The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

The Student News Site of Central Oregon Community College

The Broadside

Spirit of George Brosterhous: Deschutes Historical Museum’s helpful ghost

Some believe the spirit of George Brosterhous, contractor who died during the construction of the building, resides in the Deschutes Historical Museum located downtown Bend, but instead of haunting the museum, he is there to help.
The building was originally built in 1914 to function as one of Bend’s first schools. Brosterhous and his brother Ed Brosterhous were contractors hired to oversee the project. On June 3, 1914 George Brosterhous was standing on top of the roof overseeing a delivery, when he fell to his death, according to Vanessa Ivey, museum manager.
The only sighting to date has been by a museum guest. A gentleman playing piano in the museum turned to an employee and asked who the man was sitting across from her. The employee was perplexed by the question, because she and the pianist were the only two people in the room at the time, according to Ivey. When the gentlemen was leaving the museum later that day, he looked up at the wall and said, “that’s the man that I saw,” pointing to the photograph of George Brosterhous.
Another incident involved a guest who was conducting research in the library. After searching for a week, all of a sudden a book fell off the shelf opening up to the exact page with the information the researcher had been seeking.
“George is not a bad ghost,” said Ivey. “He helps us find stuff.”
Research is often conducted at the museum and sometimes after a researcher has exhausted all possibilities searching for a specific piece of information, the article mysteriously turns up “out of the blue,” said Ivey. “The piece of the puzzle we were looking for, that’s what we call a ‘George moment.’”

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