transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:06] The night and the light sat down for tea, and there they made the wager. Said night to light, Your sun shines bright, but I bet I can cage her. A while back, we received a letter from a woman named Jennifer, and Jennifer told us a story about a bed and breakfast on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Built next to a lighthouse, this bed and breakfast is where the lightkeepers and their families live. And there are rumors that some of them never left. And so on a very special episode, we're packing our bags and joining Spooked producer, Zoë Ferrigno on a very special field trip. Spooked starts now.

Speaker 2:
[03:02] When I first arrived at the Heceta Lighthouse Bed & Breakfast, everyone kept telling me the same thing. You have to walk up to the lighthouse at night. The view from up there is supposedly spectacular. So that evening, I waited until the sun went down, and then I headed out, up a forested trail that snakes along the edge of a cliff. Along the way, I ran into some people. Two of them, Lena and Rihanna, work at the bed & breakfast. They were on their way up to the lighthouse with Rihanna's partner Dane, and nine-year-old son Adric, and they invited me to join them. To be honest, I was happy to have some company. It was kind of a strange night. Wildfires were burning just to the east of us. Ash was falling from the sky like snow. And there was a haze of smoke covering the full moon.

Speaker 3:
[04:02] You see the red moon?

Speaker 2:
[04:04] Yeah, it's really... It's eerie, right? Yeah. Finally, we reached the lighthouse, and I understood why everyone had been so insistent that I come up here. The lighthouse is beautiful. It has a bright red roof, and underneath it, rays of golden light shoot out in every direction. It's actually the brightest lighthouse beacon in the whole state of Oregon. It can be seen up to 21 miles out at sea. Back in the day, two lightkeepers took turns working through the night, keeping the lamps lit. Now of course, the beacon is automated, but standing underneath the lighthouse in the dark, it was easy to imagine that I was back in the 1890s when it was built. But then Rihanna's son, Adric, said something that brought me back to the moment and why I was there.

Speaker 4:
[05:02] Hey, it looks like my beeping device.

Speaker 3:
[05:04] Why, after it goes, it like, it rings.

Speaker 4:
[05:07] Yeah, it does look a lot like it, doesn't it?

Speaker 2:
[05:08] That quarter looks like your ghost hunting device. Oh, cool. Adric is an amateur ghost hunter. He even has a YouTube channel. So, Adric, you're not scared of ghosts? No, never. How come? You're just very brave.

Speaker 3:
[05:25] Well, I'm a sort of creepy person, so I'm never scared.

Speaker 2:
[05:29] Wow, you're braver than me. I'd arrived at the Bed & Breakfast earlier that day. It's a big white house with a pitched roof and a picket fence that sits right above the ocean. It's gorgeous. But I was a little nervous about spending the night there. I'm a big scaredy cat. I actually asked if I could just visit the Bed & Breakfast and then stay in a hotel in town. But my editor said no. So there I was. I checked into my room, and then I went to meet Michelle Corgan, who runs the Bed & Breakfast, for a tour of the house.

Speaker 4:
[06:15] We're going to sneak in through the guest kitchen. I'll show you the behind the scenes.

Speaker 2:
[06:20] Cool, thank you. Michelle led me through the dining room and two parlors on the ground floor. The house is full of antique furniture and local art, and grainy black and white photographs line the walls. Upstairs, there are six guest rooms, each decorated in a different motif.

Speaker 4:
[06:46] This one in particular has a view of the lighthouse, so we call it the Lightkeeper's Room. Light shines way above the house, so it doesn't shine right into your room here.

Speaker 2:
[06:56] That's beautiful.

Speaker 4:
[06:57] Isn't it?

Speaker 5:
[06:57] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[07:01] Back in the 90s, Michelle's parents were chosen by the US. Forest Service to help restore the house and make it more accessible to the public.

Speaker 4:
[07:09] And they thought the way to do that would be to turn it into a bed and breakfast. I came here for the summer just to figure out what's next. Grad school. Am I going to get some life experience, do some traveling? And I didn't leave. I haven't left the area and that was over 25 years ago.

Speaker 2:
[07:34] By then, the old lightkeeper's home already had a reputation for being haunted by a ghost named Rue. There were stories of people seeing the apparition of a woman wearing old, timey clothes. Legend has it that some caretakers of the house tried to get in touch with her using a Ouija board, and it spelled out R-U-E. The name stuck. Michelle knew about the Rue rumors when she moved into the house, but...

Speaker 4:
[08:08] I've kind of always downplayed the ghost story because I feel like our intent here is to talk about the history and to really honor the hard work that it took these families to have a go at living 15 miles from any small town, nowhere in these harsh conditions.

Speaker 2:
[08:30] Does that mean that you don't believe in it?

Speaker 4:
[08:33] Oh, no. I think there's definitely something here. I've definitely had very odd things happen in this house.

Speaker 2:
[08:44] In each of the rooms, there's a guest journal where people can write about their stay and whether or not they encountered Rue. It looks like it's a mixed bag of maybe, maybe not.

Speaker 4:
[08:57] Of ghosts? Yeah. Well, I've heard that most people who aren't believers have the most experiences. Okay. And that people who are really wanting and yearning for an experience have a tough time.

Speaker 2:
[09:17] I did not want to have an experience with Rue, but I kept running into the same story, that Rue was the ghost of a lightkeeper's wife whose child died at Heceta Head. Mary Nolte, the historian for The Lighthouse, told me that there's no hard evidence to back that theory up. But a lot of people I spoke to who've worked in the house said they don't need evidence to convince them that it's haunted. Michelle told me about the time she worked a wedding at the house.

Speaker 4:
[09:46] So there's like five of us in the kitchen. We're coming to the very end of the service. We have a bowl of little baby potatoes sitting on a shelf. And we're standing there. And the bowl of potatoes basically looked to me like it levitated away from the shelf and dropped to the ground. And all four or five of us that are there just paused and looked at each other like, what was that?

Speaker 2:
[10:18] I also talked to Daniel Walker, who is the caretaker at the house for four years.

Speaker 6:
[10:24] It sounds kind of silly, but the first six months, it felt like I was kind of being put to the test a little bit. When I'm shutting down the house for the night, I could just feel a certain presence kind of hanging over my shoulder.

Speaker 2:
[11:08] Daniel and his girlfriend at the time actually lived at the house, in an apartment down in the basement.

Speaker 6:
[11:16] It must have been a few months after we'd gotten here. I'm laying in bed, just reading a book. I was the only one in the apartment. And suddenly the objects on my end table, box of tissues, my cup, just go flying off. Like somebody just took their arm and just kind of like sweep everything off of the end table.

Speaker 2:
[11:49] And then there's Jennifer Chaney. Jennifer's lived on the Oregon Coast for about 40 years.

Speaker 3:
[11:55] And so I have heard many stories over the years about the Heceta headlight house and this idea that there was a ghost named Rue.

Speaker 2:
[12:06] But that didn't stop her from taking a job at the Bed & Breakfast back in 2017. In fact, she liked hearing stories about the ghost.

Speaker 3:
[12:16] Well, I'm always one for a great story. But after working there for a couple of months, I come to the point where I haven't had any experiences myself and I am not really a person who believes in things that are unexplained. I just wrote it off as, this is community legend and something fun to talk about. But realistically, I didn't believe that there was anything haunting the house. I'm working at the lighthouse, serving breakfast on this particular morning. We served all the guests, and all the guests have left by 10 o'clock. Everybody's cleared out, and the house is very quiet.

Speaker 2:
[13:13] New guests would be arriving in just a few hours. So Jennifer and her coworker Gail were hustling to clean up the kitchen and get everything ready. Jennifer grabbed a stack of dishes and headed across the house to put them away.

Speaker 3:
[13:28] I'm walking through the parlor and out of the corner of my eye in the very large mirror that sits over the couch in the parlor, I see the reflection of a woman sitting in a chair looking out the window. She had dark hair, she was probably in her mid-30s. She had her hair up on top of her head and she had a white blouse. I think, oh, one of our guests is still here and she's just enjoying the view before she leaves. And I think when I come back, I'll make eye contact with her and I'll say, isn't it a nice day? Are you still going to stay in town? Anything to just connect with them. So I put the stack of dishes down, turned around and came back. And the woman is no longer sitting in the chair. It was curious to me that she had moved so fast because she was so quiet and still, the way that she was sitting and turned and looking out at the ocean so pensively. I didn't hear her leave, I didn't hear a door. And so I'd come back to the kitchen, and I asked Gail, did a woman come through here? And she said, no. And I said, well, I just saw a woman out in the parlor. I think we still have a guest. And she said, oh, nobody's here. She goes, it's just you and me. We look out into the back where all the cars are and there's no cars. At this time, the guest house is not open for outside visitors yet. So, I'm not completely sure who I've seen, but I know I saw somebody. I said, Gail, I just saw a woman in the parlor. She was sitting in the chair, in the red chair, looking out at the ocean. And she said, well, maybe you saw Rue. There's an awkward moment of, oh, huh, maybe that's what I saw. But it didn't seem like a figment to me. I had seen this woman as plain as day. It was probably a month or two later when I was cleaning in the space, and there again, I was alone. The house is quiet, there's nobody there yet. I'm sweeping and dusting up the top of the piano. I look up at the photos that are on the wall, and there's a photo just to the left of the piano of a woman that lived in the light keepers home for a very long time. I absolutely got to shiver up my spine, and I realized that is the woman that I saw sitting in the reflection of the mirror, Jenny. She came there from California, and she was married to one of the lightkeepers. I believe it was 1910 or so. The story was that when Jenny was there in the very beginning, she was very unhappy for the first couple of years. She was very lonely. It's very isolated up at the lightkeeper's home. She didn't have children. She was hoping to bear a child. We had records of her writing home about how lonely she was and desperate she was and that she wanted to leave. I feel like I just saw an image of Jenny sitting there pondering her life there. I think that the life that Jenny went there to live and that ended up happening for her was not originally what she planned. She married somebody that she barely knew. She came to a place that was very isolated and alone. She probably sat there wondering, am I going to be able to have a baby? Am I going to be able to have a family here of my own? I felt like I could understand how hard that must have been. It was only after being there in a couple of years and expressing to her husband her desperation and loneliness that he actually wrote to the Lightkeeper Society and asked permission for her to paint the walls and change some of the decor. And so she began to feel at home there.

Speaker 2:
[19:13] I asked Jennifer if she thought that the ghost everybody called Rue was actually Jenny. She said, it's possible. After all, there's no record of anyone named Rue ever living in the house. But then again, they didn't always keep a record of the women who lived there, only their husbands.

Speaker 3:
[19:36] So I've been working at the light keeper's home for about a year and a half. At this point, I'm a believer. But I'm never afraid to be there.

Speaker 2:
[19:51] When winter rolled around, the bed and breakfast closed for a couple weeks for renovations. The caretaker needed a night off, so Jennifer's manager asked if anyone else would stay overnight and do security.

Speaker 3:
[20:04] So I immediately say, sure, I'll be glad to stay there. I've stayed there before, when other guests were there. I know that it's a beautiful view at night. I want to watch the sunset. I ask my partner to come. We get there just at sunset. It's very dark. I turn on the lights, and a lot of things are covered up with sheets and moved around to the center of the floor because they're painting the walls. Even the chandeliers are covered with sheets. And Steve comes in behind me, and he laughs and says, This is like a Scooby-Doo cartoon. You've brought me to a haunted house, and everything's covered in sheets.

Speaker 5:
[20:55] I had heard about the rumors, and so I made a joke. Kind of zoinks. But I don't believe it. I'm a scientist. I don't believe in anything that's not observable, confirmable, and or tangible. These were just rumors to me. It's a nice, still, beautiful evening, so we decide to go out to the front porch, which looks south over the cove.

Speaker 3:
[21:32] We get in position in our Adirondack chairs, and we have our blankets tugged, and we open a bottle of wine, and Steve has brought his speaker. It's crabbing season, and you can see all the lights of the fishing boats on the horizon.

Speaker 5:
[21:52] We're sitting there for about 20 minutes listening to a bunch of different tunes, and then all of a sudden the front door slams closed.

Speaker 3:
[22:05] The music stops without any explanation. It gets very quiet. The front door is locked. But I had the keys in my pocket. So I get up and I try the key in the lock, and it won't turn. I can't move it. I can't get it open. It won't open. Which I find mysterious. My only other option is to go through the basement door. So I walk around the house, and I go down to the basement door, and this time, my key works. The light switch to the basement is all the way on the other side, and I have to go through the dark. I run through as quickly as I can, and I turn the switch on, I run up the stairs, and as I'm walking by the parlor, I hear voices coming from the parlor. And my heart starts to race a little bit. It was almost like a man and a woman's low murmuring. I can't make out what they're saying, but it sounded like questions. What are they doing here? Why are they here? Who is this? But then as I kind of start to walk forward, they stop. And then I looked into the parlor. There's no one there. It was really unnerving. But then I think I'm probably just getting worked up. Maybe it's wind. So I go back out on the porch. We prop the door a little bit open, and we sit there for a few minutes. And we've had our glass of wine, and we've enjoyed the view, and it is starting to get a little cold. It is January. We decide we're gonna go upstairs and go to bed. So the room that Steve and I decide to stay in that night is the Queen Anne room. And it's really the most romantic. It's got a four-post bed. It has draping. It's dark reds and golds. It feels the most elegant and regal. Steve started getting settled, and I ran back down to grab some water. And I came back by the parlor and heard the voices a second time. When I heard the voices the first time, I made excuses for it, what it might be. And this time, I know I heard voices. I was getting very nervous that something was going on that could not be explained. I just have this uneasy feeling that we're not there alone. I'm going up the stairs, and I'm thinking, I'm really nervous about staying the night now, but I felt I needed to follow through with my commitment. I had said I would stay there that night for security reasons, and I always do what I say I'm going to do. So I ignored my fear. I figured once we got all settled in, I would feel more comfortable.

Speaker 5:
[26:33] I'm tired. It's getting late. I have to work early the next morning. So I take my clothes off and pull the sheets back, and I climb on into bed. Jennifer's on my right side near the door, doing what she needs to do to get ready for bed, and I'm just laying there quietly with my eyes closed. And then, all of a sudden, I hear a thump upstairs, and then another thump, and then I hear another thump.

Speaker 3:
[27:13] Just thump, thump, thump, thump, like somebody's pacing.

Speaker 5:
[27:20] I think, okay, it could be the house settling.

Speaker 3:
[27:23] You know, maybe we have rats in the attic. So I ignore it, and I don't look up at Steve, and I'm changing into my pajamas. I'm leaned down, and I hear the steps again.

Speaker 5:
[27:41] It's moving from the center of the house towards the eastern wall. Then it starts traveling along the same line back. So it's gone from one end to where the window is. And back again, I'm thinking, this is weird. Is somebody up there? Maybe there's not a car in the parking lot, but maybe somebody has gotten into the house, and jimmied one of the doors, and we just didn't notice. But I don't say anything to Jennifer.

Speaker 3:
[28:22] I pull back the covers, and at that moment, I hear the steps. For a third time, coming back the other way, at this point, I'm scared. I look Steve in the eye, and he says, I'm out.

Speaker 5:
[28:48] I throw back the covers, and I tell Jennifer, let's go.

Speaker 1:
[28:51] We are out of here.

Speaker 5:
[28:53] I want to go get in our car, and I want to drive home. I don't believe what I'm about to say, but we're not wanted there. I just feel it on an intuitive level.

Speaker 3:
[29:10] And I say, we can't, we can't leave. And he goes, did you just hear footsteps? And I said, yes. And he goes, did you hear it before? And I said, yes. And he goes, you can stay if you want to, but I'm leaving. I say, okay, we'll go. I will tell my manager what happened. She'll understand. It'll be okay. I feel extreme urgency at this point to get out of there and get away from this place that I have always felt comfortable and never scared. So we both start packing up our things. I'm moving as quickly as I can. I throw all my stuff into the bag. I make sure that the lights are off, but I don't even stop to make up the bed. I just wanted to get out of there right then.

Speaker 5:
[30:05] There's fight or flight. This was flight.

Speaker 3:
[30:13] And then, at the point we're going down the stairs, I have this complete sense of dread. My heart's racing. I'm almost afraid to look back because I feel like there's something behind me. I felt that we were being chased out. I go down the stairs. I run past the parlor. I don't want to hear the voices again. We leave the building and I lock up the doors. We are run walking to the car.

Speaker 5:
[30:56] And Bluetooth speaker starts going crazy. Static that's increasing louder and louder.

Speaker 3:
[31:10] I look through the bag for the speaker. I find it. It's not on. And then I look back up at the room that we were staying in and the light is still on. I'm petrified because I was sure that I turned the light off. Something was going on that I could not explain. And we needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. We get in the car. We back up. And as we're leaving, the sound went dim from the speaker.

Speaker 5:
[31:57] The further we get away, the more relieved I'm feeling.

Speaker 3:
[32:02] We get back closer to town and I can use my phone again. I text my boss and I say, I'm sorry we are not able to spend the night. We had some very strange experiences and I can't explain it, but I'm not comfortable staying. And she writes back and says, now you know why I asked you to stay. I'm not staying there anymore.

Speaker 2:
[32:32] When I met Jennifer during my trip to Hisceta Head, I asked her what she thinks happened that night.

Speaker 3:
[32:40] I'm almost wondering if when I'm there as a worker that whatever spirit is present knows me and has accepted me and it doesn't bother me, but now I'm there with this strange man that it doesn't know. If it is Jenny, perhaps she's confused about why her house is being torn apart, why things are being moved around. Maybe she thinks we're the people that are causing all this disruption in her house.

Speaker 2:
[33:15] She told me that she's thought a lot about the work that Jenny put into the house to try to make it feel a little bit more like hers, a little less lonely.

Speaker 3:
[33:27] She found a positive way to spend her time there, and then she became part of the space. And when things are out of order, she gets upset.

Speaker 2:
[33:45] Jennifer is not the only person who feels this way.

Speaker 4:
[33:48] I heard similar theories from Michelle, When things are in disarray or a little chaotic around here, that's when we get participation.

Speaker 2:
[33:59] And from Daniel.

Speaker 6:
[34:02] A lot of people experience their stuff being moved around, so their slippers will be straightened, or their bedspread flattened out. So a lot of the times, it seems like there is a helpful spirit here that is still just taking care of the place and providing hospitality to a certain extent.

Speaker 2:
[34:28] It doesn't sound very hospitable to me to knock all your stuff off of.

Speaker 6:
[34:34] Yeah. I don't know what that was about, to be honest.

Speaker 2:
[34:45] After my hike up to the lighthouse, I headed back to the bed and breakfast. All the other guests had already gone to bed, and everything was quiet. I walked through the parlor and up the stairs to the Queen Anne room, the same room that Jennifer and Steve had tried to stay in. As I got ready for bed, I was still thinking about all the stories I'd heard about the house. And I started to wonder, if Rue or Jenny didn't like it when people made a mess in her house, how did she feel about people with tape recorders wandering around and asking questions? It didn't feel scary in the house. It was actually really cozy and warm. But just for good measure. To Rue, to Jenny, to whoever might be here. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3:
[35:50] I really appreciate it. Your house is beautiful.

Speaker 2:
[35:54] And please don't scare me in the night. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5:
[36:02] And good night.

Speaker 1:
[36:18] Thank you, thank you, thank you so much to all those who shared their knowledge and their stories about The Lightkeepers Home, to Jennifer, to Steve, Michelle, Mary, Daniel, and Aedric. This story, it's dedicated to the memory of Pam Porter, Zoë's beloved grandmother. May you rest in blessings, and wherever you are, know that your granddaughter loves you very much, as you loved her. The original score for this story was by Doug Stuart. It was produced by Pam Porter's granddaughter, Zoë Ferrigno. If you need more Spooked, be afraid, because each and every week, you can listen anywhere on any platform. Please let somebody know it's the only way this works. And Spooksters, this was a story about a very specific place. Maybe you know of a very specific place that we need to know about. And if you do, please tell me about it. Spooked at snapjudgment.org. Gee, that's the only way this happens. And there's nothing better than a spooked story from a spooked listener, spooked at snapjudgment.org. If you like your story telling that is not cloaked in shadow, embrace our sister podcast, the amazing, stupendous Snap Judgment. Snap is gonna take you for a ride. Snap Judgment's on podcast platforms everywhere. Spooked is brought to you by the team that won't hesitate to travel to a cold, desolated overhang in order to seek the heart of the mystery. Except of course, Mark Ristich, he's all about the room service in the hot tub. There's Davy Kim, Zoë Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Eric Ganyas, Teo Ducot, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stuart, Paulina Creekey, Elizabeth Z. Pardue, Adib Yamatu, and Lulu Jemima. The Spooked theme song is by Pat McHealy-Miller. My name is Glynn Washington. And some things can happen anywhere. Any place you meet that guy, win that car, run from that dog, it can happen just about anywhere. But other things simply will not occur. Cannot occur unless you happen to bond one very specific, nowhere else in all the universe, not one foot to the left, not one foot to the right place. Lifetimes, civilizations have been altered because one person stood a hair away from the precipice that another person happened upon. Because all places are not the same as all other places. Places have echoes. Places have histories. Places have stories. And maybe, maybe, places have wants and needs and jealoses and hurts the same as any other energy. We might imagine that this place, that this spot, wishes us no harm. Perhaps, I just say, born of my own experience, it's probably best to take some precaution. My advice is to never, ever, never, ever, never, ever, ever.