Quiet streets, familiar faces, and secrets buried so deep that even the dead can't rest. These are the stories from Pacific Northwest small towns where the biggest threat wasn't the stranger passing through—it was the neighbor, the local legend, or the curse that had been there all along.
In this episode, we uncover seven disturbing true stories from the dark corners of the Pacific Northwest. We begin in La Grande, Oregon, with the infamous Candy Cane Park murder, where a 21-year-old bartender was struck with a hatchet seven times in 1983. The case has haunted the town for decades, with rumors of ghosts spinning the park's merry-go-round and a local investigator who was abruptly ordered to stop looking for clues just as he was closing in on the truth [citation:12]. In Yacolt, Washington—whose name means "haunted place" in the Klickitat language—we explore a town steeped in supernatural legend, from Native American tales of children who vanished while berry picking to a turn-of-the-century fire that residents described as the end of the world [citation:11].
We also dive into the chilling story of David Allen Gerard, a man whose escalating violence in Aberdeen, Washington left a trail of cold cases across Grays Harbor County, including the brutal murders of Elaine McCollum and Carol Leighton [citation:3]. Then there's the dark history of William "Billy" Gohl, a Sailors' Union agent who allegedly controlled the Aberdeen waterfront through fear and intimidation, with newspapers estimating his responsibility in as many as 60 deaths between 1905 and 1910 [citation:3]. The eerie legend of the Bremerton Giant Shrimp, a five-foot crustacean reportedly spotted in a basement laundry room in 1948, reminds us that even the most bizarre legends can haunt a community for generations [citation:9]. Subscribe and hit the bell for more true stories from the dark side of the Pacific Northwest.