Est. 1846 · Oregon Trail History · Hudson's Bay Company · Oregon City Founder · Father of Oregon · National Historic Site
Dr. John McLoughlin arrived at Fort Vancouver in 1824 as chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company's Columbia District, the administrative authority over the Pacific Northwest fur trade from Russian Alaska to California. Over the following two decades, he managed an operation stretching from the Rockies to the coast, making Fort Vancouver the commercial and social hub of the region.
McLoughlin's decision to extend credit and supplies to American settlers arriving on the Oregon Trail — a policy that conflicted with the HBC's British commercial interests — ultimately cost him his position. He was pressured to resign in 1845. In 1846, he moved to Oregon City, the town he had founded at Willamette Falls, built his house, and became an American citizen. He divided his personally held land at the falls into 300 plots, distributing them to settlers who had arrived without resources.
McLoughlin died in his Oregon City house on September 3, 1857. His house was moved from its original lot to its current location at 713 Center Street in 1909; the McLoughlin Memorial Association opened it as a museum in 1910, making it one of Oregon's oldest house museums. The building is maintained as a unit of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, with partnership support from the National Park Service.
The McLoughlin Memorial Association operates guided tours on Fridays and Saturdays from 10am to 4pm. Admission is free. Tours begin at Barclay House and include the main residence; last tour departs approximately 45 minutes before closing. The house contains original McLoughlin furnishings throughout.
Sources
- https://www.mcloughlinhouse.org/
- https://www.americanfolklore.net/mcloughlins-ghost/
- https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/mcloughlin_house_unit_of_fort_vancouver_national_historic_site/
ApparitionsShadow figuresPhantom smellsTouching/pushingResidual haunting
The McLoughlin House's paranormal reputation has a specific origin point: the arrival of curator Nancy Wilson in the mid-1970s, approximately 120 years after McLoughlin's death in 1857 and 65 years after the house opened as a museum.
Wilson described the phenomena as beginning without prompting and occurring with a frequency of approximately once a week, typically during the hours when the house was closed to the public. Wilson had no prior belief in paranormal phenomena, which made her accounts more notable to the researchers and journalists who subsequently wrote about the house.
The documented account from American Folklore describes visitors and staff experiencing a sensation of being touched on the shoulder — particularly late at night and in the upper floors — accompanied by a shadowy figure seen in peripheral vision in the hallways. The smell of tobacco smoke has been reported in rooms where smoking has not occurred, consistent with the documented fact that McLoughlin was a tobacco user.
The beds at the museum have been found with the appearance of an impression, as though someone had been lying on them, during morning checks after the house has been closed overnight.
No formal paranormal investigation by a named organization has produced documented findings at the McLoughlin House. The accounts are primarily from museum staff over five decades of operation.
Notable Entities
Dr. John McLoughlin (attributed)
