Starvation Heights

Starvation Heights

I have found my next vacation destination.   Have I mentioned that I believe in spirits and the paranormal?!   Well, I thought it would be so fun to go on a ghost-hunting investigating vacation!    So I googled "haunted places in Washington state" (since I live in Washington).   And I was not disappointed.   I live in a very haunted place!

Just a small sampling of what I found - -

There's a place in Sedro Wooley - Cascade Job Corp.  They weren't always a Job Corp.   In the early 1900s, they were the first mental institution to offer a frontal lobotomy.   ("Offer" a frontal lobotomy - kind of makes it sound like a liposuction procedure.)  Back then it was known as the Northern State Hospital.  Many unmarked graves are supposedly below the gymnasium.  A little girl playing with a ball, an apparition of a man apparently looking for the girl.  Voices in the nurses dorm.  And a body hanging in one of the windows.   AND, a haunted underground tunnel system.   The makings of a great vacation!

In Port Townsend, at the Manresa Castle (now a bed and breakfast), is the ghost of a woman from the 1900s.  Her name is Kate.  After she found out that her fiance had been killed in the war, she jumped out of the third story, killing herself.  Despite the whole fiance/suicide thing, she seems to be a happy spirit.   Her singing can be heard at night coming from the bathroom.   A guest caught who they think is Kate in a photo, staring out the window toward the ocean.   There is also a monk spirit.   He supposedly hung himself in the attic after becoming "disenchanted with society and himself."   He, unlike Kate, is not such a happy little spirit camper.   He can be heard rattling chains and moaning.   Poor monk. 

Okay, now to my vacation destination:  Starvation Heights in Olalla.   It used to be a sanitarium, run by a husband and wife team, Linda and Sam.  Linda believed that fasting cured all diseases.   So, all her patients were starved for weeks, and sometimes months, at a time.   Many died.    In the beginning, she would bury them and plant a tree over each body.   Soon, though, she ran out of room and began throwing the bodies over a ravine.   Nice lady.  She also had a sweet little racket going.   She would forge her patients' wills and put herself in as an heir and collect their money upon their death.  Hmmm.   Sounds like fasting had more than one purpose.    First starve them, then collect all their worldly goods when they died from the fasting/starving "cure."   (There is a special place in H E double hockey sticks for people like her).  And if burying their bodies or throwing them over a ravine were not enough, she also burned bodies in an incinerator, which incinerator is still in the building to this day.  Needless to say, Starvation Heights is haunted by many very unhappy and extremely hungry spirits. 

Now, I just need to convince my husband that Olalla is a wonderful vacation destination.  
And find out where the heck Olalla is!!