Me, I thought I'd seen everything.
Here and now, the Mom uses the tissue from her purse to lift the man's limp penis. It's about the size of a boneless thumb. She lifts it straight up and lets it flop back down. The man's balls are cupped between his hairy thighs. He squirms to get away from her, but he can't.
Both of us standing inside the closed curtain, I don't stop her. My job is just to drive her around. And wait. I look at my watch, again.
The man's red-faced and shouting about the fucking devils. The demons are touching him. He's screaming for help.
The Mom, her hand puts the tissue back into her purse. And when her hand comes out, it's holding a baby pin.
The man's screaming. He's screaming, "Fuck. Cunt. Nigger. Fag."
Again and again until it doesn't make any sense. Until the words turn into a mantra. A bird's song. Just sounds without meaning. I look at my watch.
And the Mom clicks the pin open.
The door to the room is half closed. It's hospital policy not to close the door to a patient's room all the way. Everyone on the third floor can hear the man, but no one's listening.
The Mom drives the needle into the man's thigh.
She sticks the needle in, and the man bellows. He squeals until his screams break into sobs. She stabs again, and he's sobbing and begging her to stop. He's sobbing until he's quiet.
By then I'm standing at the edge of the bed. I'm leaning in, holding my breath. We don't know this yet, but in that other room the mother's son is already dead.
Haunts: Where to Rub Elbows with the Dead
From ghost stories to cold spots, the dead seem to linger among the living in Portland. Here are sixteen local opportunities to look up old friends.
1. Northwest Paranormal Investigations
Bob and Renee Chamberlain have been bitten, spit on, bruised, and flipped off—all by ghosts.
As the founders of Northwest Paranormal Investigations, that's just part of their job while videotaping and audio recording, documenting and protecting the spirits and cemeteries around the Portland area.
"Ten years ago," Bob says, "we'd never given the paranormal a second thought—never." Back then, they'd just built a new house and cared for Renee's mother as she died of cancer. But after she died, they'd still hear her cough in the house. They'd hear the dead woman stacking pans in the kitchen. They'd smell her cigarettes. Lights started turning on and off. Their pit bull, Titan, would sit, staring at her photo on the wall.
"We're sane people," Renee says. "But at first I didn't think I was. I thought I was just grieving over my mom."
The toilet tissue would unroll in a heap on the floor. The toilet lid would slam shut, and the toilet would flush. A small statue of a rocking horse would move around the living room. Their two kids heard it all, but no one in the family mentioned it to each other until Renee met with two visiting writers, in town on a book tour, who specialized in the paranormal.
Now they know the difference between a "partial apparition" and a "full apparition." They've put together a group of ghost hunters with chapters in Portland, Saint Helens, and Oregon City. They spend their evenings in places like the Klondike, a haunted hotel and restaurant in downtown Saint Helens, where Bob videotaped a stream of flying "spirit orbs," glowing balls of light that hover and veer down the hallways and around the camera like a "glowing school of fish." On a recent trip they led a film crew from the Fox network to the site of Wellington, Washington, where the whole town was wiped out in a 1920s landslide. There, spirit orbs are visible to the naked eye, and a woman's voice calls to you in broad daylight.
"They came out of there blubbering idiots," Bob says. "They were so in awe."
Bob is a big man, handsome with a square jaw. Renee is pretty, with blond hair piled on her head. Locally, they've found proof of hauntings at the Pittock Mansion in Portland's West Hills. The John McLoughlin House in Oregon City. And in the downtown tunnel system. The Little Church in Sellwood, near the entrance to Oakes Amusement Park, has a "steady flow of orbs going inside every evening," according to Bob. Renee and Bob say that something very basic about the Portland area, something organic, possibly the soil, allows spirits to manifest there more easily.
Before joining the Chamberlains for a meeting or outing with Northwest Paranormal Investigations, here are a few things to know:
"Spirits are always here for a reason," Bob says. "Either they have unfinished business. Or they don't know they're dead. Or they're pranksters."
He adds, "Those spirits feed off of you. If you're an angry person, that's what you'll get. If you're happy-go-lucky, you'll get that."
The more open-minded you are, the more emotionally sensitive, the more you'll experience. Spirit activity is more likely during a full or new moon, or two to three days before an electrical storm.
Membership dues are $2.50 per month, and the Chamberlains hate the term ghostbusters. To contact them, go to www.northwestparanormal.freehomepage.com.
"We meet more people who believe than skeptics," Bob says, "but even the most intelligent people have seen things they can't explain."
The group also locates and maintains historic cemeteries and patrols them on Halloween to prevent vandalism.
Before Renee's mother died, Bob had become so obsessed about death that he couldn't sleep. Now that fear is gone, for the whole family. "There's something out there other than just dying and staying where you're put," he says. "It may sound morbid, but I actually look forward to what I'll see on the other side."
The Chamberlains have moved several times, but Renee's mother is still with them. "People think spiritual entities are confined to one area," Renee says, "but they're wrong."
Now, when the rocking horse statue moves, Renee just moves it back, saying, "Mom, I like the rocking horse right here. Now, don't move it again!"
2. The Portland Memorial
It looks like an apartment building rising above SE Bybee Street, just before Bybee curves to merge with SE Thirteenth Avenue. A combination of towering and sprawling wings, built in Victorian, Art Deco, and Spanish styles, it houses more than 58,000 residents with room for another 120,000. It's a 3.5-acre city within the city. A city of the dead. Started in 1901, the Portland Memorial has expanded into a chilly, carpeted maze of marble, concrete, bronze, and brass. You'll find Tiffany stained-glass windows, Carrara marble statues and fountains. Overstuffed sofas and chairs sit in little groupings. Stairways wind up and down. The long vaults link together to make vistas that seem to stretch forever.
Within ten minutes you'll be confused and lost. After fifteen minutes you'll panic. But while you're hunting for the way out, look for the crypt of Mayo Methot, Humphrey Bogart's first wife. After she died in 1951, a dozen roses arrived here every week for decades. Also, look for the Rae Room, the memorial's biggest crypt. Lined with stained glass, the vault holds two freestanding sar-cophaguses and is opened only one day each year. The story is, George Rae married his maid, Elizabeth, twenty-six years his junior, so no family members will visit except on Memorial Day.
And, yes, this is the mausoleum I used as the basis for my second novel, Survivor. Part of the book I even wrote here, but the air is freezing and your fingers get stiff, fast. The Portland Cacophony Society (portland. cacophony, org) occasionally hosts outings to explore the labyrinth. On a rainy day it's a good place to walk, tracing the history of Portland's pioneer families. Or maybe just sit and read a spooky book, surrounded by the dead, in a huge window that looks over the black swamp of Oakes Bottom, toward the spinning colored lights of the amusement park.