The Haunting at Dammasch State Hospital
Time on Site: 3:40 p.m. – 11:15 p.m.
We pulled off from Grahams Ferry Road in Clackamas County just after 3:30 in the afternoon, in Willsonville. The old hospital grounds were exactly as the Professor (now more commonly referred to as Grandpa, or Santa-Pops, depending on who’s asking him a question) described from an archived campus records file—long-abandoned, overgrown, and eerily intact. The building still bore its original sign: “Dammasch State Hospital – 1961.”
It took three vehicles to get us all there, though we staggered arrival times by about twenty minutes due to a missed turn just north of Pendleton. Robin and Donna got into a debate over whether it was called “haunted” because of psychosis or residual energy. Donna doesn’t believe in ghosts—calls them cultural misfirings. Robin does, but only when there’s trace gas involved. No one asked Vernon for a biology explanation, but I saw him jotting something down as soon as we stepped out of the car.
The facility, based on exterior inspection, had clearly suffered some weathering but no major collapse. A wing on the southern end was partially demolished. Grandpa noted the direction of the blast was outward, not inward—an oddity if the place had simply fallen apart over time. We entered through the main hallway, flashlights in hand, with Josh reading off old maps printed from the State Archives.
The submersion therapy chamber was in the northwest wing. According to archived documents, it had been sealed in 1995 after an incident involving three patients and a nurse, including the other looming factors surrounding patient deaths, funding, and so on. When we reached the room, the door was jammed shut from the inside with rusted metal crossbars and part of a gurney. We couldn’t open it—but the adjacent room, where the wall had been blown out years ago, gave us a full view inside.
The chamber was intact: a stone basin, two rusted restraint chains, and what looked like scorch marks along the floor tile. Nothing else. I took several photos and paced measurements. Grandpa muttered something about “explosive decompression.” No one asked him to explain that.
Jennifer noticed that the air temperature dropped six degrees in the chamber compared to the hallway. Vernon’s instruments confirmed it. No visible EM spikes, but Robin’s compass went haywire for about two minutes. I recorded two minutes of silence on a field mic—no ambient sound at all, which isn’t possible with an open roof. Josh banged once on the old metal table. The sound didn’t echo.
Later, we checked the collapsed wing. There was an old infirmary with writing scratched into one wall: “it wasn’t drowning / it was stolen.” Donna didn’t speak for a while after reading that.
By 10:30 p.m., we began packing up. The only laugh of the night came from Caleb when a raccoon knocked over Vernon’s equipment case, nearly giving him a heart attack. Grandpa said he’d seen more unsettling things in a freshman dorm room, and we agreed it was time to go.
We didn’t camp. Instead, we drove out toward Milton-Freewater for a motel stay, stopping once for fuel and snacks. Nothing too out of the ordinary—except for that one room we couldn’t get into… and the one that someone had obviously tried to escape from.
⸻
Mileage from Last entry: 293 miles
