Georgetown Castle

A Queen Anne Victorian mansion built in 1902 by gambler Peter Gessner for his family, later converted into a brothel and gambling house serving Boeing workers in the 1920s.

Georgetown Castle, also known as the Gessner Mansion, is a Queen Anne Victorian built in 1902 by Peter Gessner, owner of the Central Tavern in Pioneer Square, Seattle's notorious red-light district. Gessner made his fortune running gambling tables and a brothel from the tavern, and he channeled that wealth into a nine-bedroom mansion crowned by a distinctive round turret, with soaring ceilings, mismatched gables, and a wraparound porch. He built it for his wife, Anne Elizabeth, but before the house was even finished, she left him for the manager of a chicken farm they owned.

Gessner moved his gambling operation into the empty mansion, but 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 it a suicide, but suspicious circumstances led many to believe his estranged wife and her new partner may have been involved. The coroner declined to hold an inquest.

The mansion's darkest legend involves a woman named Sarah, said to be Gessner's niece. According to accounts passed down through Georgetown, she became pregnant while living at the house, and her baby was killed and buried on the property. Sarah was then locked in the castle's spire room, where she went mad before dying in captivity. During the Roaring Twenties, when the house operated as a brothel and gambling parlor serving Boeing factory workers, a sex worker named Mary Christian was reportedly murdered on the premises. Accounts conflict on the details: some say she was strangled by a magician, others that she was shot by a client.

At least four distinct spirits are said to inhabit the castle. Gessner's ghost walks the second floor, his footsteps echoing through empty rooms. Sarah's anguished crying drifts from the spire at night. A baby's wails can be heard faintly from the yard where the infant was allegedly buried. The most visually striking apparition is a woman in a long white nightgown with fiery red hair, believed to be Mary Christian, who has been spotted through windows and on the grounds for decades. In the 1970s, residents Ray McWade and Petter Pettersen discovered a tiny room that had been completely walled off, containing an unnaturally frigid cold spot. McWade regularly heard what sounded like vicious brawls coming from upstairs. Both men repeatedly 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 apparition's likeness, and an elderly visitor later identified it 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 even a clubhouse for the Nonpareils baseball team before opening as Castle Inn Catering in the late 1970s. Georgetown itself sits on ancient Duwamish burial grounds, adding another layer to the site's troubled energy. In 2004, Lynda Bazan and her son Micah Schlede purchased the 5,000-square-foot house for $348,000 and undertook a major restoration, replacing 52 windows and repainting the exterior. Three paranormal investigative teams were allowed access, capturing video of glowing orbs that earned the castle a segment on The Montel Williams Show and a featured stop on Seattle's Haunted Happenings Tour. Bazan reported that after the renovations, the spirits seemed appeased and activity quieted down, though both owners still admit to sleepless nights, strange vibrations on the third floor, and unexplained sounds on the stairs. The castle remains a private residence and cannot be toured, but it is a featured stop on the annual Georgetown Haunted History Tour, viewable from the sidewalk.