Skip to main contentThe manager of the McMenamins White Eagle Saloon & Hotel knows that her historic North Russell Street bar is haunted. In the hotel upstairs, Kyrsten Bronson knocks before entering Room 3 even when it’s vacant, so as not to surprise the spirits. She’s heard ghosts sneak into the men’s restroom and a juicer turn on by itself in the kitchen. But the back of the basement is the scariest part of the bar Bronson has managed for three years, she says, because it feels like somebody is watching her.
“I started feeling this masculine energy, but it was more of a womanizer kind of energy, a little bit misogynistic,” Bronson says.
Bronson shared her stories on the McMenamins Ghost Tour of White Eagle while standing in the haunted basement, in between hustling from the kitchen to her basement office because it was inventory day. She’s not normally part of the tour—I just said, “Hey, do you have any ghost stories?” as she passed by—but Caitlin Popp, McMenamins’ tour guide manager, will have attendees covered. First stop in the creaky, dark basement: a filled-in entrance to a tunnel at the bottom of the stairs where the White Eagle’s proprietors likely hid kegs during Prohibition.
McMenamins is leaning into spooky season this year with new tours of some of its most notoriously haunted properties, including the basement and Room 3 of the White Eagle. Every Friday in October, Popp will lead ghost tours of the White Eagle Saloon while her colleagues guide the brave through McMenamins’ Olympic Club in Centralia, Wash. (The other two most haunted McMenamins properties are, according to Popp, Edgefield in Troutdale and Grand Lodge in Forest Grove.)
It’s all part of the company’s effort to let customers see a different side of their neighborhood bars, restaurants, venues and hotels, Popp says. The regional chain, of course, is famous for snapping up historic properties and giving them new life while centering the buildings’ past. Sometimes, the spirits of the properties’ former patrons or tenants come along for the ride, Popp says. Though she hasn’t personally seen any ghosts, she does believe in “energies”—and she’s quite sensitive to them.
“I do identify as a witch,” Popp says, specifically a Hekatean witch, a devotee of the Greek goddess Hecate. “I do believe that it’s really important to honor people’s histories and people’s memories. And in that way, we’re honoring the energy that’s here.”
Without giving away too many spoilers about the tour, Popp focuses on three ghosts at the White Eagle: a bartender, a bouncer and a sex worker who was murdered in the hotel rooms upstairs, according to the oral history of the venue. Popp used to be the company’s on-staff historian before taking the job in the tour department, so she’s careful to note when her stories are substantiated with actual documents and when the details are a little more ethereal.
Part of what’s so special about the White Eagle is that it has remained a bar ever since its 1904 founding, despite changing hands a few times. Back then, this part of Russell was filled with bars and brothels frequented by immigrants—White Eagle is a nod to Poland’s naval flag—who let loose after working in the shipyard. The neighborhood earned the nickname “Bucket of Blood” for all its bar fights. Now the area is home to Widmer Brothers Brewing, Icon Tattoo and Bernstein’s Bagels, but White Eagle’s consistency works in its favor ghostwise.
“I think that does really root a lot of the ghosts in place because they are really coming back to this space that, energetically, I feel like they are recycled into, in a way.”
SEE IT: Ghost tours at McMenamins White Eagle Saloon & Hotel, 836 N Russell St. 503-282-6810, mcmenamins.com/white-eagle-saloon-hotel. 7 and 9 pm Friday, Oct. 24. 7 and 10 pm Friday, Oct. 31. $15
