Rhea Porter is from a small town in Northeast Ohio. She always wanted to be a journalist, and wrote for all her school newspapers, using the "pen names" "R. Porter" or Ray Porter." Her mother was a housewife and her father had 2 successful small businesses in town. So Rhea worked for her father, to make money, and in 1925, she went to Oberlin College, a liberal arts college, (founded in 1833), which was the first college in the United States that admitted blacks and women. Rhea wanted to stay in Ohio. There were a lot of exciting things happening in Cleveland. But there weren't many opportunities for female reporters. So when she heard that there were newspapers in California that were hiring female reporters, she decided to take a chance, go on an adventure, and move there. She was hired at the San Francisco Examiner (which was a slightly tabloidy newspaper, but at least they hired her). They sent her to the party to write a story about the "haunted mansion."
