Meeker Mansion

The Meeker Mansion in Puyallup is haunted by its builder Ezra Meeker, the "Hop King of the World" and Oregon Trail pioneer who died in 1928 at age 97, and his wife Eliza, who appears at the bedroom window wearing perfume that drifts through the house. Visitors have found Ezra's full-body apparition sleeping in his old bed beside them and spotted him sawing logs in the yard.

Visitors to the Meeker Mansion in Puyallup have heard snoring coming from the master bedroom. They walk in and find no one there. Or worse, they walk in and find someone. Ezra Meeker, who died in 1928 at the age of 97, has been seen lying in his old bed as a full-body apparition, sleeping next to guests who thought they had the room to themselves.

Ezra Manning Meeker was not a minor historical figure. Born in 1831, he traveled the Oregon Trail as a young man and spent his later decades campaigning to preserve it, retracing the route by ox cart in 1906, by automobile in 1915, and by airplane in 1924. He founded the city of Puyallup and served as its first mayor. His hop farm made him the "Hop King of the World," supplying breweries across the region until a blight wiped out the crop and took his fortune with it. He built the mansion between 1886 and 1890, a 15-room Victorian with six fireplaces, custom gold leaf molding, twelve-foot ceilings, and woodwork in ash, walnut, teakwood, cedar, and cherry. The house was his monument.

His wife Eliza shares it with him in death as she did in life. Her apparition appears at the bedroom window, looking out over the property. She has been seen in the restroom putting on perfume, and the scent of that perfume drifts through the house with no identifiable source. The fragrance is specific enough that multiple visitors have remarked on it independently. In one account, a visitor in the master bedroom was approached by both Ezra and Eliza within ten minutes. Eliza spoke about the restoration of the house and her preferences for the household staff. The encounter was described not as a fleeting shadow but as a conversation with two people who happened to have died a century ago.

Ezra appears outdoors too. He has been spotted in the yard sawing logs, continuing the physical work that defined a man who crossed a continent on foot and did not stop moving until he was nearly a hundred years old.

The house went through hard years after the Meekers. It was leased as a hospital in 1912, converted to a home for orphans and widows in 1915, and operated as a GAR retirement and nursing home from 1914 to 1969. Decades of institutional use wore the building down. The Puyallup Historical Society acquired it in 1973 and began restoration. The mansion now operates as a museum, open Wednesday through Sunday for self-guided tours.

Staff and visitors describe the Meekers as friendly. There are no reports of menace, no cold spots or slamming doors, no objects thrown across rooms. The ghosts of Ezra and Eliza Meeker behave like hosts who still consider this place theirs. Ezra sleeps in his bed. Eliza watches from the window and applies her perfume. They greet visitors and share memories of how the house was run.

The Travel Channel featured the mansion on "Mysteries at the Castle." Paranormal investigators from around the Pacific Northwest have visited the property. The activity has not wavered. The Meekers seem as committed to this house dead as they were alive, continuing their routines inside a building that Ezra constructed from the profits of an empire that no longer exists, in a city he founded, on land he cleared when Washington was still a territory.