Brow furrowed, back slumped, sandaled feet turned in like a pigeon’s, Shannon Kilgore-Riley sits on a steel utility post where an old boat dock beneath the Oregon City bridge now collects transients and river trash.  It’s late.  She’s sick.  She has to work in the morning.  In her hand, a pointed piece of quartz dangles from a chain, spinning or swinging back and forth in answer to her questions.

“Did someone take you here?” she asks in a hoarse whisper, voiceless from her cold. “Someone took you here.  Did you grow up some place else?  Did someone bring you over by here?  Were you moving to the area?”  Koni, a young, heavyset woman stooped beside the river, starts to cry in earnest as Shannon’s pendulum reveals more about “Charlie,” a little girl they believe drowned here more than 100 years ago.  “Are you confused about whether you’re alive or dead?”  Shannon asks, sniffling.  “Don’t be scared.  I don’t mean to scare you.” 

It’s around 10:30 on a balmy Tuesday night in late May, but the day’s record-breaking temperatures make it feel more like midsummer.  Earlier tonight, the Oregon City Chapter of the Trail’s End Paranormal Society (TEPS) met for a “walkabout” of this old mill town on the Willamette River.  Along with Koni and Shannon, Koni’s husband John and TEPS CEO Catherine Duncan stayed late to investigate under the bridge.  John, a heavy guy wearing a single silver hoop in his ear and a black Jack Daniel’s ball cap, carries a tape recorder in hopes of picking up EVP’s, or disembodied voices unheard by those present at the time of recording.  The last time TEPS investigated under the bridge, about two months ago, John and Koni encountered a hazard not uncommon among ghost hunters.  A ghost followed them home.  Her name, they believe, is Charlie.

Unlike Shannon and John and Deb – the TEPS member who divined the name “Charlie” while driving past the bridge – Koni isn’t “a sensitive.”  She doesn’t hear voices.  She doesn’t see apparitions.  And unless a spirit makes her presence known by throwing objects or, like Charlie, by shaking the bed stand, Koni won’t sense anyone is there.  She takes pictures with a digital camera in an attempt to catch full-body apparitions or “orbs” – unexplained balls of light some ghost hunters identify as spirits in flight.  She shows me a picture of an image resembling a person, formed from light and shadow on water.  In another image saved to her camera, a bright round ball of light for which there is no visible explanation hovers over the rocks under the bridge. 

Shannon resumes her conversation with Charlie.  “Did you hurt yourself here?  Did you fall down?” The pendulum hesitates.  Shannon’s elbow seems to jerk slightly, propelling the pendulum in a circle over her palm.  Though it varies from person to person, a circular motion indicates a yes response for Shannon.  A back and forth swing indicates a no.  After a few seconds, it stops.  Shannon’s arm is still.  “So, you were moving here and you were getting off, and you fell down and hurt yourself?” Shannon’s elbow jerks.  The pendulum spins a yes response.  “Did it happen real fast?”  The pendulum continues spinning, building momentum.  Shannon abruptly stops it, closes her eyes hard and holds the pendulum in hands cupped to her forehead as though trying to see Charlie with a third eye.  “She doesn’t even know she’s dead,” Shannon says to the crew under the bridge.  And then, to Charlie:  “I’m not leaving you.” 

Someone standing on the bridge yells down, waits a second, then moves on.  Every time a car passes overhead, headlight rays illuminate the cavernous space beneath the bridge, where jagged rocks jut at dangerous angles on either side of a long stairwell sloping down to the water.  It’s the kind of place you don’t want your kids to play, the kind of place where junkies shoot up, where women get raped, and people get murdered.  The kind of place you’d find tormented spirits, unable to “pass on to a better place.”

Instead of a rape or murder victim, Koni and John found Charlie.  After the walkabout two months ago, strange things started happening.  The blinker on the car would unexpectedly switch on.  The tape player began to emit an eerie screaming sound.  John and Koni tried to figure out what might be causing it to malfunction, but they couldn’t.  John, a security guard at an apartment complex, got trapped in a freight elevator one night while alone on the grounds.  The elevator requires a key to operate, but he didn’t use a key.  It started moving on its own.  The doors wouldn’t open.  Finally he said, “Charlie, open the doors.”  They opened. 

“Charlie, can you hear me?  Are you trusting what I say?” Shannon asks, her eyes now closed.  “Have you noticed a lot of changes around here over the years?  I mean, since you fell down?  Did you bump your head?  No, you didn’t bump your head?  Did you hurt your back?  Do you still hurt sweetie?” 

With no children of their own, John and Koni began to feel protective of Charlie. John thinks she’s trying to communicate something they can’t understand.  Koni thinks she might just want parental attention. As a gift, John and Koni brought Charlie a teddy bear and left it under the bridge.  It’s since disappeared.  Shannon thinks Charlie is stuck between two worlds and needs help passing on.