1859 Sept | Oct 2012_opt

J
JACKSONVILLE
HISTORIC CEMETERY
photo by Leah Nash
The dead come alive two nights every year
in October at the Jacksonville Cemetery in
Southern Oregon. Friends of Jacksonville’s
Historic Cemetery (friendsjvillecemetery.
org) offer an award-winning “Meet the Pioneers”
torch-lit night where “spirits” in
period costumes stand graveside and tell
sad, funny and fascinating stories of life in
the 1800s. Visitors can also join one of the
monthly tours and learn about how the dead
were assigned to certain sections: six for
well-off members of fraternal and religious
organizations and a seventh for souls who
couldn’t afford a grave.
Meet the Pioneers tours (October 12-13)
draw as many as 700 people, so buy tickets
early, advises Dirk Siedlecki, president of the
Friends organization.
S OUTH EUGENE HIGH SCHOOL AUDITORIUM
In 1958, Robert Turnbull Grankey, a student at
South Eugene High School, fell through the ceiling
of the auditorium, landing in row G, seats 10 and 11,
breaking his neck and dying in front of thirty students.
“As a child, I would go to rehearsals with my
father in the auditorium,” recalls Sioux Boston, whose
father was the school’s music teacher at the time of
the incident. “The seats where the student fell were
left in their bent state, and every time I went into the
auditorium, even years later as a student, I felt an eerie
presence,” she recalls. A story in the school’s newspaper,
The Oregon Daily Emerald (Oct. 28, 1997),
reported that people have heard mysterious noises,
piano music after hours, eerie voices and a number of
students and faculty have seen someone sitting in the
old balcony. It must be a benevolent spirit because,
during the 1994 renovations, a workman fell through
the ceiling, landing on the seats and suffered only a
broken foot. Some claimed the ghost saved his life.
photo courtesy of Kelly Atwood - South Eugene Class of yearbook
1859 oregon's mAgAzine SEPT OCT 2012