Watts Street

Residential Home on N. Watts St. in Portland, OR.

Featured on the television program "Sightings," this house continues to relive its murderous past.

The story begins with a tragic murder-suicide on December 23, 1973.   A husband hunted down, then shot and killed his wife in the living room of one of her friends, then turned the gun on himself, while their children lay sleeping in a bedroom upstairs.  Numerous phenomenon have occurred in the house.  The current owners, who purchased the house in 1985, report experiencing sightings of a man and a woman in various locations within the house.  One of the owners even reports that he has walked into rooms, encountering a strange mist which left him feeling distraught.  

The children of the current owners say that when they were young, they would see such apparitions almost on a daily basis.  The mother of these children gave the youngest daughter a spray bottle of lilac-scented water to use to keep the spirits at bay.  Grown now, the children report experiencing strange phenomenon only occasionally.

The spirit of the woman would apparently appear each night to one of the children, tucking her tightly into the bed.  The mother and father would be dumbstruck when they found the sheets so tightly tucked under the matress, something that neither of them would do, just in case the child had to get up in the night.   However, the appearances were not entirely benevolent, as behind the woman, the child would always see a man watching closely, never smiling or showing any emotion - just watching.  The child never liked this part of the visits - the man scared her.

Another experience with the children reinforced the idea that something else was sharing the home with its new owners.  One night, while the children were sleeping in the same bedroom, the mother awoke to find the house very cold.   She went to the children's bedroom to plug in and turn on the portable heater that they had purchased, only to find it already plugged in, turned on, and the room quite comfortable.  The children were fast asleep.  When asked the next morning, the older child said that neither of them had plugged in the heater, because that's something they weren't allowed to do.

The appearances got progressively more intense until the middle of 1988, with loud knocking, footsteps, and occasionally even voices growing louder and more regular.  Sometime in the middle of 1988, however, things began to calm down.   There is still the occasional visitation by the entities known to the residents as "Mr. and Mrs. G", but they are few and seemingly far between.

In an interesting twist to this story:  the children who were sleeping while their father committed the murder/suicide heard about the show's appearance on Sightings, and contacted the current owners.  When they came to the house to visit, they were shocked to see that the couch located in the living room looked almost exactly like the one that had been in the house on that fateful night, and was in the same location as the couch was when their father collapsed onto it upon his death.

Sources:
Ghosts of North Portland - H.Michael Ball
Haunted America - Michael Norman & Beth Scott