The allegedly haunted Seattle Underground Tunnels, according to Ghost Hunters, are available for touring. Two popular paranormal hot spots at this historic area are a former prostitute hangout and a bank vault. Some feel that the ghostly voices heard here are simply normal sounds coming down from the street level, but others maintain that spirits from the past linger in this subterranean labyrinth.
Seattle Underground Tunnels
Kreischer Mansion
Kreischer Mansion has been on the market for a couple years now, sources say. A cool $8.5 million will buy it, and the ghost is included. According to the home’s history, original builder German brickmaker Balthasar Kreischer died one year after the house was finished, and his son Edward died after shooting himself in 1895. One of them may be the identity of the ghost… or it may be someone else altogether. In 2008, a caretaker was convicted of stabbing a man before drowning and dismembering him to dispose of his body parts in the mansion’s basement furnace. The ghost is said to make itself known through apparitions and occasionally touching living folk.
White Horse Tavern
The ghost who haunts White Horse Tavern is said to be none other than renowned poet Dylan Thomas, who died in 1952 after drinking 18 whiskey shots and collapsing into a coma. He died the next morning at St. Vincent’s hospital, but he still has his own table at the tavern, where he makes brief appearances.
St. Paul's Chapel
St. Paul’s Chapel is New York’s oldest public building that is still in use, and is the burial place for British actor George Frederick Cooke. Legend has it that to settle his towering debt, he agreed to leave his head to science. So, since his 1812 death, his ghost is sometimes said to appear looking through the cemetery for his head. But apparently his reunion with his noggin wasn’t meant “to be” — sources say his skull was used as a prop in the Shakespeare play “Hamlet.”
Belasco Theatre
Above the Belasco Theatre, former owner David Belasco and his partner, aka the Blue Lady, used to live in an apartment. He died in 1931, but his spirit, as well as that of the Blue Lady, still resides here, according to witnesses. Their apparitions have been seen onstage while performances are going on, as well as in the elevator and in the audience.
New Amsterdam Theatre
New Amsterdam Theatre is said to be haunted by actress Olive Thomas, who was in Paris on her second honeymoon in 1920 when she accidentally took her husband Jack Pickford’s mercury bichloride pills, prescribed for his syphilis. Her ghost is said to appear at the theater where she once worked, clutching a blue pill bottle. She is said to appear mostly to men; it is advised that if you are one of those she chooses, react in a calm and friendly manner so as not to upset her. After all, she’s been through a lot!
Lefferts-Laidlaw House
The 1840 Greek Revival house is said to have been haunted since the 1800s. According to the story, it was December 1878 when resident Edward F. Smith answered a knock at his door, but no one was there. Still, the knocking kept on, along with rattling of the doors and windows, until Smith called the cops. The cops had the place surrounded when something unseen through a brick through the dining room window. That set off interest from ghost hunters and psychics who held sidewalk séances, trying to unravel the mystery of the unhappy spirit.
Ghost of Firefighter Schwartz
Author and TV personality Anderson Cooper is said to own this former fire station that was converted into a home. Firefighters who lived and worked here before the building was converted say it is haunted by the ghost of a firefighter named Schwartz who, distraught after learning of his wife’s affair, hanged himself from the rafters here in the 1930s. The apparition of a hanging corpse and strange noises coming from the attic have been reported for many years.
St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery
St. Mark’s Chruch in-the-Bowery, second-oldest church in Manhattan, is said to be haunted by cantankerous Dutch colonial governor Peter Stuyvesant. The church was built over the former site of his family’s farm, and his peg-legged ghost has heckled clergymen and parishioners, rung church bells, and even interrupted church services with his stomping and singing.
House of Death
The tale of this house is told in the 1974 book “Spindrift: Spray From a Psychic Sea” by actress-turned-psychic Jan Bryant Bartell. According to her, many people died under mysterious circumstances at this haunted place. Among the ghosts who are said to haunt the place are author Mark Twain, who lived here from 1900 to 1901. His ghost was seen by 1930s tenants who found him in their living room. When they asked who he was, he replied, “My name is Clemens, and I has a problem here I gotta settle” — and then he vanished. Much later in 1987, a resident named Joel B. Steinberg was convicted for beating his 6-year-old daughter to death. Ghost tours have been available.
