It’s Halloween and Enjoy Lake City decided to find some good old spooky stories to share with you. Instead, we found something even spookier – there’s nothing spooky here!
This is The Backstory on:
Nothing Spooky Here Folks!
ELC recently asked about 40 people in Lake City:
Seen anything spooky in Lake City lately? Ghostly sightings? UFO’s? Haunted houses? Weird power surges? An old ghost story your grandpa likes to tell?
The typical answers ELC heard over and over were:
(Pause…) “well ah (…. Pause…) “no, nothing spooky here!”
“Um, never heard anything like that here.”
“Nope. You could maybe ask someone else.”
and “Nope. Ha-ha ha-ha!”
Armed with this information, ELC did more research and discovered that the weirdest phenomenon in Lake City is … there IS no unusual phenomena here!
According to Liminal, Lake City is the only neighborhood in Seattle without even one report of the unexplained. Liminal should know. They host a map of the strange, wonderful, unusual and unexpected. The map includes sightings of ghosts, fairies, bigfoot, time travelers and even broccoli wizards. People send their stories to Liminal and Liminal posts the most maybe-plausible stories along with the neighborhood where the phenomena occurred.
One look at the Lake City section of Liminal’s map and you can see it is a Bermuda Triangle of non-existent spooky stuff. Here’s what the Liminal map looks like today:
That map’s pretty bare in Lake City folks! Every other northend neighborhood is admitting to odd goings on, but not Lake City! We are literally surrounded by odd stuff in other neighborhoods:
UFOs have been reported from over in Wedgewood, up on Phinney Ridge and down in Eastlake.
Ghosts have been spotted in Northgate, Wallingford, Ravenna and Crown Hill (that one was a ghost clad in t-shirt and jeans who showed up with “an eerie non-expression”, yikes!)
Over in the U District, a basement bar has a resident ghost fisherman who lives at the College Inn Pub. The Inn’s website says that Howard, (the ghost fisherman), was on his way to Alaska for gold in the 1900’s, but never made it because he was murdered in one of the rooms at the Inn, where his spirit remains today. He’s been heard to laugh a lot, drinks beer and plays the old piano in the back room around closing time.
And also in the U District, the Kraken Bar and lounge is said to be haunted by one or more spirits. People there have seen objects move inexplicably on their own and spotted shadowy figures lurking nearby.
Even Carkeek Park reports a demon who showed up just in time for a photo! Here’s the evidence for that one: http://www.liminalseattle.com/2018/06/27/demon-photo/
Wedgewood has the Wedgewood Rock, said to be the source of mystical energy and power. It’s the 19 foot tall rock deposited by a glacier back in the Ice Age onto what is now the parking strip at the corner of 28th
NE and NE 72nd Street. A good place to renew your mystical energy when needed.
And for some really creepy stuff, Channel 13 reported a few years ago that up in Bothell, a man said his home was haunted by poltergeists who turned over his furniture, burned his Bibles and threw objects. A team from — I kid you not — the Scientific Establishment of Parapsychology studied the home and released a report that says the disturbances and noises in the home may be from the spirits of Irish settlers. The home apparently was built on settlements of people who had passed away.
But back to Lake City!
The most promising lead ELC had for spookiness in our neighborhood is a story from Imogene Inglet’s book, “Lil’ Ol’ Lake City”. It seems that back in the day during Prohibition, a couple named Abe and May ran a honky tonk on Lake City Way at 123rd Street. But their speakeasy days came to a quick end when May caught Abe “philandering with a lady from an establishment of ill repute down the street and let him have it with a .44 in true Frankie and Johnny fashion.”
Wouldn’t you think at least Abe’s ghost would have been spotted by now hanging out at Dick’s Drive In or something?
Nope. Nothing spooky here folks! (At least, that’s what Lake Citizens would have you believe…)
Happy Halloween!
Thirty-two Leaves of Remembrance are located in Lake City in front of the Seattle Mennonite Church, each one engraved with a name and year of birth and death, commemorating a life once lived in our community.
