The Haunted McMenamins Hotel Oregon, McMinnville: Room 203 and the Rooftop Bar

Hotel Oregon stands on Evans Street in downtown McMinnville, about an hour southwest of Portland in the Willamette Valley wine country. It opened in 1905 as the Hotel Elberton and is still the tallest building downtown and the largest historic hotel building in Yamhill County. Since 1999 McMenamins has run it as a 36-room hotel with a pub, a speakeasy-style cellar bar and a rooftop bar that looks out to the mountains.

Every room is named for a person from the hotel’s or the town’s past, and some of those people are said to have stayed on. Oregon Wine Press collected the stories in 2017: a regular called John who roams the rooftop bar and halls, a guest who felt pushed out of room 203, and a former employee who watched a heavy steel cylinder spin by itself in the cellar. OPB adds reports of children heard playing. It is the most affordable of the haunted hotels around Portland, and the only one that also hosts a UFO festival.

The ghosts of McMenamins Hotel Oregon

John on the rooftop

The ghost most people ask about at Hotel Oregon is John. McMenamins’ own walking guide calls him the hotel’s resident spirit and says his mischief was first reported in the 1980s, when the upper floors were closed and only the street-level shops were open. Former shop owners on the first floor said he often haunted the elevator.

Nobody has worked out who John was in life, and McMenamins says so plainly. Oregon Wine Press describes him as a “regular” who wanders the rooftop bar and the hallways, so the rooftop bar is the place to finish an evening if you want to sit where his story is set.

Room 203: Ollie Ruffler White's room

Like every room here, room 203 carries a name: Ollie Ruffler White. A guest who stayed there wrote online that “the entire time I was there, I felt like someone was watching me,” and added, “I felt like I was just being pushed out.”

When writer Neil Zawicki visited the room for Oregon Wine Press in 2017, he felt nothing when he touched the door. Later, looking at a photo he had taken, he saw what he believed was the outline of a face above the nameplate, with “two sunken eyes and the bridge of a nose.”

The spinning cylinder in the cellar

The most detailed account comes from a former employee named Michael, who wrote about a night in 2002. Making a cash drop in the cellar bar office, he noticed that “the heavy steel cylinder is spinning. Spinning very fast,” and the room turned cold.

“After that night, I have no doubt that Hotel Oregon has active spirits, and they are quite mischievous,” he wrote. McMenamins’ walking guide adds that longtime staff and residents have reported noises in the basement; some blame John, while artist Lyle Hehn joked that the puppets in his cellar painting were to blame. The Cellar Bar is now a speakeasy-style bar open to guests, though the office is not.

Children at play

OPB reported in 2014 that people have heard children playing at Hotel Oregon. No story explains who the children might be, and no particular room is linked to them.

Look out too for Lyle Hehn’s painting in the pub of Pierre and Walter White, twin sons of the original proprietor, given a ghostly aura that the artist compared to the twins in The Shining. It is art, not a sighting, but it shows how much the hotel enjoys its ghost stories.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• Room 203 (Ollie Ruffler White): The room where a guest felt watched and pushed out, and where a writer photographed what he thought was a face. Ask for it by name or number.
• Room 306 (Heck Harper) and room 401 (Wayne the Singing Chef): Heck Harper was a Portland singing cowboy who played the hotel’s Paragon Room lounge in the mid-1950s, and Wayne was a cook there who stepped out from the stove to sing to diners. A good choice if 203 is taken.
• Shared-bath rooms: The cheapest rooms use bathrooms down the hall, which means walking the corridors at night.
• The rooftop bar: Not a room, but the place where John is said to linger, with views to the distant mountains.

History of McMenamins Hotel Oregon

The building opened in 1905 as the Hotel Elberton, a two-story brick and native stone hotel in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, with Thomas A. White as its first proprietor. It was designed for four stories, and in 1910 the third and fourth floors were added, though McMenamins says only the third was finished at the time. It was, and still is, the tallest building in downtown McMinnville, and the city calls it the largest hotel building in Yamhill County.

In 1932 an elevator went in and the name changed to Hotel Oregon. The Elberton Grill ran from about 1920 to 1932, and from 1945 to 1958 the Paragon Room lounge brought country music, the singing cowboy Heck Harper and a cook known as Wayne the Singing Chef. From the 1950s management changed often; the dining room was split for a taxi company and a beauty parlor, and from the mid-1950s to 1975 the lobby was a bus depot with a snack counter.

In 1967 the guest rooms and the three upper stories closed to the public, and for three decades only the street-level businesses carried on. McMenamins began renovating in 1998 and held a grand reopening on January 28, 1999. It named the 36 guest rooms for people connected to the hotel and the town, and added a pub on the main floor, a speakeasy-style cellar bar and a rooftop bar.

In 1950 McMinnville became famous for a UFO sighting, and the town has celebrated it ever since. Hotel Oregon hosts the McMinnville UFO Festival every May; McMenamins lists the 27th festival for May 14 and 15, 2027.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for room 203 by name when you book; McMenamins’ named rooms make a specific request easy.
• Finish the night at the rooftop bar, where John is said to roam.
• The Cellar Bar is the room under the stories of the spinning cylinder. Have a drink there before bed.
• Book early for the UFO Festival in May and for wine country weekends in summer and fall.
• Pets are allowed in a limited number of rooms for $30 per pet, per day; request a pet-friendly room ahead.
• Pair your stay with McMenamins Grand Lodge in Forest Grove, about 40 minutes north, for the Lavender Lady.

More haunted hotels nearby

• McMenamins Grand Lodge, Forest Grove: the Lavender Lady in a 1922 Masonic home
• The Heathman Hotel, Portland: room 703 and the haunted ’03’ rooms
• Historic Wolf Creek Inn: Oregon’s oldest hotel, further south on Interstate 5
• Haunted places in Salem: ghost stories in the state capital, under an hour away
• Haunted hotels in Oregon
• Haunted hotels in Portland

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• McMenamins: Hotel Oregon
• McMenamins: Hotel Oregon walking guide (PDF)
• City of McMinnville: Hotel Oregon, McMenamins
• City of McMinnville historic resources inventory: Hotel Elberton (PDF)
• Wikipedia: Hotel Oregon (McMinnville)
• Oregon Wine Press: Spooked at McMenamins (2017)
• OPB via JPR: Oregon's most haunted places (2014)

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