surfer and sunken Spanish galleons asking folks whether they've had any
experience with ghosts and a surprising number say they have. We caught up with
them traveling in their motorhome looking for a good tail.
Hi. Good morning. How are you this morning? Fine, just fine. I'm Dave, this is Sharon.
Hello. We're writing a book on ghost stories. Uh huh. And we've just talked about
if you had any any type of experiences with ghosts or haunted houses or footsteps
or anything like that. Well I haven't had any experience with ghosts or haunted
houses but just one experience with my son. Well I think we both have always had an
interest in paranormal activities. I grew up in a haunted house as a boy. I can
remember my mom telling me stories of my mom and dad wake up and hear somebody
walking down the steps as an old two-story farmhouse and having a haunted
house really was no different than anything else. They were never
destructive, never mischief, they just walked a lot. It's not the Hollywood
version of a ghost like like we're encountering and writing about. It's
campfire type ghosts where you as children you're sitting around a campfire
getting scared and knowing you got to sleep out in the tent all night and
somebody's gonna scratch on the side of the tent you can bet on it. That's what
we're interested in and the humor. They have a sense of humor. Some of the stories
I've gotten off the internet have had one ghost does laundry. It washes the
dishes, folds the clothes. We're saying to the night why can't we get one like that?
They'll wash the dishes every night and fold the laundry. You know I mean ours
are not that friendly. They don't like housework. The only thing, the only thing
that ours does is put the potty seat down.
Our trip today to Seaside is to visit with Sharon and Don Rogers. They rented
our home in the house that we lived in at Seaside after we moved up here to
St. Helens and they've had some real interesting ghostly experiences in
their home. So it's not just us. There are other people that are
experiencing similar type of activities in that house.
So are ghosts a big tab active? Yes they have. In fact did you hear the back door just slide open?
What's been happening? A lot of lights flicker at night, late at night. We have
that we had that same problem back right here where your TV's at. We had a lamp
and we'd be sitting in the couch. That thing would come on and off and we'd say
stop it. So it would go to three levels of light and then shut completely off and
it would just keep repeating that until one of us would yell at it and tell it to stop it.
It's annoying. It's annoying but it's not scary. We already lived here in Seaside
but I met Sharon and Dave and they said they were going to move and ask if we
might be interested in living in the house and I said well I'd love it because
I lived in an apartment and then they told me it was haunted. I walked in the
bathroom one day and all the toilet paper was hanging out the window and
stretched down the driveway and the window was open and we never opened the
window and so I asked Sharon, I said Sharon why is the toilet paper hanging out the window?
And he tried to blame it on wind but he knew there was no wind that day so now
he's a believer with other things that have happened.
I get ready to go to work one day. I went in the bedroom and I keep my pizza hut
hat on the back of a rocking chair and I went to get my red hat and it wasn't
there so put my green one on and went to work. Left the clothes here on the bed
and whenever I come back home, the red one was there, whenever I took my green one
off and went to put it on there I saw that and the clothes were back in the
chair and there wasn't anybody at home. And I hadn't been here all day.
It's just little things like that that's become comical while we lived in Seaside.
It's just a multitude of little things like that that there's nothing ever
destructive. Most time it's more like it was a childish prank.
We moved to Seaside and first night that we were actually in the house it was
just at midnight and I heard music and I listened and it was Walt and Matilda.
And I hollered at Dave. He got up and looked and it was his shortwave that had
come on and it played this same song just over wasn't plugged in or anything.
There was one other time my children were visiting us during the summer and
three of them had come up and we prepared hammocks down in the basement
for each one of them and I went to the top of the stairs and I yelled down for
my daughter Sarah's if she was down there and the voice entered back, yes she
was. I was in the living room between where he was and where the kids were and
I couldn't figure out who he was talking to because Sarah was in his office and
then when he told me he'd gotten an answer I was like whoa now they're gonna
start talking to him. It brings back a lot of memories.
What amazes me is that this house doesn't look like it's haunted. No it doesn't.
You know on any of the movies you see an old spooky house or you know big
Victorian styles or or something creepy about it they just kind of gives you the
impression but you know it might be the husband of the lady used to live here.
Apparently he died in the house and he thought maybe he might be him walking
around at night. Like with Tammy since the lights went off on her that night she
makes sure the basement door is locked closed and locked every night and I told
her Tammy if there's ghosts they can come through the door she goes I feel
safer with it locked. How old is your daughter? 26. 26. Yes it was a non-believer but
now she's a believer.
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Whenever we go somewhere we're always asking people have you heard of any
good ghost stories. One of the ladies we talked to said her son had worked at a
movie theater in Astoria that was haunted and so we tracked it down and
stories on the mountain of Columbia River. It's about 15 miles 18 miles north
of Seaside. Yep the oldest town west of the Rockies. A lot of old history there
real pretty and it just it just hasn't changed much. Liberty theater established
1925 has a ghost named Paul. I don't like being here alone because you don't know
what he's gonna do. It's like is he gonna start you know moving papers or he's
gonna start banging on the floor or if he's standing behind you. I don't like it.
My hair stands up on the back of my neck. I've seen ghosts years years before she
started working here. I got locked in the bathroom first time I ever came to the
theater. Well they're all different characters. You got Mary, you got Lily and
you got Paul. Lily she was killed in the theater and Mary the reason she's still
here she was thrown off the balcony. That's why she's here. Paul threw her off
the balcony. Oh I'm in trouble tonight.
Mary she really goes back and forth from theater three into ladies bathroom. Why
don't you tell us a little about this Mary. Has an experience here? Yeah you come up the ramp and if
you're real quiet and there's nobody in here the movies are out then she'll come
out and you can catch her in the mirror. Or you see the women's bathroom in the
mirror just look up there and then you'll see her. Mary comes from around
this corner from the theater and she goes directly into the bathroom. Which is
hers? This one. That is her bathroom. She don't like nobody in there. Like anybody
in there? No. What more can you say? Lily she don't like no man sitting in her seat in
the theater. This is her seat right here. This is hers right here? Does it have a number or anything? No.
Apparently some man it was her husband or fiance or somebody sat behind her and
split her throat. Glass fell down from up here? Yeah a friend of mine sat there for no
reason at all. He was in her chair and this sheet of glass came down right next to him.
Paul he's quite the character. Tell them about number three how he opens and closes that one.
Oh yeah this one here. Yeah he does he opens up real slow the door creaks open real slow.
Then you go to shut it and he just bam just slams shut. I called her one time.
Get down here I'm not being alone in this theater. So she came down. The night he
appeared to me right there the candy room door was opening and closing and I
told Lesley the candy room is open. She says no it's locked. No it's not it's
opening and Paul was standing right about where you were standing. I was behind the
candy counter over there. How tall was he? He was a little taller than you. He was probably about 6'1
6'2. I mean I turned around and he was standing there and I was looking at him
when he disappeared. How did you just disappear? Yeah I was just like somebody just shut off the
light when he was gone. I don't like this basement one bit.
I had to go down and change the CO2 tank but I didn't have to change it because
Paul turned it off. What it turned a knob? Yes. He turned that one quickly off. Yeah and then I
just looked up at the light bulb and it just twisted itself off. Okay. Why don't you tell us about this room here and some of the things that happened down here?
This is the room I think where he really stays at because there's always stuff
being moved. You're always hearing noises down here. He tried to lock you in down
there. I put a big bucket you know it's got something in on what it is but open
the door and I put the bucket in front of it and the ice machine is right by the
door and I'm dipping out ice and I'm sitting here scraping and I look over
and the bucket is moving. I'm sliding across the floor and the door is starting to slam shut.
Do you watch the bucket actually move on the floor? Right. And then stop and the door kept
trying to...like in the movies.
In that corner you get just the eeriest feeling in the world.
So as you go back that way, uncomfortable. Okay this is the area where the office
is upstairs and he had this whole floor just going nuts upstairs. This is the one
that's rolling? Yeah. We're sitting in here and back behind my seat here the floor
started tapping real loud and then right about about my heels the floor started
rolling up and down like this. It went across the room, started coming back and
about in the middle of the floor started pounding on the floor and it knocked her
and I both up in the air. Three times we left the floor and third time we came
down and hit shoulders and we were out the door.
I'm turning gray now and he's making it come like real fast. I'm getting old
working here. This count is a ghost town. So a lot of people as that's what they
like about it is why they come here. There's this one guy came in here going
Paul, Paul, Paul. I'm going oh my god don't get riled up. I have to be here after you leave.
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I love St. Helens area because it's still a small town. It's a beautiful part of
the country. I think it's probably the most beautiful that I've ever lived in.
When we first moved here, we ran an ad on the local TV channel for ghost stories.
One of the young ladies that presented information to us mentioned about we
ought to do a story on the ghosts of St. Helens, a senior high school. I said, what
ghosts? I went there, I graduated in 66. What ghosts are we talking about? And I
hadn't heard anything about it. Oh yeah, her name is Vera. Apparently the ghosts
came over when the high school did a music man production 11 years ago in
the state ever since. The Barlton band uniforms from the Pacific University in
Forest Grove and apparently the ghosts came with the uniforms to the high school.
No idea as to who was doing the footwork on the stage. Now where Vera got
involved is the fact these band uniforms were stored in the basement of the music
department over there. Vera was a music student there at the turn of the
century who was murdered one night.
We were doing a Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court and there's a scene
there where they have an eclipse and so we were just practicing. The stage was a
mess. I said okay, the lights go out and everybody crawled under the table and they
did their lines that they're supposed to stay down there and I said okay the
lights come on and they did. They all came on. Every light on the stage came on
and it was full power and a couple of kids looked up over the table and said who turned
those on and we all looked at each other and said I don't know because the lights
were on up in the booth and we could see there was no one there. Our whole
lighting system in this auditorium is governed by a computer up in the light
booth. This light that we have, one light in particular, if we turn off the
computer up above the light will still come on. We can unplug the computer and
light will still come on. My name is Dean Ebert and I work here at St. Helens
High School. I've been here since this foundation was poured. Dean is, well he's
an old friend of ours, but he's been around the system for actually longer
than I have. He works as a graveyard custodian up here. One other person
myself, we do the night crew chase the dust bunnies in the halls. There are a
few other things that kind of surprise us here in the auditorium once in a while.
Several years ago he and one of the other guys that was working here at the
time were doing their rounds and checking the rooms and they saw the
lights on in here. And he has to come back in the hallway area here to do the
restrooms, the dressing room. He comes flying out of there just really moving. I mean
he said somebody's playing the piano. So we came in and as we came through the
door the piano stopped. No lights are on. Somebody's having a great time. We don't
know why or who but...
There's no way we can explain them. Things that we've seen or things that
people that we say, no they're not gonna be exaggerating anymore and believe it.
No. Whether you believe in ghosts or believe what's happening there's something
happening here. It's fun. Is it true that if you don't acknowledge her something
goes wrong? Something does go wrong. We found out there were several plays that we
didn't put Vera in the program and things would go wrong. Superstitious
theater people we put Vera in every program and so she's listed as house
security for the play. And so the kids are always, once we get the programs
printed they're always double checking to make sure we've included the name
because it's important to them now to make sure that she's there so nothing
goes wrong. We were talking this morning about why
small towns are breeding grounds for ghost stories and I guess we've come
to the conclusion that they're everywhere. It's not just small towns.
They're everywhere.
This shop is very much different now.