{"id":1939,"slug":"benson-hotel-portland-oregon","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Benson is the lumber baron's hotel — the twelve-story brick-and-terra-cotta landmark Simon Benson built in 1913 as an annex to the Oregon Hotel, financed by the $4.5 million sale of the forty-six thousand acres of Columbia River timber he'd spent two decades accumulating. Doyle, Patterson and Beach designed it; the lobby is paneled in Circassian walnut and Italian marble, and it opened as Portland's finest — the hotel that anchored the Broadway business district the Lewis and Clark Exposition had started.","Benson himself was the city's philanthropist — the brass drinking fountains on the downtown corners, the polytechnic school, the park land — and the hotel was his monument. Presidents and film stars stayed; the '59 expansion doubled it; and Portlanders still claim the lobby is haunted by a gentleman in a suit who may or may not be Simon checking the till.","The file keeps the Benson: the timber fortune, the 1913 opening, the fountains and the lobby, and the hotel that Portland's most civic-minded millionaire left to the city.","The Benson is the archive's lumber file — the timber baron's hotel, the walnut lobby, and the Portland landmark the fountains paid for."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Benson is the archive's lumber file — the 1913 hotel, the timber-to-hospitality fortune, and the lobby that still defines Portland elegance.","A hotel built on timber keeps its fountains — the file's suggestion being that the Benson's hold is the legacy: the fortune made from forests, the hotel made from the fortune, and the city that still drinks from Benson's fountains."]}],"name":"Benson Hotel","aliases":[],"type":"HOTEL","type_label":"Hotel","cats":["HAUNTED_LOCATION"],"groups":["hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"Historic hotel with Simon Benson apparition lore.","full_desc":"A hotel in Portland, Oregon, Benson Hotel is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Historic hotel with Simon Benson apparition lore. The name the accounts keep returning to is Simon Benson. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":null,"city":"Portland","county":null,"state":"Oregon","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":45.536951,"lon":-122.649971,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":"https://bensonhotel.com/","phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Tour narrative documents claimed identity, not evidence identifying a spirit. Operator page timed out; no current visitor fields inferred.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":43.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":991,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Travel Oregon recounts a Simon Benson apparition wandering hotel halls. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"Simon Benson","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.6,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Hauntingly Cool Ghost Tours in Oregon","url":"https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/culture-history/hauntingly-cool-ghost-tours-in-oregon/","publisher":"Travel Oregon","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Travel Oregon recounts a Simon Benson apparition wandering hotel halls. Benson Hotel, a hotel in Portland, Oregon, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. Sources including 'Hauntingly Cool Ghost Tours in Oregon' keep the claim in circulation. The story outranks the documentation, which is how you know it's folklore.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Hauntingly Cool Ghost Tours in Oregon","url":"https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/culture-history/hauntingly-cool-ghost-tours-in-oregon/","publisher":"Travel Oregon","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[{"name":"Simon Benson","claimed_identity":"Simon Benson","verified":null,"summary":"Travel Oregon recounts a Simon Benson apparition wandering hotel halls. A hotel in Portland, Oregon with more than a century of check-ins gives the reports plenty of rooms to work with. Sources including 'Hauntingly Cool Ghost Tours in Oregon' keep the claim in circulation. The lore has a face now: Simon Benson.","behavior":"Travel Oregon recounts a Simon Benson apparition wandering hotel halls.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Hauntingly Cool Ghost Tours in Oregon","url":"https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/culture-history/hauntingly-cool-ghost-tours-in-oregon/","publisher":"Travel Oregon","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Hauntingly Cool Ghost Tours in Oregon","url":"https://traveloregon.com/things-to-do/culture-history/hauntingly-cool-ghost-tours-in-oregon/","publisher":"Travel Oregon","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Benson Hotel","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benson_Hotel","desc":"Historic hotel in Portland, Oregon, U.S.","extract":"The Benson Portland, Curio Collection by Hilton is a 287-room historic hotel in downtown Portland, Oregon, United States.\nIt is owned and operated by Coast Hotels & Resorts. It was originally known as the New Oregon Hotel, and is commonly known as \"The Benson\". It has a reputation as one of Portland's finest hotels. The hotel is named after notable businessman and philanthropist Simon Benson. The Benson is the seventh largest hotel in Portland based on the number of rooms.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/Benson_Hotel_in_2011_-_Portland%2C_Oregon.jpg/960px-Benson_Hotel_in_2011_-_Portland%2C_Oregon.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":104,"lat":45.521918,"lon":-122.678561},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}