Georgetown Castle

A 1902 Queen Anne Victorian built by gambler Peter Gessner, who was found dead from carbolic acid poisoning a year later under suspicious circumstances. Four distinct spirits haunt the house, including a woman locked in the spire room who went mad and a red-haired murder victim from the 1920s brothel era.

Peter Gessner made his money running gambling tables and a brothel out of the Central Tavern in Pioneer Square, and in 1902, he poured it into Georgetown Castle, a nine-bedroom Queen Anne Victorian on a Georgetown hilltop, crowned with a round turret, mismatched gables, and a wraparound porch. He built it for his wife, Anne Elizabeth. She left him for the manager of their chicken farm before the house was finished.

Gessner moved his gambling operation into the empty mansion. He lasted barely a year. In July 1903, he was found dead in a second-floor bedroom with his lips and tongue scorched by carbolic acid. The coroner ruled suicide, but suspicious circumstances pointed toward Anne Elizabeth and her new partner. No inquest was ever held.

The mansion's darkest legend involves a woman named Sarah, said to be Gessner's niece. She became pregnant while living at the house. Her baby was killed and buried on the property, and Sarah was locked in the castle's spire room, where she went mad and eventually died. During the 1920s, the house operated as a brothel and gambling parlor serving Boeing factory workers, and a sex worker named Mary Christian was murdered on the premises. Sources conflict on whether she was strangled by a magician or shot by a client.

Four spirits inhabit Georgetown Castle. Gessner walks the second floor, his footsteps echoing through empty rooms. Sarah's crying drifts from the spire at night. A baby's wails come faintly from the yard where the infant was buried. The most striking is a woman in a long white nightgown with fiery red hair, believed to be Mary Christian, spotted through windows since the 1940s.

In the 1970s, residents Ray McWade and Petter Pettersen discovered a tiny room that had been completely walled off, where the air was unnaturally cold. McWade heard what sounded like brawls upstairs on a regular basis. Both men saw the ghost of an elderly woman with coal-black eyes in a long white dress, clutching her throat with one hand and striking out with the other. Pettersen painted the ghost's likeness. An elderly visitor later identified the painting as her great-aunt Sarah, who had "met a bad end" at the house.

The property cycled through uses as a gentlemen's club, speakeasy, boarding house, and clubhouse for the Nonpareils baseball team before opening as Castle Inn Catering in the late 1970s. Georgetown sits on ancient Duwamish burial grounds, which adds another layer to the site's unease. In 2004, Lynda Bazan and her son Micah Schlede purchased the 5,000-square-foot house for $348,000 and replaced 52 windows during a major restoration. Three paranormal teams were allowed access, capturing video of glowing orbs that earned the castle a segment on The Montel Williams Show. Bazan says the spirits seemed calmer after the renovations, though both owners admit to sleepless nights, strange vibrations on the third floor, and sounds on the stairs they can't explain.

The castle is a private residence and can't be toured, but it's a featured stop on the annual Georgetown Haunted History Tour, visible from the sidewalk.