Moment in Oddity - Book Wheel (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)
Many of us love nothing more than snuggling up with a good book, especially in the fall when there is a bit of a chill in the air. With the busy, chaotic world that we currently live in, having that time to delve into a novel can be difficult to come by. Back in 1588, there was a unique invention created by Italian engineer Agostino Ramelli. His invention was the book wheel. The book wheel consisted of a large rotating wooden wheel with individual stands upon which books could be placed. A person sitting in front of the wheel had the ability to rotate it to locate the next book they wished to read without ever leaving their chair. The book wheel looked very similar to a water wheel. Often, the book wheel was used when a reader was studying a particular subject and wished to reference multiple books on the same topic. To keep the rotating books at a consistent angle, gears were installed on each shelf to counter rotate at the same rate as the entire wheel. The book wheel weighed in at a whopping 600lbs and could hold approximately 8 books. Although the mechanics behind the book wheel were quite impressive, a 600lb rotating bookcase, certainly is odd.
Heceta (Ha see tah) Head Lighthouse
Lighthouses are literally a light in the darkness. Many have been located in remote places and all of them are located in areas that have suffered shipwrecks. Families living at lighthouses faced struggles and sometimes death. The Heceta Head Lighthouse is no different. Today, it has been turned into a bed and breakfast with beautiful views and at least one ghost. A legend claims that a young girl drowned here and her mother has returned in the afterlife, looking to find her. Join us for the history and hauntings of the Heceta Head Lighthouse.
The human history for Florence, Oregon begins with the Siuslaw (sigh you slaw) people who settled here more than 9,000 years ago. European settlers would arrive in the 1800s and they would fish and log and eventually set this up as a maritime port. Florence was incorporated in 1893 and there are two stories about how it got its name. One is that it was named for a shipwreck that occurred nearby and the other is that it was named for state senator A.B. Florence. One of Florence's odd claims to fame, we covered as a Moment in Oddity in 2020: the Exploding Whale Park. A large dead sperm whale was found putrefying on the beach in 1970 and this posed a real health issue. Officials needed to move it, but the whale was too large to be moved. Officials came up with a great idea that proved to be a poorly thought out solution. Why not dynamite the thing? And that is just what they did on November 12, 1970. The whole town came out to watch. And many of them probably wished that they hadn't because when the dynamite blew, bits of whale were everywhere. It slammed into the local laundromat and other buildings in the area, a large chunk of blubber crushed a car roof and everyone in attendance got a gory shower of blood and blubber. One would think a city would not want to commemorate this moment in history, but Florence did. On June 13, 2020, a new park was dedicated with a name that residents voted for in huge numbers. That name was Exploding Whale Memorial Park. Something else that Florence is known for are Rhododendrons. They grow along Highway 101 and throughout the town. The science fiction book and movie Dune were inspired by the majestic dunes of Florence. And apparently there was an accidental ban on sex in the town back in 1977. The Florence City Council approved a poorly-worded ordinance on November 26, 1977 that stated that it was illegal to have sex "while in or in view of a public or private place." They really just wanted to prevent public, you know...and eventually amended the ordinance.
It is said that the location of the Heceta Head Lighthouse was a magical place, sitting 150 feet above the sea on a bluff. The name Heceta comes from Don Bruno Heceta who was part of the Royal Spanish Navy and he was sailing from Mexico to the Arctic Circle. The ship made it as far as Oregon when Heceta decided to turn around because his men were suffering from scurvy. He mapped out the headland before leaving Oregon and it was named for him. There was a dark gap between the Umpqua River and Heceta Head, so the Lighthouse Board commissioned building the lighthouse in 1888.
A seven-mile wagon road was built between the site of the lighthouse and the public highway. Construction began in 1892 and rock was quarried from the Clackamas River near Oregon City. Lumber was provided by local mills and masonry came from San Francisco. Along with the 56-foot tall lighthouse, a barn, oil houses and dwellings were built. The light was lit for the first time on March 30, 1894. The first-order Fresnel lens was made in Birmingham, England, which was unusual since most were made in France. The Heceta Head lens has 640, two-inch-thick prisms, arranged in eight bull’s-eye panels, and revolves to produce brilliant white flashes. The first head keeper was named Andrew P.C. Hald and he had served previously at the Cape Mears Lighthouse. Hald had been born in Denmark in 1856. When he was fourteen, he took to the sea as a cabin boy aboard a full-rigged sailing ship. When he grew tired of being on the sea, he decided he would like to join the Lighthouse Service. His first job came in 1888 and he served as third assistant keeper of Cape Flattery Lighthouse. The following year he became the first assistant. He also lost his nine-year-old son that year when he drowned at the island station. Then Hald was sent to Cape Meares and then on to Heceta Head Lighthouse. He served five years at Heceta Head.
The crews changed often at Heceta Head. A one-room schoolhouse was built for the children of the keepers in 1896. One of the keepers named Frank DeRoy told his son that students used kerosene cans to store their books, so that rats wouldn't eat them.
In 1896, a Norwegian man named Olaf Hansen came to Heceta Head as first assistant keeper. Just like Hald, he left home at 14-years-old for the sea. His wife Annie joined him and the couple had six children and homesteaded. Olaf was promoted and sent to another lighthouse in 1903, but Annie chose to stat at their homestead. He would come back to Heceta Head the following year and would remain there until 1920. One of the Hansen daughters later recalled an incident with Thomas E. Alexander, who was appointed second assistant in 1912. She said, "There was one weirdo came in as an assistant here, Mr. Alexander. Mr. Alexander had a horse and one time he lassoed and threw that horse, tied his four legs together and sat on the hillside and threw rocks at that horse. We went and told our Dad, of course, what he had done. He reported it to headquarters, but he had to wait a week for the mail to go back and forth. Many times during that week, my dad and the other assistant would not go to the tower alone. They went up together because they were afraid of that man."
When it came to the houses, the head keeper had the house closest to the lighthouse. The other house was duplex with the higher ranking assistant keeper being the next closest to the lighthouse. The chandeliers in the duplex reflected status as well with the first assistant having five bulbs in the chandelier and the second assistant had four bulbs. The head keeper had six bulbs in his chandelier.
The keepers were responsible for manually winding the clockworks that powered the revolving lens every four hours. First shift began at sunset and ended at midnight. Second shift was from midnight to sunrise. The other keeper would be off. The keepers got every third night off. The watch room had a wood stove and a leather arm chair for comfort. Days were spent cleaning the lantern glass, polishing brass fittings, trimming wicks and filling the lamp reservoir. The npshistory website had this tidbit about the keeper's wives, "The Heceta Head women were fanatical window washers and cupboard cleaners, for the constant threat of a visit from lighthouse inspectors hung over their heads. These inspectors paid a surprise visit to the station once a year. They not only toured the tower and inspected lighthouse machinery, they also entered the houses and eyed cupboards, window sills and wood work. The more fastidious inspectors donned white gloves and ran their fingers atop sills and doors. Despite such stringent checks, few women were reprimanded for their housekeeping, although one was "cited" for a dirty laundry room because she had been sorting clothes into piles when the inspector came in, unannounced."
There was an accident near the lighthouse on the evening of March 25, 1927. A man named Frederick Huntington fell from an eighty-foot cliff above Sea Lion Caves to the rocks below and broke his leg. Head keeper Clifford B. Hermann and second assistant keeper Charles F. Walters hiked two miles to the spot and Hermann rappeled down a rope and set the man's leg, lashed him to a board and helped haul him up the cliff. All the keepers were commended for their work.
A garage and power plant was added to the station in 1934 and this electrified it. A 500-watt bulb replaced the incandescent-oil-vapor lamp and changed the light from a white flash every minute to a white flash every ten seconds. Electricity was added to the keeper's houses too. The addition of the electricity lead to the second assistant keeper position being eliminated. The bigger single dwelling house was razed and only the duplex was left. A coastal patrol was stationed at Heceta Head during World War II. Barracks were erected for the seventy-five coastguardsmen. The commanders stayed in the duplex. Clifford Hermann would be the station’s last civilian keeper and he retired in 1950. Full automation came in 1963. When the lens developed a bad lean, the Coast Guard proposed deactivating the lens, but the public shared their dissatisfaction with that so the Coast Guard opted to repair it. The lens eventually stopped in 2000 and was removed and replaced and reactivated in 2001. With automation, keepers were no longer needed, so the duplex was leased by Lane Community College. In 1995, the duplex became a Bed and Breakfast that serves up a seven-course gourmet breakfast. There are six rooms for rent. The house is a Queen Anne style house with a red roof and a white picket fence. The interior is themed turn-of-the-twentieth-century and there are black-and-white photos of former lighthouse keepers and their families. The people chosen to be the first innkeepers in 1995 were Mike and Carol Korgan. They started the restoration. When they retired, their daughter Michelle took over everything.
There were two nearby natural structures of interest that no longer exist. The Heceta Head State Scenic Viewpoint used to be called Devils Elbow State Park. Within this area was Conical Rock or Parrot Rock. There was a divide here that people had to cross, by walking onto a rock next to Conical Rock. During low tide, this wasn't usually a problem, but at high tide, the tidal action was unpredictable. Currents could change up without warning. From the 1970s to the 1980s, seven people drowned here trying to get over the divide. This could be a reason for hauntings. Anyway, the Oregon State Parks Division and the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife made a plan to blow up a six feet by six feet section of rock. These people clearly like blowing up stuff. Now there is a big gap there, but no more drownings. The other natural structure was called the Eye of the Needle and was a rock arch at the southern end of the Devils Elbow Beach. It seems to have just disappeared in the 1930s from natural erosion.
You really can't talk about lighthouses without talking about shipwrecks. These could be another reason for hauntings at a lighthouse. Clearly, the point of a lighthouse is to prevent the shipwreck. Many times, it was the amount of shipwrecks that decided what locations needed a lighthouse. And unfortunately, even after these lighthouses were built, there were still shipwrecks. One of the deadliest wrecks in this area, happened on November 4, 1875. This was the S.S. Pacific with 250 people on board and 600 tons of cargo. Some of that cargo was gold worth millions of dollars. The ship was doomed from the beginning of its voyage having left late from San Francisco and there weren't enough lifeboats on board. The cargo was loaded poorly too and the ship was tilting to the right side. So the crew filled the left side with water to even everything out. Eventually the ship tilted the other way and the water was removed. And we should probably mention that the Pacific had sunk once before and been repaired and was definitely past her prime. So on November 4th at 4pm, the Pacific had passed the Cape Flattery Lighthouse on Washington’s Tatoosh Island and was headed south into the Pacific Ocean. Several hours later, at 10pm, the Quartermaster, Neil Henley, was awakened by a loud crash and he saw water rushing into the ship. The Pacific had struck an 1,100 ton square-rigger named the Orpheus. Charles Sawyer was the captain of the Orpheus and he had just retired for the evening when he felt the ship turn dramatically to the port bow, so he went up to see what was going on. His first officer told him that he had seen a beam of light that he assumed was coming from the lighthouse and he turned according. The light wasn't from the lighthouse, but from the Pacific. Captain Sawyer stopped his ship and assumed the Pacific would change course, but it didn't. The Pacific blew her whistle and gave the Orpheus a glancing blow. But that strike was enough to leave the Pacific in grave danger as it wasn't structurally sound. The lifeboats couldn't be launched fast enough and the Pacific split in two. She sunk quickly killing everybody aboard the Pacific, except for two people.
The nps history site wrote, "Despite the inclusion on the National Register, Heceta House gained public recognition not as a historic site, but as a 'ghost house.'" Henry and Anne Tammen became caretakers in 1973 and they were the first to report strange things. It started with noises they couldn't explain and they figured that this is an old house, there are strong winds outside, there are explanations for the noises. But the haunting ramped up. One night, the couple had another couple over to play cards. The game was interrupted by a high pitched scream. Some mornings, the Tammens would enter the kitchen to find several cupboard open. And then this really weird thing happened. They had put rat poison in the attic and one day they found it gone and in its place was a single silk stocking.
The Tammens were caretakers when the school rented the buildings and so students were often on the property. Two students were on the porch one day when they claimed to see something gray ascend the porch steps. This gray thing was like a puff of smoke that floated, but it was long, like a human form. Most people attribute the paranormal at the bed and breakfast to one spirit, a spirit they have called Rue. There is no proof that there was ever a Rue at the lighthouse, but the legend goes that she was a former lighthouse keeper's wife and the couple lost their daughter to drowning at the lighthouse. We're not sure how Rue passed away, but because she is still broken-hearted, she has returned to the lighthouse to find her daughter. She mainly haunts the duplex where she supposedly had once lived. Her apparition has been seen floating in the halls, she takes guests belongings, rearranges furniture in the attic and knocks on the walls. Some students from Lane Community College are credited with coming up with Rue's name and this came from them using a Ouija board. Guests at the bed and breakfast are invited to record their experiences in journals in each room. Some stories talk about the weird knocking on the walls and another claimed to see the ghost of Rue sitting in a chair.
One story claims that a worker named Jim Anderson was cleaning a window in the attic in 1975 when Rue appeared to him. It scared him so bad that he fled the house. He did come back a couple days later, but he refused to go into the attic again. He later was working outside the attic and broke a window and he repaired it from the outside, leaving the broken glass in the attic because he was that afraid to enter. When someone went up to clean up the glass, they found it swept into a neat pile. Other workmen had experiences too. Their tools would go missing and then they would reappear later where they were supposed to be. Things locked with padlocks would be found unlocked.
Jessi Bunch wrote for PDX Monthly in August of 2024, "We also swapped Rue reports. The young woman staying next to us said she’d heard furniture moving. An older man mentioned the bang of a door downstairs. His wife said she’d had to take a Tylenol PM and was ready to leave. As we packed our bags in our room, the bathroom lights started to strobe. My dubious husband blamed old wiring. I’m not so sure." LordXenu23 wrote on Reddit, "My parents lived in the keepers house for a year in the mid 70's, before I was born. My brother told me he saw the ghost on a couple of occasions." The general manager in 2019, Misty Anderson, told KVAL13, "We make the beds, and then someone sits on it and there's an indentation like she's sitting there looking out the window. There was one lady that sat here in the middle of the day, and I was here, and said she watched the woman just float down this hall way like she was going to go out the front door, but there was not really anyone there." There are those who claim to hear conversations so is there more than one ghost here?
The lighthouse protected ships for years from danger. Does the property now harbor a ghost? Is the Heceta Head Lighthouse haunted? That is for you to decide!
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