Heceta Head Lighthouse is thirteen miles north of Florence, Oregon and is one of the most photographed West Coast landmarks. Its automated light, the most powerful in Oregon, can be seen for twenty-one miles at sea.

In the early 1970s, Lane Community College hired a young man and his wife to act as caretakers at Heceta House. Around the same time, the Forest Service hired a contractor to do some remodeling on the house. All three of them were the first witnesses of the haunting at the house. What happened to them is detailed in the interviews they gave to the media.

Shortly after moving in, they became aware of things that couldn't be explained by the normal creaks and groans of an old house. A clicking noise, like that of a light switch, and footsteps heard coming up from the basement. It was always warm in the middle of the night—which is strange considering most hauntings involve cold spots—so much so that the couple would wake up from sweating. Cupboard doors previously closed tightly were found open a few hours later.

During a card party with friends a high-pitched scream came from the middle of the room that they were in. Even the couples cat was frightened by the shriek. Another unusual episode involved rat poison that had been put in the attic which disappeared by the next morning and in its place was found a silk stocking.

It is said that living in isolation on the seacoast can cause a lot of visions, but the caretakers swear this was not the case.

One night the husband went upstairs to get his keys from the bedroom. As he rounded the last landing before the top floor he caught a glimpse of Rue. He saw a part of a long skirt going across the hallway and then it disappeared through a locked door.

Several college students witnessed a "gray puff of smoke," long and flowing, going up the same staircase.

The caretaker's wife also saw Rue. She was bringing dishes into the kitchen after a dinner party when she saw a "full person" going through a doorway. The apparition was carrying something in her hand.

Another night all the dishes in cupboards started rattling "just as though there was an earthquake." By the time the husband got to the kitchen the noise had ceased.

A carpenter, James Anderson, was hired to do some remodeling and was working in one room of the attic. He was perplexed by his tools disappearing and then reappearing in a different room, and sandpaper moved from where he put it. The room he was working in could only be reached via a trap door in the upstairs hallway. The high ceilings necessitated pulling himself up from the top of stepladder.

One day while cleaning the window he saw a reflection of someone behind him. When he turned around he saw an old woman, dressed in a long skirt, coming toward him—not walking but floating a couple of inches above the floor.

He backed up against the wall but the spirit kept coming. The trap door was only a few feet away so, as the figure was getting fainter, he rushed toward the door—going right through the ghost.

He literally jumped through the trap door and to the hallway floor below. He ran from the house, got in his truck, and drove off.

When he went back several days later he told the caretaker about what had happened, the caretaker said it fit with all the other things that had been going on.

Anderson stayed on the ouside of the house, by working on the exterior he figured he would be "safer." He was on a scaffolding repairing a broken window when he looked inside. Rue was floating on the other side of the window. He looked hard and long to make sure of what he was seeing, it was Rue again.

Anderson climbed down, packed everything up, and left for good. It seemed as though Rue decided to finish the job Anderson had started. That night the caretaker and his wife were in bed and they heard what sounded like a broom sweeping in the attic. The next morning they found all the broken glass in a pile near the new window. There wasn't a broom in the locked attic, but there were broom marks on the dusty floor.