Have you seen the phantom ship Valencia plying the waters of Puget Sound? Seen the ghostly lady still waiting at the Point Wilson lighthouse for her long-drowned daughter to return? Felt the soggy spider webs of a spirit aboard your own boat?

In the spirit of Halloween, Three Sheets Northwest asked Kirkland-based folklorist and writer Margaret Read MacDonald to share a few of her favorite local watery ghost tales. Below are a few chilling pieces from her book “Ghost Stories from the Pacific Northwest.” 

Prepare to shiver your timbers, mates.

The Pacific Northwest leans tentatively into the powerful Pacific Ocean. The overwhelming roar of the ocean, the terrible roiling of its waters strike awe into those who set foot on our coastal beaches. Equally mysterious are the calmer waters flowing darkly around our many isles and inlets. Sheer black rocks drop into dark waters. Brown kelp beckons with lengthy tentacles reaching up from the ocean’s floor. And overhead tortured pines cling to crumbling bits of dirt, fighting to evade the inevitable grasp of the sea for just one more winter.

 Here are a few phantoms from the ocean itself.

A Phantom Ship Escapes the Rocks
Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, Oregon

The four lighthouse keepers of Tillamook rock witnessed an amazing sight one stormy day. A derelict ship drifted perilously close to the rock. Lighthouse crew member Jim Gibbs tells of how his early morning sleep was broken by shouts from a fellow crewman:

“Leaping out of bed and into my pants, I was outside in a flash and Swede was waiting for me, all wrought up as if his blood was boiling in his veins. He pointed to the dim outline of a vessel parting the strands of mist less than a quarter of a mile away—its dull gray silhouette blending with the sky and sea and hinting of mystery.

Phantom ships leaves no trace on Tillamook Rock.

“Through the glasses one could tell that she was an old steamer that boasted a chronicle of long and hectic years—her seams had opened and the oakum had baked out through a series of summers. Badly hogged, her decks had grown sodden from rain and sea water, and the rigging hung limp from her fore and main mast, like a broken spider web, against the dismal sky. The dingy paint was peeling from her sides, and the streaks of rust from iron fittings had left tell tale marks. The davits swung empty, the pilot house was partly stove in, and the cabin portholes creaked open and shut with the pulse of the ocean.”

Gibbs told of how the derelict drifted closer and closer to the rocks. A Coast Guard cutter was radioed, but it was clear the cutter would not reach the vessel before she broke herself to pieces on Tillamook Rock. The ship showed no signs of life and bore no traces of name or registry on her hull. Just as the inevitable clash of ship with rock was about to occur … In the clutches of destruction, a stone’s throw away, she became almost motionless in the vicious tide rip that knifed about her hull. She then spun about as though some skillful navigator had taken the helm, but her stern stuck momentarily, dislodging a bulky wooden rudder, which drifted free as she squeezed by the perilous southwest corner by a gnat’s eyebrow. We could have spit on her decks as she passed below us in her death agonies. It was almost supernatural. Spared from disaster, that sinister derelict pursued her ghostly course until she had vanished in the northwesterly mists, on her capricious voyage to nowhere.

A thorough sweep of the area by sea and air was conducted by the Coast Guard, but no ship or ship’s wreckage was ever found. Except for one thing. One stormy evening when the sea was doing her worst, a huge wave crashed against Tillamook rock, depositing a load of flotsam and jetsam in its wake. Among the debris was the ancient wooden rudder which had been torn from the ship. It lay there in full sight, tangled in seaweed, on the lighthouse’s lower platform. But to descend and secure it in this storm was a frightening prospect.

Still the crew wanted badly to have this bit of evidence from the derelict experience. So young Jim Gibbs was rigged with a life line and lowered from the top of the east wall to the platform. He had only descended about 20 feet however when a shout from above came: “Look out below!” Looking up he saw a roaring mass of while water catapulting toward him. A huge wave had struck the opposite end of the rock and was sweeping everything before it. He clung desperately to the life line and took a deep breath as the sea swept over him. When he could breathe again he saw the ancient ship’s rudder being drawn away to sea with the wake of the massive wave. Had there in fact been a derelict ship which simply foundered and was never found? The crew couldn’t help recalling legends of the Flying Dutchman, a phantom ship said to sail the seven seas forever. Certainly the ship they witnessed had all the markings of a phantom sighting.

(Source: Tillamook Light by James A. Gibbs, Jr.)

The Ghost Ship Valencia
British Columbia Coast

In January 1906 the passenger ship Valencia left San Francisco bound for Seattle via Victoria. She carried 94 passengers and 60 crew members. Just before midnight on January 22 the Valencia struck a submerged reef at Pachena Bay. The ship hung up on the reef and slowly began to fill with water. Because the ship was wedged among rocks close to shore, rescue ships could not approach her. High seas made rescue efforts almost impossible. The foundering ship slowly was beaten apart by the sea. Rescuers could only watch from shore as the terrible tragedy played out before their eyes. Survivors climbed into the rigging and clung there for two days until the last vestiges of the ship were dragged underwater and they too were washed away. Of the 154 aboard only 37 were rescued. The City of Topeka carried some of the survivors toward Seattle. En route she met another ship and stopped to relay the tragic news of the Valencia’s demise. The thick black smoke from the City of Topeka stack settled over the windless waters as she hove to to speak to the approaching ship. Suddenly a shape formed in the black smoke cloud. It was the ghostly shape of the Valencia.

For years after the wreck the form of the phantom ship would appear to seamen sailing the western coast of Vancouver Island. They would see waves washing over the foundering ship while passengers and crew clung for their lives, the death throes of the Valencia replayed over and over.

Fishermen along the coast reported sighting lifeboats moving among the open waters, manned by skeletons—doomed survivors of the Valencia wreck. Six months after the Valencia tragedy several Indians exploring caves in Pachena Bay not far from where the wreck had occurred discovered a lifeboat floating in one of the caves. Peering into the abandoned boat, they were shocked to see eight skeletons. The cave was large, around 200 feet deep, with its entrance blocked by a large rock. The lifeboat would have had to be lifted over that rock to enter the cave. How it came to be there was a mystery. Perhaps a very high tide had enabled the boat to wash into the cave. Once there it was trapped, never to escape. Because of the dangerous waters at the cave’s opening, the lifeboat and its grisly passengers were never recovered.

(Source: Breakers Away: A History of Shipwrecks in the Graveyard of the Pacific by R. Bruce Scott.)

Living with Ghosts at Point Wilson Lighthouse
Port Townsend, Washington

Coast Guard wives are finding that a posting at the Point Wilson Lighthouse is definitely creepy. Jennifer Rice and her husband live in one half of the old Point Wilson Lighthouse home located on the grounds of Fort Worden State Park. Working alone in her kitchen on day, Jennifer caught a motion out of the corner of her eye. She turned quickly … but nothing was there. The she heard footsteps and rummaging noises on the second floor. “At first it was just a bunch of sounds. Then I heard footsteps upstairs and I yelled, ‘I have a gun!’ But there was no one there.”

Another night she heard something rummaging through her bathroom cupboard, taking out items and setting them down. “I was totally freaked out,” she told reporter Randi Rice.

A friend, Steve Betts, slept on the couch one night and awoke from a dream that someone was smothering him. He sat up, clutching his throat and gasping for breath. In the kitchen he saw a woman’s figure. But when he got up and moved to the kitchen, no one was there.

Gerald Blaiff, a night security officer for Fort Worden State Park for twenty years, told of a Coast Guard watchman who had seen a glowing apparition of a woman in a long gown who would wander around the grounds and go up into the lighthouse. Legend has it that the apparition is a woman looking for her daughter who drowned on a steamship that went down in Puget Sound.

The Point Wilson Lighthouse home was built in 1879 but is kept in excellent condition and houses two Coast guard families. Neither of the Coast Guardsmen, Dave Rice and Larry Buck, have experienced anything strange. But Buck’s wife, Carol, who lives next door to Jennifer Rice, has also heard rummaging on her second floor. “It sounded like someone was on the second story walking around and moving things or doing something with an object. I investigated. There was a feeling of a presence—not scary or oppressive. Then I got a phone call from Jenny wondering if I heard any noises.”

And Rice’s mother, Elaine, witnessed a strange thing during a visit she made ot the house. A mantel full of birthday cards in her room was dumped out onto the floor, through no windows or doors were open in the room at the time

(Source: Peninsula Daily News reporter Randi F. Rice.)

How To Tell When You’ve Got a Boat Ghost
Seattle, Washington

William Rudolph, of Seattle, gives this advice:

I met a guy in Alaska once who told me how to tell when a spirit was aboard your boat. (Apparently) he ran too close to some haunted point and picked up one. (He said) you could tell when you walked right thought (the ghost)—it was like walking through musty cobwebs. And your dog will jump straight up in the air for no reason.

He said it was about driving him crazy so finally he went back to that same place, opened all the pilothouse windows and door and stopped the boat, went out on the back deck and waited.

Evidently it did the trick.

(Source: Seattle Times reporter William Rudolph).

Got your own maritime ghost story to tell? Take a moment to share it with us by emailing to tips@threesheetsnw.com. If it’s scary enough, we may just feature it on Halloween night.

Margaret Read MacDonald’s book “Ghost Stories form the Pacific Northwest,” published by August House, Inc., is available at local libraries and online at Amazon.com, Powell’s Books and other booksellers.