Phil “Fill” Slep is excited about a spooky tour happening in October in downtown Aberdeen. He and Downtown Aberdeen Association are so eager they want to make sure people can have the opportunity to chime in with ideas to make it even better.

There’s a public meeting planned for Aug. 15 at 6 p.m., inside the D&R Event Center on South I Street. The meeting will allow the public to give their input for the tour — “Billy’s Back: Walk of the Undead” — which is set for Oct. 21, from 4 to 10 p.m. While it’s not related to any other Halloween events in town, it’s clearly in the same vein.

“We want to bring families, children, all kinds of people down to this tour that deals with the ghoulish part of Billy Gohl,” Fill said.

South I Street, from Wishkah to Heron streets, will be closed. Everybody who wants to be involved is invited, but there’s a caveat.

“They all need to be in some kind of walking dead kind of costume,” Fill said about the people who volunteer to take part in the festivities.

People from Plank Island Theatre will be there in order to provide “undead” makeup — scars, discoloring of the skin, a nail sticking out and other “ghoulish things”— for the volunteers if they need assistance.

Fill said Boomtown Records will play some “really, really, really eerie music” that they’ll pipe into the street. There’ll be a fog machine that adds another spooky element. While weather is a concern at that time of year, it sounds solved.

“Just because of the weather in October, we’re gonna have maybe three or four of those propane outside lamps,” Fill said. “And there will be a lot of surprises, that’s for sure.”

One of the reasons why Fill — whose humble self refuses to call himself a historian — is so excited is because a few weeks ago, 57 people showed up on a tour called “Murder, Mayhem, Mystery and Madams” that Fill gave in Aberdeen. Fill, who gives the Aberdeen history tours each weekend as well as the Nirvana Talk, Walk and Ride tours on Saturdays, never expected the group to be that big, but it was. So now he’s hoping the October event is even cooler.

Fill, who’s offered tours in Aberdeen since 2015, provided some Aberdeen history. A main figure throughout those history lessons was Billy Gohl, the infamous killer for which Billy’s Bar and Grill is named. Fill spoke about Gohl’s role, plus some of the lore and myths of the man and of the early Aberdeen days. Those days included the fire on Oct. 16, 1903 — about 30 acres burned down and 140 buildings. Fill also included detail on the taverns and brothels in town, plus the shipbuilding and fishing presence in Aberdeen. Hence, the 4-M Klub, “Murder, Mayhem, Mystery and Madams.” Fill spelled Klub with a K to be whimsical.

Billy Gohl

Fill provided fine detail of the “Billy Gohl situation.”

“During a drunken stupor at the tavern he worked at, he said he killed 40-some people,” Fill said. “There never was any weapon found, there never was any evidence. And even though a couple of times when he did commit some kind of crime the sheriff arrested him for, the union people and his cohorts would come down and bail him out. One time they arrested him, they had to pay $1,230. (His cohorts) just walked into the sheriff’s department, paid the money and off (Gohl) went.”

And the lore of Gohl’s killings has varied throughout the last century and a half since Aberdeen was founded in 1884. Fill compared it to a game of telephone.

“It’s like people at the bar at that end saying ‘Ok, I heard Billy Gohl killed one person,’” Fill said. “Well, by the time it’s gotten to this end of the bar he’s killed 200. Who does that? Who says that? Who proves that? So that’s kind of the mystery of it all.”

Lea Laura Law

Fill talked a little bit about Lea Laura Law, whose death on Jan. 5, 1940 was deemed a cold case. 83 years later, it is still unsolved. Law was murdered in her Aberdeen home. The Aberdeen Daily World headline on Jan. 6, 1940 read “Harbor Slaying Mystery Unbroken,” according to microfilm.

“It’s very interesting,” Fill said. “She’s buried up at Fern Hill (Cemetery). They show pictures of everyone mourning and her husband Richard Law and her three-year-old son. It was just amazing.”

Heraville

In addition to the history and rumors about Gohl and Law, there’s the history of Aberdeen’s name itself. The town was originally named Heraville. But the “affiliation of people,” in Aberdeen, Scotland, played a part in the city’s name change to Aberdeen. And Aberdeen, Scotland also had a worldwide known salmon packing company, just as Aberdeen’s George Hume and Sam Benn’s salmon company. And, the two rivers in Aberdeen, Scotland were like the Chehalis and the Wishkah rivers in Grays Harbor’s Aberdeen.

Brothels

The city’s history is packed with stories about the taverns and brothels. According to journals Sam Benn wrote, he wasn’t a fan of the brothels and the prostitution conducted inside them.

“But he said the community needed that kind of business in this town simply because 90% of the people here were all male, pretty rugged gentlemen,” Fill said. “And then social clubs and all of the different cultures that were here from Croatia to Germany to Russia. … They congregated in certain areas and it was all down there on F Street and Hume, where most of the taverns and brothels were.”

The business of “ladies of the evening,” as Fill also called the madams, was so popular it gave Aberdeen two historical distinctions. Prostitution — one of the main industries in the area at that point, along with timber, fishing and shipbuilding — brought in thousands of dollars into the city based on the women paying a $10-per-person fine every week. Fill figured there were at least 300 of those women and then the madams themselves — 30-50 or more — who paid $25-per-week for their fines.

“There was one point, think I even quoted it during the tour, that at one point, per capita, this town had the most brothels in the United States,” Fill said. “And then on the opposite end of that, in that same era, per capita, we had the most millionaires in the United States, right here in Aberdeen.”

In regard to the 4-M Klub tour, Fill was also clear to acknowledge how thankful he is to the Aberdeen police officers and the five Aberdeen Police Volunteers in Police Service (VIPs) who helped the tour.

“They were totally gracious, they were ambassadors for the police department and the community,” Fill said. “They were just wonderful people. And hats off to Chuck Meskimen — my counterpart, Wil Russoul, and Downtown Aberdeen Association for giving me the opportunity to do it.”

It’s this level of detail and research that Fill wants people to enjoy, plus the fun and scary element of bringing in zombies and other scary creatures to South I Street, in between East Heron and East Wishkah streets.

Russoul, executive director of the Downtown Aberdeen Association, said during the early evening, “zombies” and participants can gather by the D&R Theatre.

“We then will commence on a walk to Billy’s part of town,” Russoul said. “We encourage businesses to be open, perhaps have spooky music playing, special sales, custom zombie drinks or food, window dressings … all to help create an atmosphere of after-hours fun. Some establishments are already planning live music.”

Russoul said more information about “Billy’s Back” will be released soon.

Fill feels good about the event so far.

“The thing is we haven’t even had our first meeting yet and we’ve had so much reaction,” Fill said. “It could end up being 300 people here. That’s why we’re trying to figure out how to do kind of self-guided tours. We know what it was like to get 57 people across the street. 300 people ain’t gonna happen. We’re gonna try to break it into groups. Some groups might want to know the history of a building that could be talked about but most are gonna just enjoy either scaring themselves or scaring someone else. That’s kind of the point.”

Contact Reporter Matthew N. Wells at matthew.wells@thedailyworld.com.

Matthew N. Wells / The Daily World Part of a story, with pictures, of the 100th anniversary of the Aberdeen fire. The fire, Oct. 16, 1903, wiped out most of Aberdeen. “A fire leveled 10 blocks of downtown on Oct. 16, 1903 — a day that came to be known as “Black Friday,” the article from 2003 states.