Eugene Pioneer Cemetery

A cemetery established in 1872 on the edge of the University of Oregon campus, with over 4,000 burials including Oregon Trail pioneers.

Established in 1872 by the Spencer Butte Lodge No. 9 of the International Order of Odd Fellows, the Eugene Pioneer Cemetery encompasses sixteen acres on the southern edge of the University of Oregon campus, holding more than four thousand burials including many of the Oregon Trail pioneers who founded the city. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Among its most significant features is the Grand Army of the Republic plot, where fifty-seven Civil War veterans and their families rest beneath a twenty-five-foot marble statue of a Union soldier. The statue was commissioned by Union veteran John Covell upon his death in 1903, carved in Vermont, and transported by rail across the continent to Eugene.

The cemetery's ghosts are unusual in the world of American hauntings because they are universally described as benevolent. University of Oregon folklore professor Dan Wojcik, whose research is preserved in the Randall V. Mills Archives of Northwest Folklore at the university, has characterized the spirits as the good dead or perhaps the happy dead, a community of kindly spirits who animate the locale with their presence rather than terrorizing it. The most frequently reported phenomenon is the sound of bagpipe music drifting from the cemetery after dark. Students living near the campus edge have heard the haunting notes on numerous occasions, and some claim to have seen the bagpipe player himself, dressed in full Scottish regalia, who vanishes before their eyes when they approach. No living bagpiper has ever been identified as the source, and the music is reported to reach as far as the University of Oregon campus itself.

Women in white dresses have been seen by multiple witnesses moving through the cemetery at night, carefully cleaning headstones and tending to the graves as if standing guard over the dead. Unlike the vengeful Lady in White figures common to American ghost lore, these spirits appear to be performing an eternal act of care and maintenance, keeping the resting places of the pioneers pristine. The best time to encounter these spirits, according to campus legend, is when the bells of the church across the street ring at ten in the evening, a signal that seems to mark the beginning of the nocturnal activity. Students have been known to gather at this hour, hoping for a glimpse of the white-clad caretakers at their work.

The GAR soldier statue itself is the subject of its own legend. University of Oregon students have reported seeing the twenty-five-foot marble figure move during the night, as if the old soldier were maintaining his vigil over the veterans buried beneath him. Flashes of marble movement have been observed throughout the grounds after sundown, and a long-standing campus tradition holds that at midnight on a specific date each year, all the statues in the cemetery wake up, walk around, talk to each other, and help people when they can. Whether interpreted as folklore, wishful thinking, or genuine paranormal activity, the stories of Eugene Pioneer Cemetery reflect a community's desire to believe that the dead who built their city remain invested in its well-being, watching over the living from beneath the old Douglas firs with bagpipes, white dresses, and marble eyes that occasionally blink.