Seattle Ghost Tours: Explore the Haunted Side of Seattle
Seattle Ghost Tours take guests wandering from the Pike Place Market to the downtown Seattle region to find Seattle's most haunted sites. The Seattle Ghost Tours offices are in the section of Post Alley located under Pike Place Market. Check in for tickets at 1420 Post Alley, where a small shop also sells reading material and guide books.
Walkers assemble for the tour at the famous Gum Wall. Here, the tour guide will detail the ghosts spotted at nearby Market Theater and the Alibi Room, where a ghost named Frank frequently introduces himself to visitors to the restrooms.
From there, the tour walks up through Pike Place Market. Tours conducted after the market stalls close provide a unique perspective on the market, including a chance to check out some of the commemorative tiles that line the market floor, labeled with the donor's name, including science fiction writer and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and the ill-fated Heaven's Gate cult.
Haunted spots abound both in the market and around it, including 1921 First Avenue, a spot which housed Seattle's first full service mortuary, run by Edgar R. Butterworth, when it was built in 1903. It has subsequently held a number of unsuccessful restaurants, whose failures might be blamed by some believers on the intervention of the spirit world.
Ghosts include the spirit of Chief Seattle's daughter, Princess Angeline, who has supposedly haunted the market area since her death in 1896. One of the spots includes a marker where three ley lines, supposed forces of mystical energy, converge, and visitors are encouraged to test the statue and see if they can feel the supernatural energy it channels.
Seattle's waterfront has a long and often sordid history, and the tour's a chance to hear some of its more fascinating tales, such as the history behind a city ordinance forbidding flowerpots on windows higher than two stories (disgruntled prostitutes were fond of aiming them at passersby) or the story of Doctor Linda Hazard, an early Seattle-based serial killer whose asylum, Wilderness Heights, was nicknamed "Starvation Heights" for the number of victims claimed in the name of curing them.
HelloSeattle tip: Tour tickets are cheaper purchased ahead of time online. Be prepared for some stair walking when walking through Pike Place Market at the beginning and end of the tour.
Posted on Apr 19, 2011 by Cat Rambo
