Oxford Saloon

A historic 1890s building in Snohomish that has served as a general store, pool hall, speakeasy, and brothel, now operating as a saloon and restaurant.

The building at 913 First Street was designed by contractor J.S. White and commissioned by Arthur M. Blackman, a Maine native who arrived in Snohomish on Christmas Day 1885 at age twenty. Constructed in 1889 at a cost of $5,000, the false-front brick structure opened as Blackman's Grocery Store, one of the largest in the county, doing both retail and wholesale business. The store failed during the nationwide banking crash of 1893, and the building cycled through uses as a furniture store and shoe shop before becoming a saloon around 1910. The second floor was quickly remodeled into boarding rooms that operated as a high-class bordello. During Prohibition, it became the Oxford Pool Room, and legend holds that a tunnel system connected the basement to other buildings for speakeasy operations. The Oxford name stuck through every incarnation.

At least ten people died violently within these walls during the saloon's wildest years, and four of them are said to have never left. The most active spirit belongs to Henry, an off-duty police officer who moonlighted as the bar's bouncer. One night a fight erupted on the staircase leading to the basement, and Henry stepped in to break it up. He was stabbed multiple times and bled out on the bottom step. As owner Brian Swanson put it bluntly in a Seattle Refined interview: "Stabbed. Died. Rolled down the steps." Henry now haunts the staircase where he fell, the main floor bar area, and the women's restroom, where he is known for pinching startled patrons before vanishing when confronted. A former bartender reported that bottles would inexplicably move while he was making drinks, as if a phantom bartender disapproved of his technique.

The second floor harbors darker spirits. A prominent local businesswoman known as Kathleen or Katherine ran the bordello, keeping a discreet office at the local Eagle's Lodge where she made reservations for her high-toned clientele. She was found decapitated in a clawfoot bathtub on the second floor, a murder that remains unsolved to this day. The bathtub in which she died is still on the premises, and some witnesses claim it occasionally appears to be covered in blood. Katherine manifests as an older woman in a purple dress with purple bows, walking the upstairs hallways and the many rooms she once managed. One of her girls, Amelia, was found dead in a closet in Room 6 with a broken neck. Whether she died by suicide to escape being sold further into prostitution or was murdered in a rage remains unknown. Amelia appears as a younger female spirit alongside Katherine on the second floor, where visitors report hands reaching from the walls.

A fourth identified ghost is Nels Peterson, who owned and managed the Oxford from 1923 to 1938. According to local accounts, Nels sold the bar to distance himself from three murders that occurred during his tenure. He appears as a tall figure in a bowler hat on the second floor, and the scent of cigar smoke sometimes accompanies his presence. Visitors have captured his warped, blurred image in photographs.

Beginning in 2005, Sandy and Russ Wells of the Washington State Ghost Society conducted multiple investigations at the Oxford. During their first visit to the second floor, their tape recorder captured distinctive disembodied voices of an adult man and a young boy, and their film showed what appeared to be a man hunched in a corner. A 2007 investigation using video cameras, infrared thermometers, and audio equipment detected a male entity on the main floor and activity in the basement storage room. The Wellses went on to found Friends of Ghosts (FOG) Paranormal Investigations and Research in June 2005, establishing their office directly above the Oxford Saloon. Their team estimated the building contains more than a dozen ghosts and conducted monthly Spirit Walks through Snohomish's historic district. General manager Rebecca Caden reported seeing a large black shape with a flowing cape in the basement, a sighting corroborated independently by the owner's son. An antique doll in a display case is said to cause negative emotional responses and chaos when removed from its spot.

In one striking recent incident recounted by Swanson, a band member washing her hands in the restroom encountered someone who provided extensive, detailed information about the building's haunted history. When Swanson told her he had been the only other person in the building, the musician turned white, walked over, picked up her guitar, and left without collecting her paycheck. She never returned. The Oxford Saloon embraces its spirits and welcomes paranormal investigators, with one condition: no one may attempt to remove the ghosts, as the establishment considers them happy residents who will move on when they are ready.