Greenwood Cemetery & the 1,000 Steps

The story

Local folklore insists there are a thousand steps carving up the terraced hillside at Greenwood Memorial Terrace, and that if you try to climb them, phantom hands will push you back down before you reach the top. Count them yourself, though, and you will hit roughly sixty. But you didn't hear it from us: the true history behind why this crumbling stone staircase sits abandoned in the weeds is much weirder than any ghost story.

In 1898, cemetery trustees struck a deal with the local chapter of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks to construct a grand fraternal mausoleum atop the hillside, accessed by an impressive terraced staircase. Construction began, the stairs were poured, and fraternal plots were mapped out. Then reality struck: the Elks members' wives flatly balked at the idea of eternal lodge segregation, refusing to be buried separately from their husbands. The deal collapsed, the mausoleum was scrapped, and the stone steps were left to rot into the dirt.

The ghostly rumors picked up steam in 1910, when the Great Northern Railroad blasted a heavy train tunnel directly beneath the cemetery grounds. Heavy freight trains rattling through subterranean basalt created unseen vibrations, dark rumbles, and uncanny echoes up the hillside. Generations of local teenagers mistook subterranean train noise for restless spirits, cementing the stairs as Spokane's favorite urban legend.