The Haunted Cottage

Just twenty miles south of the Columbia River, where many a ship sank to its watery grave, there's a ghost story that's just recently been discovered. Oregon's only beach cottage museum is becoming a popular stop for aficionados of the paranormal visiting the coastal community of Seaside, eager to to try sensing the spirit that inhabits it.

The Butterfield Cottage, built in the 1890s and gifted to the Seaside Museum and Historical Society in the 1980s included something that was long-rumored, but seldom experienced – the ghost of Samuel Butterfield, son of the cottage's builders, Horace and Genevieve. 

That the cottage should be haunted comes as no surprise to the volunteers who show tourists through the antique structure adjacent to the Museum. Though Samuel's ghost makes himself visible only to children, more than a few volunteers have witnessed the reaction of a child when he or she sees the apparition. 

Though the legend is murky, and Museum staff denies it (a sure sign of its veracity), Samuel was just four years old when he was playing upstairs with his sister Genevieve (yes, she had the same name as her mother). A family friend who was downstairs at the time hear the little girl shriek and begin crying. As this friend raced upstairs to see what had happened, she nearly tripped over Samuel's body as it lay in the hallway, impaled on a pair of shears. Efforts to revive the boy were futile, and he was pronounced dead by the town's only doctor when he arrived an hour later.

Only six years old herself, young Genevieve was hysterical, and unable to communicate the events that led to her brother's death. But ghost-hunters who've interviewed witnesses to the haunting have pieced together a vague account. 

It's believed that Samuel's ghost is trying to get word to his sister that he doesn't hold her responsible for his accident. Some have said that when you play one of the cottage's Victrolas backwards, you can hear a child's voice saying “I'm sorry, Vivy.” (Vivy is the nickname Samuel used for Genevieve).

“He wants her to know that she's not to blame. But until he finds peace and can ascend to the afterlife, he can't tell her that himself,” said Egon Spengler, a paranormal research scientist. Mr. Spengler has spent hours trying to detect the ghost of Samuel, but as an adult, he's unable to perceive it himself. He's had to base his findings on interviews with children who've seen Samuel or have had other supernatural experiences in the cottage.

One child screamed when he touched the old cast iron stove in the kitchen. Though it felt cold to adults in the room, and hasn't been used for decades, the boys hands were bright red and blistered, as though he'd actually been burned by it.

A pair of twin sisters claimed to have seen Samuel beneath one of the beds in the bedrooms upstairs. And more than a few children have refused to enter the cottage, becoming very frightened as soon as they step onto the porch outside the front door.

Whether or not the cottage is haunted, we might never learn. But visitors to the area are making the Museum a must-see attraction when vacationing on the Oregon coast.