Haunted in Seattle

Christian: [0:00] Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Awesome in Seattle podcast. This is your host, Christian Nossum of the Awesome Nossum Group at Wilson Real Team. Today we have a very spooky episode for you guys as we're getting into the spirit of Halloween with our topic Moo. Moo. Are there, are they cows or are they ghosts? I can't tell. They're-

Les: [0:23] Dead cows … Speaker: ghost cows. All right. Today we're gonna talk about haunted locations in and around the Seattle area. We're also gonna touch on the rules about if a seller needs to tell you if they think their house is haunted or not. But before we get into all that, let's say hello to the guests. Not the guests, the co-hosts. The hardworking agents of the Awesome Nossum group. First up- Ghouls and goblins.

Christian: [0:48] The ghouls and goblins of the Awesome Nossum group. First up, we got the one, the only, Mr. Les Cutting.

Les: [0:53] Moo.

Christian: [0:56] Who is apparently a dead cow. Uh, we have Reed Watson.

Speaker 3: [1:01] N- that's me.

Christian: [1:03] Mel G, Melanie Ghadamy.

Speaker 3: [1:05] Hey, hey.

Christian: [1:06] And Nick Tool. Tool.

Nicholas: [1:09] Ha.

Christian: [1:10] Dead cow number

Nicholas: [1:11] two right here.

Christian: [1:15] Nick Toll. First off, let's get started with a question that we get asked a lot. Do sellers need to disclose if a house had hau- is haunted? What about if it's had a tragic past? Well, surprisingly, in Washington State, the answer is no, you do not have to disclose hauntings or deaths in a house in the State of Washington, even if you're directly asked about it. So because of this, we just suggest that clients Google the address and see if anything pops up online, 'cause really, I don't know what else you can do. Maybe talk to the neighbors and stuff. I mean, do your due diligence on your end, but the seller does not have to tell you anything about that. So what do you do if your house is haunted? Well, this might sound a, a, a little bit woo woo, but some have had success by having a shaman come out to the house. In fact, a family in Seattle's Madrona neighborhood reported seeing spooky sightings in their house, as well as having unexplained spooky things happen inside the house. They ended up hiring a shaman to come over and do whatever a shaman does, and after that, they no longer had any issues. So pretty interesting. All right. So team, what are some of your favorite haunted spots in and around the Seattle area?

Nicholas: [2:26] The first one of these haunted places that I'd like to talk about is my parents' house, since Christian, you were just talking about, um, buying a haunted house. My parents did not believe in ghosts. They never believed in ghosts, ever. It was the furthest thing from their mind, until they bought a fixer upper, mid-century modern home in North Seattle that had been owned by a very strange person, he ha- who had left a lot of remnants of who he was around the house, including weird weather instruments, uh, terrible renovations from the '70s, an organ. He was an interesting person Um, after we moved in, my parents started hearing noises, and I started hear- I s- you know, doors would open and close on their own. Boots would walk around. It kind of rose to a climax the day that my dad, uh, bought a new shirt at the store, and then it disappeared. He looked everywhere. He went through everybody's dresser. It was not to be found. So eventually he forgot about it. Two years later, he opens his dresser drawer. The shirt was on top, folded neatly with the tags and the receipt nobody knows where it is, and I s- I- it wasn't me. My mom and my sister, they swear it wasn't them, but he went through their dressers. It's not, yeah, it's not there. But to this day, if you play the organ in that house, objects will move on their own, and my parents now regularly talk to the ghost even though they never believed in ghosts before we moved in, so.

Christian: [4:10] Does he have a name?

Nicholas: [4:11] Yes, Mr. Carter.

Christian: [4:14] Mr. Carter.

Nicholas: [4:15] Mm-hmm.

Christian: [4:16] Hmm. Interesting. Creepy. All right. What, uh, what are some of our other favorite haunted spots in the Seattle area, team?

Speaker 3: [4:23] Uh, so as we just discussed on a recent podcast, one of Seattle's oldest bars, not the oldest, but one of the oldest, is Merchants Cafe and Saloon, which was also a former brothel. It holds an important piece of Seattle history as well, because the only photograph of Chief Seattle was taken in the upstairs of that Merchants Saloon building. So as far as hauntings go, people report seeing a ghost who slams doors, moves things around, turns bathroom faucets on and off. Um, one worker has also reported seeing, like, a male figure, and the story goes that a bartender was alone cleaning up for the night and thought he saw a man, and he was worried that he forgot to lock up and was getting robbed. So he, quote, "threw the glasses on the ground" that he was holding to prepare for a fight, but when he looked back up, there was no one there. I don't know why you gotta break so many glasses, just- Um-

Nicholas: [5:28] Intimidation.

Speaker 3: [5:29] But that's how- I actually- … that story goes.

Christian: [5:32] I actually just saw on King 5, they featured the Merchants Cafe on an episode about, like, hauntings.

Nicholas: [5:39] Oh.

Christian: [5:40] And they talked about, like, the bartender, one of the bartenders there was like, "Yeah, there's a gate with a padlock and, like, a chain and a padlock that, like, walls off where the bar is apparently." Mm. And they'll leave for the night, and they'll come back the next day, and stuff is just regularly moved all around, and there's literally no other way to get to the bar-

Speaker 3: [6:01] Huh

Christian: [6:01] than through this gate that has a padlock, and it… They're like, "It is 100% haunted." So.

Speaker 3: [6:06] Geez.

Christian: [6:07] For that reason alone, I wanna go check it out.

Speaker 3: [6:09] Yeah.

Speaker 5: [6:09] So another spooky spot is the University Heights Center. Nowadays, this place is a community center, but back in the day, it was a school. The story is it's home to a young boy who may still roam the hallways. A lot of people have heard strange noises of children laughing and playing in the courtyard, and just other crazy sounds have been heard around the, the center, um, even when there's no children present.

Christian: [6:39] Creepy. My daughter goes to Broadway Bound, uh, like play practices there twice a week, sometimes three times a week, so.

Les: [6:47] You should a- we should ask her if she sees anything.

Christian: [6:49] Yeah. I will. That'll freak her out.

Speaker 5: [6:53] Yeah, don't ask her. Yeah,

Christian: [6:55] don't ask. She'll have

Les: [6:56] to go again. Exactly. All right. Another spooky spot down in Post Alley is Kel's. Kel's has been coined, at one point in time, the most haunted bar in America. Not just Washington, not just Seattle, America, people. There's an awesome backstory. The Butterworth Building used to be a morgue, and the pub, um, is in the basement, and the bar owner says it was an embalming room. While many ghosts are said to appear here, their two main attractions are the little girl with the red hair and Charlie, who's said to appear in the Guinness mirror, of course.

Christian: [7:33] Creepy.

Nicholas: [7:33] The next one of these, uh, haunted places is the Hotel Sorrento. So this Hotel Sorrento is said to be inhabited still by someone whose name I can't pronounce. Alice B. Toklas, Toklas. She was credited with inventing weed brownies back in 1954. Yeah, so she's known to roam the halls of the Sorrento Hotel, the Hotel Sorrento as a ghost. She's been spotted specifically on the fourth floor around room 408 wearing a white gown. She's also been spotted in the garden with a fur coat and matching hat, and I would be curious to know whether one is more likely to see her if one has been indulging in her- Eating, eating

Christian: [8:23] her brownies … baked goods. I wonder if that's why they all saw her in the first place.

Speaker 3: [8:28] Well, rumor has it that Pike Place Market also boasts paranormal activity. Uh, reports of ghost sightings are quite high at the market, allegedly because it was built on a former Duwamish burial ground. So apparently, Princess Angeline, who was the daughter of Chief Seattle, lived in a cabin in part of the, what's now the Pike Place Market, um, until a treaty was established in 1855 ordering the entire tribe to leave, although she famously refused. So I believe she stayed in the cabin, and after her death, people have reported seeing her wandering aimlessly around the market.

Speaker 5: [9:10] Wow. Pike Place does have some creepy vibes, not gonna lie. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: [9:13] Mm-hmm.

Les: [9:14] Another real spooky spot is the Hotel Andra. Boo. This Belltown hotel rests more than 90 years old. People report news of jazz music and breaking glass from the ninth floor, though it suddenly stops whenever a guest comes in to investigate- for some reason.

Christian: [9:36] Weird.

Les: [9:37] But when they leave, it happens again. People have also spotted a woman in 1930s clothing lurking about the guest's rooms. She's believed to have once be a hotel employee who fell to her death from a hotel window in the 1960s. Geez.

Christian: [9:53] Wow.

Les: [9:54] Quite some death.

Speaker 3: [9:55] But she's wearing 1930s clothing?

Les: [9:57] Yeah, and was still wearing 1930s clothing.

Speaker 3: [10:00] Okay.

Christian: [10:01] She was stylish. Stylish. One other one that, that I've always heard of is the original VA hospital on the very north tip of North Beacon Hill. Yeah. Um, I've heard so many stories about that being haunted, and now it's… Amazon used to have offices there. Blue Nile had offices there. Uh, they still have Pac Med medical center down on the lower floors, but up above it was all, like, office spaces now, and I've heard lots and lots of, of creepy stories. Which would make sense considering it was an old hospital, and it is extremely creepy looking, it, with its art deco, uh, styling and stuff like that. It's that giant brick, orange brick building with the cool art deco, uh, architecture, right, right on the north tip, right where I-5 and I-90

Speaker 3: [10:50] intersect. Um-

Christian: [10:51] You can't miss it. You can't miss it, no. And it's, yeah, it's, it's super spooky looking just on its own, let alone knowing that it used to be a hospital and there's a bunch of ghosts there. All right, so those were a bunch of fantastic haunted house stories and haunted business stories in the Seattle area. Um, definitely go check them out in person if you're so inclined, uh, especially around this time of year. It is, uh, especially Merchants Cafe, I really want to check that place out. And I've been to Kells. I didn't know to look in the Guinness mirror for Charlie. Uh, and I regularly go to the University Heights Community Center because I have to drop my daughter off there twice a week, so now I'm definitely gonna try and look for dead kids. Jesus. Ghost kids, okay? Yes. Dead ghost kids.

Les: [11:47] Ooh, real spooky.

Nicholas: [11:48] Yeah. I'm totally checking out Merchants. I've been to The Alibi Room, Pike Place Market. It's, like, anyone who's gone to the restroom at The Alibi Room, uh, like, you go downstairs into this really creepy little area, and I thought to myself, "Oh my gosh, I bet there's, there's got to be some sort of haunting story about this place." And sure enough- Yeah, you look it up, there it is

Christian: [12:12] Jeez

Nicholas: [12:13] But yeah, I, I wanna go to Merchants Cafe now. That- Yeah … that's really intriguing

Christian: [12:16] Next team outing, let's go Mm-hmm Let's do it. All right. Well, thank you for joining us on this very spooky episode of the Awesome in Seattle podcast. If you are considering buying a house and you don't want it to be haunted, let us know. We'll help you out. We will see you next, well, in two Thursdays from now, 'cause we l- release a new episode every other Thursday on the dot, like clockwork, and we have for over three years at this point. So we will see you in two Thursdays for another great episode of the Awesome in Seattle podcast. Thanks for listening.

Nicholas: [12:49] Boo. Bye.