E.R. Rogers Mansion

Three-story Victorian mansion built in 1891 by sea captain Edwin R. Rogers in Washington's oldest incorporated town.

Captain Edwin R. Rogers was a sea merchant who made his fortune in a 24-year partnership with Samuel McCaw beginning in 1857, when Rogers was just 28 years old. Together they sailed to San Francisco, purchased goods, and built a thriving trade business in Steilacoom, Washington's oldest incorporated town, chartered in 1854. After McCaw's death in April 1881, Rogers continued as sole proprietor and prospered. In 1891, at the age of 62, he built his dream home on the corner of Wilkes and Commercial Streets -- a three-story, 17-room Victorian mansion covering 4,582 square feet, with a ballroom, sweeping views of Puget Sound, and all the stately trappings of late-19th-century wealth. He shared it with his wife Catherine and their large family. But their happiness was short-lived. The nationwide Panic of 1893 shattered Rogers's fortune, and the family was forced to leave after only two years. Rogers died in 1906, never having returned to the home he loved.

The mansion passed through a series of owners. The Charles Herman family converted its 17 rooms and South Sound views into a summer guest house. In the 1920s, Hattie Bair purchased the property and renamed it the Waverly Hotel, running it as a boarding house through the Depression and World War II. Hattie, known for her enormous heart, took in men who were down on their luck, letting them chop wood and do odd jobs in exchange for food and a bed. She died on January 29, 1948, at the age of 88, inside her beloved mansion. In 1978, the building was reopened as the E.R. Rogers Restaurant, the incarnation that would make its ghosts famous.

The most frequently reported spirit is believed to be Catherine Rogers, who was devastated when the family lost the house. A young woman in white appears near the ceiling of the lavishly appointed second-floor bar, floating in period dress with long dark hair. One of the most striking accounts came from a British patron who told staff member Jennifer Laughlin that he watched a woman's stockinged foot step through the air into the attic, as if ascending a staircase that no longer exists -- a detail consistent with the days of oil lamps and cotton lisle stockings, when blackened smudges from a lamp flame burned permanent shadows into the slanted attic ceiling above where the light once stood.

A rocking chair positioned by the north window was repeatedly moved to closets by staff, only to be found back in its original spot the next morning. Electronics acted of their own accord -- lights, televisions, blenders, and sound systems would activate spontaneously, doors swung open without cause, and candles were snuffed out by unseen hands. The cheap scent of perfume would suddenly fill empty rooms. Outside, a man's face was seen in an illuminated tree on the property's southwest corner.

The attic became the most feared area. One night a worker reported hearing chairs being violently thrown around overhead. When police arrived with a K-9 unit, the dog cowered and whimpered at the attic stairs and refused to go up -- behavior the officers said was completely unprecedented for that animal. During another incident reported by alarm monitor Kelly D. Krumpe, police responded to a tripped alarm three hours after the restaurant had closed for the night and found a front window broken from the inside out, with no one alive inside. Carpet cleaning workers who came to service the restaurant felt an unseen presence supervising their work so intensely that they left for lunch and refused to return.

Server Sue Conklin captured the staff's matter-of-fact acceptance of the situation when she recalled her hiring interview: "They asked, 'Do you mind working nights? Do you mind working... ghosts?'"

Beyond Catherine, multiple spirits may inhabit the mansion. A male apparition -- possibly Rogers himself -- has been seen ascending an invisible staircase inside the building. Local historian James M. Arkell, claiming deep roots in Steilacoom, asserted that the primary haunting is distinctly female but noted there may also be a spirit connected to the gallows that once stood nearby. Those gallows are where Nisqually Chief Leschi was hanged on February 19, 1858, before a crowd of about 300 people. Leschi, convicted of killing a militia volunteer during the Puget Sound War, maintained his innocence to the end. His hangman, Charles Grainger, later reflected: "I felt then I was hanging an innocent man, and I believe it yet." The Washington State Senate formally recognized the injustice in 2004, and a historical court exonerated Leschi that December. Some researchers speculate that apparitions seen outside the mansion may be Leschi's spirit, drawn to the Sound view near where he was executed.

The E.R. Rogers Restaurant eventually closed, and the mansion was purchased by Peggy and Jeff Gross in 2006. They undertook a meticulous restoration from basement to attic, featured in Victorian Homes Magazine in 2011. The building now serves as a law office, though it remains a featured stop on Pretty Gritty Tours' Steilacoom ghost walk and is documented in Jeff Dwyer's Ghost Hunter's Guide to Seattle and Puget Sound. Whether Catherine Rogers still roams the second-floor bar in her white dress, mourning the home she lost over 130 years ago, the current occupants have not publicly said.