Boo! 7 scary (and perhaps true) stories from the Seattle area
The Seattle area is scary. Not just because of the history of serial killers. Or the chilling rain and thunder. Or the dreary local dating scene. Or the grotesque appearance of all the new, boxy, panel-sided apartment buildings they call "luxury" to lure you inside before trapping you in a 5x5-foot box for $2,500 a month, no utilities included!
No, Seattle is scary because of all the dark corners filled with stories that cannot be explained. Like when Julian Tudor, grappling with an insecure family life in the 1980s, saw his estranged father stopping and idling his car in front of his house ... after he had passed away. Hear and read the story in Tudor's own words here. But he's not the only local to report mysterious occurrences.
From ghosts to mysteries, here are a few tales from the KUOW archives.
What's Your Favorite Color, Sweetheart? 'The Blood'
When asked what her favorite color was, 4-year-old Chloe said, "the blood."
"My favorite color is the blood. I like red like the blood, I like pink turning into blood," she told KUOW.
Hearing a 4-year-old say her favorite color is blood can be a little off-putting. But it makes sense given that her dad, Matt Woerner, started a tradition of watching slasher flicks with his daughter at a very young age. Only in a city like Seattle can you find a father and daughter bonding over a love of screams and scares.
"She's running to the car ... she doesn't have the keys ... she should've stayed in the car," Chloe said while watching "Scream" with her dad.
KUOW caught up with Chloe a few years after this story was originally published, and got some horror movie recommendations from her 13-year-old perspective.
The Fourth Window At My U-District House
Whenever Wolfe Maykut looked at the U-District house he lived in while attending the University of Washington, something about it was a bit off. Looking at it from the street, it didn't feel right. Something was weird. Eventually, Maykut realized that, from the exterior view, there were four windows on the second floor of the house, but only three rooms with windows from the inside.
The house was like what a lot of college students live in — cheap and old with peeling paint, rats in the walls, rotting wooden porches. Maykut could accept all that, but he couldn't get over that fourth window. He climbed up to peek inside and saw a large room, with a door that had been hidden from the rest of the house. The walls were rusty red, with names written on them. Why was this room hidden? Why go through the effort to wall off the door?
It became an obsession. Maykut couldn't let it go. But every effort to solve this mystery was met with horrifying consequences — spiders, hundreds of fleas attacking Maykut's feet, blood. The house pushed back. It was as if it didn't want to reveal its secrets.
A ‘haunted hike’ brings Washington disaster to life
Jill Dell was inside an old train tunnel in the Cascade Mountains when she called out into the void, seeking to speak with "anyone" or anything, that could be present.
The Iron Goat Trail follows old train tracks near Highway 2 over Stevens Pass. It includes the Cascade Tunnel, where Dell was exploring. In this same area, before the tunnel was built, a chilling tragedy claimed the lives of 96 people all at once in 1910.
The railroad town of Wellington, near Stevens Pass, was braving a massive snowstorm that winter. It was so bad that a train out of Seattle, en route to Spokane, became stuck on the tracks. More than 100 people were aboard. The plan was to wait out the storm before forging ahead. But the snow kept coming. They waited for days.
In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, lightning struck the mountainside above, causing a massive avalanche. Witnesses said it looked like "white death moving down the mountainside." It overtook the train, sending it tumbling farther down the mountain, with everyone inside. Wellington residents rushed to the scene and were able to save 23 people, with injuries. But most of the train was covered by up to 70 feet of snow.
A tunnel was eventually built to bypass the snowy conditions. The trains no longer travel this stretch, and the tracks have been converted into a hiking trail. To this day, there remains twisted piles of metal deep within the forest. But some say, that's not all that remains from that tragic day.
Alone in that tunnel, Dell explained to any entity present that she simply wanted to tell their story. That's when she finally got an answer. A voice came from out of the dark and said, "Piss off."
The ghost children who haunt Pike Place Market
Seattle's popular Pike Place Market is an expansive collection of shops, peddlers, and art. Those who work at the market say it is also a collection of souls.
There are tales of various ghosts throughout the market, but perhaps the most common are experiences of children running around its halls and shops. One local ghost researcher told KUOW that there were a lot of orphans in Seattle around 1900, and a lot of them were sent to live where the market is today.
There's a girl who haunts the stairway at Kell's Irish Pub. There's a boy who lingers afterhours at the local preschool. The market theater is never truly empty — it is often filled with laughter among the seats, when there is no audience. And one shop has made a deal with its child ghost. He stopped his mischief after owners gave him his own playroom at the store.
Ghosts on a boat
For a 19-year-old with her future ahead of her, the prospect of working and traveling on cruise ships throughout the Northwest was quite attractive to Joni. But she found out that dealing with drama from passengers and the crew wasn't the only challenge. There were others aboard.
Joni was a fairly buttoned-up person. Despite the fact she could legally drink aboard the cruise ship en route to Alaska (whereas the drinking age was 21 back in Seattle), she didn't indulge. She didn't smoke. So it was immediately quite odd when she awoke in her cabin around 2 a.m. to the smell of cigarette smoke. Rubbing her eyes, she soon saw the cigarette in the dark. It was being held by a woman's hand. And that woman was sitting at the end of her bed. She quickly turned on the light. The woman was still there, but transparent. And she was not alone. Hear the full story here.
"But they're my children"
AGHOST — Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle-Tacoma — were spending the night in a secluded cabin at the end of a dirt road in rural Washington, investigating potential paranormal activity. The cabin was originally built as part of an old mining town, before being used as a Bible camp. There were deaths and troubling stories over the years.
The ghost hunting team included some tech-oriented volunteers to record the night, as well as a psychic to sense anything, or anyone, present as they spent the night in the cabin.
From odd lights to terrible smells, they immediately knew the place was not normal. Moving through the area, the psychic noted everything she was seeing and hearing — a woman laying on the ground, and a child's voice asking if they had come to play. They quickly set up recording equipment. The team opted to sleep in shifts, on the floor in a main room of the home.
Around 3 a.m., they all awoke as the psychic quickly leapt up and said, "Someone is coming!" One team member tasked with recording audio suddenly felt the hairs on this left side stand up. A camera operator on the other side of the room gasped —"There is someone on your left." Examining the footage later, an orb of light could be seen floating past him. It was clear that the place was "unsettled."
After a few other psychic experiences, the team discovered that there was a man walking around them, a man who they could not see. He was quite unhappy. And there were children upstairs hiding from him.
Listen to the full story here.
