Field notes from the foggy side
Strange things grow in the rain.
Haunted rooms, trail talk, and the quiet that listens back.
The coyotes that walk with you
Night walking in Ferndale: yips at your left, then ahead, then behind. Real coyotes can throw a voice. This one kept the pace.
The maiden of the tracks
A still from Marine Park: the round overlook, the rock path into the bay, a figure that did not stay.
The woods at Deception Pass
Old growth, a 1935 bridge, CCC rustic, and a park everyone wants to be haunted. The Samish story of the place is not a forest ghost. The internet invented the rest.
The Mount Baker Lodge at Heather Meadows
A hundred-room chalet that lasted four summers. It burned at dawn on August 5, 1931. Nobody died. The meadows kept the meadows.
Hovander Homestead
Ferndale’s Swedish farmhouse on the Nooksack, 1903, second floor never finished. The county kept the gingerbread. The internet invented a dead child. The house did not need the help.
The Seattle Underground
After the 1889 fire, Pioneer Square raised the streets and left the old sidewalks in the dark. Bill Speidel sold tickets. The ghosts arrived later, because a buried city is already a ghost.
Pike Place Market
A working public market since 1907, a mortuary next door, and a cabin site that predates the stalls. The ghost tours came later. They still sell well.
Moon the Transformer at Snoqualmie Falls
The Snoqualmie Tribe has said in public that Moon the Transformer made the Falls, and that the mist carries prayer. This is a sacred place. It is not a haunt.
The Maiden of Deception Pass
Samish story of Ko-kwal-alwoot, raised in cedar at Rosario Head in 1983. The sea asked for a marriage. The people still feed her there.
Koma Kulshan and the two wives
Lummi and Nooksack place-story for Mount Baker, the Nooksack River, and the mountain that walked away to become Rainier.
The Walker-Ames House
Port Gamble’s empty Victorian. Faces in the windows since the mill was still running. Tours, not trespassing.
Manresa Castle
Port Townsend’s 1892 Prussian pile, now a hotel. Rooms 302 and 306 are the ones the desk gets asked about.
Fort Casey and Admiralty Head
Disappearing guns, a 1903 lighthouse, and the usual bunker folklore: a woman on the hill, soldiers who never got the all-clear.
Thornewood Castle
English brick on American Lawn, Lakewood. Chester Thorne’s house. The haunting got louder after Stephen King filmed here. The current owners say it is not haunted.
Monte Cristo
A Cascade mining town the road gave up on. Hikers say they still hear picks. The ruins are what is left of a boom that could not beat the weather.
Northern State
A closed hospital campus outside Sedro-Woolley. The buildings look like a haunting. The cemetery is real. The ghost stories are mostly what people brought later.
The Bellingham curse
People say you cannot leave this town, or that it pulls you back. The 1949 Herald blamed Chinese miners in the Sehome coal mine. The mine was real. The mass grave was the part that would not sit still.
Pantages Theater
Tacoma’s 1918 vaudeville house in the theater district. If a Pantages is going to keep someone, it will keep them in the fly space.