The Return Of The Georgetown Morgue and Jake

UPDATE

FOR HALLOWEEN

2010

If you live in Washington State you have the choice of visiting a great  Haunted House hosted by a local radio Station and  in addition to that choice  ( you lucky Devils ) you can also opt to go on  Ghost Tour and learn about Seattle’s real life haunted past.

Its back and brought to you by KUBE radio.

Its

the

” The Legendary Georgetown Morgue.”

Visit the site

HERE

The KUBE 93 Haunted House is going to scare you senseless this year at the creepy, insanely authentic location at the former Georgetown Morgue south of downtown Seattle.

 

 

 

And if you want to add to your Halloween Fun then consider taking

The Haunted Seattle Tour

I happen to love a good story and I love the ones with that taste of reality in it. Unlike the Haunted Houses, which are fun and you should do at least one in your life time, tours like the one Jake will take you on will leave  the ‘what if’ door in your mind’s eye wide open.

And do you know what walks into doors that are left wide open?

Anything that wants too.

For me that’s scary

(from the website)

                                Jake, a local ghost enthusiast, takes you on a van tour visiting haunts like:

The Elegant Hotel
The Mortuary
The Market
Gambling Den
Poor Farm
The Voice
The Castle
Old Burial Ground
The Basketball Player
Haunted Theater
Notorious Rooming House

Seattle Ghost Tour Link HERE 

 

Jake Your Seattle Ghost Tour Guide

 So there you are.

From Me To You,

 Halloween Treats to savor.

May I suggest enjoying them to the

very

last….

 

Legend Of The Georgetown Morgue

UPDATE:

FOR INFORMATION ON THE 2012GEORGETOWN MORGUE

:::click on the picture below:::

Today I read an article that debunks the story about The Georgetown Morgue.

 I don’t do the haunted house tour thing ( you know, after you’ve worked in a Funeral Home and had to visit real morgues and years later all you can remember is the taste of McDonald’s French fries because you were consistently assigned removals in the afternoons- just before lunch)- Morgues don’t exactly scare me-

 the thought of them now just makes me hungry.

For French Fries.

The super-sized serving.

Anyway.

I thought the setup for the Georgetown Morgue was a fun idea, a very neat story and the building the “morgue” is staged in is way over the top and looks the part.

Most funeral homes, let’s face it, were supposed to blend because they were either near churches or in neighborhoods and people actually lived in them.

However subtle- some of them are they are weird if you know what to look for the weirdness- take a look at the garage doors and back doors which are wider then normal to accommodate you know, things which require a lot room to move through, and though the writer of the above mentioned article does toss in the small smoke stacks at the Evergreen Washelli Funeral Home and how unscary they are but he fails to mention the actual creepy thing is the mirror mounted on the roof and tilted upwards towards the smoke stack.

The Funeral Directors use this mirror to make sure the smoke doesn’t turn dark during the cremation process…see CREEPY.

You just need to know where to look to find it.

However- there’s always an however isn’t there?

 On a visit Dubque Iowa, I saw this amazing funeral home called Behr’s- which looks scary by any measure.

So what do I think about the ‘debunking’ of the Georgetown Morgue?

Well.

I’d say the writer who did this didn’t prove anything other then the only story he could come up with was the deconstructing of another writer’s work.

Creating a world and a story and legend for you to follow isn’t easy, placing it in terms that invite readers to want actually walk ( or drive ) to  that door is actual work, bringing a building and people who never existed to life, takes effort, writing a vindictive little hit pieces to ruin the moment for people who wanted to visit the “Georgetown Morgue” ?

Geeze- now that’s just mean spirited.

So visit the setup site for the Georgetown Morgue, it’s actually well done- I thought the way they wove bits of Seattle’s real history into the ‘legend’ was pretty clever – the earthquakes, the hint of the Wa Mee Massacre, the death of a famous local musician wrapped in media hype- made it possible for present day for local residents to ‘relate’ to this building and to the story.

So no- I wouldn’t visit the haunted house- I couldn’t even be bribed with French Fries…however…if someone were to tell me more stories about the Georgetown Morgue– they would have my undivided attention.

After all, this is what we do during Halloween- we spin yarns, tell tales and for one night not only do we get to face the monsters-

we get to face them down.

It’s all part of the fun.

So.

Try.

A few of you, more then others…

to have a

Happy Halloween.

Kube93FM Haunted House

The Georgetown Morgue: Gruesome true story or fabrication?

 

October 1st, 2008

It’s October first and in case you forgot…Halloween is coming!

So here are some links to Haunted Places…a few jokes, and if you like the clip art click the pictures and you’ll go directly to the sites, more info on other Halloween Clip Art sites at the bottom of this post

Enjoy!

a.m.

Find Real Haunted Houses

In the U.S. HERE

Find Haunted Houses In the U.K

HERE

Haunted Australia

 HERE

Haunted Places In New Zealand

HERE

Okay.

It’s Joke Time.

I got these from the kids in my family…

I happen to love them.

The jokes I mean

Not the kids.

Oh come on, I’m just kidding.

What did Dr. Frankenstein get when he put a goldfish brain in the body of his dog?
I don’t know, but it is great at chasing submarines.

 

Why wasn’t there any food left after the monster party?’
Cos everyone was a goblin

Why did the vampire’s lunch give him heartburn?
It was a stake sandwich.

Dracula decided he need a dog, which breed did he choose?
A blood hound.

What would you call the ghost of a door-to-door salesman?
A dead ringer.

What do skeletons always order at a restaurant?
Spare ribs!

Who was the most famous French skeleton?
Napoleon bone-apart

Who won the skeleton beauty contest?
No body

If you like the clip art, just click the picture and you’ll go to the site where I found them, they’re from all over the Net, so have fun!

But if you’d like to see where I found most of the links go to this PAGE and HERE

The Elevator Ghost

A few days ago someone sent this to me-

it’s one of those Urban Legend stories about a ghost

that shows up on a security camera.

It made me think because

I have an elevator ghost story.

We have an old freight elevator at work

and the repair men who run the inspections- and its always a different inspection team from year to year- tell the same story about a building just two streets over from where I work.

This is a story ( it’s just a story I’m sure ) about a woman who was murdered on a service elevator that wasn’t used very often (she was moving boxes from her apartment to the basement ) over a holiday weekend and her corpse rode that elevator for three days.

Her remains were discovered after the long weekend was over when someone in the building complained about the service elevator running up and down all night long without stopping.

Nobody could get the elevator to stop and apparently the people in the building had a hard time finding a service crew to come in because of the holiday weekend.

So everyone had to listen to those gears and that motor humming and hissing and running up and down on that last night.

 Finally the repair crew made it in and when they finally got the elevator  stopped they were able to open the doors there she was.

Her neck was broken and her eyes and mouth had been sewn shut.

That was done, I learned before her neck had been snapped.

The elevator always had problems after that and no matter what they did they couldn’t fix it, so eventually the elevator was taken out and the shaft was turned into a staircase.

And sometimes, the people in the building say you can hear clicks and hums all night long coming from the stairwell.

So this story may just be an Urban Legend, like this video.

But the fact is as a writer I know that stories, all stories, were inspired by something or somebody

that was alive and real

That is,

until one day….

WNJ BRAIN FOOD

  

Tomorrow, Saturday, November 3, WNJ’s own Joanne Austin and Ryan Doan will be signing their book Weird Hauntings: True Tales of Ghostly Places, at the Barnes & Noble store in Howell from 2 to 4 PM. The store is located on the northbound side of Route 9.

 

NOW HERE’S A TASTE….READ THIS BOOK…IN THE DARK…I DARE YOU

amm

“Did you hear something?” “Is someone there?” “Did you ever get that feeling you were being watched?” Sometimes, fellow readers, there are no answers to these questions. At least no answers that make sense in our real, tangible, predictable world. Because there is another world out there – one that’s full of weird hauntings.And who better to bring otherworldly nightmares to you than Weird NJ’s own Joanne Austin, who has compiled the eeriest, strangest, most hair-raising, and true (as far as we mortals can tell) stories of ghosts that haunt our neighborhoods, battlefields, restaurants, roads, hotels, schools, and.….homes. All the dead are beautifully illustrated and brought back to life by long time Weird NJ artist Ryan Doan (RyanDoan.com). Whether it’s the specters that traverse Zombie Road, the Nob Hill Ghost, the spirits of weary soldiers at Antietam, or the antics of little Sarah who invisibly moves objects in an Ohio inn, you are about to encounter specters who will startle you, sometimes make you smile, and, more often than not, scare the living daylights out of you. Weird hauntings are everywhere. And, good people that we are, we even include their addresses. Sleeping with the lights on tonight? Don’t forget to check under the bed.

The Scariest Thing

“Anita, you write stories about ghosts and the living dead…you worked in a funeral home so tell me…what’s the scariest thing you’ve ever seen? “

To be honest, I’ve seen lots of strange things but I’ve never seen anything that ever scared me. So I’ll laugh, joke and blow the question off.

Ask me the right question though and you’ll get a different answer- you’ll get THE answer

and here it is:

To let you know right off- I’ve never SEEN anything that frightened me but once I felt something that did.

I was working alone in a basement and for once I had the radio off and it was quiet, just still and calm. It was a nice feeling, sort of a ‘sitting by the lake at sunset’ feeling.

I was reaching for something up high on a shelf when I felt something tug at the bottom of my plaid work shirt- I always wear oversized plaid shirts when I’m down there because the dust is so bad it wrecks my clothes. I thought I’d caught my shirttail on something so I reached back and pulled it down.

Then I walked to the next shelf and just as I reached up I felt that tug again and I stood there with my arm halfway up in the air when I felt the same tug- up higher this time- under my shoulder blade.

 I knew I wasn’t alone.

And I knew if I turned around there would be nobody standing there.

Now, when I’m in trouble, or stressed out I give myself these pep talks and it’s always my Grandfather’s voice I hear.Only this time it was my Great Grandmother I heard- and let me tell you she was ‘snap your spine if you made her angry’ type of a woman.

 Comfort was not a word that springs to mind when I think of Nan.

” Don’t you dare turn around ” I was hearing, ” You keep those eyes forward and don’t turn around.”

Then I felt something tug at the end of my braid and I bit my lips really hard and tried to not yell. But I didn’t turn around and as I walked away from the shelf I didn’t look back.

If you can imagine it- worse then that tug on my shirt was that feeling that something was just behind me. Whatever it was wouldn’t go away and it followed me up the basement stairs.

When I got to the top steps and crossed over the threshold I turned around and pulled the door closed. And then I opened it again reached in and snapped the light off.

 This time I kicked the door shut.

That’s it; those five minutes are the one thing that scared me. You can make what you like of those minutes- after all I still wonder about them myself.

I’d advise you to not consider them when you’re alone though, I don’t.

A Midnight Dreary

 

I not only write ghost stories

I’ve lived some.

enjoy 

About 10 years ago my husband and our three kids moved back to Mountlake Terrace. When we moved to Terrace we moved into a brand new Apartment Complex, I think there had been less then a half dozen renters in the place.

So it was new and spiffy and energy efficient.

About two weeks after we moved in I was in my bathroom brushing my teeth before bed.

It had been raining and thundering all evening, so when I started to see flashes of lighting it wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Anyway, I was looking into my bathroom mirror- I saw myself, I saw my bedroom window over my shoulder and then I saw blinding white light in the mirror and then my teeth slammed together and there was this deafening roar and all I could think was, ” I’m in trouble. ”

I wasn’t in trouble- but the tree outside my bedroom window was.

 The next day we found out it had been hit by lightning and you could see the scorch mark down one side and two of its limbs were blasted off and another was left dangling.

The kids played and tugged at the damaged tree limb until it came off. I remember them dragging it around for a while and the maintenance man broke it up and threw it away.

It was shortly after that  when the ghosts came.

My youngest son is a social animal.

At the age of  7 and after only a few weeks of living in our new place he knew everyone. By that I mean he knew names and who lived where and what they did and their pets names and millions of other little details.

Don’t ask me how he did it.

Then he changed.

It was a gradual change-  my son started to sleep a lot during the day,  he started getting dark circles under his eyes and when he started hiding his favorite toys around the living room I thought that maybe the move had affected him after all.

One day I was pulling his collection of Ninja Turtles from out of my bookcase (he had hidden them behind the books) when he went walking by with his skateboard under his arm and said he wanted to take a nap.

It was about 2:00 in the afternoon and enough was enough.

I asked why he was so tired and he said, ” this little boy comes into my room at night and plays with my toys and he’s keeping me awake.”

” Is that why you’re hiding your toys? ”

” Yeah. ”

 Is it working? ” I said trying to play along.

My son shrugged and went into his room and took his nap.

It was a little while after the toys in the bookshelf incident when my Sister came over for a visit.

My kids had insisted on a pet hamster because not only did their Mom have a cat she had pet rats and the boys decided pets shouldn’t be something only Moms got to have.

They named  their new pet Scooter.

My Sister and I were alone in the apartment- the kids, my husband and her husband were all out buying pizza.

We were in the kid’s room playing with Scooter.

We put him into one of those little balls hamsters  can run around in and I remember my cat was sitting in the doorway and I was going to push the ball with the hamster in it towards him.

My cat had been raised with my rats and he had this thing were he wouldn’t go for rats or hamsters and my Sister didn’t believe it.

So we both look up to where Wolfgang had been sitting when this little boy ran right passed the bedroom door and down the hall towards my bedroom.

” Who’s that? ” my Sister asked.

” Probably a neighbor kid. They walk in all the time. ”

I went to get the kid when my cat sort of slinked around the corner and he looked up at me and growled.

I don’t mean that cat growl- it was big and deep and his ears flattened against his head.

I went to push him out of the way with my foot and he reached forward and grabbed my ankle with his teeth. Then he started to  jerk backwards with these little snaps to his neck and the entire time he’s doing this he’s looking up at me and growling.

Then he sort of turned without letting go and tried to pull me back into my kid’s room.

My sister was yelling, I was screaming  because my cat was holding onto my ankle and the blood was starting to run and no matter what we did or how loud we yelled he wouldn’t let go.

Then his ears went back up; he let go of  my ankle and he walked out into the living room.

” There’s no one in the apartment except us…is there? ” my Sister asked.

I remember I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know.

I’ll leave you with this final ghost story-

Out of a dead sleep I woke up at exactly 1:45 in the morning and standing beside my bed was my Grandfather.

I was really glad to see him- it had been about 14 years since he had died. He’d missed my Wedding and my High school Graduation and a million other great things.

Now I was going to get the chance to tell him all about it and I remember trying to wake up more so that I could get my husband to wake up and meet my Grandpa.

I was surprised- but not that my Grandfather was there but that he looked so young.

He looked like he did in his late 30’s- I’d only seen pictures of him in those days and I wasn’t sure why he looked like that and not like the man I’d known.

But that was okay- all that mattered was that he was here now.

This went on for a week- I’d wake up at the same time and there he was standing by me looking happy and relaxed and pleased to see me.

At the end of the week my Grandfather’s sister passed away.

I was heartbroken- she was a great lady and she use to tell this great story about performing in a childrens choir ‘back in the day’ for Prisoners in an honest to goodness Prison.

They were singing for genuine convicted killers and robbers.

I use to ask a million questions about what it was like inside of a Prison and she was happy to tell me.

Plus she could whistle through her teeth.

She had a great life if you ask me.

Anyway, I never asked what time she died- I was sure I already knew.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

So there are my stories- are they true?

Did they really happen?

Did they?

There’s This Place …

From The Guys At

Weird New Jersey

watch this alone…at night…with the lights off

 go one…give it a try

it’ll be a scream.

amm

Did You See That?

Just doing my part to spread the Halloween fun…

so here are some treats to get you in the Halloween Spirit

enjoy

For some Devilish Delights ( and I DO MEAN Devilish Delights)

 visit

at

The Hungry Ghost

He says it’s all about Pies, but for real Tony loves that spooky stuff so check him out at Tales at Twilight

I AM NOT WORTHY I AM NOT WORTHY visit my heroes Mark and Mark at Weird New Jersey –they so rule.

And to get that little chill- you know the one that runs up and

down your spine just as the lights go off…

read Max’s Ghost Story

Want to see something really strange? Then vist the West Midland Ghost Club in the U.K. ….

or you could stay local like me and hang ( ha ) with the crew from A.P.A.R.T

FOUR MORE DAYS! FOUR MORE DAYS!

NOW GO FORTH AND HALLOWEEN….

 

 

Spend H’Ween with A.P.A.R.T

A.P.A.R.T. will be spending Halloween with the Meeker Mansion.
They will have a booth set up to discuss their investigation, disclose their
findings, and share stories of ghosts, spooks and the paranormal.

contact info:

info@apartofwa.com

note from

FROM

REGAN:

I just wanted to add as well that we’ve done a couple additional investigations, with great results.

But you have to come see us to discuss those results, hear them, and see them.

*wink*

This is a kid friendly event.

!!!!!EXTRA!!!!

for an exclusive article by

Regan

from

A.P.A.R.T

CLICK HERE