There's one place in Seattle where it's Halloween every day.At 1921 First Ave., businesses keep coming and going, but one thing stays the same -- the presence of ghosts unafraid of making their presence known.
These spirited die-hards have bid their share of goose-bumped humans a hasty adieu.
The latest casualty at 1921 was the hip eatery Starlite Lounge, which closed this year. What ultimately doomed the new restaurant was shaky management, say those in the industry. But rumor has it specters floating inside the stone and brick building -- once home to a bustling death business -- banged pots of disapproval to speed up moving day.
John David Crow wasn't a believer in spirits when he opened his restaurant, Fire & Ice, at 1921 First four years ago. One evening, Crow told me, a wire coat hanger straightened itself and balanced on a knob like a seesaw.
So, Crow called in a shaman, who walked around and was shocked. "There are 19 spirits in here," the shaman told him. "I see 19 faces looking down at us right now."
Before you knew it, Crow's restaurant closed, too.
Workers at a previous restaurant at the spot, Cafe Sophie, also reported strange occurrences. Once, after midnight, an electrician rewiring one of the chandeliers saw two men sitting at a table talking, but thought nothing of it. The men even got up and held the ladder as the electrician worked -- until a woman in a white linen dress entered the room and started arguing with them.
"The electrician suddenly realized that his 'helpers' were not of this world," according to an account in Margaret Read MacDonald's book "Ghost Stories from the Pacific Northwest."
Cooks later found the electrician "sitting on the curb muttering."
Seattle, of course, has its share of famous ghosts and ghost tales.
There's the girl with dark hair, swathed in a white light, said to haunt the Neptune Theater in the University District. A janitor saw her in the lobby and told her the theater was closed. Then he realized she was transparent -- and dropped his Coke.
The Harvard Exit cinema on Capitol Hill has a resident spook. So, too, did the 14-room mansion known as The Castle, in Georgetown. Two residents said they saw a derangedlooking woman clutching her throat as if she were being strangled.
Seattle's most famous market, Pike Place, has a host of otherworldly characters, including "The Fat Woman Ghost" -- the spirit of a barber who lulled customers to sleep to steal from them. The barber fell through a Market floor to her death -- or so the story goes.
1921 First Ave., though, is most unusual, because tenant after tenant has tried to make peace with its lingering dead, even as they've tried -- and failed -- to court the living.
But the back story of the location -- in the same block as Le Pichet cafe -- explains why spirits, if you believe in such things, keep hanging around.
In the early 1900s, E.R. Butterworth brought his thriving mortuary to the location. Inside the building, there was a showplace for funerals, a garage for hearses, a cremation oven and a vault for ashes. On the first floor were viewing rooms, sitting rooms and a chapel. Seattle's first hydraulic elevator carried mourners to the top floor to buy caskets."For twenty years, The Butterworth Building saw the city's deceased pass through its doors," MacDonald's collection of ghost stories says. "Then in 1923 the Butterworth family moved their firm to Capitol Hill -- but they seem to have left a few of their customers behind."
Over the years, a man watched in awe as work tools mysteriously danced in the air. A bartender saw wine bottles shoot from a bin. And a kitchen worker stacked plates and looked away, only to turn back and see them laid out like fallen dominoes.
A customer in a booth once complained to a waiter about a woman staring at him. The waiter looked back and said, "What woman?"
Employees from different businesses -- including Avenue One and Isadora's -- that have come and gone at the spot echo the feeling that they were being watched.
Monday, I peered inside the dark space. With its vacant bar chairs clustered in a dark corner and long shadows everywhere, it looked spooky -- but apparently not spooky enough to scare off yet another entrepreneurial spirit.
It turns out the family behind Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub in the Market will open a restaurant in this spot in early 2008.
Ghosts be damned, says Patrick McAleese, an owner of Kells. He says his cousin will try his luck at 1921.
With a touch of Irish humor, he added: "I'm a little more concerned about the living than the dead."
Seattle First Avenue Restaurants Haunted
Seattle First Avenue Restaurants Haunted