by Leslie Rule
No people died, but an estimated one million rats were incinerated. The city was rebuilt and elevated, eliminating the plumbing problems.
Beneath the new city, the underground town remained and was eventually condemned, left to the rats and ghosts.
Then in the 1960s, writer William Spiedel spearheaded a project to save the underground realm, and today tourists can follow guides through the dark and musty streets below, see remnants of early buildings, and—if they are vigilant—glimpse specters from another time.
Tour guide Midge Markey was leading several dozen six-year-olds through the underground when she encountered something that sent a chill through her.
They had stopped below First Avenue and Yesler Way. Here in the shadowy world beneath, a heap of dusty bricks is a favorite frolicking sport for rats. Kids, she explains, always get excited about the rats, so she told them they should look carefully at the bricks. “You just might see a rat scuttling away,” she remarked. While the children were busy looking for rats, she glanced at the old bank vault. There, beside it, stood a mustached man in old-fashioned attire. “His collar was buttoned up with tiny buttons, like the shirts in the 1800s,” Midge told me.
Certain that the children would become hysterical at the sight of the ghost, she quickly turned her attention back to them, preparing to calm them down. But the kids were still searching for rats, oblivious to the ghost who had materialized beside them. Midge looked back at him, and he stared at her for a long moment before fading away.
“I thought I was losing my mind,” she admits. “Then I saw him again, in the same spot a week later!”
While some of the other tour guides teased Midge when she confided in them about her encounters, others have seen apparitions in the dank world beneath. Ghosts are also seen above ground.
The huge arch in the Pioneer Building not only marks the beginning of the Underground Tour, but the spot where three men lost their lives many years ago. (Leslie Rule)
Do they creep up from below?
Many of the area establishments have basements that connect to the underground, and the spirits of yesteryear are seen passing through. At Luigi’s Grotto, a popular restaurant on Cherry Street, Luigi led me through his basement to an opening to the cavernous underground, then showed me a downstairs corner of the restaurant where a waitress once saw a woman materialize.
Is she the same woman who appears just a stone’s throw away at the Broderick Building?
Women from the law offices whisper about the ghostly lady who visits the seventh floor. No one knows what the Victorian woman in voluminous skirts is looking for.
When I stopped in the Megan Mary Olander Flower Shop on First Avenue, I casually asked Megan if the shop had ghosts. She exchanged knowing glances with her employees before admitting, “We have a ghost who turns the radio on and off.”
Do those who suffered unjust deaths still roam the old streets? (Leslie Rule)
And in First Avenue’s J&M Café, an employee was stunned to see a ghost in the basement. The specter stood beside the old ticket booth, which was left over from the days when the location was a trolley station. He looked as if he was planning to purchase fare. But he is out of luck. The last trolley left the station decades ago.
Who are the ghosts of Seattle’s Pioneer Square?
Certainly they are left over from a variety of eras and met different fates, but if we are to embrace the theory that violent death results in the most ghosts, then a dark day in January 1882 is surely to blame.
When George Reynolds married lovely Mary Meydenbauer, everyone expected them to have a long and happy life together, but just weeks later, two killers snatched that away.
George was walking at Third Avenue and Marion Street when two men approached. James Sullivan and William Howard demanded his money. George reached for his revolver, but both robbers shot.
Young George crumpled to the sidewalk and died.
A row of windows in the Pioneer Building look down upon haunted Pioneer Square. (Leslie Rule)
Called to action by the clanging of the fire bell, two hundred determined men ran to search for the robbers. They combed the narrow streets, the shadowy woods, and the cold rocky beach in search of the killers. They drilled holes into the bottoms of all the small boats, so the murderers could not escape by water.
Four hours after the killing, the robbers were arrested, but the vigilantes wanted blood. They grabbed the guilty pair from the lawmen and carried them swiftly to the yard of prominent citizen Henry Yesler. There, a makeshift gallows had been made between two maple trees. With a frenzied crowd of two thousand shouting encouragement, Sullivan and Howard were lynched.
The execution made the crowd hungry for more, so the mob went to the jail for another prisoner, Benjamin Payne.
Benjamin was suspected of killing a policeman, but shortly before his death, the victim had insisted Payne was not to blame. On his deathbed, police officer David Sires had acknowledged he had failed to announce himself as he chased Payne through the dark Seattle streets. Payne, afraid a robber was after him, had shot Sires.
But the crowd was in no mood to listen to reason. Despite Sheriff Wykoff’s protests, the mob broke down a jail wall and carried Payne to the gallows. “If you hang me, you’ll hang an innocent man!” Payne cried, as angry hands slipped a noose around his neck.
Two days later, Sheriff Wykoff, burdened by the horror, died of a heart attack.
When the three lynched men were buried, the nooses were left around their necks, the long ropes sticking out above the dirt.
Some of Seattle’s children sneaked to the grave sites and pulled at the ropes, snipping sections of it for souvenirs. In a macabre fashion statement, sweet-faced little girls braided pieces of the rope into their hair for school, and the boys tied pieces of the death rope to their suspenders.
The moon has set on Seattle over forty thousand times since that tragic day. All of the people involved are long dead.
Still, I wonder, what was it like to be there? What happened when the excitement died? Did everyone go home for supper? What did they see when they crawled into their beds and closed their eyes? Did the anguished faces of the dead men fill their dreams? Or did they sleep peacefully, smugly believing that justice was served?
Seattle’s graceful pergola is a historic landmark, which sits atop the very haunted underground land. (Leslie Rule)
Mary Reynolds must have had nightmares. She had become a widow so soon after becoming a bride.
And what of her husband, the robbery victim? Did the young man who so suddenly lost his future go peacefully to the afterlife? Or is he still here, waiting in the underground, looking for Mary or his killers?
We have our choice of ghosts from that episode: Benjamin Payne, who mistakenly shot the policeman; David Sires, the policeman whom Payne shot; and robbers James Sullivan and William Howard. Any of them could still be lurking beneath.
Sheriff Wykoff, who succumbed to a heart attack, also could be down below, still trying to bring order.
The violence of their deaths makes them all candidates to live on as Seattle’s underground ghosts. Perhaps one of them is the phantom who stared solemnly at tour guide Midge Markey.
What became of the women who loved the dead men? They, too, may be earthbound in the underground.
The site of the lynching has changed. Henry Yesler’s house was demolished. The hanging trees are gone, too, perhaps made into furniture. Yes, it has changed, but the exact site is still known. In fact, it is the entrance to the Underground Tour.
Walk beneath the massive stone arch and down the wide gray stairs for a glimpse of a time long gone. And as you pass beneath the arch, remember that it marks the spot where horror happened on a January day over a century ago. Two thousand people chanted and cheered as three were hung. The executed trio passed through this spot on their way to the “other side.” If you should meet them as you explore the underground realm, tell them their journey is not over. It is time for th
em to move along.
Ghosts in the News
The Killer Wore Black
LISA POSLUNS, a thirty-eight-year-old real estate broker, met a terrible fate on November 3, 2002. She locked her fifth-floor office in the downtown Toronto building and prepared to go home to make her nightly phone call to her mother. A devoted daughter, she was also a devoted worker, who was known to slave over her desk for long hours.
Unfortunately, the wrong person had noted her schedule and was waiting for her when she stepped into the hallway.
He dragged the terrified woman to the basement, assaulted her, and then savagely stabbed her to death. The killer discarded her in the utility room, left his shoe print in her blood, and made his getaway.
Detectives were soon investigating the shocking murder and questioned everyone associated with Lisa and the building where she worked. Four months rolled by with no arrest in sight.
Apparently frustrated with the lack of progress, Lisa’s ghost appeared to a janitor working in the building. According to the February 17, 2006, edition of the Toronto Sun, custodian Rui Marques testified that he was cleaning an office when she materialized and pointed to a black table. “I was trying to figure out what was the meaning of that,” he told a Toronto court. “She pointed to the desk, and she faded away very quickly. The hair stood up on my arm.”
A fellow custodian, Nelson DeJesus, usually wore black, so Rui Marques made a connection to the fact the spirit had pointed at a black table. It was a clue, he decided, and steered the police toward Nelson DeJesus.
Detectives followed up and gathered compelling evidence, including proof that the suspect’s DNA matched that left at the crime scene.
Nelson DeJesus, thirty-six, was convicted of first - degree murder, with no chance of parole before 2028.
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Accidents Happen
What happens when another’s carelessness causes a death? Is a dead person’s spirit less insulted by the fact that their killer did not mean to hurt them?
Probably.
Still, fatal accidents seem to account for many earthbound spirits. Reports of hauntings around this sort of tragedy are countless. The popular theory among paranormal investigators is that the spirit is so shocked by a sudden death that it is unable to move on.
While natural disasters can be blamed on no one but a higher power, almost every other type of accident is the fault of someone. Often it is the victim himself. Other times it is a well-meaning person who made an unforgettable mistake.
I grew up beside one big, beautiful accident waiting to happen. Puget Sound was so near my home that on stormy days when the waves grew wild, the salty water splattered on our windows. When the sky churned, the waves turned a smoldering green as they rushed to crash upon the rocky beach.
On the days when Puget Sound shimmered blue, each white-ruffled wave glinted in the sunshine. Still, it was cold. At fifty-five degrees in the summer, the chill can cause a person to succumb to fatal hypothermia in five minutes.
I saw that as a challenge and was determined to swim to the lighthouse on Maury Island, two and half miles across the sound from my home. As a teenager, I thought of myself as a tough girl who could walk barefooted across barnacle-covered rocks without flinching. I’d done it so often that I had hardened the soles of my feet until they were thick and leathery.
Just as my feet could learn to take the sharp barnacles, my body could adapt to the cold. At age twenty, I acclimatized myself to the icy water by swimming in it daily, adding a few minutes each session until I could remain immersed for over two hours.
I planned my swim for the afternoon of a new moon, when the tide was the calmest. I coated myself with vegetable shortening to seal in body heat, and with two boats by my side, swam across the sound. Not a fast swimmer, it took me two hours and twenty minutes.
Though I was prepared, the average person is not.
While many people who live on Puget Sound wade into the waves on hot summer days, only the hardiest fully immerse themselves in the frigid water.
One poor soul took an unexpected dunk many decades ago and now lives on as a ghost of Puget Sound. I learned about him while my mother and I were signing books.
A woman came through the line and told us of an eerie encounter.
Years before, she and her husband had ventured out in a rowboat, and as they neared the shore of Maury Island, a storm hit, and the water grew wild. They were tossed about as they tried to avoid the big, jagged rocks. Cold water splashed into their boat, and they feared they would sink.
Suddenly, a fisherman appeared, wading toward them. “He grabbed the boat and pulled us in,” the woman confided.
Once ashore, the man left so hurriedly that they did not see him go. Puzzled, the couple headed up a path to a small store. When they told the cashier about the mysterious man who had saved them, she was skeptical. “She told us that that part of the beach was deserted, and she had never known anyone like the old man we described.”
They mulled over their experience. It had had a surreal quality to it. He had appeared and disappeared so quickly, it was as if he was a ghost.
A ghost.
They were not prone to fanciful notions, yet they felt in their bones that they had met a ghost.
After the woman finished her account, I turned to my mother and said, “I wonder who he was. I don’t remember a fisherman dying out there.”
“Don’t you remember?” my mother exclaimed. “It was one of your Grandma Doris’s favorite stories!”
Doris Rule, my father’s mother, had lived on the beach many years before. I didn’t recall the story, but my mother did.
Sometime back in the 1940s, a fisherman had regularly fished in the waters between our beach and Maury Island. An obese woman began to pester him for a ride in his rowboat. He politely turned her down, but she kept asking until one day he gave in.
Unfortunately, the woman was so big that she tipped over the boat. The fisherman and his passenger were suddenly bobbing in the chill water. The woman’s fat saved her life. It provided extra insulation and protected her from the cold.
But the fisherman quickly turned blue and was in the fatal grips of hypothermia before rescuers could reach him.
While I cannot be certain that the helpful mystery man who saved the couple was the spirit of the dead fisherman, it makes sense that he was. It was as if he were on a mission to save others from his icy fate.
Here are some more accounts of accident victims who remain earthbound.
Sunday Drive
Sometimes it is the smallest action that determines our fate. It can be something as simple as lingering over a second cup of coffee, forgetting to return a phone call, or passing another car on the road.
Normally not life or death decisions, we usually do not give these small acts a second thought. But when such a little thing prolongs our lives or brings swift death, we never forget them. It was Sunday, February 24, 1946 when Elmer Lawson of Charleston, South Carolina, made an unforgettable choice that irrevocably altered the lives of eight people and left a macabre apparition behind.
In 1929, Charleston became home to the fifth-longest bridge in the world with the building of a superstructure that spanned two wide waterways, Cooper River and Town Creek. At 2.71 miles long and 150 feet above the water, the bridge cut a beautifully intricate silhouette in the moonlight.
The John P. Grace Memorial Bridge, also known as the Cooper River Bridge, became a great convenience and a cherished landmark for area residents.
In February 1946, an enormous ship was anchored in Charleston Harbor, near the bridge. The Nicaragua Victory was a hulking ten thousand tons and not easy to maneuver.
One Sunday afternoon, the crew apparently misunderstood the captain’s order to remove the slack from the anchor chains. Instead, they pulled the anchors up, allowing the monstrous freighter to drift.
Dorothy and Bill Clapper could not have known they were on a fatal path when they steered their green Chevrolet
onto the Cooper River Bridge. The young couple had had a pleasant Sunday at the beach on the Isle of Palms and had enjoyed watching one-year-old Bill Jr. play in the sand. As the Clappers drove over the bridge, they did not notice the freighter plowing toward them. And, apparently, neither did the Lawson family.
Who knows what was in Elmer Lawson’s mind as he decided to speed up on the Cooper River Bridge?
The thirty-seven-year-old father’s green Oldsmobile was packed. Along for the trip were his wife, thirty-year-old Evelyn; his mother, sixty-year-old Rose; and his two small children. Robert was seven years old, and little Diana, only three.
As they reached the arch of the bridge, Elmer gave the pedal a little extra gas, and their car passed the Clapper family’s vehicle. Dorothy glanced up to see the Lawson youngsters waving as they passed.
Why was Elmer in such a hurry?
We will never know. His simple decision to pass another car sentenced him and his family to a watery grave. Just after he overtook the Clappers, the runaway ship slammed into the bridge.
A 240-foot section of the bridge collapsed on impact, and the Lawson car shot off the road and plummeted to the river below.
The Clappers braked in the nick of time.
In a 2005 interview with Tony Bartlelme of Charleston’s Post and Courier, Dorothy Clapper recalled the pivotal moment when the Law-sons passed them. “I told Bill that if that car hadn’t passed us, we could have been the ones that drove off the bridge. …”
The newspaper also quoted Jesse Morillo, who was on board the ship. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said. “When we hit the first section, it collapsed like a child’s Erector Set. And we didn’t slow down.” As the car fell, he was horrified at the sight of two small children, their hands pressed against the windows.
The Lawson family was entombed in their car for days before their bodies were recovered.
Six months later, the bridge was repaired, and people tried to put the tragedy out of their minds as they traveled over it. While most succeeded, a few cannot forget, because as they traversed the Cooper River Bridge, they found themselves side by side with a ghost car ridden in by the dead.
