A Homesteader Hears Wailing at the Haunted Spring
A local homesteader hunts a terrifying, wailing spirit near Lake Washington, only to find a very earthly culprit.
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 lone homesteader on the primeval forest which borders the classic Lake Washington from whom we obtained the particulars of this ever-true tale. 'Night after night,' said he, 'I had been startled by a weird, unearthly wailing, which seemed to proceed from the neighborhood of the Haunted Spring, which, edged with poplars, is channelled with superstitious horror by the aborigines 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 demoniac 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, picking my way over fallen logs and rocky boulders by the straggling moonbeam's misty light. 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 sure cure for rheumatism in all its forms, left there by some one, unmindful that it would be to me a message of a Divine gift, for with one dollar I obtained one bottle from the S. A. R. C. 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 bit of 1880s 'native advertising'—using a fake supernatural encounter to sell patent medicine—it captures the isolation and superstition that permeated early Seattle. Today, the 'Haunted Spring' is long buried under the concrete and lawns of the city's affluent lakeside neighborhoods, yet the impulse to find 'cures' in the wilderness or online remains a constant of the human condition.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.