The Woodstock Mystery Hole: An Original Oregon Oddity

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Oregon, Portland in particular, is known for all manner of weird little nooks and crannies. Oddities like The Vortex and Ape Caves abound, making some sense of why Oregon was chosen as the setting for the paranormal cartoon Gravity Falls.

Only natural, then, that this state should also be home to the Deluxe Mystery Hole™. The self titled Barron Mind, owner and caretaker of this enigmatic opening in the Earth, greeting myself and my friend upon our arrival. The price of entry was one large piping hot vegan pizza. The barter economy is alive and well for many in these parts.

He doesn't give out the exact location on any of the websites where the Mystery Hole is featured, and I respect that. Accordingly I'll keep the secret of how exactly to get there, though if you're polite and contact him by email he may be persuaded to arrange a tour.

Over the top signage indicated everything from the hole itself to where I should stand in order to take the best possible photograph of it. I am helpless but to applaud the Barron's sense of whimsy. Atop a support structure just next to the hole is a small boat I was informed can take passengers anywhere they please, so long as they are dreaming.

The hole itself appears to be the entrance to what may have once been a fallout shelter or wine cellar. I can scarcely imagine anybody would build a tornado shelter in Oregon. For the most part it was filled in by the previous owner, though Barron has been excavating it and decorating the interior since the 1980s.

I allowed myself to be photographed in front of the hole, looking about as personable as I ever do. I packed way more battery mass in my jacket pockets than I actually wound up needing. I wrongly imagined there would be tunnels to explore or something, not anticipating the punchline of all the buildup before you actually descend into the hole itself.

I admit to having second thoughts at this point. My self preservation instinct is weak but still present. A wooden ladder and a dank, dark hole in the ground is rarely the prelude to anything good. But as I discovered as I climbed down, the hole is not nearly as deep as it appears from the top. The ladder narrows towards the bottom, creating the illusion via forced perspective that it's much longer than it really is.

Just another example of Barron's sense of humor. Almost nothing I encountered while on his property was without some sort of related gag. The bottom of the hole itself consisted of a pair of chambers, one much larger than the other, decorated with all manner of wall carvings and small trinkets.

Barron's put a lot of work into sprucing up what little space there is, adding flourishes like concrete and cobblestone arches, candles and other neat touches. There's only so much you can do with a subterranean space about the size of a walk in closet, but he's done it all.

Anywhere it was possible to embed designs of any kind, there are designs to be found. Deliberately cryptic but enough to catch your eye for a few seconds, suggestive of subterranean secret society meetings or rituals to raise the dead.

I didn't think to ask whether the toys adorning the walls were donated by visitors or supplied by Barron himself. Probably a little of each. Everything from aluminum whistles to action figures to bits of costume jewelry. For a cramped underground chamber, it does a pretty good job of holding your interest for the brief time you're down there.

A lot of it was probably lost on me because of age. If I were ten years old, you wouldn't have been able to make me leave that hole. I'd be camped out in it right now making plans to expand my subterranean empire and wage war on the mole men.

Case in point, right at the base of the ladder there's a little elf sized door in the cavern wall. The "door that's never been opened", Barron calls it. I believe him. A much younger me would've eaten this up, having concocted all manner of elaborate fantasies about races of miniature humans living underground, hiding from their comparatively gigantic cousins.

The absolute rear of the chamber conceals a tiny room Barron tells me is for "vision quests". Various pots, books and trinkets could be found here, as well as a single candle for illumination. I have a feeling this place will intensely confuse alien archaeologists someday.

There I was, foolishly assuming the only mystery to be had was down in the hole. Only to be told, upon climbing out of it, that there's also a mystery hedge. How mysterious can a hedge be? Hold onto your butt my friend. As hedges go, this one's a bamboozler.

It's possible to traverse the "hedge tunnel" end to end at ground level. But there's also a sort of narrow, linear treehouse built into it which creates an upper level Barron calls the "mystery hedge walk". He assures me it's a popular place to congregate when he throws parties, and it's not difficult to see why.

Complete with artwork and an electric fireplace, the mystery hedge walk is its own rad little secluded space with green, living walls and a sort of Ewok tree village/Peter Pan and the Lost Boys feeling to it. According to Barron it's the third iteration of this structure as the first two were learning experiences more than anything else.

I came for the hole, who wouldn't? But this serene leafy retreat wound up being the most fun, interesting part of the tour. It's a shame Barron has no kids, although he says the neighborhood kids help themselves to the various neat little forts he's built. I imagine their parents had a look first, but I did considerably more dangerous things in my youth than climbing down a fifteen foot ladder or walking through a hedge.

Naturally at the end, a fire pole awaited us. The preferred method of descent for its obvious fun factor, we were even furnished with gloves to prevent "pole burn", though I'd brought my own which worked acceptably for this purpose. Did you know the mystery hedge walk would end by sliding down a pole? No, of course not. That was the mystery all along!

Though Barron was content for us to pay in pizza, there was merch on offer at the end of the tour. T-shirts for sale, but also some amusing freebies. A "full color postcard of the bottom of the mystery hole", just glossy black. Some pamphlets on how to evaluate how fun an activity will be ahead of time, related to Barron's "Church o' Fun", and a Mystery Hole pin which now adorns my backpack.

I'm unsure what I expected going into this except a hole with some mysteries in it. I got what I came for by any reasonable metric. I over-prepared, but then what else is new? If you're looking for a serious but still beginner-friendly underground adventure, the Ape Caves or Oregon Caves (depending whereabouts you live) would be a better bet, but that isn't what the Mystery Hole is about.

The Mystery Hole is about absurdity. It's about whimsy and fun. In that respect it delivers exactly what it sets out to. I haven't been this straight up amused in a long time. Barron's easy going eccentric lifestyle and constructions gave me a glimpse of the sort of goofy capers I'm liable to get up to by the time I'm his age. I could do a lot worse with my retirement than making at least a small part of the Earth more funny and interesting than I found it.