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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, OcTObER 28, 2021
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
BECOMING VAMPIRA
NO TRACE NOR TIDINGS
ACCORDINGLY
NAMED ASTORIA
H
T
alloween must not pass without mention of
the glamour ghoul with a 17-inch waist, Vam-
pira, aka Astoria High School grad Maila Nurmi
(1922-2008).
How did she become Vampira? In the early
1940s, in New York, Nurmi performed on stage in
“Spook Scandals.” Her role? To rise out of a coffin and
scream.
Director Howard Hawks saw her, and was so
impressed, he brought her out to Hollywood to be in
a movie. The movie, “Dreadful Hollow,” went into
production, but was never made. Nurmi went back to
modeling.
Her real break, she often said, was a 1953 gala Hal-
loween ball thrown by Hunt Stromberg Jr., a producer
at Los Angeles’ KABC TV. She dressed as an early pro-
totype of the Vampira persona, and won first place in the
costume contest.
Stromberg wanted to beef up his late-
night show featuring old horror movies, and knew Nur-
mi’s vampire character would fill the bill, so he hired
her.
It was for the show that she perfected her creation and
alter-ego, the sexy, smart, wise-cracking Vampira. Pre-
miering April 30, 1954, “The Vampira Show” was an
immediate hit in L.A.
The show began with her walking straight up to the
camera and belting out her signature glass-shattering
scream. Hear it here: bit.ly/vscream
Vampira then introduced painfully bad movies while
wearing talon-length fingernails, long black hair, a skin-
tight black dress and ghoulish makeup.
The show may have only lasted a year, but her legacy
lives on. (bit.ly/mnvamp)
W
hen the Ear was naught but a young
earlet in New England, Washington
Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”
was always read, or talked about, around
Halloween time. In a fit of nostalgia, the
Ear decided to read the story again, and was
delighted to find it online.
Sleepy Hollow may be the most famous
of Irving’s stories, but he also wrote John
Jacob Astor, “Astoria; Or, Anecdotes Of
An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Moun-
tains,” published in 1835, also available
online.
Irving doesn’t actually get around to the
founding of Astoria until Chapter 9, which
talks about the 16 men sent ashore on April
12, 1811, to start a settlement:
“Crossing the wide mouth of the river, the
party landed, and encamped at the bottom
of a small bay within Point George ... The
weather was superb, and everything looked
delightful to men just emancipated from a
long confinement on shipboard.
“The Tonquin shortly afterwards made
her way through the intricate channel, and
came to anchor in the little bay, and was
saluted from the encampment with three
volleys of musketry and three cheers. She
returned the salute with three cheers and
three guns.
“All hands now set to work cutting down
trees, clearing away thickets, and marking
out the place for the residence, storehouse,
and powder magazine, which were to be
built of logs and covered with bark.
“Others landed the timbers intended for
the frame of the coasting vessel, and pro-
ceeded to put them together, while others
prepared a garden spot and sowed the seeds
of various vegetables.
“The next thought was to give a name to
the embryo metropolis: The one that natu-
rally presented itself was that of the projec-
tor and supporter of the whole enterprise. It
was accordingly named Astoria.”
WHAT TO WEAR?
FORT STEVENS’ SPOOKS
n these trying, inflationary times, the expense of a
fancy Halloween costume may be a bit overwhelm-
ing. Never fear, LivingOnTheCheap.com has come to
the rescue with a list of 102 “cheap and easy” (OK,
some are not so easy) costume ideas.
Of course, there are the usual get-ups, like vampire,
zombie, ghost and skeleton, but some veer into more
interesting territory.
One of those is No. 45, being Tippi Hedren from
Hitchcock’s “The Birds” — an appropriate choice
in gull territory — which entails making birds out of
construction paper, gluing them to your shirt and put-
ting some in your hair, and using lipstick (and nail pol-
ish) to simulate blood stains. Don’t forget to wave your
hands.
Or, try No. 70, being a bag of jelly beans,
which involves a lot of balloons. For the truly lazy
and/or uninspired, be a werewolf: Go out in your reg-
ular clothes and explain Halloween didn’t fall on a full
moon.
I
FRIGHT FEST
H
alloween feels incomplete without watching old hor-
ror films, so toddle on over to Archive.org for a fright
festival of B movies.
A dandy one is “The Wasp Woman.” And don’t miss
“Attack of the Giant Leeches.”
Then there’s George Romero’s “Night of the Liv-
ing Dead,” which still holds up. It’s so scary, Reader’s
Digest even ran a diatribe against it in 1969. And House
on Haunted Hill is still deliciously creepy.
Lastly, don’t forget “Plan 9 from Outer Space” on You-
Tube, featuring Vampira and Bela Lugosi, often touted as
the worst movie ever made.
he Oct. 31, 1888, edition of The Daily Morning Astorian
mentioned the lost barkentine Makah, loaded with lum-
ber and bound for Australia. One of the owners was Astoria
businessman Martin Foard. A letter had been received from
J. J. Stokes, who wrote that on Oct. 26, the ship was “bottom
up in the breakers half mile north of Tillamook Bay entrance.”
It was presumed she had capsized in a heavy squall.
The masts had broken off and washed away, the sails and
rigging were gone and the small lifeboats were missing,
but had not come ashore. “There is still no word of the
crew,” Stokes added.
The Oregonian noted that several boats were out and
about picking up pieces of wreckage. On the shore, where
some of the ship’s stores came in, one man found the ship’s
patent log. There was no doubt where the wreckage came
from when a wooden board marked “Makah” washed up,
the letters devised using copper nails.
Capt. Gallup, who was loading his ship with lumber at St.
Helens, reported on Nov. 1 that on Oct. 21, “I passed for nearly
the day through a large amount of lumber, laths, doors and
windows etc. I suppose it was the deck load of a schooner.”
By Nov. 3, the shore was strewn with lumber, and the
Makah was fast breaking up. “So far there is no trace nor
tidings of her hapless crew,” the paper noted. And there
never was; all were lost.
TRAPPING BIGFOOT
D
id you know there is a Bigfoot trap in Oregon? Seri-
ously, there is.
It’s near Jacksonville, which is about 5 miles west of
Medford. Specifically, it’s in the Rogue River-Siskiyou
National Forest, on the Collings Mountain Trail No. 943.
The 10-by-10-foot square was built of wood, with metal
bands, and is secured to the ground with telephone poles.
Originally built in 1974 by the North American
Wildlife Research Team (now disbanded), the trap was
inspired by Perry Lovell, a local miner, who said he saw
18-inch footprints in his garden.
The team diligently baited the trap with animal car-
casses for six years, but all they ever caught was a befud-
dled hunter — which is probably why the trap was locked
open in 1980 as a safety measure.
The specific spot was chosen because it was in a remote
area, and they hoped it was along the path of a Bigfoot
migration — even though no one knows if there is such a
path, or if the critters migrate, or if there actually are such
critters. Regardless, the trap is not remote any more, since
a road went in nearby.
In 2006, the U.S. Forest Service repaired the bedrag-
gled wooden contrivance, and it still stands. As far as any-
one knows, it’s the only Bigfoot trap in the U.S. (bit.ly/
quatchtrap, bit.ly/squatchtrap2).
TUNNELING FOR GHOSTS
J
ust for fun, the Ear checked out spooky places on the
North Coast at HauntedPlaces.org
Comments were allowed, and the haunted place that
had the most, and the most detailed, was Fort Stevens
State Park in Hammond, built in 1863.
No one mentioned the haunted bike path, or the man
with the knife, but people did report seeing the ghost sol-
dier with the flashlight.
There were also reports of a figure floating across the
hall at Battery Clark, hearing voices at Battery Rus-
sell, smelling gunfire, and more than one mentioned
hearing a giggling girl.
“I went here once when I was 18, and pregnant with
my first son, and his dad,” C. Roberts recalled. “We left
right around dusk on that June day, and we heard some-
one yell ‘fire,’ and we actually heard the cannon boom,
and the ground shook, too.
“We ran to our car, and then we saw the guy with the
lantern follow us almost to the parking lot.”
People also saw shadowy figures, and had feelings of
being watched, or of unease, among other creepy phe-
nomena. Several others turned and fled, as well, like
Missy.
“… We were walking the path after hours to get
a spook, and got more than we bargained for,” she
posted.
“Of course, our men — holding the flashlights at the
pitch-black hour and location — took off, leaving us
girls behind, after all four of us saw a white figure stand
just as a human (and) walk across the path.
“Couldn’t make out clothing or distinct features, we
were busy running for our lives.”
F
un rerun: Many Astoria houses and buildings are
believed to be rife with the restless spirits of the dead, so
Portlander and former Seaside resident Roger Clooten went
searching for Astoria’s ghosts in the tunnels under the city.
“I do this because I want people to know the paranor-
mal is real,” Roger asserted. “It’s not a joke.”
Roger’s first reaction to Astoria’s underground, not sur-
prisingly, was “it’s disgusting down there.” He took a cam-
era, and went in from the basement at Godfather’s Books
and headed south, to 11th and Exchange streets.
And yes, he believes it’s haunted. He looked up and
down each tunnel, and something caught his eye. It looked
like a woman standing there, “a shadow person,” he said. He
saw other apparitions, too. One of his photos of shadow fig-
ures is shown.
Are there really ghosts in the tunnels? Since it’s com-
monly believed that several houses and buildings around
town are haunted, why not? (In One Ear, 5/11/2012)