As haunted tourism booms, Oregon cashes in on its ghostly past

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Come October, Oregon leans hard into the macabre and grabs its share of the more than $30 billion dark tourism market. Chilling tales, brooding weather and historic charm make Oregon an ideal destination for thrill-seeking travelers. Ghost hunters who make the trip are rewarded with dozens of reportedly haunted places to visit, and even more tales from the dark side.

With its haunting landscape and heavy skies, Oregon is a natural stage for the unexplainable. The sense that a ghost might be lingering just out of sight, never far from the living, is enough to draw impressive spooky-season crowds. They come to spend the night in creaky old hotels rumored to host ghostly guests, wander shadowed burial grounds where the dead refuse to rest and descend into a labyrinth of underground passages tied to the darkest of legends.

Americans have a deep fascination with the paranormal. What began in famously creepy destinations like Salem, Mass., and New Orleans, La., has spread throughout the United States, and Oregon is increasingly part of the conversation.

Dark history lies beneath Portland

Portland's Shanghai Tunnels are more than a quirky footnote in local lore. They're a spine-tingling draw for visitors who seek ghost stories with grit and history. The underground passageways once connected the city's waterfront with bars, basements and storage areas. In the late 19th century, legend has it, unsuspecting bar patrons were drugged, dropped through trapdoors and "shanghaied," or kidnapped and forced onto ships bound for Asia.

The tunnel system has been called one of the most haunted places on earth, and that eerie reputation is well earned. Tour guides and visitors report sensing or seeing ghosts, lights turning on and off and items moving about inexplicably. Many describe hearing voices or feeling ghostly fingers on their shoulders.

Some explorers report that ghosts in the tunnels purposely trip people, pull their hair, push them against walls and watch intently as you meander around the dark and dank halls. Here, urban legends collide with atmospheric storytelling, and that's exactly what visitors come for.

Hotels where some guests never sleep

Oregon's historic inns and hotels offer overnight stays with an extra chill. The Wolf Creek Inn, built in 1883, is the oldest continuously operating inn in the Pacific Northwest. It's also one of the most haunted places you'll ever sleep. Guests and staff report experiencing cold spots, footsteps, voices, music playing and even apparitions in period dress.

The Geiser Grand Hotel in Baker City, a Victorian landmark dating to 1889, is also known for unexplained activity. Stories of a female ghost in a 1930s-style purple dress, a saloon dancer from the 1920s, a headless chef, a cowboy and his girlfriend and a lady in blue who floats up the grand staircase, rearranges guests' belongings and eats their snacks, have become part of its lore.

At Eugene's Victorian-era Shelton McMurphey Johnson House, visitors tell of footsteps on empty staircases, flickering lights and mysterious bursts of laughter. There's even a spooky doll room that becomes even more so when you hear about the time one of the dolls inexplicably fell over on its face just as a visitor entered the room.

Bend's McMenamin's Old St. Francis School delivers one of the creepiest stories of all. At bedtime, a couple left a cell phone on their bedside table. When they awoke the next morning, they found a photo taken with the phone of themselves asleep in the bed.

Walking with Oregon's ghosts

From lantern-lit cemeteries in Eugene to Bend's legendary O'Kane Building, the alleyways of Ashland and historic saloons and churches in Oregon City, Oregon's haunted tours deliver more than jump scares. They connect visitors to Oregon's history through stories that blur the line between rumor and truth.

Eugene's Pioneer Cemetery, with more than 4,000 graves, boasts numerous reported sightings of spectral figures in the fog. Students have claimed the sounds of bagpipes echo from the cemetery on certain nights. Others have said they see women in white dresses wandering through the cemetery, cleaning gravestones and tending to spirits.

On a Bend ghost tour, you might meet a mischievous spirit named Gretchen haunting the Pine Tavern or long-dead builder Hugh O'Kane roaming about the building that bears his name. In Ashland, haunted tours spotlight spectral figures said to wander the streets near the Oregon Shakespeare Festival grounds and old downtown hotels, where guests and staff have long whispered about restless presences that never checked out.

In St. Helens, where Disney's "Halloweentown" was filmed, an annual Spirit of Halloweentown festival celebrates the intersection between family fun and ghost stories that give you goosebumps. The event, which Travel Portland calls a "celebration of the spookiest holiday around," includes parades, haunted tours, costume contests and pumpkin lightings, making it one of the most enjoyable ways to embrace the state's ghostly lore.

Why we chase the unknown

For many curious tourists, catching a glimpse of a ghost isn't the main goal. They come to be immersed in an atmosphere where anything seems possible. The creaking stairs, aged wood and dim lighting of historic places create a charged setting that lets them slip into a state of suspended belief.

"You don't have to see a ghost to feel it," says a woman named Susan, keeping close to her guide in the Shanghai Tunnels. "People come here because it feels different than anywhere else." Even skeptics admit there's something about Oregon, the way the wind moves and the shadows shift, that makes everyone feel like the past isn't quite done with us.

Oregon's ghosts aren't going anywhere

What began as local lore has become a major draw in the booming dark tourism market. With its shadowy history and abundance of haunted hotels, chilling ghost tours and unsettling accounts of the paranormal, Oregon stands out as a favorite stop for adventurous travelers. In a multi-billion-dollar industry that shows no sign of slowing, Oregon has secured its reputation as one of the most compelling haunted destinations in the country.

Robin Donovan is a food and travel writer, a bestselling cookbook author and the founder of All Ways Delicious, a website loaded with easy recipes from around the world. Her writing is featured in major media outlets, including Chicago Sun-Times, Huffington Post, MSN, Seattle Times, Cooking Light, PopSugar, Fitness, SF Gate, Mercury News and many others.