From Victorian mansions and hotels to dark forests and underground cities, the North Olympic Peninsula can be a spooky place.
Whether it’s the hauntings of the Lady in Blue, or the ghostly cries of children in a castle, things happen that can unsettle the soul.
The Lady in Blue is the most famous of Peninsula ghosts.
Since the 1960s, guests and visitors at the Palace Hotel in Port Townsend have said they have seen or sensed the Lady
in Blue.
Some people believe she is Miss Claire, one of the prostitutes who lived and worked in the building at 1004 Water St., built in 1889, after it became a brothel in 1925.
Each of the rooms in the hotel, which was renovated and turned into a Victorian hotel in 1977, is named for one of those who worked there during its less-respectable time.
The Lady in Blue is always sensed or seen in Room 4, said Bob Masuret, 54, a desk clerk who has worked at the hotel for four years.
Masuret said he has never felt or seen anything himself but has heard the reports from others.
“In 2009, a guest came down and said the door bolted open,” Masuret said.
Three other ghosts have been sighted by guests in the hotel but not as often as the Lady in Blue, he said.
In Room 3, near a stove, there is a female presence, and a male presence in the second-floor lobby, some have said, according to Masuret. Another female presence was reported in Room 9A.
A portrait of the Lady in Blue hangs in the hall, and a book is kept for guests to record spooky or unexplained events at the hotel.
Manresa Castle
Less than two miles from the Palace Hotel is another allegedly haunted spot, the Manresa Castle at 651 Cleveland St.
The castle, constructed in 1892, was the home of Charles Eisenbeis, Port Townsend’s first mayor, until his death in 1902.
According to local legend, three rooms, 302, 304 and 306, are haunted.
The stories tell the tales of a distraught young woman who, on learning of the death of her beloved, jumped to her death from a third-story window near one of the castle’s towers, and a monk who hanged himself.
No one knows if those stories are true, but there is something going on at the castle, said Shannon Dineson, 19, a front desk clerk, Friday.
Dineson has worked at Manresa Castle for two years and lived in the hotel as a manager for four months. During that time she has had her own share of spooky happenings.
“One night, I was woken up when the headboard of my bed was slammed up against the wall,” Dineson said.
She has heard unexplained knocking on hotel walls, bright lights flashing outside of windows and fire alarms going off for no reason.
Other employees have reported being locked in rooms, being pushed down stairs when no one was near, a broken clock ticking and chiming the hour and mirrors crashing to the floor, Dineson said.
Guests also share their stories of things that go bump in the night, at least a few each month, Dineson said.
People hurriedly check out in the middle of the night, reporting having their blankets pulled crushingly tight around their bodies or other discomforting events, she said.
Many write of their experiences in a black logbook kept at the hotel’s front desk.
“People say they hear crying babies in Room 200, even when there are no children in the hotel,” she said.
The hotel was rented out by a hospital as a maternity ward at one time in its past, she noted.
Port Angeles
For the last 10 years, Don Perry, owner of Heritage Tours, has guided thousands of people through the Port Angeles Underground, but it wasn’t until a group of ghost hunters arrived to “test” for ghosts that he became aware that there may be something more than dust in the old passageways.
“It’s certainly old enough to have its share of ghosts,” said Perry, who is also deputy mayor and is running for re-election in November.
In 2010, Paranormal Investigations of Historic America, based in Monroe, brought recorders and equipment to explore beneath the streets of the Port Angeles and in the Family Shoe Store at 130 W. Front St. — once a downtown brothel — Michael’s Divine Dining at 117B E. First St. and the Museum at the Carnegie, 207 S. Lincoln St.
While sitting with the group in a dark underground room, all five lights of a magnetic field detector he was holding registered, Perry said.
It was a very strong signal, he was told.
One of the ghost hunters asked the ghost to show itself again, twice, and Perry’s detector registered “something” twice more.
“If you had tapped me on the shoulder, I would have jumped through the roof,” he said.
Then a came a loud banging sound.
When the group turned on the lights to see what it was, they found his daughter’s flashlight several feet from where it had been put down, standing on its end, not on its side as if it was kicked there, he said.
Perry has continued guiding tours through the underground since that day, and ghosts are not on his mind when he does, he said.
But Perry said he is sure something out of the ordinary did happen that day, whether it was really a “ghost” or if someone was remotely controlling the magnetic field detector he held.
“I’m a skeptic, but I am open-minded,” he said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.
