Fort Vancouver

The ghost of General Alfred Sully, who died of an aortic hemorrhage in 1879 after months of pain-driven hallway pacing, told a visitor at the Grant House: "I lived here before, and I am just looking around." Fort Vancouver's Officers Row houses multiple spirits, including a spectral sentry, a judgmental entity named Elizabeth who critiques women's dating choices, and a ghost cat named Chadwick's invisible quarry.

"I lived here before, and I am just looking around." That's what the ghost of General Alfred Sully told a startled visitor at the Grant House on Officers Row at Fort Vancouver. For a man who spent his final years pacing hallways in chronic pain from an esophageal ulcer, looking around seems to be the one habit death couldn't cure.

Sully commanded Vancouver Barracks from September 23, 1877, until his death there on April 27, 1879. Son of the famous portrait painter Thomas Sully, Alfred graduated from West Point in 1841 and fought in the Second Seminole War, the Mexican-American War, and the Civil War, where he commanded a II Corps brigade at Fredericksburg before being reassigned to lead punitive expeditions against the Sioux in Dakota Territory. By the time he reached his final posting in Washington, the ulcer was causing sleepless nights of pacing. His death was ruled an aortic hemorrhage from complications. He was buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia, but his spirit stayed in Vancouver.

The Grant House, built in 1849 by Captain John S. Hatheway and his 76-soldier company, is the oldest surviving structure on Officers Row, a line of 21 former military residences that housed some of the most consequential figures in American military history. Despite its name, Ulysses S. Grant never lived in the house. He arrived in 1852 as a brevet captain and regimental quartermaster with the 4th Infantry and was quartered at the depot near the river. Officers Row's residents over the decades included Major General Oliver Otis Howard (Medal of Honor recipient, founder of Howard University) and Brigadier General George C. Marshall, who commanded a brigade here from 1936 to 1938 before authoring the Marshall Plan.

Sully's ghost centers on the eastern end of the building's second floor, near his former quarters. The temperature drops in the upstairs hallway. Deliberate pacing footsteps echo through it. An unplugged telephone rang repeatedly, baffling staff. A restaurant owner said Sully locked a telephone repairman inside the house. A hostess saw a boy in a suit sitting quietly in the waiting area; coworkers saw no child. An accountant working late heard footsteps outside her office with no one present, then felt a cold sensation pass through her body. A museum curator who lived in a back apartment kept an orange cat named Chadwick who would track invisible presences through the rooms, following something unseen with the focused attention cats reserve for things humans can't perceive. English muffins fell from stable shelves during investigations.

But the Grant House is just one building on a very haunted military reservation.

Author and historian Jefferson Davis, a retired Army major who worked at Vancouver Barracks for 32 years and co-authored Weird Washington, has documented spirits across the entire site through his "Spirit Tales of the Vancouver Barracks" walking tours. A spectral sentry patrols the parade ground near the guard house. Davis traced this to an 1880s newspaper account of a soldier who finished his sentry shift and then killed himself with his own rifle. Along Officers Row, a nanny haunts the Windermere Realty building, connected to a woman who killed herself after bearing a child by the master of the house.

At an old Army building converted to offices, an entity named Elizabeth has a habit of confronting women brought home on dates. She told one to "leave, but be careful on her way out" and advised another to "stop drinking." In the post hospital, Davis spent a night in the basement outside the morgue door. During the 1918 influenza epidemic, so many soldiers died there that overflow bodies had to be stored across the street at the post dentist's office. During his investigation, a table began rocking across the floor on its own, and afterward, all three investigators' synchronized watches displayed different times. The Admiral Paul Nelson Mansion on Officers Row has blood dripping from its walls and grass dying and reviving in unnatural cycles.

Fort Vancouver began as a Hudson's Bay Company fur trading post established in 1824-1825 by Chief Factor John McLoughlin, whose operation controlled 34 outposts, 24 ports, six ships, and 600 employees at its peak. The 366-acre National Historic Site now includes a full-scale replica of the HBC fort, reconstructed on its original foundations beginning in 1966. Officers Row was acquired by the City of Vancouver starting in 1980, with the Grant House and 19 other structures purchased from the Veterans Administration for one dollar.

The Grant House now operates as the Eatery at the Grant House restaurant, where General Sully has taken to supervising the staff. Given his track record of locking repairmen inside, frightening accountants, and introducing himself to visitors with the casual confidence of a man who knows he's not leaving, the restaurant might want to keep a place setting open.