The Associated Press/Petr David Josek

Various buildings in Portland supposedly are haunted, from Pittock Mansion to the Heathman Hotel. Such tales are mostly just for fun, conversation starters for Halloween parties.

But the fact is, the Rose City has a long history of ghost panics that have nothing to do with All Hallows' Eve. In the early years of the 20th century, when Spiritualism was in its heyday, locals commonly spotted apparitions. The dead, many people believed, really did hang around to scare -- or warn -- us.

And the sightings continued even after Spiritualism faded. 15-year-old Thelma Taylor was murdered under the St. Johns Bridge in 1949, and there are Portlanders who still claim to see and hear her.

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St. Johns Bridge (The Oregonian)

"Oh yeah," a business owner said in 2013 about Thayer's continued presence under the bridge. "I've been down there at night and heard her scream, 'Help me, help me -- somebody help me!' "

Below, we look at five Portland ghost sightings that got enough residents unnerved that they scored headlines.

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The Kenton Ghost

In January 1913, a group of Portlanders undertook a series of "ghost hunts" in an attempt to catch a neighborhood spirit that had come to be known as the "Kenton ghost." Two men, William Adams and Jack Langston, insisted they saw a ghost late one night as they drove on Patton Road near Lombard Street. "The 'ghost' was seated on a stump, and Adams, to make sure he was there, spoke to 'the ghost,' but received no reply," wrote The Oregonian. "Instead, 'the ghost,' who is a smooth personage, glided away."

Others soon saw the smooth personage as well, and then still more Portlanders came forward to say they, too, had glimpsed the ghost -- all of which led to the poltergeist hunt.

Offered one man who said he met the ghost:

"I came along the other evening, and right before me, near a tree, was this peculiar object. I would have spoken to it but didn't care to get into an argument, so said nothing. Just then he vanished."

The wife of a Portland Cattle Loan Co. executive admitted she had seen a fat ghost three months before and wondered if the recent sightings were "the same one, starving."

Kenton Saloon proprietor Nell O'Hare, however, put the ghost sightings in perspective. "Men come to my place and tell me about the things they have seen the night before, and they are such a variety of everything that seeing ghosts is tame in comparison."

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The Associated Press

The Brentwood ghost

"Ghosts -- nebulous, shivering wraiths of shadowland -- have Brentwood trembling in their pores, and their victims, Mr. and Mrs. H.N. Wellcome, have been ordered by nervous neighbors to leave their home before noon today or be removed by force," The Oregonian reported on April 3, 1922. "Deputy sheriffs, attorneys and neighbors who attempted to solve the mystery have failed dismally."

The vicious spirits appeared a week after the Wellcome couple and their young son moved into the four-room house in the south Portland neighborhood. Rapping -- "a heavy, low thud" on doors and walls -- woke the family night after night. Often it grew to a pounding so loud and heavy that it should have "knocked the joists and sills loose."

On the first night of the disturbance, Herbert Wellcome, the husband, rushed to the back door as it banged and shook in its frame. Throwing it open, he found no one. The mysterious noises apparently led Mrs. Wellcome to faint dead away in the kitchen, causing her to drop a pan of water. She was put under the care of a doctor.

The rapping continued, "Tell-Tale Heart"-like, day after day. The Wellcomes weren't the only ones to hear it -- so did the neighbors. A group of them confronted Herbert Wellcome, accusing him of making the racket. He denied it, but they told him to vacate the house or they'd toss the family out themselves. Mr. Wellcome called in the sheriff and an attorney.

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The Oregonian

"Not all sentiment was against the Wellcomes," wrote a reporter, "for the neighborhood is divided into two factions, those who believe that Wellcome is 'running a shenanigan' on them and those who believe that some human or occult being, with sinister motive, is deliberately terrifying the newcomers into moving."

One popular theory among pro-Wellcome neighbors: Mrs. Wellcome was a medium and didn't know it. The supporters conducted a séance to inform the ghosts that Mrs. Wellcome wasn't aware of her gifts and so couldn't communicate, but the rapping continued.

Some critics argued that Mrs. Wellcome must be responsible for the noise, insisting that she was the only member of the family at home every time the "ghosts" had struck. John Brown, a local real-estate man, was standing just inside the back door during one barrage of knocking. He said "he could see Mrs. Wellcome's form swaying back and forth [in the vestibule] as though she were pounding and that she jumped away from the front door when she heard footsteps." He offered to bet anyone $100 she would be proved responsible.

But investigators determined that "the rapping must have been done with some heavy instrument. Examination of surfaces failed to reveal a single scar or dent that might have been made in such a manner."

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MLive.com/Advance Publications

The front door had been pounded so hard it should have splintered. Not a dent on it. A neighbor was six feet away from the door when it began to shake. He saw no one but insisted he "felt a breath of air" on his face.

Herbert Wellcome said he didn't believe in ghosts, but that he'd been knocked down by whatever it was that caused the noise -- while seeing nothing.

Deputies and neighbors couldn't replicate the sounds they'd heard by knocking or pounding on the walls and doors. They removed weatherboards to look between the walls, searched the attic and under the house, but found no "noise-making instruments."

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Katie Walsh/Tribune News Service

This was all duly reported in the city's newspapers, where residents followed the events closely. One reader, however, was disgusted by the ghosts' amateurishness, pointing out that spirits in California had "been throwing rocks on a warehouse in broad daylight" and one in Canada was setting fires and even braiding horses' tails.

"It is time that self-respecting ghosts wholly abandon rapping and other house noises for something better," the reader wrote. "The noises are so subject to human imitation that the best quality of ghostly efforts is now open to suspicion. ... [Such] imitations are doubtless the reasons why the enterprising ghosts of New Brunswick and California have abandoned the practice of rapping. It is hard to believe that a real Portland ghost would be less up-to-date."

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The Oregonian

It was a convincing argument, but still the Wellcomes' supporters continued to seek paranormal proof by camping out in the house. "For hours the watchers sat and watched," offered a reporter. "The ghost did not like their brand of tobacco. He refused to satisfy their curiosity or to have anything to do with them. They slandered him libelously."

A local deputy finally acknowledged that it likely was all a crock -- though not necessarily one undertaken by the Wellcomes. The house had been empty for months before the family moved in. Law enforcement suspected the empty house had been used by a bootlegger while vacant, and they now theorized that the criminal wanted his house back. "I believe," said the deputy, "he has been using the Wellcome house for a liquor cache and is trying to frighten them away."

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Advance Publications

Downtown ghost

A "ghost" scared downtown residents in 1914 with late-night flashes of light and door knockings. The disturbances happened over several days, startling people awake or shocking them if they happened to be gazing out the window as the apparition passed by.

Police said it sounded like a burglar carrying an "electric torch," but those exposed to the frights were convinced it was otherworldly.

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"Women screamed, men were awed and children ran frightened to their parents when the mysterious 'ghost' ... made his appearance" at the Cordova Hotel at 11th and Jefferson streets one October night, The Oregonian wrote. The haunting was called "diabolical," and it included the disappearance of a catalogue from an automobile parked outside the Cambrian Apartments.

The police assigned two patrolmen to the case, and they expressed "considerable worry" about the ghost. The heightened police presence apparently scared the spirit away -- the light flashes and knockings soon ceased.

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The Oregonian

The bloody ghost

In 1889, an anonymous Portlander sent a letter to The Oregonian in which he described seeing "a real, live ghost in the north plaza block." He sought an investigation of the event but was holding back his identity for fear of public ridicule. The letter, which prompted responses from many sympathetic readers, follows:

"Now, I am no spiritualist, and have always been opposed to anything of the sort; but what I saw last Sunday night is very strange. As I was out rather late and coming home, of course I took the shortest route, and cut through the north plaza. While nearing the west end I saw a large wound cut in a woman's head and blood oozing from it. She was dressed in pure white, and it seemed that it was a night gown she had on.

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The Oregonian

"But now comes the mystery. I spoke in a firm voice to the woman, who answered not, and upon my starting toward her, she suddenly disappeared, and I at once took to my heels and ran. If there was any such thing as a ghost, that surely was one, for today I went to the very spot where I saw the great tragic affair, and there was no sight of blood or of a struggle, and as I have told you before, I never believed in any such stuff, but since I have seen it, I must believe that there is something of it, for I would not go through the plaza again for $500."

The Oregonian's editors closed out the column by offering up the ridicule the writer had feared, saying that the correspondent had "forgot to add what particular brand of liquor he had been drinking before reaching the plaza on that memorable night."

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Bag & Baggage Productions' "Charles Dickens Writes a Christmas Carol" (Casey Campbell Photography)

The ghost of past regrets

Ghosts weren't only scary "reality" to many Oregonians in the early 20th century. They also served as symbol, prompts to live and learn and move forward. A literary sketch in a 1900 edition of The Oregonian, titled "An Everyday Tragedy," captured an unhappily married woman lingering in her dressing room as her often-absent husband waits downstairs to take her out on the town.

Then "the ghost of her former love" appears behind her in the mirror. She shudders.

"You here again?" she says.

"Yes," he replies. "I am here again. Am I not welcome?"

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AP photo/E.H. Gunder

"You seem to haunt me more these days."

"And why not?" says the ghost. "You have more time to see me."

"But I would rather not see you," she says with a sigh. "I would rather forget you."

The ghost smiles at her. "It is your fault," he says. "You killed me. And now, where else should I go? I am part of you. You cannot get rid of me."

"But you make me so unhappy -- so unhappy!" the woman says. "Will you always come?"

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The Associated Press

"Always."

"And never leave me?"

"Never," says the ghost.

After a long pause, the woman rises. She steps "proudly, defiantly" to the door, but then she turns back to the ghost of her former love. Her eyes are filled with tears.

"Don't fail me," she says.

-- The Oregonian

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