Vacation Destination

Starvation Heights

Well, I found my next vacation spot!  Olalla, Washington.    Have I mentioned that I believe in spirits and the paranormal?!   I think it would be so cool to go on a ghost hunting investigation vacation!   So, I googled "haunted places in Washington state" (where I live).  And I was not disappointed!   I live in a very haunted state!

There's a place in Sedro Wooley - Cascade Job Corp.   In the 1900s it was supposedly the first mental institution to offer a frontal lobotomy.   ("Offer" a frontal lobotomy??  They make it sound like liposuction.)   Back then it was the Northern State Hospital.   Unmarked graves below the gymnasium, a little girl playing with her ball, along with the apparition of a man who seems to be looking for her.  Voices can be heard in the nurses' dorm, and it is reported that a body can be seen hanging in one of the windows.  And there's supposedly a spirit named Frank who is a jokester and likes to throws things :)  My kind of ghost!

In the Manressa Castle in Port Townsend, a woman ("Kate") in the 1900s supposedly killed herself by jumping out of a third story window after she found out her fiance had been killed in the war.  So sad.  Her singing can still be heard in the bathroom at night.  She seems to be a really nice ghost, though, despite the whole fiance/jumping out the window thing.  There is also a monk who, after becoming disenchanted with "society and himself," hung himself in the attic.  There are also reports of doors opening and closing by themselves.  And while Kate is friendly and cheerful, the monk appears to be very distraught and can be heard moaning.  Poor guy.

BUT, the place I want to vacation is Starvation Heights in Olalla.  It's privately owned, so I'd have to work my magic on the owners to let me vacay there :)  Starvation Heights used to be a sanitarium run by a husband and wife, Linda and Sam.   Linda apparenty thought that all diseases could be cured by fasting.   So, she basically starved her patients for weeks, and even months, at a time.  Many of them died.   At first she would bury them and plant a tree over their burial site.  But then I guess she starved so many of them to death, that she ran out of room and started throwing their bodies over the ravine.   She sounds like such a nice woman.    She had quite the racket going . . . she would forge their wills and make sure she was the heir to all their money.  No wonder she was starving them to death.  Apparently there is an incinerator in the building where she burned a bunch of bodies, as well.   So, we have bodies in the forest, bodies in the ravine, and burned bodies in the incinerator.   The place is purported to be haunted by many of her extremely unhappy and very hungry patients.   I can't wait!

Now, I just have to figure out where Olalla is!!    And convince my husband that this would be an absolutely awesome way to spend some vacation time!!!