimes they do follow people, but that is a very rare -- and obsessive -- ghost.”
 
She said they captured EVPs on digital recorders during both day visits to the site. Once, someone answered questions with “yes” and “no.” Another time, a female voice asked, “Who are they?” They also captured in a photograph a white ball of light with “what appears to be a laughing face in its center.”
 
The stories may be easier to believe on a foggy Halloween night, when the moon is full, the air is crisp and cold, and a wolf is howling in the distance. But even in the daylight, the paranormal investigators firmly believe they’re true ... and who knows, they may be.
 
“I know this all sounds a bit fantastic, but it is the truth as we know it,” Galvan said.

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