Possession

AUTHOR’S NOTE

When I started this book I thought it would be fun to write one that was just about ghosts and hauntings. Of course, that’s not quite how it worked out. . . . But if you’re going to talk about ghosts in Seattle, the obvious places to start are Pike Place Market and Pioneer Square. Since I’ve done a lot around Pioneer Square, I decided to concentrate on the market this time, and I couldn’t have picked a better spot—it’s the mother lode of freaky Seattle stories. At the same time, the activity around the construction of the State Route 99 tunnel became an irresistible addition since the area is linked to some of the weirdest and most bizarre events in Seattle’s history—and you know how much I like weird events—so I started looking at the proposed route for the tunnel to see what sort of fictional havoc I could wreak on my town. And, of course, Seattle obliged by providing the sites of a tragic accident and the offices of a serial killer on either end of the route, with all sorts of strange things in between. I just couldn’t resist stirring them up and seeing what happened.

During the final editorial cycle, I found a note from the copy editor of this book expressing some surprise (or possibly doubt, horror, or curiosity) about my referring to Linda Hazzard as a serial killer. Not only was Linda Burfield Hazzard a real person, she is one of the few women to be recognized as a serial killer and she was the first ever recorded in Washington’s unhappy history of them. There are quite a few articles about Hazzard online—including several on my usual haunt, HistoryLink.org. The best known of several books about her is Starvation Heights by Gregg Olsen, which is guaranteed to give you the creeps. I also got information about Hazzard from the ladies of the Clallam County Historical Society while I was doing research for a previous Greywalker novel, Downpour. I really couldn’t have made up anything as dreadful as the details of Hazzard’s crimes. Truth is, once again, more outrageous than fiction.

The tragedy of Cannie Trimble is also sadly true and is another bit of strange Seattle history that I picked up initially through an article at HistoryLink.org. She’s a bit of a mystery, as there seems to be little information about her other than the reports of her death and the fact that she was married to one of the wealthiest men in Seattle at the time. There’s also a debate about her name—some archives and articles list her as Cassandra or Cassie Trimble, but comments from surviving relatives claim that her name was actually Cannie. I made her into a sad but helpful spirit, and I wonder what she was really like—smart and funny and full of life, I hope—but I suppose I’ll never know.

I took some liberties with the disposition of Gas Works Park, which actually was undergoing ecological restoration in the first quarter of 2013, but there never has been a secret door into the abandoned coal gas processing plant. However, you can fly kites off the top of the mound that covers some of the factory’s wreckage—it’s a great location with a fantastic view and constant wind.

Pike Place Market is famously haunted and Mercedes Yaeger has conducted tours of the market’s ghostly sites since the early 1990s, as well as written several books on the topic, which I read as research for this book. I also went on the tour with fellow writers Liz Argall, Melissa Mead Tyler, Stina Licht, and Cherie Priest and had a wonderfully spooky time. I didn’t have to make up any of the stories about the market that I included in this book—they’re all true, as are most of the ghosts. As I write this, Kells is still in the process of renovating the upper floors at the former Butterworth Mortuary building, but you can still get a drink downstairs in the old embalming and crematory rooms, where things do, once in a while, go bump in the night. If you want to experience some of this for yourself, take the ghost tour the next time you’re in town, or walk through the market after dark with your ears pricked and your eyes open.

I had some archaeological assistance from my friend, writer Robin MacPherson, but the majority of the archaeological information came from another writer friend, Rhiannon Held. There is a real-life Washington State Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation, and Rhiannon was able to help me with information about that office’s work and responsibilities on the tunnel and seawall projects. I was thrilled she had the time to look over the manuscript and to assist me with it—the line “It’s not all whips and fedoras” is one I borrowed from her. And she was still kind enough to let me slip her into the story, even though I had to demote her to monitor.

I also had a lot of help from Dr. Martha Leigh of Swedish Physicians about eye damage from oil paint (as well as help from my minion, Thea Maia) and the facts about persistent vegetative states, which are, in fact, extremely rare. I probably fudged the facts here and there by accident, but I tried to keep them as true to the real world as possible while still telling a good story.

Here and there I had to tinker with reality to make it fit my story; I have to say that anything I got wrong with this or any other detail of fact, personality, or history is all my own fault.