Oooooo Spooooky!

Yesterday was the "Haunted Staircase" day! Spoooky! On the map there is a staircase, number 54, which is marked "haunted staircase." I was wondering if it was actually haunted or the map maker just decided it was haunted for some reason.

Upon further research I found the following legend about the stairway (courtesy of Queen Anne View): "The original wooden stairway crumbled down the hill in the early 1900s, killing a woman who was on her way to meet her fiancé. Decades later, the legend continues, a woman was walking on the concrete steps that had replaced the ill-fated originals when a disembodied voice whispered urgently for her to turn back. The woman heeded the eerie warning and narrowly avoided serious injury when the stairway broke apart, crashing downhill."

Creepy!!!

The walk however started with staircase 357 (pictured to the right), which was spooky in its own right. Mysterious muddy water at the bottom, overgrown hedges, dark and foreboding. It leads up from the well-traveled Gilman to 11th Ave W, home-street to the haunted staircase. Walking along up on 11th, there was an eerie feeling in the air. House after house were up for sell, empty, for rent, neglected. An overgrown sidewalk amidst some very luxurious houses as well.


Then, for the haunted staircase. It looked simply like a neglected staircase. It had a few remaining, rotting stairs which led to a bramble of blackberry bushes. If I were more adventurous and without knee problems I would have gone down further.

Continuing along 11th I came to a park, which eerily enough is not on the map, curious. Its name? Rachel's playground. Now, who is this Rachel? What happened to her and why is there a park named after her? Must have been some sort of tragedy? Spoooooky!



Looped around the park and hooked a left back onto 11th and headed down Wheeler St. I was going to hit up a little street, just to be able to highlight it on the map. But, alas, the street does not exist. Spooooky!

Parallel to Gilman is a little tiny spur road, very steep, overgrown with brambles and not well traveled. There was a girl, standing in the middle of the street, on a cell phone, talking about directions and addresses. I asked if she needed help, I showed her my map. She looked confused and told me she was ok and turned around slowly. Spooooky!

On top of the hill was a fenced in yard, with one of the wooden boards missing, poked my head in and it was a creepy yard filled with lots of junk.

Spooooky!