Historic lighthouse saved by a nonexistent ghost ... but was she, really?

Good morning, Oregon. I'm Finn J.D. John, FJ at OffbeatOrgan.com, and this is the daily

Offbeat Oregon History Podcast. Thanks for downloading, and I sure hope you enjoy the

show today.

The story was first published on September 3rd of 2017. Under the headline, Ghost

may never have existed, but she saved Equine Bay light. It is a rewriting and thorough

re-researching of a much shorter column first published in December of 2009. Here we go.

Next time you're in Newport, on the Central Oregon coast, if you haven't yet, take a few

minutes to check out the Equine Bay Lighthouse. It's the only lighthouse I know of in Oregon

or elsewhere that was saved from the wrecking ball by a non-existent ghost. At least I

think she was non-existent. The ghost's name is Muriel Trevinard, and she was born on

a dark and stormy night in the late 1890s when Eugene resident Lysian M. Miller, the sister

in law of poet Joaquin Miller, created her as a character in a story called The Haunted

Light at Newport by the Sea. In this charming and magnificently shuttersome little 24-hundred

word story, Miller wove a gripping story of a mysterious young woman left at a Newport

boarding house by her seafaring father who plans to pick her up in two weeks. She takes

up with a group of tourists from the valley who are camping nearby. One day the group

of them decides to explore the old Equine Bay lighthouse, a small structure built in

an unfortunate spot in 1871, and shut down for good just three years later to be replaced

with the Equine Head Lighthouse a few miles north. The story takes place just a year or

two after that closure, so probably 1875. Equine by the way is spelled as if it should

be pronounced Yaquina, but it's a Native American name rather than a Spanish one, so

Yaquina. Inside the abandoned lighthouse, the adventurer is

find a secret door leading to a shaft that apparently runs all the way down through

the sandy bluff to a sea cave. A chill fog moves in and the explorers decide to go leaving

the secret door open behind them. As she is about to leave the girl, Muriel, realizes

that she has left her handkerchief in the lighthouse and goes back to get it. Shortly

thereafter screams are heard, the party races back to the house and finds the secret door

closed and locked and no sign of Muriel save for a pool of warm red blood. The door is

securely and unmovably locked, the Wayne Scotting is back in place, and they are never

able to budge it again, nor did they ever hear anything more of Muriel or her father.

And as time goes by, everyone forgets all about the incident with one or two exceptions.

Quote, but to this day it has said the blood stains are dark upon the floor in that upper

chamber, the story finishes, and one there was who carried that little handkerchief next

to his heart till the hour of his own tragic death. Moreover, the lighthouse itself is the

story tells us haunted by Muriel's ghost which screams for help in the night when, quote,

the fog comes drifting in from the sea and completely envelops the lighthouse and then

stops in its course as if its object had been attained. The story itself is very nearly

perfect, with deaf touches of dread here and there answering a few questions and leaving

many hanging cryptically unanswered. What was at the bottom of that well? Who was Muriel's

tall, dark, aristocratic father? How did Harold's hinted at tragic death come about?

Such realistic touches in a fictional story are an invitation to the reader to wonder,

is this really fiction I'm reading? Could this actually be truth masquerading as fiction?

Is there truly a Muriel trevonard? In writing this spooky story of events long past,

did Lysian Miller make it all up or was she writing down for posterity and actual ghost

story whispered to her by one of the tourists from the valley? Questions like these were

in the air almost from the start when Miller's magnificent little gem was published in the

August 1899 issue of Pacific Monthly magazine, and they've gained strength and credibility

with every passing year since. Visitors to the lighthouse still ask to see the bloodstains

and mysterious linen closet upstairs. And though most people familiar with the legend don't

actually believe it, there are those who do. Among those who believe the story, the stories

of Muriel's ghost don't end with screams in the night and mysterious lights guiding ships

at sea. Author Susan Smitten in her book about ghostly hauntings cites a 1975 article in

the register guard out of Eugene, in which Lincoln County Historical Museum curator Pat

Stone recounts the story of a young hitchhiker who came through, looking for work, having

nowhere to stay and no money to rent a room he enrolled a sleeping bag at the lighthouse.

That night he said a ghostly young woman appeared floating outside one of the windows. She

told him not to worry and that he would find work the next day. And so he did.

Probably the most intriguing derivative ghost story though was the legend of Captain

Evan McClure, skipper of the wailing ship Moncton. And in fact, it may be that the Muriel

Trevenard story is derivative of it rather than the other way around. The crew of this wailing

ship, according to the story, Mute Need and put Captain Evan McClure overboard in a small

robot just off the Oregon coast in the early 1870s. He was never seen again. But supposedly

there were a number of hauntings of houses and taverns along the coast after that. By a

red bearded skeleton-faced character prowling in search of someone to, quote, join me in

death.

The theory is that Lish and Miller wrote her story with an eye towards supplying a

denouement to the Evan McClure story, involving old Evan finally finding someone to take him

up on his spooky offer. But of course it's impossible to document which ghost story came

first so will likely never know. But Muriel Trevenard, the possibly fictional ghost, needed

no help from Evan McClure for her greatest achievement, the preservation of the lighthouse.

By the time the 1940s rolled around, the place was in awful shape and wrecking crews had

it on the schedule. In response, the citizens of Lincoln County formed the Lincoln County

Historical Society, specifically to prevent it from being demolished and to restore it,

which, with the help of Ohio industrialist and Oregon native son El E. Warford, they

would eventually do. Meanwhile, to buy the additional time they would need to complete

their plans, a group of citizens actually had to form a human chain around the building

to stop the demolition from proceeding. Would all this have happened without the fame

and narrative excitement generated by Muriel Trevenard and the story of her death? Possibly.

It seems unlikely though. In the 1940s, old buildings were generally regarded very unromantically,

even old lighthouses. Today, restored to its former glory, it's a state park. It's

also the oldest structure in Newport and the only wooden lighthouse in Oregon.

Key sources in this story included works by John B. Horner, Susan Smitten, yakwinolights.org,

and lighthousefriends.com.

Well, that's our show for today. Thanks again for listening. This podcast is part of

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