Spooky Oregon: Tales of Hauntings, Strange Happenings, and Other Local Lore

by S. E. Schlosser, Paul G. Hoffman (Illustrator)

Overview

Spooky happenings throughout Oregon

Pull up a chair or gather ‘round the campfire and get ready for forty creepy tales of ghostly hauntings, eerie happenings, and other strange occurrences from times past! Oregon folklore traditions are kept alive in these expert retellings by master storyteller S. E. Schlosser and through artist Paul Hoffman’s evocative illustrations. You’ll meet ghosts and witches, hear things that go bump in the night, and feel an icy wind on the back of your neck on a warm summer evening. Now with brand new stories, this entertaining and compelling collection will have you looking over your shoulder again and again.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781493034659
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2018
Series:	Spooky
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

S. E. Schlosser has been telling stories since she was a child, when games of "let's pretend" quickly built themselves into full-length stories. She created and maintains the website AmericanFolklore.net, where she shares a wealth of stories from all 50 states, some dating back to the origins of America. She lives in the Phoenix, Arizona region. She is the franchise author for this series.

Paul Hoffman illustrates books of many genres—children's titles, textbooks, short story collections, natural history volumes, and cookbooks. For the Spooky series, he employs a scratchboard technique and an active imagination. He lives in Massachusetts.

Read an Excerpt

1. Monster - When his injured son returns home without his twin sisters, a father races through the fog to their rescue. As the mist thickens near the lakeshore, the father catches tantalizing glimpses of the girls and hears them sobbing for help. But each time he draws near the mist-riven figures, they vanish before he can reach them. As he stumbles about in the swirling darkness, it becomes obvious there is more at work here than an accident caused by the sudden thick mist covering the water. Something far more sinister is luring the father toward his doom in the depths of the mist-covered lake. Will he survive?

2. Rue the day - A carpenter was commissioned to work on the light keeper's house at Heceta Head. While working in the attic, he encountered the ghost of a woman (called Rue) floating a few inches above the floor. Spooked, he dove through the ghost and jumped down through the trap door. It took him a few days to regain his nerve and return to his work site. He was not thrilled when he learned an attic window was broken and he need to replace it. This time, the carpenter opted to remained outside the house; instead climbing up a ladder to replace a broken attic window. When he spotted the same floating woman peering out at him through the broken glass, he made a beeline for home and never returned! Back inside the locked attic, someone... was it Rue?... swept up the glass from the broken window and left it in a neat pile for the caretakers when they unlocked the attic the next morning.

3. The Wanderer - An out-of-town nurse summoned to care for the sick during the Spanish Flu epidemic in Portland encounters an eccentric old man that raises strange visions in her mind; visions of death and disaster and plague. She is terrified when she meets the old man a second time on a street corner as she walks to the makeshift clinic to start her evening shift a few nights later. When he faints at her feet, she has the old man carried to the clinic and cares for him through the night. Each time she touches him, the nurse is beset with strange visions of disaster, starting in ages long past and moving forward in time. She sees the face of the Wanderer in every age. As the night progresses, the nurse realizes the unconscious man is aging in reverse - becoming younger each hour until he is a handsome young man in his early thirties as dawn breaks. By the time he wakes, the nurse has guessed the man's his true identity. She bustles the now-healed individual out of the clinic and drives him to the edge of town. As the wanderer takes his leave, the Spanish Flu stops spreading and the people of Portland begin to heal.

Table of Contents

Contents

Map viii
IntroductIon x
PART ONE: GHOST STORIES

1. The Handkerchief 2
Newport
2. Top Hat and Cane 9
Bend
3. Neahkahnie Treasure 15
Tillamook County
4. Shanghaied 22
Portland
5. Looking for Johnny 28
Oregon City
6. The Green Lady 38
Jacksonville
7. The Mad Logger 44
Lincoln County
8. The Sandbar 51
Astoria
9. The Rivals 57
Sisters
10. Cold 64
Ashland
11. The Cabin 70
Mount Hood
12. The Golden Hand 76
Medford

PART TWO: POWERS OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT

13. Devil's Lake 82
Lincoln City
14. The Lights 89
Hells Canyon
15. Trespassing 94
Cascade Mountain
16. Tommy Knockin' 107
John Day
17. Griffin 116
Merlin
18. The Cheshire Cat 124
Eugene
19. Bandage Man 135
Cannon Beach
20. Laughing Devil 141
Gold Beach
21. The Devil's Sink 146
Elgin
22. Time Slip 156
Fort Clatsop
23. Destiny 165
Crater Lake
24. The New Neighbor 178
Baker City
25. Close Encounter 184
Willamette Forest

And Featuring FiveNEWStories: "Monster," "Rue the Day," "The Wanderer," "The Underground," and "The Festival."

Resources 189
About the Author 195
About the Illustrator 196

Editorial Reviews

Forest sounds and the gentle slap of Pacific waves form the background music for this collection of ghostly tales. Master storyteller S. E. Schlosser adds to her enviable bibliography of eerie, yet strangely winning stories of local hauntings and unexplained occurrences. Ideal campfire accompaniment.