Campbell House

An 1898 Tudor Revival mansion designed by Kirtland Cutter for mining magnate Amasa Campbell, now part of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

The Campbell House stands as one of Spokane's finest surviving examples of Gilded Age wealth, a 13,000-square-foot English Tudor Revival mansion designed in 1898 by Kirtland Kelsey Cutter, then the city's most fashionable architect. Its owner, Amasa Basaliel Campbell, was born April 6, 1845, in Salem, Ohio, the youngest of ten children. After working on Union Pacific Railroad construction and gaining mining experience in Utah, Campbell arrived in Spokane in 1887 with partner John A. Finch on behalf of Youngstown investors. The resulting firm, Finch & Campbell, struck it rich in Idaho's Coeur d'Alene Mining District, founding the Standard and Mammoth mines near Wallace. In 1891, Campbell, Finch, and fellow mining investor Patsy Clark co-founded Hecla Mining Company in Burke, Idaho. By 1903, Campbell and Finch sold the Standard and Mammoth mines for three million dollars to a joint venture backed by the Rockefeller and Gould families.

At age 45, Campbell married Grace Fox, a 31-year-old schoolteacher, and the couple initially settled in Wallace during the silver boom. Their only child, Helen, was born May 14, 1892, in Spokane -- Grace had been sent there for safety during the violent 1892 Coeur d'Alene labor strike, when union miners dynamited the Frisco mine and the governor declared martial law. Campbell spent roughly $70,000 on the house and its custom furnishings, including a gold reception room inspired by French rococo design where Grace received women visitors for precisely fifteen-minute calling-card visits, a men's game room where Amasa could play cards and billiards away from Grace's temperance-minded gaze, a library with an inglenook fireplace, and a den decorated in Middle Eastern style. The household employed five to seven live-in servants, with separate dining quarters, a third-floor dormitory, and a basement bathroom so servants would not have to climb stairs during the workday. Cutter designed not only the architecture but the interior furnishings as well, commissioning a 15-page decorating plan from a Cleveland firm specifying every wallpaper and fabric.

Amasa Campbell died of throat cancer on February 16, 1912, at age 67. Grace continued living in the house until her death in 1924. Their daughter Helen, then Mrs. W.W. Powell, donated the mansion to the Eastern Washington State Historical Society in memory of her mother, and it opened as a public museum in 1926. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, the house underwent a comprehensive restoration from 1984 to 2001 and is now the largest artifact in the collection of the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture.

The paranormal reputation of the Campbell House centers on the portrait of Amasa Campbell that hangs in the home. Multiple visitors have reported the portrait's eyes following them as they move through rooms, tracking their path with an unblinking gaze that many describe as deeply unsettling. Museum guides and staff have reported their own encounters, with one guide stating simply, "Everyone has had their own experience here, even our guests." Staff have seen the figure of a child playing in the bedrooms, only to find the rooms empty upon investigation. Visitors report the sound of children giggling in unoccupied rooms, footsteps echoing through hallways where no one walks, eerie whispers carried through the halls, and unexplained banging sounds. Some visitors have reported seeing a full-bodied apparition on the main stairwell. Others describe a persistent sensation of being followed through the house, an unseen presence walking close behind them. According to Deborah Cuyle's book Ghosts and Legends of Spokane, paranormal investigators have recorded high EMF readings throughout the house, suggesting unusual electromagnetic activity.

A persistent internet legend claims that four Campbell children were murdered in the house by an intruder, with a fourth child kidnapped and never seen again. This story is entirely false. Amasa and Grace Campbell had only one child, Helen, who lived to age 72 and died in 1964. How the murder myth originated remains unknown, though it has spread widely across online forums and paranormal websites, sometimes presented alongside genuinely reported phenomena. The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture has addressed the fabrication through its Campbell House Dark History Series, guided tours that explore the real controversies surrounding the family -- including the violent labor disputes that funded their fortune, Victorian-era funeral practices, spiritualism, and mourning rituals -- while separating documented history from internet fiction.

The Campbell House remains one of Spokane's most visited historic sites and one of Washington's most frequently reported locations for paranormal activity. Self-guided tours are available Tuesday through Sunday as part of museum admission, and the Dark History tours offer an after-hours look at the mansion's grimmer chapters.