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2004 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)
Here is a button which will take you to an archive copy of the last three years or so of the "What's New" section I began in 2001.
Ghosts of the Coast Getaway Posted 13 November 2004 Update Notice: I've added something elsewhere on this site Posted 8 June 2004 Radio Appearance Posted 8 June 2004 Radio Appearance Posted 11 April 2004 Update Notice: I've added something elsewhere on this site Posted 11 April 2004 A Visit to the Big Easy... New Orleans Posted 11 April 2004
13 November 2004 This is the first go at planning the November beach get away trip to Lincoln City, Oregon. This is intended as a get together among people who share a similar interest. To satisfy the legal minds, I have a disclaimer. While I arranged for rooms and having the appropriate people conduct tours, etc, I am not a tour guide. I am not charging any money for my advice, and I am not insured, so if anyone gets hurt or upset, please don’t sue me, because I don’t have any insurance, come along at your own risk. If it seems unsafe, don’t do it. The best weekend to do this is the 19th though 21st of November, prior to that is Veteran’s day (sort of) weekend, and the weekend after is Thanksgiving. Right now we don’t have a definite number of people, but based on past experience, I don’t think we can do things with more than a dozen people participating. I am not taking reservations, but I would appreciate anyone wanting to attend contacting me first. $59 for a deluxe sleeping room $74 for a two bedroom unit $79 for a kitchen $89 for a suite All prices are based on double person occupancy, $7 each additional person. Tim will give a 10% discount for anyone who identifies themselves as being with the group for a 1 – 2 night stay. Alternatively: If you come a night early (3 night stay) or stay a night later (Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Friday, Saturday, Sunday) he will give you a $20 dinner credit at the Blackfish Café for free! To rent a room, contact the Captain Cook Inn via their reservation line: 1-800 994-2522 Another benefit to this get together is a free ghost book to everyone staying at the Captain Cook. We may also have other give aways, or prizes. We’ll see
Events: Friday 19 November: I will be arriving Friday night, hosting the get together We’ll probably show the haunted history on the Northwest, with finger food and ghost discussion as people show up. There are a lot of things to see and do at the beach, and some of them depend on the weather, we’ll decide then. I have a short slide show on some of the places, and I’ll go over it with people, so we can decide. The following places are suggestions only, I would like your opinions before formalizing things. Saturday: 20 November: 9:30 AM – 11:00 Video screening of Oregon Ghost Explorer. This was a video funded by the Lincoln City Chamber of Commerce in 2001. Martina, Jen and I participated in filming this, and I may be able to have the producer, Jim Kusz talk about making it. And if anyone is interested, there may be copies for sale. 11:30 – 12:30 I am going to see if we can’t get a walking tour of the Bijou Theater in Lincoln City. The place is haunted, and the owners are pretty honest about it. 12:30 – 1:30 PM Lunch 1:30 – 2:00 PM Travel to Newport, with a stop or two on the way. One feature just north of Newport is the Devil’s Punchbowl, which has one ghost story associated with it. There is also a winery tasting building onsite, if enough people are interested, we can pause here for a short time. 2:00 – 5:30 lighthouse tours. There are two lighthouses in the vicinity of Newport. The Yaquina Head Lighthouse is located about three miles north of town, and is about 90 feet high, and stories abound about dead lighthouse keepers and workers killed during construction. There is a visitors center on the way to the lighthouse, where you can easily spend an hour before climbing the tower. The tower itself is about a mile away from the visitor’s center. It costs about $5 a car to park there, so we might want to switch cars in town, and carpool down to the tower. It might be possible to book a dedicated tour just for us, as soon as I have numbers, and people let me know. They do give an interpretive talk at the base of the tower, as well as at the top. The climb is worth the tour. The Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is located in town itself, and is a three story wooden tower, and much homier than the other lighthouse. I think that admission is about $3 per person (suggested donation), and the place is set up as an interpretive display with period clothing, furniture, etc. This is the more famous haunted lighthouse of the two. I don’t think that you can arrange a tour, but I can check. 5:30 – 6:00 travel to Depoe Bay. Depoe Bay is located about 8 miles south of Lincoln City, and I propose to stop there to visit the natural formation, the Spouting Horn, if the tide is in, and then later, to visit the Spouting Horn restaurant for dinner. If everyone is willing, I will try to arrange to have us eat in the upper floor, and perhaps have the bartender tell us everything he’s observed. This is where Jenn, Martina and I participated in part of the Oregon Ghost Explorer video, and we can share experiences there. 8:00 PM – Whenever? Return to Lincoln City and hang out Sunday, 21 November: 9:30 AM Visit Siletz Bay Park, in southern Lincoln City, this is where independent observers, as well as Martina felt the presence of a ghostly sailing ship. 10:30 AM Lincoln County Historical Museum: Requested donation (I think) $3, the museum was haunted by the remnants of firefighters, from previous use of the building, as well as various displays. The place still seems to be haunted, as I found out earlier this month. Noon: Lunch at the Blackfish Cafe. This restaurant is located across the street from the Captain Cook, on the way out of town, toward home. It was an old gas station and garage, and I think Martina and another psychic, Janet detected something here. Depending on the weather: The Lincoln City cemetery is very haunted and beautiful, but is also located on a headland, so it will be wet and cold if the weather is bad. Devil’s Lake State Park is located just east of Lincoln City, and has a legend of a monster that haunts it’s depths. I heard recently that the monster was a killer whale that was trapped in the lake when the water level was down, in the 1800s. Neakhanie Mountain is located about 30 miles north of Lincoln City, and there are stories of Spanish treasure, Native American Spirits, and a 1 ½ mile trek to the top of the tallest peak in the coast range. There are a few other haunts that I can tell you about when we get together. Any other haunts I’ve missed that everyone might be interested in? Suggestions? Too many places, or too few? Please let me know
Book Review 29 September 2004 I don't normally do book reviews, but I was at the 2nd Annual Pacific Northwest Ghost Hunter's Conference in Seattle on 25 September, and was approached by Ginnie Bivona, the President of Atriad Press, in Texas. She and her company have taken the chance to publish several books of collected of ghost stories simultaneously. This can lead to financial ruin, if your books are not good, or well received. She gave me three of these books for my review; all have the main title series: Haunted Encounters: The books were, Personal Stories of Departed Pets, Real Life Stories of Supernatural Experiences and Ghost Stories from Around the World. I immediately noted that one of the editors was my friend Mitchel Whitington. Mitch maintains the website, Ghost in my Suitcase, and has written several books, such as Ghosts of North Texas, and my personal favorite, Uncle Bubba's Chicken Wing Fling. The last book has nothing to do with ghosts, but details the rural doings in the fictional town of Cut Plug, Texas; each story is punctuated with a different and delicious BBQ chicken wing recipe. I immediately accepted the books. The Haunted Encounters series, Personal stories of Departed Pets, Real Life Stories of Supernatural Experiences and Ghost Stories from Around the World have a similar format. Each book is a collection of short stories written by professional and amateur authors about their true supernatural experiences. These stories come from across the world, not just a particular location, and the authors from all walks of life. It was interesting to see that each story included a bio and photograph of the story author, showing the editors worked well with their contributors. Each book in the series has a retail price of $15.95 and is well over 200 pages of stories. Despite it's title, Ghost Stories from Around the World has several stories from the Pacific Northwest, including a gentle giant calming a sick child on an airplane, and a nightclub haunted by gangsters killed in a shoot out with police. There are several stories from authors in England and Continental Europe. I particularly liked the story from a scuba diver who encountered the ghost of a woman, baby and young boy, eighty feet under water, on the deck of a ship that sank over a hundred years earlier. Some readers like to concentrate of haunts from one particular place, such as the Pacific Northwest, or subject; such as Battlefield ghosts. Personal Stories of Departed Pets may interest them, because pets are a special subject that are not dependent on a location. All the stories in the Haunted Encounters books are relatively short, ranging from four to ten pages, which makes them a quick read. Some of the stories are quite charming, while I would not read some of them before going to bed at night. I would recommend all of these books to readers interested in short stories about ghosts across the globe, with many different types of haunts.
Posted 8 June 2004 I have posted more stories in the Other People's Ghosts section, for the months of March to April 2004, and started the May to June 2004 page. I have included a few more new organizations in the links section and my appearances section. Included in appearances is a notice and link about the 2nd Annual Pacific Northwest Ghost Hunter's Conference in Seattle, this coming September.
Posted 8 June 2004 On Wednesday, 9 June, I will be a guest on The Lou Gentile Show. The broadcast was originally scheduled for April 2004, but they had a massive failure of their servers, so we rescheduled. The broadcast will begin around 7 PM Pacific Time and I will be on the air around 7:30 or so, until 10 PM. Wish me luck.
Posted April 2004 On Monday, 2 May, I will be a guest on The Lou Gentile Show. The broadcast will begin around 7 PM Pacific Time and I will be on the air for two or three hours, until 10 PM. Unfortunately, I will be on east coast time, and will start around 10 PM and I'll be up until 1 AM. And I have to go to work the next day. Wish me luck.
Posted 11 April 2004 I have posted more stories in the Other People's Ghosts section, for the months of March to April 2004. I have also (obviously) archived the stories from the What's New section from 2003 and begun this 2004 What's New section.
Posted 11 April 2004 On the weekend of the 2nd of April I flew to New Orleans to visit my friends at AGHOST, as they conducted a series of paranormal investigations in the Big Easy. You will have to visit their website for more details of their investigations. I'm afraid that I have been out of the paranormal business for so long that I was content to stay in the background and watch them do their work. They had been there a few days before I arrived, and I arranged to meet them at St Louis Cemetery Number One tour. One brochure about the cemetery reads in part: This is New Orleans oldest surviving cemetery. If you visit only one cemetery in New Orleans- this is the one. Founded a year after a flood, an epidemic and a fire destroyed a large part of the city. Surrounded by wall vaults, filled with crumbling tombs, this is New Orleans' City of the Dead. The jumbled maze-like paths will remind you that death does not always wait for a planned and orderly cemetery. Creoles, Americans, Slaves, Immigrants, Catholic, Protestant, all are buried within these walls. Spanish influence in the architecture predominates- the wall (oven) vaults, wrought and cast iron, plaster over brick. Tombs of interest include the family tomb of Creole character Bernard de Marigny, who when bankrupt, sold his plantation and the Marigny district was created. He also named some of the city's streets- Desire, Elysian Fields, Craps, Pleasure, Duels, Piety and more. Also the Glapion tomb (descendants of Marie Laveau and the reputed resting place of the Queen herself) and the Italian Mutual Benevolent Society tomb as seen in "Easy Rider". I try to say kind things about everything, and hate to admit this, but I was disappointed in the tour. Before it started, the tour guide told everyone that his tour was trademarked (or copywritten) and forbid anyone to record it with on audio or video cameras. I found his talk disappointing, so it's just as well I did not try to record it. It was not an interactive experience between the guide and his guests, but a memorized, speech, which was filled with talk about where he was going to have his tomb built, by his son the architect, how he bought earrings to flirt with women, and other comments about the guide and his family, rather than the cemetery. Because the talk was memorized, if you asked a question that was out of sequence, he had a hard time keeping on track. The cemetery is located right next to a main road and he talked too softly to be heard most of the time. The cemetery itself is very impressive, and if you listen really hard to the tour guide, you will learn a lot about the history of the place and New Orleans as a whole, but I regret spending $15. In my opinion, the tour guide business in New Orleans is the victim of it's own success. There are a lot of people giving tours, so it is hard to know which guides to use. I was told that on one tour, the guide might have dipped a little too deeply into her hip flask, and ended up tipsy. At the cemetery, there were at least four tours going on at the same time and we had to wait for our turn to visit some of the spots. Although the tour guides wore T-Shirts that said something about haunted history, there was not too much talk of ghosts. Be sure to ask the tour agency what the tour will cover before you pay money. It was not a total downer, we took a great haunted tour of the Garden District that I would recommend to everyone. New Orleans is divided into several districts, or Quarters, the French Quarter, the Garden district, etc. The Garden District was named that when the residents planted lots of fragrant flowers to mask the smell of human waste, which still seems to cling to the French Quarter today. It also preserves the time of the mid-19th century when the rich built vast mansions to show their wealth off to each other, and what Yankees picture when they think of "The South." Our tour guide, Carla Boullion, took us through history and the changes in the Garden District, by talking about the various ghosts and the setting in the Garden District when they died. The oldest ghost is a little girl, who dates to the time when the Garden District was a sugar cane plantation. She was followed in time by the Irish, who died in the thousands, digging ditches and canals, helping drain the fields, making the land suitable for housing. There are several ghost dating to this mansion period, including my namesake, onetime President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. If you are thinking of taking some ghost tours, I recommend contacting Carla. Word has it she's working on her own book of haunted tales of the Big Easy... We had an interlude into the present, when we stopped outside of the mansion of Anne Rice, who was in the process of selling her house, which was haunted by the ghost of it's builder. We waved at the security camera outside the house. Apparently, some overly psychotic fans of hers came there one day to kill her, after murdering family members in Florida. Fortunately Anne Rice was not at home. After that she secured her home pretty well. Accommodations Most of the AGHOST people stayed in a Bed and Breakfast in the heart of the Garden District, called the Castle Inn. The Castle Inn is a mansion, built in 1891, about a block from the St Charles Avenue Street Car. It is furnished in period style, and has lots of wood paneling and high ceilings with claw footed bathtubs. The staff there were very friendly and pretty easy going about most of the disturbance the AGHOST folks made when they came in late at night after their investigations. It's a wonder why AGHOST even left the Castle Inn, since it's haunted. There may be several ghosts, but the owners have documented at least two, a man and a young girl. When the present owners took over the mansion in 1998, one of the staff repeatedly saw a man standing by the window of room 11. He may have been one of the "colored" servants who worked as a personal servant to the gentleman of the house in the early 20th century. This man died when he fell asleep while drinking liquor and smoking cigars. You can guess what happened when he dropped the cigar. He is particularly fond of women and will show himself to attractive female guests. He also likes to hide things like keys and cell phones in the microwave. The second ghost is that of a young girl who drowned in a pond nearby. She has been seen, barefoot, in a white shift, looking for her mother. She likes to bounce on the bed and sometimes touches people on the ankle or foot. I was a late addition to the ghost hunting trip, so I stayed at another property owned by the same people, called the Creole Gardens. The Creole Gardens, located on Prytania, has a bit of a checkered past when compared to the Castle Inn. The Bed and Breakfast consists of two 1840s era mansion, with attached slave quarters. One of the mansions was the home of Benjamin Palmer, a famous 19th century minister. The other mansion next door served as a bordello and has been redecorated along a bordello theme; and I stayed in one of the prostitute's rooms. I spent the mornings sitting in the atrium garden, in the center of the complex, chatting with the owner. She is currently restoring the interior of the main mansion, and allowed me to walk around, and admire the fine woodwork and construction. I understand that it may be haunted as well, but I do not have any details. Although the two bed and breakfasts are some distance apart, the St. Charles Avenue streetcar line links the two together.
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