Times/News

There's no need to pay to go through a haunted house, especially when the Highline area has plenty of local haunts to explore for free.

Joe Teeples, a Des Moines resident and vice president for AGHOST. (Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle Tacoma), has been doing investigations for over 25 years.

He has found that the Seattle area is a hub for ghostly activity.

AGHOST has conducted over 200 investigations, since they started four years, through out the Seattle area at places including Lakeview Cemetery, The Seattle Underground, and Des Moines Beach Park.

"We're always looking for ghost stories," Teeples said.

Last Jan. 8 a team of 15 AGHOST members went to Des Moines Beach Park to investigate the claim that the ghost of a little girl named Diana walks on that date every year.

While trying to take video outside of a cabin, the camera kept shutting off. When it was turned back on, and they tried to film again, it shut off.

The psychic who was with them picked up not only the ghost of one girl, but the ghosts of many children who were warning them to stay away from the crabby old man and members of the team also saw the image of a young girl walking up a trail.

"Wherever the psychic was telling me to take pictures I was taking pictures," said Teeples.

History of the park would prove that the area was once home to a children's orphanage owned and operated by a Mr. Draper in 1917.

"You get a good respect for history because you have to do research on the history of things," Teeples said.

Other investigations in the area include The Radisson hotel in SeaTac.

Part of the hotel was built over Washington Memorial Cemetery and, although the headstones were moved for the new construction, the bodies remain buried underneath the hotel.

There have been reports of people walking up and down the halls and sounds coming from outside of rooms, on the bottom floor of a certain wing, said Teeples.

AGHOST is a scientifically based group that is just out looking for the facts, he said.

Teeples has been interested in investigating the paranormal since he discovered his imaginary friend growing up was the ghost of the previous owner of an old farmhouse his family lived in.

But Teeples is quick to point out that he's the ultimate skeptic.

"You always look for the rational explanation first, and then if things don't match up you look for the answer," he said.

But through years of investigating the paranormal, Teeples is convinced there is something out there unexplainable.

"I've seen enough stuff that when someone says it doesn't exist, I've seen evidence to say that's not true."

Teeples and President of AGHOST Ross Allison have combined to write a book titled Ghostology 101 that details how to conduct an investigation and the haunted spots through out the Northwest.

It took them over a year to write and Teeples stresses that it's a scientific based book on ghosts.

"We developed the book as a resource for people who would be interested in conducting their own investigations or possibly start a ghost hunting club of their own," said Teeples.

He warns, "Don't do this [an investigation] alone. The scariest thing is not the ghost, it's a human being waiting in a tree."

Teeples listed the the top 10 haunted spots in the Seattle area:

Des Moines Beach Park; Lakeside Milan Treatment Center, where a boy reportedly wanders the halls; East Hill Elementary School in Kent, where there are reports of moaning and an apparition of a man hanging himself; Pike Place Market; Harvard Exit Theater; Burnley School of Art on Broadway; Ye Olde Curiosity Shop; The Starlite Lounge in Seattle, which is the site of Seattle's first mortuary; Seattle Underground; and a building at 5501 Airport Way S. that used to be a bordello and has the image of a woman choking herself.

The book is available for purchase online at www.aghost.us, or at Ye Olde Curiosity Shop or The Museum of Mysteries in Seattle.