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. 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. 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.
Radio
Appearance 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.
Oregon Tourism meets
Ghosts
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. 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. 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.
A Night With
AGHOST
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.
Update notice
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.
Starvation Heights
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.
Update notice
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.
Missionaries Remain in Salem
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.
There
are several bridges running across the stream that supplies water to the
mill. Which one is haunted?
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
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