Sunday, November 04, 2007
Fugitives & Refugees - Cathedral Park
"This park gets its name from the towering gothic arches that carry the Saint John's Bridge overhead. (Note: The saint in St. Johns is rarely if ever spelled out and there is no apostrophe in Johns. As a Portlander, Palahniuk should know that.) These arches march through the park, creating a sort of cathedral effect. It's a wide-open park of lawns and play equipment, but not long ago it was a wasteland of briar thickets and hobo jungles, warehouses, and old wharves.
For most of the twentieth century local kids earned summer money by picking strawberries, raspberries, and boysenberries on outlying farms. These kids would wait, early in the morning, on street corners where the "Berry Buses" would pick them up. The buses took them to work and brought them home.
In the 1930s a young girl was kidnapped while waiting for the Berry Bus in North Portland. According to local legend, she was taken to the bushes below the north end of the Saint John's Bridge (sigh), tortured, and killed. Even now that Cathedral Park is a nice garden and hosts a summer jazz festival, nearby residents say you can still hear that one girl screaming in the park on warm summer nights." - From Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Palahniuk
The butchering of St. Johns aside, I've actually heard this "ghost" on more than one occasion - only during the summer, and only at night. The first time you hear it, your first instinct is to call the cops - unless you're a prick or something - the only problem is it's nearly impossible to place where the screams are coming from. The screaming is faint enough to feel blocks away, but clear enough that you have no problem making out what they are - a girl/woman screaming. This "ghost" screams in surround-sound - distant, but close and seemingly coming from every direction. Very weird.
Like I said, the first time you hear it, it'll freak you out, after that you get used to it. The screams are fairly consistent and recognizable to the point that in the event a real person was out there facing some kind of trauma, you'd be able to tell the difference.
Labels: Portland, St Johns
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