Homesteader Investigates Wailing at Lake Washington Spring
A lonely homesteader chases a supernatural wailing into the woods, only to discover a surprisingly commercial origin for his ghostly disturbances.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It was a lonely homesteader in the deep recesses of the forest primeval which borders the classic Lake Washington from whom we obtained the particulars of the 'o’er true tale.' 'Night after night,' said he, 'I had been startled by a weird, uncanny wailing, which seemed to rise from the neighborhood of the Haunted Spring, which, edged with poplars pale, is shunned with superstitious horror by the settlers and rarely visited by the most adventurous of the pale faces. Night after night my faithful collie sank into the cabin shivering with fear, as the dismal wail shuddered through the startled air. I could bear it no longer, and shouldering my trusty rifle and leaving my faithful watchdog whining piteously to see me depart for the unhallowed spot, I followed the serpentous trail which led to the Haunted Spring, picking my way over fallen logs and rocky boulders by the struggling moonbeam's misty light. As I neared the locality the mournful cadence of the mysterious sound rose testily above the sighing of the wind through the tottering pines. Not in the places entering which the lost wretch leaves hope behind could there be heard a sound more frightful. Treading lightly, I stole unawares upon the home of the hidden terror. Just then the moon, hitherto partly veiled in clouds, shone out brightly, and there in the fakes of a willow, close to the turbid waters of the 'Haunted Spring,' I beheld an empty bottle that had once contained Swamp Angel Rheumatic Cure, the only known sure cure for rheumatism in all its forms, left there by some one, unmindful that it would be to me a divine evidence of a divine gift.'
“Not in the places entering which the lost wretch leaves hope behind could there be heard a sound more frightful.”
This 1885 story captures the early frontier mythology of Seattle's wilderness, where the deep woods held both genuine mystery and the encroaching influence of patent medicine marketing. Today, the 'haunted' shores of Lake Washington are mostly occupied by high-end residential real estate, yet the tension between our desire for the mystical and the commercial noise of the city remains a defining Seattle quality.
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