The Oregon Caves Chateau

My mother came out to visit me and my family just recently. One thing she'd wanted to do when young, but never got to do: Visit the Oregon Caves. So before her coming out, I reserved a number of rooms for her and my family, at the Oregon Caves Chateau.

Part of the nuance of such was that it (the Chateau) is supposed to be haunted. I tried to get the room involved (310) but it was already reserved. (Darn it!)

Instead I and the wife got room 301, two of the kids got 302, and the remaining kid bunked with Mom/Grandma- 204. Small rooms, not much in the way of amenities, hard mattresses, but cozy and nicely housekept.

We got there just at check in time. And we managed to get a tour of the caves before our dinner reservation time. Apparently during the history of the caves - there was one reported death in the caves itself - an accidental suicide involving the proper use of guns. But no reported hauntings from that.

But the hotel itself? Room 310 is supposedly haunted by a ghost named: Elizabeth. Legend has it - that Elizabeth was a lady on her honeymoon who caught her newlywed husband messing around on her with a chambermaid/housekeeper. Instead of confronting her husband she chose suicide, either by jumping from the third story window of her room or hanging herself within it.

Now, did our room have any problems during the night? The missus didn't report any problems, though I got the notion that someone was determined to keep me from falling asleep, because every time I started to fall asleep- I'd get woken up by some little nitnoid sound like a creak in the room inside or outside. Four times that happened. And I got woken up several times despite leaving the window open to listen to the sound of the small waterfall outside the windows. One instance was of my walking cane falling all the way over. Grrrrrr!

The kids in 302 went to sleep and stayed that way. No problems were reported by them.

But Mom/Grandma reported that in 204, that she was woken up several times during the night by someone opening and closing the dresser drawers, or by someone walking around the bathroom at night. Which according to the kid bunking with her, she didn't do.

That's it I'm afraid. No apparitions, No outlines, no moaning (of the ghostly kind) heard or detected otherwise.

The Chateau was nice, the mattresses were hard, the elevation was 4000 feet, such caused me to gasp a bit that night, partly due to the head cold I developed due to the massive rain during the ride down.

Hmm, perhaps the head cold was my punishment for the cruelty I visited upon a Stellar Jay during dinner- I left some buttered bread in front of the dining room picture window of which the Jay put on a performance trying to fly through the window to get at.

If you go to the Chateau- be sure to drive slow, the last 5 miles of the road is very twisty turny, and there are plenty of critters to avoid making into road kill.

And bring a jacket. It gets chilly in the caves.