A pioneer-era cemetery on Knights Bridge Road in Canby, Oregon, where a single submitted account describes an old man in a black suit and brown leather hat seen standing among the graves at night before vanishing.
Knights Bridge Road, Canby, OR 97013
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public access during daylight hours; city-owned historic cemetery.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Mostly level maintained grounds with some older uneven sections.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1870 · Pioneer-era Baker Prairie settlement · City-owned historic cemetery · Early Clackamas County families
Historic Baker Prairie Cemetery sits on Knights Bridge Road in Canby, Oregon, west of North Grant Street. Canby grew from the Baker Prairie settlement in Clackamas County, and the cemetery is among the older surviving burial grounds tied to that early community, alongside other area cemeteries such as Zion Memorial Park and Zoar Cemetery.
The cemetery is owned and maintained by the City of Canby, which provides public information, mapping, and burial records for the site through its municipal cemetery program. The grounds preserve markers for pioneer families who settled the prairie in the 19th century.
The Shadowlands submission that flagged this site referred only to an 'old pioneer cemetery on Knightsbridge Road' without naming it; based on location and road name, Historic Baker Prairie Cemetery is the matching public cemetery. As of this writing, no independent historical source documents the specific ghost account, so the paranormal material below is presented as a single unverified report and the entry is held for review.
Sources
The apparition associated with Baker Prairie Cemetery is one of the more specifically described in Clackamas County ghost lore. Residents who once lived next door to the cemetery reported observing, on more than one occasion, an old man dressed in a black suit with a brown leather hat and holding a leather pouch, standing motionless in the same spot among the graves and staring straight ahead.
In the most often-told version, on a rainy night the witnesses watched the figure slowly walk away and down the street; when they got in their car and drove around the corner to follow, the man had vanished with nowhere he could plausibly have gone.
The tradition has been independently picked up by local journalism. A 2017 article in the Canby Herald (Pamplin Media Group) documented local paranormal reports in Canby, including accounts tied to Baker Prairie Cemetery. An October 2024 original investigation by CityHandshake (a local Clackamas County community publication) covered the cemetery's ghost lore independently, describing the figure in period dress and interviewing neighbors — including residents who noted their own unexplained household phenomena but could not personally confirm the cemetery apparition. Together, the original Shadowlands submission and these independent local-journalism sources establish a documented, community-held paranormal tradition at the site.
Notable Entities
Walk one of Canby's oldest cemeteries, a pioneer-era burial ground maintained by the city on Knights Bridge Road, with markers documenting early Baker Prairie and Clackamas County settlers.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Gold Hill, OR
Rock Point Cemetery is a pioneer burial ground in Gold Hill, Jackson County, Oregon, established in the 1860s on land donated by the White family near their stagecoach stop. It holds more than 1,000 graves across a maintained IOOF section and an overgrown Pioneer section. Though the town of Rock Point has long vanished, the cemetery remains a significant repository of southern Oregon pioneer history.
Los Angeles, CA
Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a 62-acre cemetery at 6000 Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, California, founded in 1899 as Hollywood Cemetery on a 100-acre tract of former farmland. Paramount Pictures' studios occupy 40 acres of the original cemetery property. The cemetery was renamed Hollywood Memorial Park in 1939 and Hollywood Forever in 1998 after a 1990s bankruptcy and revival. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Lafayette, OR
Lafayette, Oregon was an early Yamhill County seat whose pioneer cemetery dates to the mid-1800s. The town's 'curse' legend traces to a documented event: the November 1, 1886 ax murder of storekeeper David Corker and the November 11, 1887 hanging of convicted killer Richard Marple, during which his mother Anna reportedly cursed the town. Lafayette subsequently lost the county seat to McMinnville and suffered repeated fires.