Ghost Tales of Seattle

Seattle Ghost Story Part 3

                                                                  Etta Present Day

Etta knew she was dead. There were others here who didn't. She watched them wander mindlessly up and down the hotel halls. She envied them. She was stuck in this place with the ghost of her child. But how did it have a ghost when it hadn't ever lived? It wasn't really a baby, just the sound of crying that kept her from seeking oblivion. She was in hell for the murder of her child and her accidental suicide. The living were ghosts to her, cloudy shapes that did things she didn't understand. It made her furious, all these people going on with their lives, not knowing or caring about what had happened to her.

She took her bloody hands and pressed them against the window in the hallway outside her room, leaving her mark for the living to see.

                                                                 Genevieve Present Day

The handprints had been found on one of the widows in a second floor office, facing the alley behind the building. I looked out the window in question. I could see the back of the building next door, a couple of dumpsters, and an electric rental bike someone had left knocked over against one of the walls. The fact the ghost had left bloody handprints implied it wasn't just a memory. Only ghosts who were aware left physical proof of their existence. There were two rumors about a female ghost who wailed along with a baby. One that it was a single mother who had fallen on hard times and killed her baby and then herself. The other was a young woman who was a prostitute who had died after a botched abortion. Either story was tragic and would leave a strong spirit behind.

"What was here before it became an office for the museum?" I asked Wilson.

"The window was part of the main hallway of the hotel. This spot is closest to room thirteen," Wilson said. "Do you think that has something to do with the haunting?"

"What, room number thirteen?" I shook my head. It amazed me the way people assumed all superstitions were true when speaking with a necromancer. "Just a coincidence, although it might show the ghost had fallen on hard times. Back in the 1900s, people were even more superstitious about thirteen. Some hotels wouldn't even have room thirteen, so it might have been cheaper than a normal room."

                                                                   Etta Present Day

One of the living was out in the hall. Most of them were just shadows to Etta, but there was something different about this one. A light shone around them as they stood by the window where Etta had left her bloody hand prints. The blood still dripped between her legs and she was compelled to dash to the window and do it again, but something stopped her. Instead of the constant rage, she felt afraid of this living person. She'd heard when she was alive that ghosts were cold, but for her it was the touch of the living that felt like ice.

The child began to cry. It always appeared as a shadow lump on her bed. It would start wailing, but she could no more touch it then she could touch the living. It drove her mad and she wished she could get away from the sound. She curled up in a ball on the floor with her hands over her ears, but it never helped.