State file · OR
Haunted places in Oregon
What are the most haunted places in Oregon? The best-known are Shanghai Tunnels, Heceta Head Lighthouse and Yaquina Bay Lighthouse.
Oregon’s ghost lore follows its coastline, its rivers and its gold country. Fog-bound lighthouses guard a treacherous coast, Portland grew up as a rough river port where sailors were shanghaied onto outbound ships, and the eastern half of the state still holds gold-rush hotels, mineral-spring resorts and stagecoach inns from the 19th century.
- 3 hauntings
- 12 recorded sightings
Haunted places in Oregon
Shanghai Tunnels
Basements under Portland’s Old Town, sold on tours as tunnels where sailors were kidnapped – a story historians call a myth – and home to the ghost Nina. Regional legend
Heceta Head Lighthouse
A clifftop lighthouse on the Oregon coast whose 1893 keepers’ house is said to be home to a gentle gray lady, now known as Rue. Regional legend
Yaquina Bay Lighthouse
A short-lived 1871 lighthouse whose famous ghost, Muriel Trevenard, came from an 1899 magazine story – fiction that locals and visitors came to believe. FolkloreThe ghost lore of Oregon
Some of the state’s most famous ghosts turn out to have surprising origins. The girl who haunts the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse was invented in an 1899 magazine story; Portland’s “Shanghai tunnels” are, historians argue, a 1970s legend grafted onto a very real history of crimping; and the gray lady of Heceta Head was named by a Ouija board. Tracing those stories back to their sources is half the fun of ghost hunting in Oregon.
Visitors can take the underground and ghost tours of Portland’s Old Town, sleep in the keepers’ house at Heceta Head, tour the restored lighthouses at Newport and head east to the historic hotels of Baker City and the Blue Mountains.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Old Town Chinatown, Portland
The city’s oldest district, with the Merchant Hotel basement, historic saloons and nightly underground and ghost tours.
- Geiser Grand Hotel, Baker City
An 1889 gold-rush hotel in eastern Oregon with a long list of reported resident ghosts.
- Hot Lake, near La Grande
A historic hot-springs hotel and former sanatorium in the Grande Ronde Valley, often listed among Oregon’s most haunted buildings.
- Wolf Creek Inn
A state-owned 1883 stagecoach inn in southern Oregon where Jack London finished The Valley of the Moon and Clark Gable is said to have stayed, with ghost stories of its own.
- The central coast
Newport, Yachats and Florence string together lighthouses, shipwreck sites and coastal legends along U.S. 101.
Timeline
- 1880The Merchant Hotel is built Shanghai Tunnels
The Old Town hotel whose lobby is now Old Town Pizza later became the setting of the Nina legend and the main tunnel-tour stop.
- 1894The light is lit Heceta Head Lighthouse
The new lighthouse began guiding ships along a dangerous stretch of coast, with keepers’ families housed nearby.
- 1899“The Haunted Lighthouse” Yaquina Bay Lighthouse
Lischen M. Miller’s short story about Muriel Trevenard appeared in Pacific Monthly and became the basis of the ghost legend.
- 1906The Eskasoni case Shanghai Tunnels
Crewmen were held aboard a ship at gunpoint in daylight, one of the documented shanghaiing cases that show the trade worked in the open.
- 1956Saved as a museum Yaquina Bay Lighthouse
After years of neglect, the Lincoln County Historical Society opened the lighthouse as a historic site.
- 1963Automated Heceta Head Lighthouse
The light was automated and the keepers left; the house passed to the Forest Service and was leased to Lane Community College in 1970.
- 1972The tunnel story is born Shanghai Tunnels
According to historian Barney Blalock, the Portland “shanghai tunnel” tale began when an old drainage tunnel was turned into booths for a bar; tours soon followed.
- November 26, 1975“Lady of the Lighthouse Baffles Workmen” Heceta Head Lighthouse
The Siuslaw News reported the caretakers’ and workmen’s experiences, including Jim Anderson’s sighting in the attic window.
- Late 1980s–1990sThe ghost gets a name Heceta Head Lighthouse
According to later accounts, college students staying at the house got the name “Rue” from a Ouija board.
- December 7, 1996Relit Yaquina Bay Lighthouse
A modern light was installed in the tower, shining for the first time in 122 years.
- October 2012Zak Bagans in the basement Shanghai Tunnels
The Ghost Adventures host led a fan event in the Merchant Hotel basement; the Portland Mercury’s reporter recorded no ghostly results.
- 2014The Oregon Shanghaiers Shanghai Tunnels
Blalock’s book laid out the history of crimping and argued that the tunnels were never used for it.
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