I Spent the Night with a Ghost

And I'd do it again.

A week or so ago I had my big birthday party at McMenamin’s Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon, a sprawling 74-acre property that began in 1911 as the Multnomah County Poor Farm, where the poor could live and work. Todays its many buildings, once home to hundreds of destitute workers, now house a winery, a brewery, a distillery, restaurants, ballrooms, a movie theater, a golf-course, a world-class outdoor concert venue, an immense lazy river hot tub, and more hidden gem bars than you could visit in a week. As I was hosting an event there, the events team very generously upgraded me to the best suite on the property: the entire ground floor of the big two-story house named the Administrator’s House (after its former role). This proved very handy, as its great room with fireplace and dining room served as the communal meeting place on both evenings of my event, where many bottles were emptied.

I should point out up front that I had done no research into whatever “haunted history” may allegedly be associated with Edgefield — the thought had never entered my mind.

The weekend only had one downside, which was a windstorm of Biblical proportions. The wind never let up once the entire time. That’s fine because we were all mostly indoors, but my house — at over a century old — was perhaps the noisiest structure ever devised by the hand of man. Every beam creaked all night as the house twisted and sheared in the gusts. Even the floor was creaking loudly, such was the strain on the structure. Edgefield provides earplugs, but as I had to get up 4 or 5 times the first night just to re-close windows that had blown open, I got but little sleep.

A photo of my “haunted” room, taken from the bed in question

The second night was calmer, but not by much. It worked easier for me as I freely confess to have restrained only minimally my intake of wine and whiskey — hey, it was my party.

Sleep did come.

At about 4:30am, I bolted awake to a loud slam which sent my heart racing. The bathroom window had blown open and slammed the bathroom door, and I trotted up the stairs to the hallway and secured the window yet again. I went back to bed — pulse still in overdrive — but figured I wouldn’t get back to sleep that night. I’m really bad at sleeping anyway, and 4:30 is not an unusual “rise and shine” time for me. But soon the buffeting of the wind must have joggled me back to sleep, and as I dozed I gradually became aware that the sun was streaming in through the windows. The cacophony outside seemed to have subsided a bit, and soon I fell back into a more solid slumber.

Then someone sat down on the foot of my bed. I heard the bedsprings creak as they compressed, and I felt my feet drop a few inches. It was not an unpleasant way to wake up. Until the thought shocked me into full consciousness: I was alone in this room.

Instantly I was sitting up, wide-eyed. My legs were still stretched out straight. The bedclothes were relatively undisturbed. There was nobody sitting there.

Doing what I do for a living, the explanation was immediately evident. This had been a hypnopompic hallucination — a phenomenon I had discussed only that preceding Tuesday on Skeptoid. Hypnagogia and hypnopompia are very common sleep disorders, affecting nearly everyone. They have related but different causes, and create related but different effects. Hypnagogia strikes when you are just falling asleep or into a state of deep relaxation; hypnopompia happens when your brain is fighting over whether to keep dreaming or to wake up. Hallucinations from each can be audible, visual, tactile, or all three. Hypnopompic events tend to be more disturbing and dramatic than hypnagogic ones. Mine was certainly dramatic.

Luckily I’m one who takes this information on board and learns to appreciate what a neat experience a legitimate hallucination can be. I’m not sure I’d wish that kind of a shock upon myself every morning, but it is at least a great way to wake up fast and thoroughly, if that’s what you’re after.

Later I did decide to go online and see what, if anything, haunting enthusiasts have reported about Edgefield. There’s quite a lot. “McMenamins’ Edgefield Hotel was named Oregon’s most haunted spot,” reports Thrillist. There’s the voice of a woman trying to calm her child by singing. Visitors report having been shoved by unseen hands. There’s a phantom child, and the smell of perfume. Animal bones are reported to be found in room 215 — a room in which you might feel a cat’s nose being pressed against your cheek at night. Guests have reported their ankles being grabbed in the middle of the night. A woman in white likes to peer into — and tap on — second-story windows. It seems a grab bag of all the usual stuff from “haunted houses” everywhere.

Almost as if most experiences attributed to ghost encounters have common causes.

But as for stories concerning the Administrator’s House, sadly I found none. Oh well. I’ll just have to go back and hope for more.