SEATTLE — There's no better place for ghost hunting than the streets of Pioneer Square. And the "Spooked in Seattle" tour takes guests to some of the neighborhood's creepiest places.
"Look behind those curtains to make sure no one's hiding back there," said tour guide Danielle Siler to a group assembled in the basement of Merchants Café and Saloon, reputed to be one of Seattle's most haunted haunts.
Through vivid storytelling and a few visual aids brought along on her iPad, Siler paints a picture of the neighborhood as it existed more than a century ago.
"These stairs weren't here," she tells the tour group of about a dozen people exploring the outside of a century-old building. "It was a ladder."
She shares stories of the residents who've never left.
"People talking, footsteps, and even creaking sounds," Siler said, describing some of the hauntings witnesses have observed in the area.
Apparitions are said to have spoiled some of the photos at Klondike Penny's Old Time Portrait Studio, now the location of Bon Voyage Vintage Mall.
"They were not in the business of selling ghost photographs," Siler said.
Siler tells the group how another tour guide ran into an apparently chatty ghost at the J&M Hotel.
"She opened the security door and she hears, 'Hello?'" Siler said.
The tour ventures down a dark alley — of course — then makes a stop outside an old burlesque theater. Siler explains how, inside a locked room within the now-boarded-up structure, an unseen hand once rearranged the letters of an Ouija board.
"The word 'cat' was spelled out," she said.
Apparently dead men (and quite a few women) do tell tales on the streets of Pioneer Square. Listen closely and you'll hear them.
To join a "Spooked in Seattle" tour, click this link.
RELATED: Catching up with a ghost hunter!
KING 5's Evening celebrates the Northwest. Contact us: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Email.