Seattle

Sorry for the delay, folks. I'm still have Google issues with my computer, and they won't be fixed anytime soon. So the updates will come as often as they can, but I make you no promises.

A few weeks ago, my roommate (CK) and her boyfriend took a week long vacation in the Pacific Northwest. They mostly stayed in and around Seattle, but ventured to my old hometown of Portland to see the wonderful things it has to offer! They went on an underground tour, and even bought me a book about Pike Place Market's ghost stories. They came back with so many great stories (including seeing an honest to goodness ghost), that I had to put my new book to good use and do a blog about the great city of Seattle! My blog will focus strictly on the weird and spooky, but if you'd like a traveler's point of view of Seattle, be sure to check out my roommate's blog over at Life From A2. For now, enjoy the ghosts of Seattle!

What goes on here?


Pike Place Market has been around a long, long time. Since 1907 it has been the place to buy and sell in Seattle. You might know it best as the place where they throw the fish. But it's so much more than that. Pike Place Market is the home of unique shops, and even more unique people. One of these people was Princess Angeline.

Princess Angeline (Kikisebloo, her given name), daughter of Chief Seattle, marked a turning point in Seattle history. She lived in a little wooden shack just by Western Ave, and when the time came that the other Native Americans were forced from the city, she refused to leave. She stayed in that little wooden shack until her death. And even then, she was given the kind of burial reserved strictly for men in those days. Her image was used as a symbol of the city right into the 1960's. But she didn't fade away after that. According to Mercedes Yaeger, Angeline is the most seen ghost in all of Pike Place.

She appears anywhere and everywhere, even at a wedding at one end of the Market! She's frequently seen on the ferry to Bainbridge island, but disappears about halfway through the voyage. She's also seen covered in a white blanket on the lower levels of the market. Princess Angeline is just as much a part of Pike Place Market now as she was when she was alive.



The next story takes us to business #415. It was a little bead shop (now a store called Merry Tails) in the Market, with plenty of strange happenings to warrant it a place on the list of hauntings in Seattle. The owners of Bead Zone have related several different stories. Their inventory liked to be moved around a lot. Nina, one of the owners, was on the phone having a heated conversation. All of a sudden a string of beads flew off the wall and at her. Another time, Nina was trying to decide what necklace to wear with her dress for work, when a necklace containing a bead the same blue as her dress flew off the wall and landed at her feet.

The ghost, called Jacob by both Nina and Ram, and the current owner, has made himself known to more than them. Mercedes has taken several different tours through the shop, and twice she has gotten a reaction from the boy. Once, two strings of red beads flew from their place on the wall. The other, a group of Girl Scouts smelled hay and horse manure quite strongly within the shop.

Perhaps the strangest sight came when Ram and Nina discovered a completely closed off room next to their shop. One morning they noticed their shop had six windows from the outside, but three from the inside. They investigated, and found a hollow space in the wall. They knocked through it... only to see some of their inventory (written in their own handwriting) from the week before sitting in neat little piles among other beads and pennies. They were all stuffed behind a completely sealed room! There would be no way for the pieces to have gotten into the room... unless Jacob was up to his tricks.

Now the current owner keeps a spot in the shop devoted to Jacob. It's his own little area to play in.


All of this just brushes the surface! There are dozens more ghosts and strange stories from Pike Place Market. Below is a video that claims to have captured one of the apparitions of the Market. You can decide for yourself whether or not it's a real ghost. In any case, it's a great addition to the stories people have to tell about Seattle.

As always, if you have stories of your own, be sure to email me, or comment below!


My info on all these hauntings came from here:
Legends of America
Haunts of America
Seattle Times
Yaeger, Mercedes. Seattle's Market Ghost Stories. http://www.seattleghost.com

Pictures come from here:
http://www.seattlemet.com/q13-fox/articles/0309-fea-duwamish/
http://www.pikeplacemarket.org/

Chicago, again!

So, as some of you know, I'm obsessed with a little book series called The Dresden Files. Harry Dresden is a wizard for hire, a private investigator who utilizes magic to help him solve crimes (and sometimes the world). The books are set in Chicago, and streets, parks and buildings are beautifully highlighted. And while I only live a few hours from the Windy City, I have yet to visit it myself. But I've already fallen in love with the oasis in the Midwest. And so, Chicago will be getting multiple posts in American Haunts! It's also large enough and old enough to warrant enough spooky stories to cover multiple pages and websites. So, today we'll visit a few more haunted locations around Chicago. Maybe one day I'll even be able to visit them!

What goes on here?


Nearly every state has the same story- a girl walking alongside a deserted road late in the evening is spotted by a driver. He (it's usually a he) offers her a ride, and she gratefully gets in and gives him vague directions to where she's going. The driver pulls up alongside a cemetery and the girl disappears. Or sometime during the drive she vanishes from the car. Chicago is no different.

She's called Resurrection Mary, and she's been getting into cars since the 1930's. She's always heading to the same destination- you got it, Resurrection Cemetery. Mary seems to have started hitchhiking near the cemetery itself, but has spread to the Willowbrook Ballroom, the last place she was seen alive. There are stories of Mary jumping on the baseboards of cars back in the 30's and 40's, up to men meeting her in the ballroom and giving her a ride "home" from there.

Prairie Ghosts has this to say on the history of our dear Mary: "Most researchers agree that the most accurate version of the story concerns a young girl who was killed while hitchhiking down Archer Avenue in the early 1930’s. Apparently, she had spent the evening dancing with a boyfriend at the O Henry Ballroom. At some point, they got into an argument and Mary (as she has come to be called) stormed out of the place. Even though it was a cold winter’s night, she thought, she would rather face a cold walk home than another minute with her boorish lover.

She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue. She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a passing automobile. The driver fled the scene and Mary was left there to die.

Her grieving parents buried her in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a white dress and her dancing shoes. Since that time, her spirit has been seen along Archer Avenue, perhaps trying to return to her grave after one last night among the living."

There have been dozens of sightings of Resurrection Mary, but perhaps the most convincing evidence comes from a 1976 report. A man, passing by in his car, spotted a young woman in white at the closed gates of the cemetery. Instead of offering to help her, the man called the police. They came to deal with the problem, but never found the woman in white. Instead, they found something much more interesting. Two of the bars of the gate had been pulled apart from the rest. On them were human-looking hand prints, pressed deeply into the metal!

Officials did their best to get rid of the evidence. They tried to "fix" the bars by blowtorching the fingerprints, but really all that did was draw more onlookers. Eventually they removed the bars in total, and claimed a truck backed into the gates on accident. 

But that's not really fooling anyone, now is it?

Next we visit the Red Lion Pub, located across the street from the theatre where John Dillinger was ambushed and arrested. It would be enough for that to make the pub popular, but there are a few other things going bump in the night in this section of Chicago. 

Since its opening as a pub in the 1980's the Red Lion has become a hotspot for anyone looking for a little creep with their beer. People have reported feeling a dizzy feeling and feel a strange presence when they pass by a plaque memorializing the owner's father. Another presence is that of a woman. She likes to mark her entrance with a strong smell of lavender. There's yet another feeling of a person in the women's restroom, and an apparition of a man in a cowboy hat and boots who walks by the main bar. There are at least two other ghosts seen on the property- a man with a dark beard and hat and a blond man.


The Red Lion Pub has become one of the most famous pubs in Chicago due to its entire family of ghosts. I'd love to hear any stories about it you've got! If you've seen something weird, email me, or post a comment below! 








As usual, links to the info are here:
http://strangeusa.com

http://www.prairieghosts.com
Resurrection Mary
http://graveyards.com
Red Lion Pub

And pictures you see on the blog are from here:
http://www.slightlywarped.com
http://www.plainsparanormal.com
http://www.hauntedchicago.com
http://travelingtrek.com/chicago/chicago-skyline/