The Haunted Northwest

Over the years, reference staff dealt with questions about ghost stories, preferably authentic, in the greater Seattle area. Some of the haunted locations which patrons wanted to research included the Manresa Castle in Port Townsend, the Martha Washington School for Girls which is now a park, the Pike Place Market, and the Harvard Exit theatre among others. More recently, interest has been expressed in Thornewood Castle in Lakewood, otherwise known as Rose Red, the mansion featured in Stephen King’s miniseries.

One of our older sources included Kathryn Robinson’s article in the Oct. 28-Nov. 3 1987 Seattle Weekly entitled “Seattle Spirits: Visits to the Northwest’s Favorite Haunting Grounds” which featured her search for Colonel Isaac A. Ebey’s ghost, said to walk along the rim of Perego’s Bluff on Whidbey Island.

More recently, three Northwest titles on the paranormal have been published.

Jeff Dwyer’s Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Seattle and Puget Sound is a travel guide for those seeking encounters with apparitions. Dwyer gives detailed information about haunted destinations. Apparently if Manresa Castle is one of the most haunted buildings in America, room 306 is the one you should book. Dwyer also includes Lakewood’s Thornewood Castle. This huge mansion with ornate  English Tudor and Gothic architectural features, many gables, seven-hundred-year-old windows, and parapets make a perfect setting for ghosts. The original owners, Chester and Anna Thorne are said to appear frequently to guests and inn staff. Also included is the Martha Washington Park, former site of the Martha Washington School. We haven’t been able to verify that a janitor went on a killing spree there in the late 1950s.

Librarian and folklorist Margaret Read MacDonald’s Ghost Stories from the Pacific Northwest covers a wider area which includes stories from Oregon and British Columbia, as well as Washington. Since her accounts include complete citations for the sources she used, skeptics can go back and look at the original published articles from well known local journalists from the Seattle Times and Post Intelligencer. Here again you’ll find the Pike Place Market, Rosario Resort, Manresa Castle, the College Inn Pub, and the Burnley School of Professional Art, now the south annex of Seattle Central Community College.

The Mysterious Doom and Other Ghostly Tales of the Pacific Northwest by Jessica Amanda Salmonson takes a fictionalized approach to these stories, using the persona of ghost hunting Penelope Pettiweather who searches for spirits in the Pike Place Market, the Georgetown Castle, and other locations. In a dramatic description of Penelope and her companion’s fictional encounter with Ebey’s ghost near Perego’s Bluff, they saw that “the severed head’s eyes were glowing. The mouth was wide open. From that gaping maw issued forth the wail of a bansee.”

Perhaps fortunately, Kathryn Robinson did not succeed in seeing Ebey’s ghost.  Although the veracity of almost all of these accounts could be questioned, they do make for  good reading, especially on a dark and stormy night.

                                                          ~ Brenda T.