Today is My Friday

During this time of year, I always get the hankering to watch a “scary movie.” I seldom have the patience to sit through a two-plus-hour movie, so I tend to be fairly picky about the ones I watch. The hunt for the perfect film for a spooky October night usually ends in frustration as I scroll through endless previews of slasher, jump scare and zombie flicks. However, I have found that the perfect ingredient for a movie that will send a chill down my spine is the child ghost. Maybe it is the tragedy of a life cut short or my curmudgeonly avoidance of small and noisy creatures, but nothing scares the bejeebers out of me like an undead kid. Today’s story deals with such a ghost. The Clark County Historical Museum is housed in a stately red brick building at the southeast corner of Main Street and E 16th Street. It was constructed in 1909 (with Hidden bricks, of course) as the City’s first public library and operated in that capacity until the early 1960s when the museum took ov...

I have a confession to make. When I was planning my fourth installment of Vancouver Ghost Stories, I had a completely different haunting in mind than the one I am writing about this week. I am not proud of it, but I changed my mind because I was craving a cookie. I will explain. The majority of my research for this series has been Pat Jollota’s fun book Haunted Vancouver, Washington which details reports of ghosts within our fair burg and provides possible identities of said spirits based on historical research. Many of the stories involve either buildings that are no longer in existence, like this or this , buildings that are not open to the public or private residences. The one that caught my eye this week involves a bakery. The building at the northwest corner of Columbia and 31st, built in the 1930s, originally served as a grocery store operated by Lucius and Celia Bagley, who also lived on the premises. After her husband’s death in 1944, Celia remained in the house u...

Welcome to another edition of Vancouver Ghost Stories, where I spotlight local hauntings each week in the month of October. The first two stories, which can be found here and here , involved ghostly appearances by spirits not thought to be associated with tragedies that occurred within the walls of the building. This week’s story is a little different. Photo credit: Haunted Vancouver by Pat Jollota When I arrived in Vancouver earlier this year, demolition of the Red Lion Inn on the waterfront was underway. Much of the structure visible from the street north of the hotel revealed a shabby exterior; it was clearly a building that had seen better days. The hotel opened as the Thunderbird Inn at the Quay in 1960, and I imagine that it was quite the glamorous spot with its expansive view of the Columbia River. The hotel became part of the Thunderbird/Red Lion chain in the early 1970s and was renamed the Red Lion Inn. In 1975, it was the scene of a murder. Marcia Elaine ...

October is National Pedestrian Safety Month, and this is an issue that is very important to me as an avid walker. I live on the north side of downtown Vancouver, and I walk several miles every day. There are some street crossings in the city where I do not feel safe as a pedestrian due to excessive speed and lack of attention by drivers. Typical transportation design in our country is focused on moving cars quickly and efficiently through the roadway network. Driver speed and convenience is often prioritized over pedestrian safety. Vancouver is no different from other American cities in this regard; however, an exception to this is the Uptown Village section of Main Street. Automobile drivers are more likely to travel at high speeds when there are fewer constraints on the road. Conversely, when structural limitations are added to a roadway, drivers will slow down. This article notes a correlation between lane widths and crash fatalities. Taking a look at Main Stre...

It is probably the unseasonably warm weather, but I am not yet feeling the Halloween vibes in this first week of October. I started a series of Vancouver Ghost Stories last week with this post to help me get me in the mood, but I have not yet achieved a sufficient level of spooktasticness. However, I have learned some fascinating local lore. Vancouver is the oldest city in Washington state, and old cities are full of history, old houses and ghosts. Today’s tale focuses on one of the city’s most prominent families and their historic mansion. The Lowell M. Hidden House at 100 W 13th Street was constructed in 1885 by Lowell Mason Hidden, the founder of Vancouver’s successful Hidden Brick Company. Since its founding in 1871 until its closing in 1992, the Hidden Brick Company supplied millions of bricks to several structures around the Vancouver area as well as other buildings in Portland, Astoria and Tacoma. Lowell and his family lived in the house until after his death in 1923....