The communities of the Pacific Northwest and Southwest are known for their modern urban styles, where today companies with cutting-edge technology continue building the world of the future in cities from Seattle to Silicon Valley and LA to San Diego. But it was not so long ago that towns and communities along the Pacific Ocean were small, gritty, and lawless, where many people sought to make their fortunes, but instead came to a sad early end. And some say a number of those forgotten adventurers, many whose lives ended prematurely, still haunt many areas along the Pacific, as if searching for spiritual answers or simply looking for peace in the afterlife. With that in mind, here are 10 eerie tales of spirits and ghosts along the Pacific Coast, some steeped only in legend, others grounded in at least an inkling of truth.
10 The Burnley Ghost
Edwin and Elise Burnley established the Burnley School of Professional Art in 1946 in Seattle, where they taught graphic design and illustration. Then, in the 1960s, people began reporting supernatural events, such as doors opening on their own, hollow footsteps made by no one visible on stairs, and phones being dialed by seemingly no one. — Local legend suggests it is the ghost of a teenage boy who died falling off a steep stairway at the back of the school. An attempt to contact the spirit of the dead boy was met by a loud crash in an upstairs bathroom. A broken window was found with a rock purportedly too heavy to have been thrown that high by human hands from the ground below.[1]
9 The Haunting of Lone Fir Cemetery
A restless ghost reportedly roams the Lone Fir Cemetery in Portland, established in 1846 and named for a single evergreen tree on the property. The ghost is said to be Emma Merlotin, a beautiful French girl who moved to Portland in 1850 and married a man who eventually ran off with another woman. — After her husband left, Merlotin began a career as a high-class prostitute. That didn’t end well. She was brutally cut to death with an axe. Worse, her murder was never solved, despite the authorities removing one of her eyes under the false belief that the last image of her attacker might be imprinted on a retina.
She is said to haunt the cemetery dressed in 19th-century French clothes, but if approached, she screams and throws up her hands, as if reliving her shocking death. Her grave marker remains there still.[2]
8 The Spirits of Battery Point Lighthouse
Crescent City in California boasts one of the first lighthouses built on the California coast in 1856. And it has seen its share of tragedy, including a tsunami that hit the area in 1964. The giant wave claimed eleven lives and destroyed twenty-nine blocks of the town. Some say the spirits of those whose lives were lost came back to shore and now haunt the legendary lighthouse.
The last residents to live in the lighthouse, Jerry and Nadine Tugel, reported that bedroom slippers turned around in the middle of the night, and footsteps were heard up and down the lighthouse tower. House cats would sense something unseen and would only go in certain rooms or only walk on furniture of a room without ever setting paws on the floors. Paranormal experts suggested permanent ghost residents were a man, a woman, and a child.[3]
7 The Lady in Lace
The Monterey Peninsula, just south of San Francisco, is known for its scenic 17-Mile Drive between Carmel-by-the-Sea and Pacific Grove. This pictorial road through the coastal forests following the Pacific Coast also passes the famous Pebble Beach golf course. Just be careful if it gets foggy because one might encounter one of the more beautiful ghosts, the Lady in Lace…