The Willow Glen Resident Pyromaniac poltergeist wreaks havoc on house By Deborah Taylor-Hollis When A and B (names have been omitted to protect the haunted) bought a home in Portland five years ago, they thought the four-bedroom, two-bath in the hills was a dream. No one told them it bordered a century-old abandoned slaughterhouse parcel or that several "bad" things had happened here--including the severe fall from a ladder the last male owner had taken, which had left him paralyzed and shouldn't, couldn't have happened, but did. While moving in, A claimed she felt uncomfortable in the second-story addition, especially in the back bedroom. They used it for storage, and she eventually quit going inside it--even in the daytime. At night, from the master bedroom under the addition, the couple could swear they heard footsteps going back and forth across the second floor. Sometimes, the doors would open and close, and they could hear it from below. When light bulbs began to spontaneously burst in the living room--when the lamps were unplugged--she worried more, and so when my family and I came to visit, she told us she was getting scared. Her partner, B, had been sitting in the kitchen just weeks before, two feet away from an unopened bottle of piña colada mix on the open shelves, when it suddenly exploded. The force of the combustion was so bad that they never found any pieces of the label. No bits of glass to pick up--they were all minute shards spread over the entire kitchen and needed to be vacuumed and wiped up. The bottle was obliterated, neck and all, yet B was untouched by the shrapnel-like glass. While there, I woke up one day with a sudden fear of a fire, and spent the morning obsessing about a house ablaze: how we would get the baby out; where the windows opened up to; how to get out quickly with me upstairs and the baby downstairs. I was sure that the wood-burning stove we were using was just giving me funny thoughts, and we sure needed the heat in early January--the snow was coming fast. I kept trying to ignore the fear, but couldn't stop my preoccupation with a bad fire. A finally convinced me to get out for awhile, but before I did, I made sure that my son was all right and that B knew how to get him out quickly, and moved the video camera downstairs for quick retrieval, too, just in case I had to fly out the door. I kept on thinking, without reason, about fire evacuation and saving my child. It seemed pretty silly at the time. It was a solid home, we had everything under control and they had just bought it six months before, after several inspections required by the mortgage company. We were using a stove with a spark arrestor, and it had been double-checked for safety. I was being silly. When A and I returned an hour later, three firetrucks were there. My son was safe with the neighbors, and the house was full of firemen who had put out the blaze. It had started directly beneath the floor of the room we had been in all morning, just moments after I left the house. Bad wiring (apparently missed by the appraiser/ inspector when my friends bought it six months prior) was the cause, and they rebuilt the damaged rooms. B was glad we'd been discussing fire all morning: He felt prepared and was quick to evacuate child and pets, call 911 and start fighting the flames. That summer, the rock retaining wall fell while they sat on it to discuss selling out and coming home. Other problems, each serious, followed before they moved back to San Jose. The next year, the new owners had another fire, one year later to the day in the exact same spot. The also saved the house--that time. Six months later, another fire--this one of "unknown origin"--occurred while they were out, and the place burnt to the ground. I'm not going to tell you it was haunted. I'm not drawing any conclusions here, just presenting the facts. Happy Halloween. [ Back to Contents Page | Willow Glen Resident Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Willow Glen Resident, October 28, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.