Читать книгу Spooked in Seattle - Ross Allison - Страница 30

The Little White Church existed for ten years before it closed. The church building reopened and served as many different things besides a church; it also was a gambling hall, a saloon, a restaurant, and a vaudeville house, until it burned down in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889.

Today, working in the United Way building offers a more unique experience for its employees. Workers have seen apparitions wandering through the halls, heard talking when no one is around, and have also reported dark figures streaking by.

One night a few volunteers where working late stuffing gift bags. They noticed loud noises of things being moved around upstairs, thinking it may be a co-worker. To their surprise, they discovered they were the only ones left in the building.

When United Way took over the building, they had a night custodian who quit after she would see a man frequently approach her and then disappear. She described him as a tall, slender man from the early 1900s, maybe slightly before. What scared her the most was his face, which she said looked scarred, as if he had been burned.

Could the activity reported here be the result of building a structure over what was once a cemetery? Could the man seen here be a survivor from the Great Seattle Fire? Whatever it might be, these spirits may be looking at how times have changed or may be trapped in a time forgotten.

See also: Denny Park in Belltown; Battle of Seattle in this section

FRYE’S HOTEL

101 Third Avenue S

Built in 1911 by George Frye, this was once labeled Seattle’s finest hotel but is now called the Hotel of Death. Converted to low-income housing in the 1970s, this hotel has had its share of bad luck. In 2006, when twenty-nine homicides were reported in downtown Seattle, this hotel accounted for 20 percent of them in six months alone.