The Ghostly Wailing of Lake Washington
A lonely homesteader’s terrifying nocturnal encounter leads to a discovery that reveals the ‘supernatural’ horror was nothing more than a discarded medical bottle.
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 this 'o'er true tale.' 'Night after night,' said he, 'I had been startled by a weird, uncanny wailing, which seemed to proceed from the neighborhood of the Haunted Spring, which is shunned with superstitious horror by the aborigine and rarely visited by the most adventurous of the pale faces. Night after night my faithful collie slunk into the cabin quivering with fear, as the dissonant wail shuddered through the startled air. I could bear it no longer, and shouldering my trusty rifle and, leaving my faithful watchdog whining piteously as he saw me depart for the unhallowed spot, I followed the serpentine trail which led to the Haunted Spring. As I neared the locality, the mournful cadence of the mysterious sound rose fitfully above the soughing of the wind through the somber pines. Not in the place entering which the lost wretch leaves hope behind could be heard a more frightful sound. Treading lightly, I stole unawares upon the source of the hidden horror. Just then the moon, hitherto partly veiled in clouds, shone out in unclouded brilliancy, and there in the forks of a willow, close to the turbid waters of the Haunted Spring, I beheld an empty bottle that had once contained Swamp Angel's Rheumatic Cure, the only known sovereign cure for rheumatism in all its forms, left there by someone, unmindful that it would be to me a divine message of a divine gift, for with one dollar I obtained one bottle from the S. V. K. O. Mfg. Co., Seattle, Washington Territory, which entirely cured me of the terrible rheumatic pains which I had had for thirty years.'
“Not in the place entering which the lost wretch leaves hope behind could be heard a more frightful sound.”
While this piece is a classic 19th-century 'advertorial'—a marketing stunt disguised as a human-interest story—it reflects the era's pervasive fascination with the 'untamed' wilderness of the Pacific Northwest. Today, the legendary 'Haunted Spring' of Lake Washington has been entirely swallowed by the sprawl of Seattle's residential development, turning the supernatural mystery into a mundane piece of local lore.
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