Walker-Ames House

The Walker-Ames House in Port Gamble has been the focus of paranormal investigations since the 1950s, with sightings of three children in the attic windows, a ghostly nanny, and a child spirit named Annabelle recorded during audio sessions. Paranormal investigator Pete Orbea has logged over 1,100 hours inside the house, encountering apparitions near the servant staircase and physical phenomena in the basement.

Pete Orbea has spent more than 1,100 hours inside the Walker-Ames House in Port Gamble, Washington. During one investigation, with ten people standing behind him near the servant staircase, a woman appeared in the hallway. She cast a shadow on the wall. Then she vanished.

That kind of encounter would shake most people. Orbea kept coming back. He took over the Port Gamble Ghost Walks around 2011, and the house became his obsession. He has collided with something invisible in the dark that he described as feeling like "an offensive lineman." He has recorded a child's voice identifying herself as "Annabelle" during an audio session. He has watched shadows dart past stained-glass windows on Christmas investigations while footsteps raced across the second floor above him.

The Walker-Ames House sits at 32340 Rainier Avenue NE, facing Hood Canal in one of the oldest company towns on the West Coast. The Puget Mill Company built Port Gamble in the 1850s as a timber operation, and this house served as the superintendent's residence. Cyrus Walker ran the mill from 1854 to 1888 and built the original home at the center of town, with the front rooms looking out over the bay. A fire destroyed that house in 1885. The replacement, finished in 1888, is the Victorian that stands today. When Walker retired, both the house and the superintendent title passed to his son-in-law, Edwin Ames. Stained glass and fine furnishings arrived by ship from Boston and St. Louis.

Nobody has lived in the house since 1995, when the sawmill finally shut down. But something stayed.

Paranormal reports here go back to the 1950s. Pedestrians walking past at night have spotted the faces of three small children peering from the upstairs windows. The sightings are specific: a figure appears in the attic window roughly every six weeks with a regularity that locals have noticed over years of observation. The children are not the only presence. A woman people call "the nanny" stands motionless in the attic, expressionless, then disappears. Her footsteps track across the floor above. She presses her face to the window glass as if watching for someone who will never arrive.

In the basement, the phenomena turn physical. Female visitors report having their hair pulled. Jackets get tugged by unseen hands. A "horrid stench" follows people out, according to Orbea. Two separate paranormal teams detected a floral scent on the main staircase that could not be measured at the top or the bottom of the stairs. They also documented a cold spot measuring three feet by two feet, floating eighteen inches above the floor and registering three degrees colder than the surrounding air.

The house has earned serious attention from the paranormal community. The annual Port Gamble Ghost Conference launched in 2010, and in 2012, the conference added special three-hour investigation sessions inside the Walker-Ames House. Neil McNeill and Evergreen Paranormal first investigated the property in 2006, followed by the Spokane Paranormal Investigation Group, the Puget Sound Ghost Hunters, and actor Chad Lindberg, who participated in a 2018 session. A&E featured the house on "My Ghost Story." Gregg Olsen, the New York Times bestselling author, set his young adult "Empty Coffin" series in Port Gamble, drawing on the town's reputation.

The house sits empty. The stained glass Walker imported from the East Coast still filters light through rooms where no one sleeps. Investigators bring toys to the attic and try to provoke responses from whatever occupies the upper floors. Orbea says he is "just a regular guy who talks to ghosts." After 1,100 hours in the Walker-Ames House, he has not run out of things to talk about.