The Haunted Outhouse

I found it hard to explain to my daughter Kalene that there were no such thing as haunted toilets. After my traumatic experience, I had a hard time convincing myself.

Lopez, in San Juan County, is a beautiful island filled with easily accessible parks and bicycle friendly roads. The village in the center has modern shops to attract tourists as well as a nice grocery store for the island residents.

It is only a short but sweet, hour-long ferry ride out of Anacortes, Washington, which is beautiful on a warm sunny day.

Odlin Park, just a mile from the ferry landing, has a beautiful sandy beach and plenty of campsites. My wife Cheryl, our 12-year-old daughter Kalene, and I brought our bikes and camping gear across on the ferry to spend a weekend at the park.

After setting up our tent upon arrival, we cycled into the village for ice cream and then down past the airport to a walking park called Shark Reef.

I don’t know why it was named Shark Reef because I doubt that there are any sharks in the area, but just off the shore of the park there are two rocky islands. If you look closely, you will notice that at the water’s edge on the islands, resting on the rocks, are a great number of sea lions.

The span of water between the park and the islands roars like a river as the water at tidal changes shifts directions. The sea lions know that salmon swim through this flow and they gorge themselves on their easy catches. They then lay on the rocks and sun themselves in a food coma.

As the sun began to set, we hurriedly rode back to Odlin to make dinner. We were unaware of the high wind warning which was approaching.

The park has plenty of pit toilets amongst the campsites to meet the needs of all the campers. They were all purchased from the same manufacturer and have the same design. What makes them unique from other designs is the large diameter vent pipes which rise from the pits and top out a few feet above the roofline.

That night, we sat around the campfire making torches from marshmallows on our sticks. The wind was starting to come up as I sat on a camp stool trying to stay out of the smoke. Tents and tarps around us were beginning to flap and lean and many of the other camp sites had already dumped water on their fires. Because sparks and ash were now blowing across our campsite from the wind, I also doused our fire and we prepared for bed.

Inside the tent, I decided it was my time-honored tradition to tell Kalene some of the ghost stories I heard from my youth. One involved meeting a poltergeist face to face in an old building. Of course I told the story as being fact.

“The vacant house which sat on the hill hadn’t been lived in for years,” I said. “Though it was dark as coal outside, I walked through the tall grass toward the rotted and broken-down front steps. The wind howled around the structure causing the building’s windows to rattle.

“As I took the door handle in my right hand and began to turn it clockwise, the wind grabbed a broken shutter on a window next to me and slammed it shut. This unnerved me and I had to pause a moment to regain my composure before grabbing the door handle again to push open the door.

“Why would you want to go inside?” Kalene asked.

“It’s what a man does,” I answered.

“It’s also why women live longer than men,” Cheryl chimed in with some degree of sarcasm.

“Before I was so rudely interrupted . . .”

“The door was stuck but after a few manly shoves, I pushed it open and stepped inside. The interior smelled musty combined with the aroma of mouse and bat droppings. It was like there had been no fresh air inside the building for years.

“The flooring had long since rotted and the planking squeaked with each step I took. Only the moon shining through the window openings gave the main floor any light. I wandered around the empty rooms. Some had a broken chair or table inside. The wallpapers were stained and pulling away from the walls. The downstairs bathroom had a leaking faucet in the sink that had been dripping for who knows how many years. In what used to be the kitchen, I found some broken cups and fruit jars. The single pane window over the sink had been broken and a blackberry vine grew through it.

As I wandered back through the hallway, I pulled open a door. It exposed an upstairs staircase.

“You didn’t go up the stairs, did you?” I could tell that I had her hook, line, and sinker now.

“Let’s stop the story now before she is too frightened to fall asleep tonight,” Cheryl suggested.

“No dad! Keep going. Why would you go upstairs with no flashlight?”

“I stuck my head in the stairwell and looked up the staircase. The new breezeway between the two floors allowed the wind to circulate between floors. The house began to moan as the air pressures equalized.

“From the second floor or the attic came the sounds of fluttering wings. The thought of pigeons or bats entered my mind. I grabbed the dropping covered handrail with my left hand and dragging my right hand against the wall to stabilize myself, I started climbing up the stairs.

“Though the staircase was dark, ahead of me, bright flashes of light from some unknown source would illuminate the walls at the top of the landing. Then the light would be gone. This had the effect of temporarily blinding me.

“There were 15 steps in the staircase from the first floor to the second. One at a time I put my full body weight on each, checking to make sure I wouldn’t break through. At the halfway point, the flashes increased. The wind from the open front door was now blowing at full force up the staircase. The curtains at the top thrashed back and forth, trying to break free from the rods which held them. Now, the windows and the attic roofline emitted sorrowful moans from the air pressure being forced through them. It was a haunting moan of several different pitches.

“Almost to the top step, I stopped. The lights which were flickering were now a steady glow off to the right of the top landing. For the first time, I began to smell a stench which was defying the flow of air which roared up the staircase. It was a stench drifting down the staircase.

“I gagged at the revulsion of the stench. It was unbelievably putrid. I must get out of this breezeway! But as I placed my left foot on the top step, I heard an ungodly scream which almost caused me to faint from fright. From around the wall at the top of the stairs swooped an apparition staring at me face to face. It was more horrid than Hollywood could ever imagine. I screamed.

“Its mouth hung open and from it flowed a hideous stench which surrounded my being in a greenish fog. I could not breathe. It’s eyes of death stared into mine and appearing to inhale an enormous breath, it exhaled in my face while at the same time moaning, ‘Leave!’

“I stumbled backwards down the staircase, fell into the hallway, and hit my head on the far wall. The flickering light appeared to be descending the stairs because the stairwell glowed brighter. Floating to the bottom step, it turned and stared at me on the floor as I stared up at it.

“Leave!” it moaned.

“I used the wall to help me stand upright and I pushed off, running as if death was following me, right out the front door and down through the tall grass.”

I paused and stared at Kalene and Cheryl who were staring back at me with their mouths open and looks of horror on their faces.

“Well, does anyone need to use the bathroom before bed?”

The wind shook our Dome tent.

“No? Well, I’m going. Be back in a bit.”

I walked up a trail through the tall grass toward the closest pit toilet. The grass leaned as the wind blew over it. I made sweeps in an arc to the right and left with my flashlight making sure that I wasn’t being tracked by wolves. The dark silhouette of the outhouse was before me.

I stopped. The building was emitting a moaning whine. The moan rose and lowered with the intensity of the wind. A branch from an alder tree slapped against the roof.

“This is freaky,” I thought. “I wish these things had power for lights.”

A break in the clouds cast light from the moon onto the frosted plastic windows giving them the impression that someone else was inside the latrine.

I crept slowly to the door and knocked.

“Hello. Anyone inside?”

A strong gust of wind caused the outhouse to groan with a long, drawn-out moaning sound. The alder branch slapped loudly against the roof.

“Well, no answer.”

Pulling open the door, I shone the flashlight inside. It was empty. Going inside, I lifted the lid and quickly sat down. The alder slapping the outhouse roof was beginning to unnerve me. I again used the flashlight, looking around all corners of the room to eliminate the possibility of there being spiders or bats in there with me.

And then I smelled it, an indescribable stench filling the building. Frantically, I shone the light around the small enclosure again. Am I not alone in this room?

A roaring wind came off the water. Campers at many of the sites screamed as their tents collapsed and sparks from their fires blew across the campground.

Then I heard it . . . the ghost. It was banging on the door and banging against the roof. Suddenly its presence rose from the pit, up between my legs, blowing my clothes, surrounding my nose and mouth with unspeakable vileness. My eyes watered, my sinuses burned. Is this being from the burning sulfur pits of hell?

More banging on the building. The outhouse moaned like a thousand lost souls were screaming and finally I heard the ghost itself scream.

“Leave!  Leave!”

Pulling up my trousers, I swung open the door and jumped outside only to be blinded by a searing light. It came from having a high-powered flashlight aimed at my face.

“Oh, sorry sir. You ought to leave and go to another privy.” It was the camp Ranger.

“When we get strong winds like this, the winds blow down the oversized vent pipes and push the pit gases right up into the face of anyone sitting in there. It’s toxic.”

All the way back to the tent, I gagged and snorted, trying to rid my body of the stench which had invaded it. This was something only an exorcist could help me with.

Epilogue – Fact is better than fiction.

In the years since the Lopez campout, Kalene has grown, married, and moved on. She has retold the story of the haunted house many times. I left a lasting impression upon her.

I, on the other hand, have decided that fact is indeed better than fiction and now I traumatize my grandkids with a story about pit toilets called, The Haunted Outhouse.

** The cover photo is not an example of the outhouses at Odlin Park.

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