CRESWELL — Val Frasier, director of Afterlife Ghost Investigations, is a Creswell resident with spooky experiences near and far. Her group has investigators in Thurston, Creswell, and Eugene.
“We do not go out and chase ghosts just for the fun of it. Usually, people call us because they are having problems in their business or home,” Frasier said, adding that people contact her group when they cannot explain what is happening, and it won’t stop.
Frasier said her group receives the most calls about haunted houses in Springfield. Most of it is residential.
“We were really busy, and then Covid hit, and everything stopped,” Frasier said. “Either the activity died down, or people just learned from all the TV shows they watched during the pandemic. People learned how to handle it themselves!”
For those who experience haunting, Frasier suggests regularly smudging with sage, offering prayers, and talking to the dead.
In her line of work, she says, “It’s almost like you have to be a therapist for the human people and for the ghost. Either they have to learn to live in balance with each other, or the spirit has to go.”
Frasier doesn’t charge for her work. Her work is a service to help people in need.
“I consider it a calling,” she said.
She said that ghosts typically stir in the night because “When things quiet down, and people stop bustling, this is when the spirits feel like they can come out and do their thing like they are stepping out of the way for the living.”
She points out we have folklore in Celtic history, Mexican culture, and Asian traditions, all with spirits coming out at night, but she concedes there is so much we do not know.
Pulling back the veil
During a preliminary investigation, her group gathers information to determine whether the unexplained is related to electrical malfunctions, plumbing, wall animals, or other reasons.
After worldly explanations have been ruled out, they set up a nighttime investigation with static cameras to try to hit the hot spots. They use EMF meters – electromagnetic field detectors – which show changes in radiation and electricity and can show sudden spikes when ghosts are present. They also use recorders for EVP — electronic voice phenomena. Electronics often pick up on sounds and voices beyond human hearing.
The typical ghost patterns Frasier encounters fall into these categories: residual energy imprinted like a pattern; poltergeists caused by the energy of the living bouncing around rather than a spirit; sentient, conscious spirits, who are lost and exist as though they are in a dream; and highly aware sentient spirits who are territorial.
Frasier likens the latter to the movie “Beetlejuice,” in which ghosts try to haunt the living to get them out of their houses.
Frasier’s most harrowing experience was in Winston, Ore., where an older woman had something harassing her in her home. Her family thought she had dementia until they experienced a little girl screaming over the phone themselves. The family experienced a cold spot and the sound of large, growling animals outside the grandmother’s room. One of the rooms with heavy, antique beds that were difficult for humans to move shifted when she went into those rooms.
“We had the most crazy things happen like you would see in a horror movie,” Frasier said. Mumbling voices came through their walkie-talkies, with a little girl saying “vile” things and then laughing maniacally. A CD player playing gospel music that the family had set up in the most haunted room would skip words to form the sentence, “We … have … your … grandmother.”
When the experts tried the same experiment, they had similar results with their CD and their player skipping to make sentences.
The older woman reported that her scariest experience involved lying in bed and seeing a man beside her. Another time, she felt something pressing down over the side of the bed and saw fingers pulling down on the side of the mattress.
“It didn’t feel like a regular haunting or a human spirit,” Frasier said. After multiple cleansings, they still had difficulty resolving the energies in the house and needed to find a priest to come in and bless it.
Frasier said that places with higher numbers of hauntings are heavily congregated, such as hospitals, schools, hotels, motels, lodges, theaters, and assisted living homes.
“Believe it or not, mortuaries are not haunted. They have services where they send the person on — that is why nothing attaches to mortuaries,” she said.
When something tragic or traumatizing happens, it is easier for things to manifest there. But she points out that hauntings usually don’t happen right away. They are more likely to happen after the place has been empty for a while.
South Lane experiences
Mt. David, Cottage Grove: “The hill has something guarding it. If you try to do EVPs at night, you will feel it. It isn’t safe,” Frasier said of Mt. David in Cottage Grove. Frasier said that she knows people who have gone ghost hunting on Mt. David, go home, and then become depressed and have mental issues because something has attached itself. As Oregon Magazine reported, this pioneer cemetery and the woods around it give many people a high creep factor. A ghost-hunting team investigated up there in 2022, and a video on YouTube called “Our First Investigation was Terrifying” by a group called Silent Adventure.
Cottage Grove Armory: If someone asks a Cottage Grove resident about the most haunted building in their town, they will probably mention this historic Art Deco building. The Armory, built in 1931 for the National Guard, is now owned by the City and used as an event hall. “An old building becomes vacant, and ghost stories start,” said Jake Boone, former city councilor. Coast Ghost Paranormal Research Society investigated the building in 2013. The group said they detected paranormal activity and caught orbs on camera, but Boone was skeptical when he accompanied them.
Cottage Grove bridges: There is a local legend that visiting all the bridges in one day invokes the spirits. “Most Haunted Places in Cottage Grove” from YouTube describes the sounds and sights affiliated with hauntings on the bridges and over the water.
Holbrook Lane, Creswell: Up on the hill, between houses, a water tower, and a nursing home, the empty woods give people the creeps, Frasier said, adding that the noises and sightings people have witnessed at night like black apparitions running through the dark too fast to be animals.
Oregon Avenue, Creswell: An investigator once sat on the bench at the corner of West Oregon Avenue and South 2nd Street, near the former Star Theatre, and conducted an EVP session. Frasier said they reportedly heard sounds from the building, asked the ghosts questions, and even got answers!
Pleasant Hill Cemetery: “Most cemeteries are okay, and nothing oppressive about them,” Frasier said. “Pleasant Hill Cemetery has something guarded by it. If you go out at night, you might get confronted by it. Something might attach to you.”
Mt. Vernon Cemetery, Springfield: Frasier warns, “If you go at night, you will feel like people are crowding around you. It’s their way of telling you they don’t like you being there.”
