True Ghost Story

[+OverSword]

Here is a creepy story I would like to relate.

in June of 1988 my friend Rick and his girl were looking at a one bedroom house to rent in the University District of Seattle. When the landlord showed them the house there were tenants still there and they had big iron crosses on the wall and cloves of garlic strung up around the windows. The yard around the house was quite interesting, the house was up on a small hill about 15 yards from the street and you had to walk through an entirely enclosed hedge tunnel to get to the house and there was a very old and squeaky iron gate at the top of the tunnel. As they were checking out the yard an old lady that lived in the house behind it walked up to the fence and tells them very seriously "Don't move in there, that house is haunted."

They ignored the warning and moved in the following month. Not long after they moved in strange things started happening. Rick said he would come home from work and put his keys down on the coffee table and then when he would go to find them later they would be missing. He would search high and low without a sign and then soon after would reappear back on the table. He would have to get up in the middle of the night a couple of times a week to turn the bathroom faucetts off. He said they would be open all the way with the water running hard.

Thursday nights were ladys night at our favourite bar downtown and we would frequently go to someones house to party some more after the bars closed. One night we were all going over to Ricks and our pal Dogboy beat everyone there. He was more than a little drunk and he walked around to the corner of the house to take a leak. I know, classy, but what do you expect from a guy called Dogboy? As he was standing there out of the corner of his eye he saw a blonde girl standing there and he says what's up? and when he finishes and zips his pants she was gone. At the time he just figured she was from the bar and had walked away rather than hang out while he was peeing.

A couple of weeks later Rick was having a party. Most of the people were in the house, I was sitting on a bench in the front yard talking to two girls I knew and my friend Tom was standing on the front porch smoking, when he says "Hi." He then asks the girls and I if there was someone by the gate at the entrance to the hedge tunnel, from where he was he could only see the end of the tunnel but from down in the yard the girls and I could see clear down to the street. When we said that there was nobody there Tom leapt over the porch railing and sprinted down the tunnel and then ran a short way down the street in both directions. He came back up and was pasty faced saying "I swear there was a blonde haired girl standing there looking at me and when I said hi to her she looked scared and retreated into the tunnel." Tom would not stop talking about the girl and that's when Dogboy told us about his seeing a blonde girl in the yard a couple of weeks before.

About two days later I stopped by to return a video tape I had borrowed, and Rick was weeding the yard. He say Jon, check this out I have something freaky to show you. He walked over to some juniper bushes and lifted the branches off of the ground and there right next to where Dogboy was peeing was a simple flat grave marker of a girl who had died at the age of 19 is 1902.

For my part (sitting in the yard when my friend Tom freaked out and seeing the grave stone) this story is true. All the rest was related to me by the other people mentioned and I have known them all since the late 70's and early 80's, still associate with them, and have no reason not to believe them.

Hope you enjoyed the story.

OverSword

[Mr.United_Nations]

that was a creepy one, i thought it was dogboy that might have disturbed the grave because of his business. Have you been back there to take photos of the area or is that house gone or your friends moved out?

[coolguy]

Very cool maybe the ghost was the girl that died in 1902

[CatFromHell]

Spooky. I remember going to look at a house just around the corner from where I live now, And like the house your friends moved into, There were crosses all over the wall, It really spooked me and my partner at the time out, There was definitely something weird about the place that we couldn't quite put our finger on, The previous owner had died a couple of years ago and the family had been unable to sell it, Even the estate agent showing us around seemed in a rush to get us out. Needless to say we didn't buy, Even though the price had been knocked down quite a bit. Eventually it was sold but a few months later it was on the market again, Nobody seems to stay there long.

Did your friends stay in the house for long after that or they get the hell out, Like I would have done?

Edited July 22, 2014 by SheWomanCatTypeThing

[eight bits]

I notice that you are in the Seattle Area, and you apparently know the address. If you capture the information from the grave marker (a reasonable request to the current owner or tenant should give you access), then you can easily track down the woman buried there, and possibly even locate some of her living kin.

You can do the tracing yourself, but it may be faster to have it done by somebody expereneced in geneaology ( 'll do it as a freebie, to name one.) For Washington State, the magic date for vital records is July 1, 1907, so it will be a little trickier search than usual, but if the relevant events are all in King County,then it should be doable. Washington didn't become a state until 1889, after he birth. She should also appear in the 1900 Census (the 1890 has serious gaps).

Whether she was blonde or not may not be recoverable from official records, but if she has living family, they may cooperate and have pertinent information.

[Rlyeh]

But aren't they all true stories?

[+OverSword]

that was a creepy one, i thought it was dogboy that might have disturbed the grave because of his business. Have you been back there to take photos of the area or is that house gone or your friends moved out?

I have not been back there although a fellow UM member who happens to be my brothers significant other moved in about a mile from the spot. The next time I go out to visit I'll bring my camera and check it out. There has been quite a bit of development in the area and it's been 26 years so there is a chance there is a new condominium standing on the spot now.

[+OverSword]

. Did your friends stay in the house for long after that or they get the hell out, Like I would have done?

Interestingly Rick and Sherry, after having been together and living together for about five years if my memory is correct, had a very messy break-up full of lying and cheating while living there. That could be attributable to that time paralleling us becoming local rock stars though and nothing to do with ghosts.

[+OverSword]

I notice that you are in the Seattle Area, and you apparently know the address. If you capture the information from the grave marker (a reasonable request to the current owner or tenant should give you access), then you can easily track down the woman buried there, and possibly even locate some of her living kin.

You can do the tracing yourself, but it may be faster to have it done by somebody expereneced in geneaology ( 'll do it as a freebie, to name one.) For Washington State, the magic date for vital records is July 1, 1907, so it will be a little trickier search than usual, but if the relevant events are all in King County,then it should be doable. Washington didn't become a state until 1889, after he birth. She should also appear in the 1900 Census (the 1890 has serious gaps).

Whether she was blonde or not may not be recoverable from official records, but if she has living family, they may cooperate and have pertinent information.

As I stated in a reply above, the next time I'm in the area I will definitely look into it. Provided that the house is still there I will furnish you with as much information as I can if you're interested.

[eight bits]

OverSword

Definitely I am interested in any information you turn up.

BTW, if perchance the grave has been built upon since then, do not give up. Relocating human remains, or otherwise altering a burial site generally leaves a paper trail (although the details of what's required vary from state-to-state). What's principally needed is the address as it was and the information on the grave marker. That much should be recoverable with a bit of persistence.

Thanks for posting.

[rashore]

I'm going to suggest that there is no grave at all, but rather just a grave marker. Sometimes people steal gravemarkers or on occasion they are removed due to moving a grave to another cemetery or because of replacing the marker, and they end up in backyards, garages, basements... Sometimes end up being used as a paver in a walkway. Sometimes they get dumped elsewhere too.

It may also be that what was there is a cenotaph- a memorial grave where there is no body. This happens most often when when a body is difficult to retrieve, like lost at sea or during war.

I'm not discounting the rest of the story, merely stating that there might have been no body buried there.

[Sakari]

Cool story.

[Stubbly_Dooright]

I agree, cool story. Sometimes, rather a place being rumored to be haunted or not, sometimes I wouldn't think that should stop a person from moving in. I guess I feel that way from living in what I thought was, and really no harm came from it. But I would be annoyed by the water turning on in the middle of the night. Wrecking the sleep and wasted water and all that bit. And the keys turning up missing thing too.

[Peter Gomes]

hmm.... nice story and I like this type stories.

Edited July 23, 2014 by Peter Gomes