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It's Halloween! I know that most people have already done their partying over the weekend, but still there's some good ways of celebrating this awesome holiday. One thing you won't want to miss is Art Bell's annual Ghost to Ghost Halloween show where he invites callers to share their ghost stories. Bear and I like our ghost stories and Art Bell does a great job of moderating this show, it's the perfect way to end your Halloween.

Time has gone by so fast, tomorrow is Halloween. I've got more posts that need to be uploaded still, but I still can't believe that we've been counting down now for two solid months. In that time, I've eaten enough candy corn to last a lifetime, carved pumpkins and even visited the haunted St. Johns Bridge.

Of course, we'll continue counting down with some Christmas and Thanksgiving cheer as well as the usual movie reviews and what not as well as a new design for the site, but until then let's enjoy what's left of Halloween. Check back tomorrow for some great new reviews that round out this most macabre of holidays.

Every once in a while, I like to highlight a site that catches my attention. I know that everyone has jumped on the blogging bandwagon, but there is always room for good sites like Transbuddha. Not only do they make great posts, but they even included a link to onepagewonder!

It's been a while since I've seen one of these circulating, but I like how it's been updated to fit the new generation:

About 6 years ago in Indiana, Jessica Smith was pushed down a sewer opening by 5 girls in her school, trying to embarrass her in front of her school during a fire drill. When she didn't submerge then police were called. They went down and brought up 17 year old Jessica Smith's body, she broke her neck hitting the ladder, then hit her side on concrete at the bottom. The girls told everyone she fell ... They believed them.

FACT: 2 months ago, 16 year old Ron Anderson read this post and didn't repost it. When he went to take a shower he heard laughter from his shower, he started freaking out and ran to his computer to repost it, He said goodnight to his mom and went to sleep, 5 hours later his mom woke up in the middle of the night cause of a loud noise, Ron Anderson was gone, that morning a few hours later the police found him in the sewer, his neck broke and his face skin peeled off

If you don't repost this saying

"She was pushed"
or "They Pushed her down a sewer"

Then Jessica will get you, either from a sewer, the toilet, the shower, or when you go to sleep you'll wake up in the sewer, in the dark, then Jessica will come and kill you.

I checked out Snopes and as usual, they were already on this one. I've seen a lot of these come and go. Something you would share on the playground and swear it was true because your friend's cousin was killed after not forwarding the message. I do like the myspace take on this though, I guess people are getting a bit more creative with these things and just in time for Halloween.

On a related topic to the last post, its funny how many places are supposedly haunted. If you want to find a local haunt in your neighborhood, try this handy list from the shadowlands: Haunted places in your area. The ghost site is also full of some eerie stories submitted by the site's readers.

It's funny, but the more you start inquiring about the supernatural, the more you realize that everyone has a story of some sort. I'm definitely a skeptic, but I do love a good ghost story. Another local haunt I had forgotten about was the old alma mater, the University of Portland. UP is a scenic little Catholic college that's nestled on a bluff that overlooks downtown Portland (it's close to the St. Johns bridge that's also reportedly haunted). It was founded in the early 1900s and was later incorporated by the order of the Holy Cross. It's where Bear and I met.

Being an old catholic university, it's not surprising that the college should have some ghost stories of its own. Some people claim that the campus is built on an old native american site and others chock the odd occurences to the catholics. But there is one story that everyone on campus knows- the haunting of Waldschmidt Hall (pictured above). Waldschmidt Hall was originally called West Hall and was the first building on campus. It used to house both the student dorms and classrooms, making it a one stop university.

The story goes that, back in the day when it was an all male college, the students would celebrate the beginning of the school year by swimming in the Willamette River. The river is situated directly behind the Hall and is now home to a ship yard. Well, the students all run down the bluff and dive into the river, only one of them never comes back. I don't remember the student's name, but the legend goes that he has been hanging around ever since.

They remodeled the hall in the 1990s and renamed it Waldschmitt Hall. According to some of the employees and professors, it turns out that they never made use of the highest level of the hall even though the university could use the space. The reason why? Some say it's because the student is still hanging around there.

I don't know if this is true or not, but universities in general all tend to be home to the macabre, you just have to peel back the energetic facade. After all, who hasn't had the experience of pulling an all nighter, drinking too much coffee and getting that feeling that something is watching you from behind the reference desk in the library...

It had to happen. You remember when Bear said I couldn't carve a miniature pumpkin and then I carved it? Well, I checked in on the little fella this morning and he's not looking so hot. What was once a beautiful miniature pumpkin specimen has been ravaged by the horrors of old age. Remember how cute he was?

Just look at him, so full of hope and wonder. I don't know if he's been living some sort of rockstar lifestyle or what, but the passing weeks have not been so kind on our little friend:

I feel bad for the little fella. I can't believe I used to sleep with him perched on my pillow each night. Now he's just an eviscerated pile of rotting pumpkin flesh and it makes me uncomfortable just having him around. I guess he's prematurely suffering the fate of pumpkins all around the country- at least those that don't fall victim to ritual smashings.

While he won't make it to Halloween, at least you and I still have a couple of quality weeks to spend together. I've got more posts to upload so stay tuned.

-mark

To celebrate our first year of matrimony, Bear and I took the weekend to explore the southern part of this state. Unlike Portland, the southern end of Oregon is mostly agricultural and the people tend to drive pick up trucks. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just different. We stayed in a garden resort in a small town named Cottage Grove which is not only famous for the garden resort place we stayed, but there are a few other notables.

Their claim to fame is as the covered bridge capital of Oregon. That's right, these wise folks never tore down those covered bridges and now they're using them to draw in unsuspecting tourists. Okay, from the looks of things, Bear and I were the only tourists, but the bridges were pretty neat. You can just see the headless horseman coming at you with a jack-o-lantern:

The other claim to fame isn't so much a claim to fame, but more of an historical footnote. The downtown area was used as the backdrop for Animal House. I know this picture doesn't do it justice, but if you recall the film's end when they storm the parade, it might look more familiar. I don't think it's changed a bit since then either.

OK, so you're thinking we're boring, but it was just nice to get away for a weekend. Sometimes you just have to get out of the city and decompress a bit. The other bonus is that the fall colors were visible, making it a great way to celebrate the fall.

Portland is an interesting place. The local governments here definitely work hard to portray the city as a clean well organized place that's full of outdoor activities, great food and beer, and residents that are nice, if not a bit laid back. Now that they are really redeveloping the city it is true. Portland is clean, it's pretty safe and the people here are great. It's the city of roses, just look at the picture below- who wouldn't want to live in such a nice city?

Then there's the other side of Portland. The side nobody talks about. At one time, Portland was actually a bustling port. By the turn of the century, the city had developed a notorious reputation as one of the most dangerous ports in the world and from the looks of things, the reputation was well earned and residents were cautioned from entering any of the businesses along the waterfront.

The reason was simple: Portland had emerged as a stop in the white slave trade, among other nefarious rumors. The term Shanghaiing actually got coined in Portland and those who were involved built an infrastructure around the practice. Shanghaiing someone consisted of kidnapping them and selling them to a ship's captain who needed help. Of course, the actual practice was a bit more complicated- usually those who wanted to sell someone to a captain would wait for the unsuspecting victim to get sufficiently drunk at one of the waterfront watering holes and then they would either drug him, forcibly take him, or drop him through a trapdoor in the floor of the bar.

The underground part of the city consisted of a tunnel network that connected the basements of the local drinking establishments to the waterfront. So once they got you, they would hold you in the underground until they found a buyer. It's estimated that during the height of the practice, around 1,500 people a year were sold into slavery.

So what does this have to do with anything? In the spirit of Halloween, I think it's curious that Portland has literally built over its history. A new facade, a fresh coat of paint and voila! But the tunnels are still there and many of the buildings that were infamous for being brothels, drinking halls and god knows what else mostly still remain, they've just been turned into expensive condos or retail spaces. Most people don't know anything about the beginnings of this city by the river and if you bring it up to them, most people just dismiss it as a piece of trivia.

But it's still there, even if we don't want to talk about it. Right now, someone is probably relaxing in their nice new condo downtown, totally unaware that it was once a brothel, or site of something equally unsavory. For as little as we seem to know about the size of those tunnels, it's still entirely possible that their bodies and spirits still inhabit them today...talk about skeletons in your closet.