Heceta Head Keeper's House
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Dates Active: 1950s to Present
Category: Haunting, Lighthouses, Mysterious Sounds
Cause: Unknown
Status: Ongoing
Entry ID: 012624A-00042
Summery:
The ghost of an old woman haunts the Keeper's House at Heceta Head Lighthouse, which is now a bed and breakfast. Reported activity includes disembodied voices, moving objects, knocking and banging, as well as full-body apparitions.
In Depth:
Heceta Head is a light station near Florence, Oregon that was built in the 1890s. The property has several buildings on it, including the lighthouse itself, a few sheds, and the Keeper's House. It is the Keeper's House that is supposedly haunted by a gray lady that some have taken to calling Rue, who has appeared to people on several occasions.
Strange activity has been reported at this location since the 1950s, but documentation of such stories were not well kept due to the area's isolation. People really started taking notice of the strange activity in the 1970s, when the Keeper's House was put to use as a satellite classroom for Lane Community College's arts and sciences programs. Harry and Anne Tammen, a couple from California, moved into the house and took over caretaking duties on the grounds. The Tammens had several strange encounters, including a screams, gray smoke or mist moving about both inside and outside the house, objects moving about the house with no explanation, and the face of an old woman appearing in the attic window.
Things came to a head when the house underwent renovations, and a worker named Jim Anderson was doing some painting and general cleaning. He had been cleaning the attic window when he saw a reflection in the glass, and when he turned to see what it was he came face to face with the specter of an "old, wrinkle-faced woman" dressed in a period dress floating just above the floor. When she disappeared, he ran from the house, refusing to come back for several days.
When Jim Anderson finally returned, he refused to work inside the attic. One day he accidentally broke one of the attic windows, and, still refusing to enter the attic itself, performed all of the repairs from the outside leaving the broken glass scattered on the floor out the attic. Not telling the Tammens of the breakage, he left for the day. That night, the Tammens thought they heard the sound of something scraping against the attic floor, and upon investigating the next morning found the glass that Jim had left had been swept up into a neat little pile.
The Tammens, curious about the strange activity, tried to communicate with the spirit using a Ouija board. During the session the spirit received a name: Rue.
Activity still continues to be encountered at the house even today. Below are just some of the reports of strange happenings surrounding the Keeper's House.
Reported Activity (Current as of 2017):
- Footsteps have been heard often throughout the house, especially
coming up from the cellar or up in the attic. This also happens along
both sets of stairs leading up to the rooms from the ground floor.
- Dishes can be heard rattling in the kitchen cupboards, though the noise stops when someone enters the room.
- A box of rat poison that was left in the attic was found missing, and in its place was a pair of women’s stockings.
- Doors, windows, draws and cupboards have been found opened when they had been closed previously. Many of these have latches that prevent them from opening of their own accord, and no one was around that could have opened them.
- The Keeper’s House would become unbearably warm in the very early morning hours, typically between 2:00am and 4:00am every morning, despite no fire in the fireplace and no other active heat source. Some guests claim they had to keep the windows to their rooms open in order to cool off their rooms, even when the weather outside is below freezing.
- A woman can be seen staring out of the attic window. Multiple witnesses have seen this at various points in time.
- A woman can be seen walking through the house and through doors in a gray mist. In one instance, the woman was seen carrying items from the dining room to the kitchen after dinner.
- A guest at the bed and breakfast for a wedding found that the bathroom door would keep locking by itself. That same guest had a closet door that was wedged shut against a rise in the floor slam shut on her.
- Another guest that was packing up to leave had a suitcase that was laid flat on the bed fly across the room and hit the wall with a great amount of force. No one else was in the room at the time.
- One of the employees told a guest that the once had to stay in one of the unoccupied rooms due to the road to their home being blocked by a mudslide. Upon his lying down on the bed that night, he heard a loud, audible “Don’t!” call out to him. There was no one else in the room.
- The same employee said they saw a stack of dishes float off the shelf in the kitchen and drop to the floor, shattering them.
- Hosts of the Keepers House tell guests to be mindful of leaving any electronics lying around, as Rue will occasionally get playful and relocated them to various other places in the room.
- A guest that stayed at the bed and breakfast for several nights in early 2019. During the night she had a dream about a woman who was distraught over losing her child. In the dream, this woman told her that she was ‘taking her child to heaven’ and then threw herself off of a cliff. This was before she had heard any of the stories about Rue. Several other guests have reported similar dream experiences.
- A child was heard playing on and around the stairs leading up to the
bedrooms one night. In the morning the guest who heard the racket
inquired of the other guests as to whose child it was. They were
informed that children were not allowed to stay at the B&B. [NOTE: The Heceta Head Bed and Breakfast will only allow children to stay if all of the rooms have been reserved by the same party, such as for holiday family gatherings or weddings.]
- One guest happened to have the entire house to himself when he heard quite a few different noises from different locations in the house. Among the sounds that he heard was a man crying outside of his room, a child playing around the stairs, and tapping and dragging sounds. He tried to record the sounds but when replayed none of them recordings came up with anything.
- A couple of friends stayed the night in the same room with one of them using a rollaway between the window and the room’s bed. When they woke up the next morning the window was found to be open, even though to do so one would have had to stand on top of the sleeping guest in order to do so.
- Several guests testified to having felt a pressure on them while they were trying to sleep. None of them felt threatened or afraid.
- Numerous guests spoke of hearing scraping or dragging sounds coming from the attic.
- A 6-year-old child staying at the B&B for a wedding said he refused to use the bathroom in the Mariner Room I. When asked why the boy said it was because of ‘the three white people, the kind that float.’ [NOTE: The Heceta Head Bed and Breakfast will only allow children to stay if all of the rooms have been reserved by the same party, such as for holiday family gatherings or weddings.]
- A group of teenagers staying the night came downstairs in the middle of the night to help themselves to some snacks from the kitchen. While they were down there they could hear a baby crying in one of the other rooms upstairs. Come to find out the next morning that none of the other guests staying that night had a baby.
- The front doors of the Keeper’s House lock automatically when closed, a feature meant to keep guests of the Heceta Head Lighthouse State Scenic Viewpoint from entering the bed and breakfast. However, two 13-year-olds and their parents, who were staying at the house, witnessed the locked door open of its own accord in order to let one of the house cats outside. A separate adult guest reported seeing the door open for a cat several years later, as well.
- In 2006, six different guests heard what sounded like a man calling for help in the early morning hours, sometime around 3:30am. After investigating the source of the sound, no person was found.
- Several different guests have reported that their bedside lamps would turn themselves on in the middle of the night. One guest had an electric candle repeatedly turn itself on in their room.
- A pair of guests from Utah claims that one of them saw an old woman in 1900s clothing seated next to another visitor on top of the upping stone and didn’t tell the other until several years later.
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Last Updated: March 23, 2024
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