Certain places seem simply doomed to be damned, eerie places are infused with dark lore, and one of these places lies in the stormy seas of the Northwest United States.
This whole story begins with a place called Tillamook Rock, just a lonely basalt rock jutting out among the wind and waves sent by the stormy sea. It is located one and a half kilometers from the north coast of Oregon.
Oan stands there under the pressure of numerous storms that pass through this area, always opposing the gray, seething ocean and the breaking waves around it.
Its jagged silhouette, almost like a ghost out there in the fog and ferocious storms, gives it a rather otherworldly vibe, and perhaps this is what spurred on the legends of the Indians by devils and evil spirits.
Indeed, it is said that the local tribe would never have come close to her, and that beneath her were the ghostly tunnels of demons leading down to the darkness of the underworld.
It is a rock with a dark history that has become surrounded by stories of death, curses and the paranormal right up to modern times.
Regardless of whether evil spirits were ever there or not, the area where it was located, called Tillamook Head, was nevertheless undoubtedly dangerous, as it posed a constant threat to the ships that passed through these waters all More and more often.
In 1878, the US government decided that the area's danger was great enough to build a lighthouse on this abandoned rock, and so plans were put in place to implement the project.
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However, Tillamook Rock, which has stood in this cold, foaming sea and has inspired fear for centuries, will not be so easily tamed.
Exploration of the rock began in 1879 and was immediately rejected by it. The first to arrive, a master mason named John Trevavas, was tragically washed away by the wave as soon as he got there, his body was dragged into the sea, never to be found.
This was perceived as a bad omen for many people who were supposed to work in the construction, and combined with local legends that this is a cursed place, some of them refused to go to work there, many of them even quit altogether. However, plans to build a lighthouse went further, and in 1880 construction began in earnest, with people hired from outside the area and outside the influence of creepy stories drawn to the construction work.
Failures would begin almost immediately, further showing that the place was not hospitable to outsiders when the first construction team was hopelessly stuck there due to a fierce storm that took away almost all of their equipment and made the sea too dangerous to begin a rescue operation.
The people will be locked up there without food or supplies for nearly two weeks, during which time they were apparently attacked by sea lions and nearly froze to death and starved to death.
Even after this incident, frequent storms, persistent high winds, unfavorable weather, the difficulty of making a safe landing, and the sheer steepness of the terrain made construction and transport of building materials slow and met with failure.
The project will take an incredible 575 days to complete the humble Lighthouse, and the rock will hit one last time before construction is complete when a sailboat called Lupatia crashed there in heavy fog, killing 16 people and sparing only the dog on the ship.
Despite all this, the lighthouse, by now ominously nicknamed "Terrible Tilly", was officially opened for operation on January 21, 1881. Given the harsh working environment and absolute isolation there, on this threatening rock, it was decided to place four lighthouse keepers simultaneously in shifts of 42 days, 21 days off, but even so, the work there was considered somewhat akin to hell on earth.
Cold weather, relentless winds and storms, epic waves, endless dampness and the incessant roar of the ocean at any time of the day or night took on their moral and physical burden, and being on Tillamook Island was perceived as more or less the same as a prison term.
Indeed, it has become common that only lighthouse keepers who have received disciplinary action in the past have been appointed as dire Tilly lighthouse keepers. It was simply impossible to get others to work for Tilly, and then ghosts appeared.
Lighthouse keepers returning from this inhospitable place often talked about the paranormal, about how strange footsteps, voices or moans that cannot be explained roam the building, and even about being patted, stroked or pushed by invisible hands.
Some of the best descriptions of this kind of paranormal events come from a former caretaker named James A. Gibbs, who served there for a year.
From his first night there, he claims to have been warned by the other three guardians of the ghosts that roamed the rock, and he experienced it himself that very evening when he had a rather strange experience. Gibbs will say that he was awakened by the sound of disembodied footsteps in his room, and then he was seized by an inexplicable paralysis.
He said:
For some reason, I just couldn't move. I tensed and tried to scream, but the words seemed to get stuck in my throat. Hearing two more steps, I realized that someone was standing next to my bed. Then there came that awful moment when something passed near my throat, so close that the wind blew across my face.
And one day he and the other three caretakers saw a ghost ship passing by on the waves. The ship was very old-fashioned and seemed abandoned:
Jumping out of bed and pulling on my pants, in the blink of an eye I was on the street, and the "Swede" was already waiting for me, all worked up, as if blood was boiling in his veins. He pointed to the dim outline of the ship dividing streaks of fog less than a quarter of a mile away - its dull gray silhouette merging with the sky and sea and hinting at mystery.
Through binoculars, one could see that it was an old steamer, which could boast of a chronicle of long and hectic years - its seams opened, and the tow was baked over several years. Badly battered, its decks were wet with rain and seawater, and the rigging hung limply from the bow and main masts like broken spider webs against the gloomy sky.
Dirty paint peeled off its sides, and traces of rust from the iron parts left treacherous marks. The davits were empty, the pilot house was partially submerged in a steam boiler, and the cabin windows creaked open and closed in time with the pulsating ocean.
This eerie, lifeless ship drifted aimlessly and dangerously close to the rocks on an imminent collision course, before suddenly stopping, after which it made a full turn, as if under conscious control, and quietly headed back into the inky night.
Frightened people reported the appearance of a strange steamer to the Coast Guard, but no such vessel was found.
The only piece of evidence they had was a wreck of a ship that washed ashore during the incident, but it was soon returned in waves after Gibbs failed to retrieve it.
The lighthouse keepers were pursued by at least two separate entities, including the former lighthouse keeper, who was said to be very angry and disliked company, even stalking or attacking people.
Even when the lighthouse was closed in 1957 due to high maintenance costs, the light on the abandoned rock was still said to shine at night, although there should have been no one there and it was no longer working, and this is a strange phenomenon that continues to this day.
In 1980, the rock was used as a columbarium or storage for urns filled with the ashes of the dead, over 30 urns with ashes were kept there. The funeral company that used the lighthouse called the service “forever at sea” before it closed in 1999. The urns are supposedly still there.
In later years, Tillamook Rock became known as a bird sanctuary, considered part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is largely closed to all visitors.
For years since then, a ghostly light is still reportedly coming out over the dark waters, and the rock remains an unusual place with a strange history and many spooky tales.