Olalla, Washington is a quiet community located in Kitsap County near Gig Harbor. It’s such a peaceful place, you’d never guess it was the site of something very sinister… something so evil that it warranted a book called Starvation Heights being written. Have you ever heard the story?

This is Olalla.
Scott Smithson / Flickr
It looks like a serene and beautiful place, and it is... now.
In the early 1900s, the woman shown below, Linda Burfield Hazzard, created a "health sanitarium" called Wilderness Heights in Olalla.
Wikipedia
Linda had no medical degree, but was licensed to practice medicine in Washington through a loophole that grandfathered in some practitioners of alternative medicine without degrees. She notes in her book The Science of Fasting that she studied under Edward Hooker Dewey, M.D., a champion of fasting. At Wilderness Heights, her patients fasted for days on end and occasionally were allowed small amounts of tomato and asparagus juice or orange juice.

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In 1911, two wealthy British heiresses, Dora and Claire Williamson, came to Olalla seeking treatment from Linda Hazzard.
Flickr Neal Wellons
Needless to say, it did not go well for these ladies. Claire starved to death, weighing just 50 pounds at the time of her death. Linda then tried to convince Claire's sister, Dora, that she was insane and needed to stay at the asylum as well. "Mysteriously," Claire's jewelry and gowns made their way to Linda's possession, and Claire's gold fillings were sold for profit. This is the story that inspired the nonfiction book Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen, which details the troubling ways Linda would attempt to control her victims for her own gain.
As reporters broke the news of the dead heiress, suspicions grew, and so did the list of deceased patients that could be traced back to Linda's Wilderness Heights "treatment."
Wikipedia
This is Lewis Emerson Rader, a Washington State politician who starved to death after a 29 day fast orchestrated by Linda Hazzard. Also on the list was Daisey Maud Haglund, the mother of Ivar's founder Ivar Haglund.
The prosecuting attorney, Thomas Stevenson, called Hazzard a "financial starvationist" and "a serpent who trod sly and stealthy, yet with all her craft left a trail of slime." Hazzard was eventually convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison.
Scott Smithson/Flickr
But this wasn't the end of Linda. Eight years after her sentencing, she returned to Olalla and built her great sanitarium, acting as if nothing had happened. The facility burned to the ground in 1935, and Linda died in 1938 while attempting a fasting cure on herself.

Was Linda Hazzard a con artist like most believe, or was she simply a misunderstood doctor with good intentions? We’ll never know for sure. But the horrors of Wilderness Heights in Olalla will never be forgotten.

Have you ever read Starvation Heights or heard the story of Hazzard’s sanitarium in Olalla? What other eerie, historic stories have you heard from around Washington?

For more peeks into the spooky side of Washington state history, check out these haunted stories… and discover why Washington might just be the most haunted state in the country.

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Starvation Heights & Related Info

Jennifer | January 06, 2023

What are the most haunted places in Washington?

Over the centuries, Washington state has gained quite a spooky reputation. From chilling cemeteries and haunted hotels to stories of possessed parks, mansions, and more, here are just a few places in Washington that are said to be haunted (although not all are open to the public):

  • Black Diamond Cemetery
  • Butterworth Building, Seattle
  • Campbell House, Spokane
  • Davenport Hotel, Spokane
  • Hotel de Haro, Roche Harbor, San Juan Islands
  • Lewis County Historical Museum, Chehalis
  • Maltby Cemetery
  • Manresa Castle in Port Townsend
  • Meeker Mansion, Puyallup
  • Mount Baker Theater, Bellingham
  • Northern State Mental Hospital, Sedro-Woolley
  • Oxford Saloon, Snohomish
  • Rucker Mansion, Everett
  • Tacoma Old City Hall, Tacoma
  • Tokeland Hotel, Tokeland
  • University Heights, Seattle

 

What are the oldest historic hotels in Washington?

For a dose of history with your room service, Washington's vibrant landscape is filled with hundreds of historic hotels boasting centuries of charm and uniquely storied pasts (that occasionally include hauntings). In fact, while Washington only has a few hotels on the Historic Hotels of America list, the unofficial list goes on and on. A few of the oldest and most historic hotels and inns in Washington include:

 

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Olalla, WA 98359, USA