Cries in the night

Many souls visited the Christie School; some stayed

By Paul Duchene

The Portland Tribune, Oct 26, 2001, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Janet Reiner is very upset.

Hand on her cheek, the psychic bows her head and her long dark hair falls forward as she walks into the darkness, following a flickering torch. She has asked not to be told anything about this place.

Broken floor tiles crunch under her feet. The sounds echo through the shadowy attic of the Christie School, in Marylhurst, once home to hundreds of orphans.

“Oh, my God,” Reiner says intently. “Were there beds here? Were they sick? I hear a lot of crying. Don’t you hear it?”

We shake our heads and Reiner continues pacing around the edge of the room, peering out the mullioned windows and talking, almost to herself.

“Something happened at one of these windows. I don’t know, I can see children banging on them. Something’s not right,” she says.

The roof slopes down between the dormers, creating closets under the eaves. Reiner is drawn to one of them.

“No, it’s in here,” she says. “I can hear children crying. This room was something. If the children did something wrong, they were sent here to think about what they did.”

The space curves around into the darkness, and several brown metal beds line the wall. They’re tiny, maybe 2 1/2 feet wide and 5 feet long. We checked the area in daylight but missed them hidden away under the eaves. Reiner casts around intently, feeling for something we can’t see.

“There are three children in here. They’re frightened. They’re sitting in the corner,” she says. “Feel how much colder it is over here?”

She finds a child’s marble, and it rolls across the floor, as loud as a bowling ball in a mausoleum.

• • •

We’re on the fourth-floor attic of the old Christie School building. The top two floors were condemned by the fire marshal in 1963 because of wiring deficiencies. In the early years of this century, the fourth-floor attic was home to the “moppets,” the name given by nuns to the 6- to 9-year-old orphan girls.

The attic crowns a stately Federal-style brick building that was originally St. Mary’s Home for Orphan Girls. Twelve members of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary founded an orphanage in Portland in 1859, and the order built the Christie School in 1908, naming it after the archbishop who helped them purchase the land, situated between state Route 43 and the Willamette River.

For 50 years, the building housed as many as 150 girls at one time. Administrative offices now occupy the first three floors. Today, students board in modern buildings nearby.

Administrator David Bales estimates as many as 12,000 orphans passed through the doors before the 1950s, when the school changed to handle emotionally troubled children. During World War II there were boys here as well.

All the orphans left behind a psychic imprint, says Reiner, who has come down from Olympia to share a vigil with Vancouver, Wash., ghost hunter Jefferson Davis. Reiner, who’s 40, and Davis, 39, have explored several haunted buildings together. He says she’s extraordinarily intuitive and describes himself as “a lower form of life” who’s just curious.

Davis is the author of four books on Northwest ghosts. Despite his youthful enthusiasm, he’s a serious archaeologist, juggling time between teaching at Clark College in Vancouver and working for the Army.

Reiner is a successful real estate agent, but she’s been able to communicate with other dimensions since she was 5 years old.

“I thought everyone could do it,” she says. “I’m hypervigilant, thanks to an abusive mother, and I think it’s made me extra-sensitive to what’s around me.”

Such sensitivity means that Reiner can see child spirits following us curiously as we examine the halls and passageways in the echoing attic.

At one point she stops Tribune photographer Kyle Green.

“What did you do? Was it the flash? Don’t move! There’s a child holding on to you. She’s a little girl with really big blue eyes. There’s a whole pack of them,” she says. “They were safe here, but they were sad. They didn’t feel loved so they loved each other.”

Reiner’s observations about the spirits in the building seem to fit stories told by longtime staff members, many of whom have heard crying, singing and especially footsteps. None reported sightings.

• • •

With hardwood floors, 15-foot ceilings and wood paneling, the building is a natural echo chamber. The school’s community relations coordinator, Drina Simons, says she barely notices strange noises.

“Personally, I’m never scared,” she says. “I’m so busy working, it’d be, ‘Make my day, ghost, I’m in no mood.’ ”

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