PResented by Third Angle and World Forestry Center
Witch’s Castle by Bora Yoon
Forest Park, NW Portland
October, 2025
This Halloween Season, hike to the Stone House nestled within Forest Park along Lower Macleay Trail accompanied by an immersive, spooky, site-specific soundscape created by local composer Bora Yoon — excavating memory, and bringing to life place-based storytelling along the wooded path.
Prior to departure and using a mobile device, we recommend you download an MP3 or WAV, the map and forest guide. Once you are on the trail, you might not have ideal reception to steam these files directly from our website. Depending on your device, you might need to keep it from going to sleep, so be sure to charge it before departure.
BE SAFE: Forest Sound Walks are immersive experiences, so do be mindful of your surroundings as you walk the trail and listen to the music. Wear sturdy shoes and bring all necessities you need for this out and back hike.
Download The SOundwalk And Guide:
Smaller File
Lossless Quality
Service Limited on Trail - downloading recommended
Soundwalk guide
The soundwalk is an out-and-back journey to The Stone House (aka Witch’s Castle). Track your progress with the audio using the guidebook.
Begin at Lower Macleay Park
The park sign and red sculpture (“Unititled” by Vern Luce) mark the start.
RUBEDO [24 min] - Hike down the Lower Macleay Trail -
NIGREDO [12 min] - The Stone House
Reach the stone house and extend slightly beyond at the overlook of the river.
ALBEDO [24 min] - Hike back to the starting point -
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Created under the light of the last full moon, instrumental forces of Bora Yoon’s soundwalk to the Witch’s Castle includes voices, whispers, EMF electromagnetic frequencies and disturbances; waterphone, walkie-talkies, heartbeats, water, modular synth, Tibetan bowls and viola.
Loops and diagetic themes for characters create an immersive, visceral, and dynamically processed electroacoustic soundscape that activates lived histories and haunted narrative of Danford Balch.
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What most locals call the Witch’s Castle is actually the Stone House: a small, two-story stone pavilion built in the 1920s–30s by Portland Parks as a rustic restroom/pavilion and ranger shelter. It never was a medieval castle — but its mossy stones, forest setting, and an old local murder story gave it a spooky nickname that stuck. The Stone House was damaged by a storm and largely abandoned in the early 1960s; since then it’s been a popular (and often graffitied) Forest Park landmark and photo subject.
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Long before the stone ruin was built, the land around what is now the Witch’s Castle was part of a 19th-century donation land claim. Danford Balch settled the area in the 1850s; Balch Creek carries his name. A notorious episode from that era — Balch’s murder of his son-in-law Mortimer Stump and Balch’s subsequent hanging — is the real dark story folded into local lore and helped inspire ghost tales and the “witch” imagery that later visitors attached to the Stone House site. (That episode is a documented 19th-century event and the source for many of the site’s legends.)
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The land that became Forest Park was originally Douglas-fir and mixed native forest used for thousands of years by Indigenous peoples. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries parcels were logged, homesteaded, and traded. Civic leaders — influenced by the Olmsted firm’s work and local park advocates — began assembling parcels to protect the hills west of Portland; the city formally dedicated Forest Park in 1948. Today it’s one of the largest urban forest reserves in the U.S., with over 5,000 acres and more than 80 miles of trails (including the Wildwood Trail).
CREDITS
Instrumentation: voices, whispers, EMF electromagnetic frequencies and disturbances; waterphone, walkie-talkies, heartbeats, water, modular synth, Tibetan bowls, viola.
Featuring original works:
“Seek and Find”
Composed by Bora Yoon | Poetry by Rumi
Sung by Voices of Ascension and Modern Medieval
“STCTS”
sometimes things change things sometimes
By Bora Yoon and Ben Frost
“Of Matter and Mass”
Duration sound installation by Bora Yoon
“One Light: Gospel of Mary Magdalene”
By Bora Yoon
Sung by Musica Viva
Renee Louprette, organ
Original sound design and music
Excerpts from album Sunken Cathedral (Innova, 2014)
Presented by
Third Angle New Music
The World Forestry Center
October 2025
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Special thanks to
Musica Viva
Voices of Ascension
Modern Medieval
Four/Ten Media | Princeton Music
Haunted Homicide Podcast
Sarah Tiedemann, Evan Lewis, Will Pyle
Annie March
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(c) Bora Yoon Music. All Rights Reserved.
Commissioned by Third Angle New Music
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www.borayoon.com
www.thirdangle.com/soundwalks