State file · WA
Haunted places in Washington
What are the most haunted places in Washington? The best-known are Pike Place Market and Manresa Castle.
Washington’s ghost lore is young by East Coast standards but layered on a much older history. The Coast Salish peoples, including the Duwamish and Suquamish, lived around Puget Sound for thousands of years before American settlers arrived in the 1850s, and words attributed to Chief Seattle – that “the dead are not altogether powerless” – are quoted by Seattle ghost guides to this day. Many of the state’s stories are bound up with that displacement and with the boom-and-bust frontier that followed.
- 2 hauntings
- 9 recorded sightings
- 2 news stories
Haunted places in Washington
Pike Place Market
Seattle’s 1907 public market has its own ghost tour, with stories of a playful stable boy, a market founder and Chief Seattle’s daughter, Angeline. Regional legendManresa Castle
A Victorian castle turned Jesuit college turned hotel, famous for two tragic ghost stories – which a former manager admitted a bartender made up. Hoax / debunkedThe ghost lore of Washington
Seattle’s best-known haunts include Pike Place Market, whose ghost walks tell of a stable boy, a market founder and Chief Seattle’s daughter Angeline; the old theatres and clubhouses of Capitol Hill; and the rebuilt streets of Pioneer Square, raised after the Great Fire of 1889. Across Puget Sound, Victorian Port Townsend has Manresa Castle, a mansion-turned-Jesuit-college-turned-hotel whose two most famous ghost stories were, a former manager admitted, made up by a bartender.
Further afield, old forts guarding the Sound, gold-rush and logging towns, and Spokane’s Gilded Age mansions all have their own spectral residents. Washington’s historians and journalists have been refreshingly frank about which stories are history, which are folklore and which were invented for the tourists.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Pioneer Square and the Seattle Underground
The city’s oldest neighbourhood, rebuilt after 1889 over buried storefronts, hosts underground and after-dark ghost tours.
- Capitol Hill, Seattle
The former Burnley art school and the Harvard Exit building feature in some of Seattle’s best-documented ghost stories of the 1960s–1980s.
- Port Townsend
A Victorian seaport packed with ghost stories, from Manresa Castle to Fort Worden and Laurel Grove Cemetery.
- Spokane
Gilded Age mansions and grand hotels from the city’s mining boom give the Inland Northwest its own haunted circuit.
Timeline
- 1892The Eisenbeis castle is completed Manresa Castle
Charles and Kate Eisenbeis move into their new mansion on the hill above the town.
- May 31, 1896Death of Kikisoblu (Princess Angeline) Pike Place Market
Chief Seattle’s eldest daughter dies in her cabin on the waterfront below Pike Street and is buried at Lake View Cemetery.
- August 17, 1907The market opens Pike Place Market
Farmers sell directly to the public at Pike Place for the first time, the start of one of America’s oldest continuously operating public markets.
- October 1918Influenza reaches Seattle Pike Place Market
The pandemic kills more than a thousand Seattle residents; nearby hotels and stables are used as quarantines, the backdrop of the “Jacob” legend.
- 1927The Jesuits arrive Manresa Castle
The building becomes a Jesuit training college and, after a 1928 addition, is named Manresa Hall.
- 1968From college to hotel Manresa Castle
The Jesuits leave and the castle is converted into a hotel.
- 1980sThe first market ghost tours Pike Place Market
Shop owner Michael Yaeger begins Halloween ghost tours, later expanded into year-round Market Ghost Tours by his daughter.
- 2003The bartender’s confession Manresa Castle
A former manager tells the Peninsula Daily News that bartender Nick Gael invented the stories of Kate and the priest.
- September 5, 2015Ghost Adventures airs Manresa Castle
The Travel Channel broadcasts its episode filmed at the castle that January, bringing a wave of new bookings.
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