Haunted Vancouver, Washington

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INTRODUCTION

Vancouver, Washington, is the oldest city in the state. It grew on the banks of the mighty Columbia River. Writers at the National Historic Site refer to this area as One Place Across Time. That is an apt title. This little corner of the state saw the Chinook Nation’s grandest era, Captain William Broughton’s exploration in 1792 and then the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery sailed past in 1805 and 1806. In 1824, the Hudson’s Bay Company set up shop at the confluence of the Columbia and the Willamette. As the Hudson’s Bay grew, the Oregon Trail branched off to end at the fort for supplies. In 1846, the treaty was signed that made Washington a part of the United States, and the United States Army arrived in 1849 to create what is now the oldest American military installation in the Pacific Northwest. From this base, soldiers marched to the Civil War, the Spanish American War, two world wars, Korea, Vietnam and the conflicts of today. The oldest operating airfield in the United States is here, which brought balloon flights in 1911, airmail service in the post–World War I era, the Chkalov flight and the first transpolar flight in 1937. Mighty shipyards rose and disappeared during both world wars. All of this and more happened in the same few hundred acres along the river. One place across time, indeed.

While all of this was happening, a town was growing, and people carried on their businesses, romances, tragedies, successes and failures. From this rich tapestry grew the stories that we tell.

1

DOWNTOWN

INTERSTATE BRIDGE

The Interstate Bridge crosses the Columbia River between Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon. The span that is now the northbound span was the first built and opened in 1917. Then it was a two-way route with a streetcar line down the center. Today, freeway traffic thunders across. There is a walkway on the north side of the span. On that walkway, a tall, slender man has been seen. He wears an overcoat and a fedora hat.

Some people driving on that bridge have seen him on misty evenings. They sense that he is in some sort of trouble and want to help him. But when they look in their mirrors, he is gone. A woman, giving her name only as Johanna, said that she had actually met the ghost as she walked across the bridge one night. He didn’t seem to see here, nor did he return her greeting. When she turned around to look back, he was gone.

There is a hump in the bridge. It’s not original. When the second span across the river was built, it had a hump to allow ships to sail under to decrease the number of bridge lifts. When that bridge opened, the first was rebuilt to have a matching hump. That’s where the man disappears. He walks into the hump and vanishes.

There have been many tragedies on the bridge, including car crashes and suicides. During a July 4 water show in 1934, the second Columbia Regatta, a young daredevil, Roland McCall, was killed when he dove 110 feet from the top of the bridge into the river. His body was not found until August 21. None of those accounts, however, fit the tale told by those who have seen the figure. Only one story matched, and that was the account of Mayor Grover Percival.

When Mayor Percival walked across the Interstate Bridge, it was a flat, single span structure with walkways on either side. Author’s collection.

The mayor walked onto the bridge on election night, October 17, 1920, and never returned. A search was undertaken, but it would be a month before his body was found on Hayden Island. He was hanging in a tree—hanged with his own handkerchief.

There seemed to be no reason for the suicide. His health was not good, but he was still active. He was in no financial trouble. He was not in political trouble; in fact, he was not running for reelection that night. His good friend John P. Kiggins won the race that evening.

What could have been going through his mind as he smiled, tipped his hat to the ladies and set out across the bridge? What despair accompanied him as he greeted his friends as he passed? Why does he cross the bridge again and again? Would he undo that dreadful night? Or could it be that it was not a suicide but a murder? Hanging oneself with a handkerchief seems implausible.

He had been instrumental in getting the bridge built two years before. It had been controversial, and there were lawsuits to try to stop it. The Governor had vetoed the funding for it. The two counties, Multnomah in Oregon and Clark in Washington, had raised the money for the bridge through loans and raised taxes. Feelings had run high.

We will never know the true story.

LOST AIRMAN

A bartender in Warehouse 23, a restaurant by the bridge, spoke of screams in the night—a scream that echoed. It was a scream of horror and agony. He had been closing the restaurant. He locked up quickly and fled. What could have caused that sound?

People from Camas to Swan Island used to talk of a lost airplane. Planes are so common today that no one notices an airplane overhead unless it’s very low. Can these two phenomena be related? Perhaps.

It was very foggy on a November night in 1928. It was so foggy that Clarence Price could not find the Portland Airport, a new airport on Swan Island. He flew up and down the river—often at just fifty feet above the water. People in Camas heard him. A mechanic at Swan Island heard him and sent up a flare. The pilot must not have seen the flare. He flew east to Camas and circled. He flew past Pearson Field, was a military field then used by the 321st Observation Squadron. Mail planes had landed there before Swan Island.

Curious spectators and souvenir-seekers crowd around Clarence Price’s shattered mail plane. Author’s collection.

He’d been a pilot in World War I, which is when he learned to fly. He’d flown mail for Varney Aviation since 1926. When he was once more to Camas, he banked back, flying very low and hoping to see something on the ground.

Ahead was the Interstate Bridge. He must have thought he was well above it. But the lift span with its giant counterweights, great concrete blocks, rose 110 feet. Price’s plane hit one of the towers and spiraled into the lumberyard below. It burst into flames. Townspeople rushed to both help the pilot and to grab bits of the plane as souvenirs.

He never regained consciousness and died soon after. Is it his scream that was heard in the night as the great bulk of a steel bridge appeared out of the fog? The place where the plane hit would be west of the kitchen of today’s restaurant. Listen on a foggy night, and you might hear the motor of the little plane flying east and west, searching.

A strange side note: a bit of mail from the crash was sent to a Portland newspaper. It was a scorched photograph of a four-engine Fokker that had crashed into a house in Long Island the week before.

ROOM 160

Across the lobby of the Thunderbird Inn at the Quay, a doorway opened into a hallway. You could walk all the way to the back of the hotel, where a corridor crossed. Turn right and walk to the door of room 160. The woman in room 160 has been one of the most reported hauntings in Vancouver.

The first was from a housekeeper in the hotel. She had been checking empty rooms to make sure that they would be ready to rent. She opened the door of room 160, and a woman was sitting on the bed. Oh, I’m so sorry! she said as she backed out of the room. She immediately reopened the door to see if the woman needed anything. The room was empty.

One night there was an ice storm. Management at the hotel told staff to not try driving home but to pick rooms and stay the night. No one wanted room 160.

The next report was from a tourist couple from California. The husband awoke in the night to see a figure standing at the foot of the bed. He caught a glimpse of a glittery garment. He quickly turned on the bedside lamp to, you guessed it, nothing. At breakfast the next morning, he mentioned the episode to the waiter.

The Inn at the Quay Hotel stretched along the Port’s Berth One just west of the bridge. The restaurant had been the City Prune Warehouse. Author’s collection.

Ah, said the waiter. You must be in room 160. There was a murder there.

The couple headed straight for the museum and told their story. Research revealed a shocking tale. Jackie Charles Patterson was an appealing little man with a crooked smile. He walked with a limp. His family later testified that he’d been deprived of oxygen at birth, so he did illogical things.

He and his wife, Marcia, had a most unusual marriage. She lived in Vancouver in McLoughlin Heights. He lived in Arizona. When he wanted to see her, he’d tear a $100 bill in half and send half to her. If she wanted the other half, she’d have to see him.

The marriage was over, and Marcia decided to file for divorce. In response, he sent her halves of five $100 bills. A meeting was set up. She dressed in her best and put on a wig. Wigs were fashionable in 1975.

Patterson took the train to Vancouver and bought a used car downtown. His next stop was the Fort Motel. He rented a room and then almost immediately checked out. At the Thunderbird Inn at the Quay, he found what he wanted: a room far off the road, at the back, by the parking lot—room 160. He set off to pick up Marcia.

They dined at a downtown restaurant, Onslow’s, where the waitstaff described them as friendly to each other. At the hotel, however, the mood changed. They argued, perhaps over the divorce. He put a pillow over her chest and fired two bullets into her heart.

Since Patterson was the only one who walked out of that room, we must take his word for what happened nest. He carried his wife, wrapped in the bedspread, out of the room, down the hall and