Spirits Along the Columbia River

INTRODUCTION

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

As a resident of the Pacific Northwest—the Astoria, Oregon area to be exact—I’m fascinated by the area’s history and culture. The Pacific Northwest was one of the last parts of the United States to be explored and settled, making it seem more wild than other parts of the country. In my book Haunted Graveyard of the Pacific, I focused on hauntings at the mouth of the Columbia River, where the river meets the Pacific Ocean, as well as the coastal areas between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Some believe the term Graveyard of the Pacific applies only to the confluence of the Pacific Ocean and the Columbia River. In fact, the Graveyard stretches along the Pacific Northwest coast, from Tillamook Bay in Oregon, past the treacherous Columbia Bar (the world’s most dangerous entrance to a commercial waterway) near Astoria, Oregon, up the Washington coast, the Juan de Fuca strait separating Canada from the United States and up the western coast of Vancouver Island. Further, the Graveyard includes the waterways and the coasts that hug those waters.

The Columbia River has gone by many names in Native languages as well as English and Spanish: Nch’i-Wana (the Great River), the Big River, the River of the West, the Thegayo, the Rio de los Reyes, the Rio Estrachos and the Rio de Aguilar. This mighty river, the second largest after the Mississippi by volume in the United States, unites all parts of the Pacific Northwest. Historically, the river garnered much interest on the part of explorers of many nations, including Spain, Great Britain and the United States. These countries struggled over possession of the river as they sought the legendary Northwest Passage. Their hope, unfulfilled, was to find a direct route by water from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. This is what led to President Thomas Jefferson commissioning the Lewis and Clark Expedition. This competition between nations, as well as the settling of the region, led to much pathos, tragedy, opportunity and achievement.

The Columbia River, 2020. Courtesy of Sonyuser, Pixabay.

There is no better way to discover the beauty and history of the Pacific Northwest than to explore the Pacific coast, the Columbia River, the Snake River and the towns near their shores. In this book, I examine reported hauntings, folkloric tales and supernatural creatures said to inhabit the areas along and near the Columbia and Snake Rivers, tributaries from Oregon and Washington to the Idaho border and nearby coastal areas. While the Pacific Northwest offers breathtaking scenery, it has also been identified as one of the most haunted regions in the United States. The spirits of the frontiersmen, adventurers, boatmen and early settlers seem to cling to the rivers, lakes, shores and towns.

At the western end of the Columbia River lies Astoria, Oregon, a rustic, beautiful Victorian coastal city established in 1811. It is the oldest permanent American settlement west of the Rocky Mountains and is often referred to as the San Francisco of the Northwest due to its hilly topography and distinct architecture. To the east of Astoria, through Oregon, Washington and to the Idaho border, are rustic villages, restaurants, antique stores, surf shops and carnivals, while farmers’ markets and weekly tourist festivals welcome residents and visitors alike. The Pacific Northwest is known for great hiking, boating, camping, fishing, biking, clamming, golfing, cranberry cultivation, oyster farming and tourism, while state parks with nineteenth-century military forts and national historic sites welcome history enthusiasts. Bald eagles, black bears, elk, deer and other wildlife call the area home.

Despite this idyllic setting, more than two thousand ships and countless lives have been lost to the treacherous waters where the Pacific Ocean meets the Columbia River, to the north and south and east along the rivers and tributaries. Smaller rivers in Oregon and Washington feed the mighty Columbia River as it races toward the Pacific Ocean. The combination of river flow and offshore currents creates an ever-shifting, hazardous sandbar at the mouth of the 1,214-mile-long Columbia River. Unlike other rivers whose power dissipates as they drain into deltas, the Columbia River funnels water like a powerful firehose into the Pacific Ocean. This, together with frequent thick fog, violent storms and man-made disasters, has caused ships to sink, burn and be crushed against the shore.

On land, the spirits of settlers and adventurers are said to linger in places like Astoria and Portland, Oregon, and along the shores of the Columbia and Snake Rivers. In the nineteenth century, the Oregon Trail, which stretched from Missouri to the Pacific Ocean and hugged the Columbia River, served as a major route for those wishing to travel west to discover new land and begin new lives. But the Oregon Trail was dangerous, and as many as thirty-four thousand lives were lost along the trail to disease, accidents and more. Other lingering spirits are said to include those of Native Americans whose lands were stolen and burial grounds desecrated, soldiers, murderers and murder victims.

In addition to shipwrecks, drownings and shanghaiing, there are other reasons supernatural tales and folklore abound in the Pacific Northwest. The geography and climate of the Pacific Northwest—towering trees, mountains, volcanoes, icy waters, earthquakes, tsunamis, high winds— are part of a long record of natural events that were not easy for Native Americans and others to make sense of without some supernatural explanation. Native Americans have long-standing beliefs in Sasquatch, sea monsters, Thunderbirds, werewolves and other creatures that help explain the unexplainable. The wildness of the region, as the last portion of the continental United States to be settled, influences such supernatural tales. There is also a strong Scandinavian influence in the Pacific Northwest, bringing with it an abundance of supernatural folklore and tales.

Painting of a ship, 2015. Courtesy of Comfreak, Pixabay.

A forest in fog, 2016. Courtesy of LUM3N, Pixabay.

Chilling tales of paranormal phenomena abound in this northwestern corner of America, and it’s no wonder movies and television shows like the vampire and werewolf book and movie series Twilight saga, the pirate treasure movie The Goonies, the TV series Supernatural, the remake of The Fog and the drama-mystery Twin Peaks were made or based in the Pacific Northwest. Even the movie The Shining, for which Oregon’s Timberline Lodge served as the movie’s Colorado-based Stanley Hotel for exterior shots, featured a package of Willapoint Minced Clams, sourced in the Graveyard of the Pacific, at Willapa Bay, Washington.

The dark skies, wind and fog that frequent the Pacific Northwest round out the atmosphere of mystery and dread. So, if you see someone on land who appears out of place or hear ghostly words on the wind, check again—it might be the forlorn spirit of a lost soul reaching out.

MY BELIEFS AND APPROACH

Those who believe in ghosts, supernatural creatures and paranormal phenomena say restless spirits haunt the Pacific Northwest, while others point to the tales of Native Americans and early settlers. Though I would not describe myself as a full believer in these stories, I find them fascinating and would like to believe that some, or at least part, of the legends are true.

My background is an eclectic one that, while on the surface might not appear to tie directly to the subjects I write about, prepared me for this work. I retired from the U.S. government in 2019 after thirty-six years as a senior executive, manager and in other roles in the western United States and Washington, D.C. I am also a consultant, legal expert witness and licensed attorney. From the early 1980s to the mid-2000s, while based in the San Francisco Bay area, I made numerous trips throughout the Pacific Northwest to teach government leadership courses. It was during that time that I became fascinated by the region’s atmosphere and history.

My wife, Wendy, and I moved from the West to Washington, D.C., for my work. My last role was that of chief human capital officer for a federal agency. I was named that agency’s senior executive of the year for 2019. After living in the D.C. area for thirteen years, we retired and decided to move back west. Our focus quickly centered on the Pacific Northwest. Part of our reasoning was economic (no income tax in Washington and no sales tax in Oregon!), but much of our decision-making focused on the climate, history and beauty of the area. Upon retiring, I quickly found I had no desire to fully retire; I had to do something more, something worthwhile that would reflect my desire to acclimate to my new home and have a positive impact. To paraphrase American stateman Benjamin Franklin, if one wishes to be remembered, they should either write something worth reading or do something worth writing about. I chose the former!

I have also served as a college professor at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; Portland State University in Oregon; Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Washington; and Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon. In addition to Haunted Graveyard of the Pacific and this book, I wrote Monsters and Miracles: Horror, Heroes, and the Holocaust, a book that blends family stories with World War II and Holocaust history, as well as folklore, heroic tales and horror stories. Monsters and Miracles was published internationally by Amsterdam Publishers, the leading publisher of Holocaust memoirs in Europe, in the summer of 2022.

I have also developed a course on the haunted history and folklore of the Pacific Northwest that I am teaching at Clatsop Community College. I have been featured in newspapers, on radio programs, at museums and in bookstores, where I have spoken about the haunted folklore of the Pacific Northwest. In the spring of 2022, I served as a speaker and instructor at the Oregon Ghost Conference in Seaside, Oregon. I designed and am leading haunted and history trolley tours of Washington State’s Long Beach Peninsula. I am