Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery

A cemetery in the town of Lafayette, southwest of Portland. The town was a prosperous county seat in the mid-1800s before burning three times.

Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery occupies four and a half acres of gently sloping ground in the Yamhill County wine country southwest of Portland, established in the mid-1800s when the land was purchased in 1874 for one hundred dollars by local leaders to serve as a burial ground for the region's earliest settlers. The first recorded burial was that of Henrietta Hodges, a young girl whose family had traveled to Oregon from Wisconsin by wagon train, one of thousands of families who risked everything to cross the continent on the Oregon Trail. The cemetery grew as the pioneer community did, filling with the farmers, merchants, and families who built the towns of the Willamette Valley.

The cemetery's most notorious legend involves a woman accused of witchcraft by the townspeople. According to local tradition, she was hanged for her alleged practices and buried somewhere on the cemetery grounds. Before her execution, she reportedly screamed out a curse upon the town, prophesying that it would burn. What makes the legend particularly unsettling is what happened afterward: fires did indeed strike the area, lending an air of fulfilled prophecy to the dying woman's words. Whether this was coincidence or something more, the story has become inseparable from the cemetery's identity.

Lena Elsie Imus, buried in the cemetery, died by suicide in 1908 after drinking carbolic acid in her home. That home later became the site of Argyle Winery, and employees at the winery have reported seeing and sensing her presence over the years, describing a woman in period clothing who appears among the headstones or near the property where she died. Lena's story connects the cemetery to the surrounding landscape, suggesting that the spirits here are not confined to the burial ground itself but wander the broader area where they lived and suffered.

Visitors to Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery report a wide array of paranormal phenomena. Shadowy figures are seen moving among the headstones, particularly at dusk and after dark. Unexplained cold spots occur in specific locations regardless of weather conditions. Disembodied whispers have been heard by multiple witnesses, and at least one visitor has claimed to record a voice saying "Run home!" during an investigation. The sensation of being watched is nearly universal among those who visit after hours, and some report feeling a tightening in their chest as they walk deeper into the grounds.

More alarming are the accounts of physical encounters. Some visitors have reported being chased from the cemetery by an unseen force and discovering deep scratches on their backs afterward, injuries they had not felt being inflicted. Strange lights and orbs appear in photographs taken at the cemetery, and cameras have malfunctioned during visits. Footsteps and children's laughter have been heard when no one else is present, and gates and doors have been observed moving on their own.

The cemetery's reputation as one of the most haunted locations in the Portland metropolitan area has drawn so much attention from paranormal investigators and thrill-seekers that Yamhill County imposed a no-trespassing rule to protect the grounds and the graves of the pioneers buried there. The restriction has not diminished the cemetery's reputation, and Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery remains a fixture on lists of Oregon's most haunted places. The Willamette Valley's wine country, with its rolling hills and quiet vineyards, seems an unlikely setting for such intense paranormal activity, but the pioneer dead who built this land rest uneasily, and the woman accused of witchcraft has never, by any account, stopped making her presence known.