McMenamins Olympic Club Paranormal Investigation by PIHA

About Centralia, WA: In 1851 George Washington (1817-1905), who would later found Centralia, arrived at the confluence. Washington claimed squatter's rights to a tract east of the Skookumchuck and north of the Chehalis on what was known as Skookumchuck Prairie. His was a squatter's claim because since he was a black man Oregon Territory law prevented him from owning land.

The 1920s brought slower growth and tensions in the logging industry. Some loggers sought to organize into unions to improve working conditions. In the Red Scare rhetoric of the day, those seeking to organize threatened the very existence of democracy in America. But the conditions in the logging camps were so dismal they left little choice for loggers except to seek outside help to improve their lot.

In Centralia the tension came to a head in 1919, after the Armistice Day parade. Members of the American Legion who had just finished marching in the parade continued on to the local Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.) union hall. Shots were fired and four Legionnaires lay dead when it was over. Authorities arrested the Wobblies (as the I.W.W. members were known) and put them in the city jail.

Vigilantes returned to the jail later and pulled one of the Wobblies, Wesley Everett, out of jail and took him to a bridge over the Skookumchuck River and hanged him.

As more settlers arrived in the area, Washington worried about losing his land to white settlers. Washington asked his former guardians, James (d. 1859) and Anna (d. 1867) Cochrane (a white couple), to file on his land to prevent anyone else from filing on it. The Cochrans later sold the land back to Washington once Washington Territory's laws did not prohibit his ownership.

Having settled, at least temporarily, his land ownership dilemma, Washington sought to put to rest his tenuous position in Oregon Territory. Oregon territorial law barred blacks from living in the territory. In 1853 Washington petitioned the territorial legislature for an exemption to this law, which they granted in January 1853.

About McMenamins Olympic Club:

The bawdy Olympic Club opened in 1908 as a "gentleman's resort," and had a barber shop, shoeshine stand, cafe, bar, card room, pool room and cigar counter, complemented by urbane furnishings such as Belgian crystal and Tiffany lamps. The elegant trappings were meant to coax loggers and miners to leave their week's salary behind. And they often did. Next door, what began as the Oxford Hotel and New Tourist Bar was built in 1913 for railroad travelers. The hotel became especially noteworthy when in 1921 the train-robbing bandit Roy Gardner was captured in the hotel after escaping from federal guards days earlier and riding to Centralia on the cow-catcher of a slow-moving train. Jack Sciutto, the Olympic Club's original proprietor was crowned "King of Bootleggers".

McMenamins Olympic Club's Paranormal History:

Candles mysteriously lit; rearranged chairs in basement; falling ax; music drowned out by mysterious tune; a man's laughter has been hears echoing in the building. A ghost nicknamed 'Elmer' has been seen standing by the cast iron stove. It is thought that this ghost could be of Louis Galba who had rented a room at the hotel formerly on this site. The hotel burned in 1908, and Louis jumped to the ground from his second story room. He died a few months later of his injuries.