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Portland has a lot to offer anyone itching for a fright. And we don’t mean the political attack ads on billboards or the long, dark wait times for a bus.
R.I.P. City
All things spectral, uncanny and macabre can be found in a cute shop on most corners around town. And the rainy Pacific Northwest has always been entwined with the uncanny: Somewhere in the woods just outside city limits, a sasquatch keeps vigil over the grave of D.B. Cooper. But the scary stories the Rose City likes to tell about itself often read more Double R Diner than Black Lodge.
The local ghostbusters are inclined to befriend the undead rather than hoover them up. While our boneyards, crypts and mausoleums (we ranked them) are filled with pioneer ghosts and the skeletons of folks whose names still adorn buildings, legends surrounding local graveyards lean kooky and wholesome; instead of falling prey to body snatchers and poltergeists, you’re more likely to be run over by someone slurping energy goo while training for a marathon.
There are a few old-fashioned ghost stories to tell. Have you heard the one about the vaudeville actor who was murdered behind St. John’s Twin Cinemas? But on the whole, local horror scribes and mythologizers seem less interested in truly gruesome legends. The Oregon Zoo, for example, is ripe for every genre of haunting—unmarked graves; a bloody death in the lion pit—though nobody seems to have been interested enough to actually write them.
No, Portland has its own flavor of supernatural narrative. The myth of Polybius, the haunted arcade video game from the ’80s, exemplifies the local flavor. Like the subject of all good ghost stories, it may or may not have ever existed at all. —Matthew Trueherz, Arts & Culture Editor
