The Wolf Creek Inn lies in Wolf Creek, OR, just off Interstate 5 on Exit 71. It is a two-story Classic Revival style clapboard inn that serves as a bed and breakfast, restaurant, community event center, and museum. Wolf Creek Inn is the longest still-running inn and restaurant in Oregon history.

The lodge began life as a clap-board lodge built in the early 1850’s offering rest along the Applegate Trail. In 1883 it was converted from a “Six Bit House” into a first-class hotel by orchardist Henry Smith. Pear and apple trees survive to this day near the Inn that were originally planted by Smith. Christened the “Wolf Creek Tavern”, the stagecoach stop was built up with 16 rooms, separate men and women’s parlors, a dining room, and a deluxe outhouse just outside the back door as a respite along the sixteen-day coach route between Portland and San Francisco.

Working cowboys would be allowed to stay in the attic for 10-cents a night, but the attic was unfloored, leaving only a “shelf” of two or three boards around the perimeter of the attic for the cowboys to sleep. To keep from rolling off in their sleep, the cowboys would jam their spurs into the rafters, the marks of which still remain. In 1925, then owners John and Dinky Dougal constructed the South Wing along with the famous “Tasty Cuisine” sign, and the inn grew in popularity as a retreat for writers, artists, and actors.

Famous guests to Wolf Creek Inn include: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Orson Welles, John Wayne, Sir Anthony Hopkins, Sinclair Lewis, and President Rutherford B. Hayes. The entire cast of “Gunsmoke” stayed in the inn once while shooting an episode in the nearby ghost town of Golden. Clarke Gable and Carole Lombard were said to be regulars of the establishment, Gable famously befriending the innkeeper and regularly slipping away to go fishing on the Rogue River. Some claim that Clark would occasionally sneak off to Wolf Creek for extramarital dalliances, but it’s also claimed Gable came here to grieve after Lombard’s passing.

Jack London was one of the inn’s most frequent lodgers and spent an entire summer there with his second wife while he wrote the short story “The End of the Story” and finished “Valley of the Moon”. His room has been preserved to appear much as it would have during his visits, and some say his ghost returned to the Inn after his death in 1916. Guests have reported encountering London’s apparition in his room, and his voice has been heard as well.

Dinky Dougal gave birth to their daughter Jane in the Mary Pickford room. Jane revisited the Inn in the late 1900’s and recalled how Dinky’s cooking would attract the wolves nearby to hang out in the yard, hoping for a snack. Wolf Creek was named naturally for the large number of wolves in the area at its founding, and guests to the inn in early days were each given a chamber pot for use during the night, since leaving the safety of the building to use the outhouse could be hazardous. The last recorded sighting of a wolf near the Inn was 1956.

Another commonly encountered ghost is the spirit of a female stagecoach driver, who people like to associate with One-Eyed Charley. ‘One-Eyed Charley’ Parkhurst was a well-known stagecoach driver on the roads south of Oregon during the Gold Rush. Charley had a reputation for being a real roughneck, described as a man that “drove his team hard, spat his tobacco juice harder, and cussed like Sam Clemens”. Charley registered to vote for the first time in 1868 to cast a ballot for Ulysses S. Grant and was known to only miss work on the day after payday (due to being hungover).

When One-Eyed Charley died at the age of 67, the mortician was shocked to learn that ‘Charley’ was actually ‘Charlotte’. Originally an orphan girl, Charley left the orphanage and got into stagecoach driving by dressing and acting like a man. Since Charley proudly voted for Grant in 1868, that potentially makes her the first woman in the US to vote in a presidential election.

The lady stagecoach driver’s voice is often said to be heard in the building when no one is around. She is described as sounding like a little kid singing, kind of playing around, and is often seen in the window from outside. It has not escaped more astute historians that there is one major hang-up in the story: One-Eyed Charley died in 1879, before the Inn was constructed. But since the Inn was converted from the original clapboard lodge form the 1850’s, perhaps there’s enough leeway to not squelch the story out over that detail just yet.

Other ghosts reported include a young woman who has been seen in Clark Gable’s room, and an older man who has been seen inside the building. Both have been caught on EVPs. The building has the full complement of randomized haunting reports: doors opening and closing, phantom scents, lights flickering, piano playing, small items moving on their own. Children are sometimes heard playing in the Ballroom. EVP’s captures are not uncommon for paranormal investigators, including one that reportedly said the name “Beulah”, so there’s speculation that it might be one of the spirits’ names. The kitchen is often reported to have items thrown around the room or people preparing meals may brush across someone who isn’t there. Some guess Dinky Dougal is still overseeing food preparation in the kitchen that meant the world to her.

A more sinister spirit has also been described on the grounds and even within the inn, described as a “vampire-like creature” with the stature of a small man, with ghoulish fangs and blood around its mouth. It has been suggested to be a spirit-of-the-woods or some kind of cryptid, but most people reckon that it is simply the ghost of a mentally disturbed person wishing for witnesses to perceive him as a monster.

There are a few amateur paranormal investigations of Wolf Creek Inn on YouTube one can sift through, and they are about what you would expect: people fumbling to use tarot cards and dowsing rods they’ve never touched before, using ghost hunting phone apps and identifying EVPs that somehow don’t turn up in editing.

There is also an investigation by paranormal punching bags and douche squad extraordinaire, Ghost Adventures. Zak Bagans, of course, is on the scene for all of six minutes before finding a “portal” no one else in all of history has identified, decides that the reported little girl ghost is actually a demon in disguise protecting the portal, and then spends the rest of the episode going after this demon that only he has ever identified there.

In the 1960’s Interstate 5 came through the area, pulling away customers that would go directly past the Inn on old Highway 99, but being only a few hundred feet away from I-5 kept it in close enough proximity to survive. It was added to the National Registry of Historic Places in 1972, and in 1979, the Oregon Department of Parks & Recreation purchased the Inn to gave it a complete historic renovation. Today, the Inn still takes lodgers (ghost hunting tourists should try to get a reservation in Rooms 6, 8, or 9), and offers self-guided tours of the building Thursday thru Sunday.

Featured image by Marek Szturc on Unsplash