Scary Story

This happened during my freshman year at college. As it was my first time living on my own, I settled in by digging up every single ghost story or suspicious death that took place in my new home. The campus didn't disappoint. There was a ghost in the theater who tinkered around with the lights late at night. Someone in our dorm had committed suicide a few years earlier. No one ever saw the student's ghost, but everyone theorized that a ghost could exist and took preventative measures such as hiding and making up stories about it. (This is a great example of the analytical thought process put into effect by students all over America.) A particularly malicious ghost lived in an apartment on the far end of campus. He or she enjoyed banging closet doors and breaking glasses. Students moved in and out of that apartment constantly.

But, in the midst of all these events, my dorm room was an island of safety. Nothing crazy or supernatural could ever happen there. It was impossible, because it was my room. (This was the same reasoning I had as a child. My bed was safe, because it was my bed and I was in it. Everything else? Not safe. Had to pee? Held it.)

Until one night in late autumn.

For me, there was nothing special about that night. I went to bed and slept soundly. I had happy, freshman dreams.

But, for my roommate, the night was a little more stressful.

She woke in the middle of night, feeling hazy and confused, but absolutely, positively certain that there was someone in our room. Raising up onto her elbows, she looked across to where I was sleeping and saw him.

He was a man standing over the head of my bed and looking down at me.

"Hey!" my roommate called. "Sarah, wake up! Sarah! Sarah!"

Normally I jump up at the sound of my name being called, but on this night I slept through it. My roommate was too tired to feel afraid or fully process why there was a man standing in our room. Instead, she focused her weary brain on figuring out how he got in. She got up and tested the front door. Locked. Then, she tested the bathroom door. That one was open and it led into our suitemates' room. Someone could have entered from there. It still didn't explain why the man stood so silently and didn't respond to anything my roommate did. "Well," she thought, "I guess if he's just going to stand there, I'll go back to sleep." (Very loyal of her.)

Before doing so, she kicked her wallet under the bed so he wouldn't see it and be tempted to take it on his way out. Then, she crawled back under the covers and fell asleep.

The next morning she woke up with the incident fresh in her mind. Fully rested, she began to realize how strange it had been.

"Hey," she said to me, "I had the creepiest dream. I thought I saw a man standing at the head of your bed, looking down at you. It felt so real!"

I wondered whether someone could have actually come into our room. I had a stalker at the time and he'd done all sorts of creepy stuff, so it wasn't impossible to think that he might have snuck in and stared at me while I slept. But the more my roommate and I talked about it, the more we realized it must have been a dream. My desk was pressed up against the head of my bed and there wasn't room for anyone to stand there. We checked with our suitemates to see if they'd left their door unlocked, but they promised they hadn't. We lived on the third floor and no one could have climbed in the window.

"I guess that proves it," I said to my roommate. "You dreamt the whole thing."

But, instead of growing calmer, she got even more upset. "The more I think about it," she said, "The more real it feels. I must be going crazy. I saw him there! I really did!"

Knowing that my roommate tended to dramatize things, I didn't take her seriously. I tried to calm her down, then went about getting ready for the day. We moved on to other topics, boring things like lectures and tests. Then, on our way out the door, my roommate stopped.

"Wait," she said. "I can't find my wallet."

After turning our room inside out, she finally discovered it.

Under the bed.

Trying to keep my wits about me, I came up with explanations for why her wallet might be under the bed. Maybe she got up and kicked it in her sleep.

"But I never sleepwalk!"

Maybe she was playing a joke on me.

"I wouldn't do that!"

Maybe she accidently left it there the day before.

"I didn't!"

We left it unresolved. I stubbornly refused to believe that a ghost had entered our room, but, from that night onward, I slept with my head at the other side of the bed.

...

Happy Halloween!

Road Trip Wednesday #101: Your #1 Reason for Writing

Wow, this is kind of a big question. I don't know if I'll be able to answer it in the fifteen minutes I have available to write this blog entry. All the same, I'll give it a whirl.

I suspect my reason isn't so different from anyone else's. This is the way my mind works. It spins stories up until the moment I fall asleep at night. As I go through my day, little things jump out at me and scream, "Me! Use me in your story! I could be good!" When I talk with people I wonder about their histories and what pivotal moments might have brought them to their current point. Sometimes I devise histories for them. When I was a kid, if I wasn't writing plays or directing my friends in elaborate games of make-believe, then I wasn't happy. I gobble up stories in the form of books, dances, music, and art and my brain churns them into each other and spits them out into something new. Much of the time I don't even realize I'm doing it, until a morsel of an idea emerges and we're off to the races again.

The truth is: I'm full to bursting with stories and if I don't get some of them out, then I start to go crazy.

And crazy me isn't a pretty thing.

Local Ghosts

Here it is! Another installment of Random Things I Find Interesting.

It turns out that Seattle is a heavily haunted place (if you like that kind of thing) and one of the most colorful areas is Georgetown. It sits southward of the city and possesses the Museum of Flight (which is pretty cool) and a bunch of Boeing employees shuttling in and out.

But, back in the day, stuff definitely happened in Georgetown. It's where a lot of the first settlers ended up, before people began making their way northward. Around the turn of the century the neighborhood started to go downhill. It became the red-light district, with ample brothels and bars. When prohibition hit, people started going down to Georgetown for a good time. It was far enough away from the main city that the laws weren't as heavily enforced. The area was known as the "cesspool of Seattle".

One of the most famous sites for the spook-loving set is the Georgetown castle.

The castle was built in the late 1800s. Sarah is its most famous ghost and, according to residents, she can still be seen today. Sarah was sister-in-law to the first owner of the house and became pregnant with his child. When the child was born, the owner (such a nice guy) murdered it and buried it beneath the porch. That porch is still famous amongst locals. It's supposed to be one of the spookiest parts of the house. What happened to Sarah? Well, she went crazy and was locked up in the tower room until she died and went on to haunt the place. Cheerful little story.

But, there are other ghosts, too. Peter Gessner, the first owner, ended up committing suicide in the house. He drank acid to kill himself. His ghost still wanders the halls. Sometimes children's voices can also be heard coming from the top floor. The upper floors of the house once contained a brothel, so the voices could belong to the children of the prostitutes. A later occupant ended up jumping off the Aurora Bridge. Why? Because he was haunted by Sarah's voice echoing through his house. Eventually the landlord made potential tenants sign a release stating that they knew what they were getting into.

Today the house is well-cared for by the current owners and has been brought back from a state of neglect.

That's only one haunted location out of many in Georgetown. There's also the Georgetown morgue, which can lay claim to one suicide, one accidental death, one body snatching, and nine employees who were forced into the crematorium and burnt alive. The morgue has a colorful and detailed history, which, according to local historians, is probably fictional. One of the local radio stations holds their haunted house in the building every Halloween. Ooooh, could they have made up all the terrifying tales? Nah, they wouldn't do that. The haunted house is reportedly a gruesome affair and I, for one, will not be attending. Much as I like researching some of these things, I'm a total weeny when it comes to having bloodstained actors leap out at me from dark corners.

Another building in Georgetown, whose history is better verified, is the poor farm, which was attached to the local hospital. It began operations in 1877 and continued on until 1931, when it became a hospital. Then, in 1956, it was sold and demolished.

The poor farm was sadly inadequate, with tuberculosis patients sleeping in tents on the grounds. Inside the building, cots were lined up in the hallways. Some say the bodies of those who died were moved to an alternate graveyard. Others say they were dumped in the Duwamish River. So, yeah. More ghosts. Ghosts that are probably annoyed.

Honestly, I'm not one who believes in ghosts, but I do find ghost stories fascinating, especially when they're wound into the history of my city. For being a relatively new city, Seattle has a gritty and interesting past, resulting in tons of ghost stories. I've got many more I could (and might eventually) share, but a few Georgetown ghosts should do it for today.

'Tis the season!

What about you? Any local ghost stories you'd like to share?

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