The Ghostly Wails of Lake Washington
A pioneer’s terrifying nightly ordeal near a 'haunted' spring ends not with a supernatural discovery, but with a piece of patent medicine marketing.
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.
I am a settler in the forest which borders the east side of Lake Washington, from whence we obtained the particulars of the occurrence: Night after night, I had been startled by a weird, unearthly wailing, which seemed to emanate from the neighborhood of the 'Haunted Spring,' which, edged with poplar and pine, is shunned with superstition by the aborigines and rarely visited by the most adventurous of the settlers. Night after night, my faithful collie slunk into the cabin, quivering with fear as the discordant wail shuddered through the startled air. I could bear it no longer. Grasping my Henry 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 in the struggling 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. 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 Rheumatism Cure'—the only known sure cure for rheumatism in all its forms—left there by someone, as if it would be to me a divine message of a divine gift. For with one dollar, I obtained one bottle from the S. A. R. C. Mfg. Co. of 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.”
This 1885 advertisement uses the 'gothic frontier' trope—a classic fear of the unknown woods—to pivot toward the burgeoning industry of patent medicines. It mirrors today's 'wellness' marketing, where influencers and advertisers similarly use anxiety and storytelling to drive consumerism, proving that the hustle for the next miracle cure is a permanent fixture of the Seattle experience.
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