Читать книгу Spooked in Seattle - Ross Allison - Страница 17

Folks say that they have heard people walking around when no one was in the area. In one account, an employee was in one of the stalls in the women’s restroom, when she heard what she guessed was a co-worker walk in and proceed to the other stall. The employee called but got no response. When she finished, she was surprised to find no one else in the restroom with her. Others have reported seeing a shadowy figure walking around on the upstairs balcony.

While working in the kitchen, one employee would feel a cold spot behind him, and he would also see utensils on the wall swing on their own. One day the activity became so intense with loud banging that he had to turn the volume on the radio up just to ignore the loud sounds.

THE UNDERGROUND TOUR

608 First Avenue

When it came to Seattle rebuilding itself after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, the new plans helped to develop the underground we tour today. When people from all over the world come to Seattle to visit the Underground, their first impression is, “Oh my, I just paid $15 to see a building’s basement.” But there really is more to the story than meets the eye.

The city needed to rise above its major drainage problems with its flooding streets and exploding “crappers.” Since the city was built at sea level, they knew the first step would be to raise the foundation of the city. Doing so would involve an eight-to-ten year project, and business owners couldn’t wait that long to start building their shops. With conflicts of interest, the inhabitants of Seattle had a divided city. Business owners began to build at sea level, while the city fathers built raised streets around their business. Sound complicated? It sure was, and it became much more troublesome when eight-to-thirty-five-feet-high walls surrounded the shops. These walls were then filled in with dirt, rubble from the fire, animal remains, and anything else the builders could find to level the streets off at the top. Seattle had high streets with shops and sidewalks still at sea level! Well, this had to be fixed if for no other reason than to prevent the many deaths from residents falling off the streets onto the sidewalks far below. More than seventeen had already suffered such a fate. After about two years of employing a ladder system at all major intersections to allow shoppers to climb out of one block and down into another, it was time for the sidewalks to be raised to the street level. What was once the second floor would now become the first floor for businesses, and the first floor was now demoted to the basement. This created a tunnel system of underground sidewalks, and the project took twenty years to complete.

It wasn’t until 1965 when a local journalist named Bill Speidel was asked about rumors of an Underground Seattle. Curious himself, he discovered the truth of the city’s history and started the city’s first tours of its underbelly. At that time the underground sections where filled in with trash and castaways from the businesses above. Through the years, Speidel cleaned it up and made the Underground into a fun and entertaining tour for visitors to learn how ridiculous our founders could be.

So now people will see areas that have not been touched since the Underground was condemned, due to plague scares in 1907. Visitors to the Underground can experience smells of dampness and mold, see old business signs, rusted out junk, decay, and a few rats scurrying around.

Korn: The original Korn building was completed just before the Great Seattle Fire, which then destroyed it. Soon after the fire, another building of the same design was put up in its place. Here you will see the old bar from the supply shop that once ran from this location. Tour guides have reported seeing a shadowy figure leaving the area just as they enter the room. Some say they can even feel a heaviness when entering the room.