In Search of the Spirit World: Hunting for Ghosts in the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery

By Aaron Ragan-Fore
Originally published in Eugene Magazine

Days are getting shorter, shadows are longer
and halloween is just around the corner. We’re head-
ing into that time of year when you’d just as soon stay
indoors, curling up at home with a mug of something hot. You
may triple-check that the doors are locked before you go to bed.
And you’re in the mood for a good ghost story.

Eugene is home to many legends of the supernatural, but
few people realize just how haunted the city may be. the Bijou
Theatre, once a funeral parlor, is prone to strange mechanical
failure; investigators have photographed unexplained floating
lights. Boxes are reported to scoot around under their own
power in the back room of the Toys R Us at Valley River Center,
of all places. Eugene schools seem to be most popular with the
unquiet dead: Fox Hollow Elementary, South Eugene High and
Sheldon High are all said to be haunted. One particular elevator
shaft at Lane Community College is even said to have its own
resident specter.

In short, Eugene isn’t suffering from a shortage of spooky spots.
That brings us to Eugene Pioneer Cemetery. Although the me-
morial park, situated at the southwest corner of the University
of Oregon campus, is horseshoed on three sides by the teeming
life of an academic community, Pioneer Cemetery is unaffiliated
with the university.

it’s not for lack of trying on the part of the Fighting Ducks.
the park was dedicated in 1872, a full four years before the UO
was founded, and nearly every headstone bears a 19th-century
birthdate. the purchase price of the cemetery’s original 10 acres
was $600 in gold. Today, due to its proximity to the McArthur
Court arena, the land would be worth . . . substantially more.

Mid-20th-century proposals called for disinterring the plots to
pave the cemetery over for parking, or adding a multi-story garage
above it for a sort of basement-level mausoleum. The schemes
were thankfully derailed in 1997 when the cemetery was added
to the National Register of Historic Places, leaving undisturbed
this resting place of many a westward-migrating Oregon Trail
pioneer...

To read the rest of this story, visit Aaron's site!