Trail: Lower Macleay Trail
Artist: Bora Yoon & Third Angle New Music
Length: 0.9 miles, approx. 1 hour of music
Elevation Gain:
Note: first .2 miles wheelchair accessible
World Forestry Center and contemporary music commissioners Third Angle New Music present a special edition haunted soundwalk composed by Bora Yoon for Portland’s Witch’s Castle.
Experience local folklore by visiting the local landmark, the Stone House, nestled within Forest Park along Lower Macleay Trail, for an immersive, spooky, site-specific sound walk — excavating memory, and bringing to life place-based storytelling along the wooded path through this unique musical soundscape.
PREPARE BEFORE YOU GO
Prior to departure and using a mobile device, we recommend you download an MP3 or AIFF , 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.
PORTLAND FOREST FOLKLORE, THE WITCH’S CASTLE, FOREST PARK
What most locals call the Witch’s Castle is known as the Macleay Park Shelter by Forest Park Conservancy, and originated as the Stone House: a small, two-story stone pavilion built in the 1920s–30s by Portland Parks as a rustic pavilion and ranger shelter. The Stone House was damaged by a storm and largely abandoned in the early 1960s; since then it’s been a popular Forest Park landmark.
Long before the stone ruin was built, the land around what local lore now calls 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 true episode from that era — Balch’s murder of his son-in-law Mortimer Stump and Balch’s subsequent death — is the real dark story folded into local lore and helped inspire ghost tales and the “witch” imagery that visitors now attach to the Stone House site.
To activate this forest’s lived histories and the haunted narrative of Balch and his lore, composer Bora Yoon created this Forest Sound Walk under the light of the last full moon of October 2025. Instrumental forces of Yoon’s site-specific walk for the Witches Castle include viola, voice, breath wind, haunted whispers, music boxes, bowed waterphone, radio static, and electromagnetic frequencies (found from disturbances in the magnetic field), loops, and diagetic themes for characters to create an immersive, visceral, and dynamically processed electroacoustic soundscape.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Site visit for Forest Sound Walk
Witch's Castle
Trail to Witch's Castle
Forest Park
Site Recording
Stone Table
The walk is split up in 3 sections and divided by landmarks and special points signified by the sound of shifting sand (like an hourglass). As you pass these markers to know you’re on the right track and with the audio.
– 20 minutes to the castle from the red sculpture and park sign (demonstrating present day – the forest becoming more layered with history).
– 10 minutes at the castle itself and slightly beyond at the overlook of the river (memory and history, taken over and swirl) morals, haunting thoughts still processing, stuck energy and stagnant spirits, negotiation, bartering, transmutation)
– 20 minutes back (now with the past and present layered and offering two trajectories forward for energy: circulating and transmuting (with an ending with positive trajectory) or to remain stuck and trying to still glean what the moral or takeaway may be if not transcended and the loop (curse of history repeating) may begin again.
ABOUT THE COMPOSER
Bora Yoon is a Korean-American multi-instrumentalist, composer, vocalist, and sound artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice. and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries – to formulate an audiovisual storytelling through music, movement and sound.
Yoon designs site-specific performance works in historical buildings to evoke and resonate a place’s acoustic ecology, memory, and sonify a sense of place.
As a solo performer she has presented her work at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Nam Jun Paik Art Center in South Korea, Patravadi Theatre in Bangkok, the Walker Art Center, the Bang on a Can Marathon, Smithsonian American Art Museum, John Zorn’s Stone, TED Conferences, and universities across the globe.
Third Angle New Music’s mission is to perform, present, and record adventurous contemporary sonic works while commissioning new works from a diverse spectrum of composers.
They produce adventurous sonic experiences with their own ensemble; present local, national, and international guest artists at a wide range of moments in their careers; create soundwalks and site-specific sonic experiences to connect Portland listeners with their environment; and commission new works from composers that range from young students to Pulitzer Prize winners.
Third Angle New Music’s official website
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