The fog rolls in off the Pacific in long, pale rolls that swallow the headland whole. Then the wind shifts. The mist tears. And the white tower of Heceta Head appears two hundred and five feet above the surf, its single bright eye still cutting cleanly through the dusk. For more than a century, the light has flashed every ten seconds. Below the tower, halfway up the cliff, sits the Queen Anne keeper’s house that is now a bed and breakfast. The key any guest is handed comes with a name. Rue.
Heceta Head Lighthouse was first lit on March 30, 1894, on a remote stretch of the Oregon Coast between Florence and Yachats. Two duplex keepers’ houses were built nearby. One of them, a Queen Anne with a small attic at the top, still stands. The lighthouse was automated in 1963. In the 1970s, Lane Community College students brought a Ouija board into the keeper’s house and the board returned three letters: R-U-E. Local research has not identified any keeper’s wife by that name in the official rosters. Legend says her daughter drowned. The most thoroughly documented encounter was reported in the Siuslaw News in 1975, when workman Jim Anderson saw an elderly woman in late-Victorian dress in the attic, fled, accidentally broke the attic window, and that night the Tammens family heard scraping above. They found the broken glass swept into a neat pile.
Today the keeper’s house operates as the Heceta Head Lighthouse Bed and Breakfast at 92072 Highway 101 South in Yachats. The tower and trails are open year round. Six guest rooms occupy the building Rue is said to occupy. Sleep through the night and you may hear nothing. Wake to the unmistakable scrape of glass being swept across a floor and you will be the latest in a quiet ledger.
Story Source: www.columbian.com
Address: 92072 Highway 101 South, Yachats, OR 97498
Accessibility Rating: Open to All — Freely accessible to the public with no advance requirement. Includes hotels, restaurants, bars, and public historic sites where visitors may walk in without prior booking.
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What Others Have Experienced
A Portland Monthly writer who stayed at the lighthouse B&B woke in the night to what sounded like broken glass scraping across the floor and broom bristles scratching; fellow guests at breakfast reported furniture moving, a door banging downstairs, and one older woman was so disturbed she was ready to leave
— from Portland Monthly
A worker cleaning an attic window in 1975 encountered Rue and fled the building immediately, refusing to return to the top story for several days
— from Portland Monthly
The ghost is said to maintain a tidy house: after a window shattered at the property, the broken glass was found swept into a neat pile despite no one having been in the room
— from Oregon Discovery
Guest book entries left by previous visitors describe Rue appearing as a seated figure in the bedroom chair and unexplained tapping sounds on the walls throughout the night
— from Portland Monthly
Some guests have reported waking to find what felt like a presence getting into bed beside them during the night — an unsettling but reportedly benign encounter
— from Oregon Discovery
