Lone Fir Cemetery
Located in Portland’s hip southeast section, Lone Fir Cemetery’s eerie beauty draws visitors from all over the city and the nation to hear about its haunted past. Lush trees and finely manicured grass frame the land in a verdant atmosphere of dread and foreboding. Visitors walking through the cemetery’s natural fauna experience its rich history through the many decrepit graves they pass. But sometimes, they meet a piece of that history in the paranormal world up close and personal.
Is The Lone Fir Cemetery Haunted?
Strange sightings of disheveled figures roaming the Lone Fir Cemetery have sparked debates about the otherworldly presence inside Portland’s oldest cemetery. Spirits from almost two hundred years of Portland history gather in the dark recesses of the pioneer cemetery on the southeastern edge of town. Learn more about Portland’s haunted past on a chilling ghost tour with Portland Ghosts!
Early History of Lone Fir Cemetery
The first recorded grave at Lone Fir dates back to 1846 before the land officially became Mount Crawford Cemetery in 1855. Twenty-five thousand graves rest within the thirty acres of the forest, of which 10,000 are unidentifiable due to years of poor maintenance. Because of the cemetery’s age and importance to Portland’s history, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
Many of these graves house politicians, 16 Portland mayors to be exact, and famous people from Portland’s past. The cemetery’s first owner, James Stephens, purchased the land claim from the east bank of the Willamette River. Soon after, the Stephens family built a farm and worked the farm until Emmor Stephens, James’ father, died. His grave became the cemetery’s first.
Eight years after Emmor’s untimely death, a steamboat owner named Colburn Barrell made the Stephens family an offer on the land they could not refuse. James Stephens accepted Barrell’s offer on the condition that his father’s grave continued to be maintained. Barrell accepted James Stephens’ terms and took over ownership of the land in 1854.
Unfortunately for Barrell, his steamboat, the Gazelle, exploded just outside Oregon City that same year, killing twenty-four people and injuring most of the remaining crew.
Robert Hereford, the Gazelle’s captain, suffered broken bones as well as severe burns to the majority of his body. Many of the survivors suffered the same wounds, and only a handful of people escaped the blaze unscathed. It was the worst steamboat accident in Oregon history. Barrell, feeling responsible for the accident, set aside ten acres near Emmor Stephens’s grave for the families of the passengers and crew. Barrell named the site Mt. Crawford Cemetery to honor the memory of all those who died on that fateful day, including his business partner, Crawford Dobbins.
Modern History of The Lone Fir Cemetery
Colburn Barrell held on to the land for twelve years before he sold the cemetery to a group of Portland families and plot holders. Before they passed it on, Aurelia, Colburn Barrell’s wife, suggested that the plot holders name the cemetery “Lone Fir” because there was a single fir tree on the property.
The inhabitants of the three other downtown cemeteries were moved to Lone Fir shortly after it was named. It remained the city’s official cemetery until the Riverview Cemetery was founded in 1893.
A Soldier’s Monument was built to commemorate all those lost to the Mexican-American War, the Indian Wars, the American Civil War, and the Spanish-American War. The monument, funded entirely by the five hundred citizens in the area, was completed in 1903.
Almost fifty years later, in 1947, more major construction occurred as Multnomah County removed 265 tombs from Block 14, the historical Chinese sector. Many of these remains were shipped back to China, but some were forgotten or lost altogether. A storage unit was built over the gravesites, but the story was not over yet.
An archaeological study in 2004 found that at least two Chinese immigrants never went home. In 2007, the city removed the building and connected that portion of the land with the rest of the grounds.
On further study, the archaeological team discovered fifty more bodies, mental patients from James Hawthorne’s Oregon Hospital for the Insane.
Today, this cemetery area is sectioned off, and visitors know who is buried on the cemetery’s eastern edge by more than just the area’s history. Spirits from the Lone Fir’s extensive past are said to roam between the dense forests that hold their graves, greeting unsuspecting guests in the most peculiar ways.
The Haunting of Emma Merlotin
The most famous spirit in the Lone Fir Cemetery is Ane Tingry-LeCoz, better known as Emma Merlotin. She was born in France on November 8, 1850, and her family immigrated to the United States when she was around five or six. In adulthood, she lived in a very upscale neighborhood with her husband for many years before he decided to run off with another woman to New York. Rather than waiting around, she decided to start her own business and became a high-class prostitute.
Just before Christmas, on December 22, 1885, Merlotin was brutally murdered in her cottage home at 3rd and Yamhill Streets. A nearby police officer heard bloody screams coming from a nearby cottage. Upon entering the cottage, the police officer saw the body of Emma Merlotin partially under her bed. Blood was everywhere. Merlotin had been brutally hacked to death with a hatchet.
The beautiful French courtesan’s murder remains unsolved to this day. In a last-ditch effort to solve it, investigators removed one of her eyes to study her retina. Scientists believed that a person’s last image was forever trapped in the retina when they passed. Merlotin was a harlot with a heart of gold, feeding neighbors during Christmas and helping anyone she could in their time of need.
She may be dead, but she is not at rest. Many visitors report seeing a shadowy figure of a woman dressed in French fashion roaming the cemetery. When approached, she throws up her hands, screams, and disappears. Locals surmise that she is doomed to relive that horrible night when she lost her life for eternity.
Zombies In Lone Fir Cemetery
Merlotin’s spirit is not alone in this maze of evergreens and deciduous giants, the second-largest arboretum in Portland. She is joined by other wayward spirits and possibly even zombies. The undead creatures who find no rest with the living and refuse to join the dead have seldom been reported in the Lone Fir Cemetery. At least, that appears to be the only explanation for what happened to one Reddit user.
One dark, foggy evening, two friends were meeting another companion near the Lone Fir Cemetery. It was late, 11:30 am, and the friends were tired of waiting for their third amigo. Bored, they hopped the fence to the cemetery for some midnight exploring. The experience forever changed their lives.
After a quick romp around the cemetery’s 150-year-old graves, they noticed a man off in the distance. Unsure what type of person would hang out in a cemetery around midnight, they yelled out to him. The man did not move. He stood in a staunch and unnerving silence as they approached. Then, out of nowhere, he violently jerked his neck upwards and stared at the sky.
The two friends were admittingly a little shaken up at this point but continued to approach the figure. As they did, they realized that he was a very old man with a long white beard. Then, as something snapped him out of a coma, the man aggressively looked at the two approaching friends. He let out a bloodcurdling roar that echoed across the wooded cemetery, knocking sleeping birds out of their trees.
While Portland is known for being weird and having a large population of unhoused people, this encounter defied all logic for the two friends. After quickly running off, they returned to the site to find any trace of the man. None was found.
Haunted Portland
Lone Fir Cemetery is just one of many places where the dead walk freely and the spirit world comes alive at night. Ghosts of Portland’s pioneer past are visible in all of Portland’s most haunted places. Visit them and learn fascinating historical tidbits on a Portland walking ghost tour with US Ghost Adventures.
Read our blog to learn about more haunted cemeteries across the United States, and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Fir_Cemetery
https://www.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2009/10/29/the-ghosts-of-lone-fir-cemetery
https://the-line-up.com/lone-fir-cemetery
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/64773368/anne-jeanne_tingry-le_coz
https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/gazelle_disaster/#.XZEuSJNKgWo
https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/oregon/portland/disturbing-cemetery-portland/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/1e14nv/experience_in_lone_fir_cemetery_portland_or/
https://www.friendsoflonefircemetery.org/wp-content/uploads/Notorious.pdf