Fall Serial

By Gabi Shirley

Newberg is a great place to grow. It is the home of George Fox University, and not far away from it is the Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery, located on Duniway Rd. in Lafayette.  This cemetery is known to locals as being haunted, especially if you visit at night.  

According to multiple sources, a woman was hanged and buried in the grounds we now know as the cemetery for accounts of murder of a local store owner, and for witchcraft. She is said to have left a curse on this small town so that it will burn three times, and since her death in the early 1800s, Lafayette has burned twice (once in 1857 and again in 1892).  

This woman is not to be messed with; reports of laughing, screaming, footsteps and a “feeling of being watched” have all been reported.  Accounts of heaviness in the body with a cold feeling have also been said to happen often here. 

On one website (Hauntedplaces.org) a woman claims that she and her boyfriend went to visit a few cemeteries in the area, but when they got back to her car all the alarm lights were on, including the check engine and battery lights, the low fuel indicator, and the light saying all the doors and trunk were open.  

When she opened and closed her door again the light remained on, and as they neared the gate her car died. After about twenty minutes they made it safely back on the road. 

So, go to this cemetery if you dare, but I caution you: do not go alone. While her curse lives on in Lafayette, very little else is known about the woman who still needs to burn it down one more time.