Adowntown Puyallup businessman works late one night in his upstairs office. He hears feet scurrying down the hall. Everyone has gone home; he knows he is the only one in the building. He slowly reaches for the doorknob and yanks the door open. The scurrying stops. No one is there. The hall is empty.
A vendor at Third Street Antiques feels a chill when she walks by a display of antique estate furniture. When the furniture is sold the feeling goes away.
Psychics visiting Meeker Mansion say they sense an otherworldly presence wandering its Victorian corridors.
The specter of haunted houses and paranormal activity is especially apparent this time of year, when sudden cold breezes send leaves rustling around one’s ankles and trees contrast bare, bony limbs against a twilight orange sky.
Ancient Europeans believed that at this time of year the veil that separates the living from the dead grows thin, allowing the two worlds to interact.
Local author Leslie Rule believes people are more open to spiritual influences around Halloween. Rule is the author of several books about paranormal encounters and has traveled throughout the country in search of haunted dwellings.
Rule said that downtown Puyallup businesses may be more susceptible to haunts because of their proximity to the railroad tracks.
“There have been so many accidents on the tracks,” she said. “Maybe that can account for all the ghosts.”
Rule, a vendor at Third Street Antiques, said that ghostly entities can be attached to certain objects and follow those objects when they move. The store’s owner, Kathy Kraushar, doesn’t think the shop is haunted, but said vendors have sensed unexplainable feelings around certain displays.
Vendor Keitha Crane experienced a creepy feeling in the vicinity of a collection of particularly old antiques in an upstairs corner of the store.
“Somebody had died and this stuff was inherited and they brought it here,” she said.
One night Crane was closing the store alone. Standing by the old antiques, she said she felt an instant chill. At the same time, just out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a wispy grayish smoke float across the room.
“It was just something that shouldn’t have been there,” she said. “I just couldn’t explain it and as a Christian, I instantly rebuke these things. I thought ‘You have no power over me. You’re out of here.’”
Crane said that the creepy feeling disappeared when the antiques were sold.
“The only time I experienced a presence is when those old-world antiques were here,” she said. “Once they were out of here the feeling was gone. We had never had a display of that caliber before, and haven’t had one since.”
Rule said “residual haunting” is a theory that when something dramatic occurs it can somehow be captured in time and witnessed at a later date. In theory, if humans can record moments, sights and sounds with digital recorders and cameras and play them back with machines, can nature not capture events and play them back also, just with a different set of tools?
“When we go to a movie and see Clark Gable on the screen, obviously he’s not really there,” Rule said.
The theory is that nature may have its own set of recording devices not known to man. The problem is, mankind likes to be the one in control and when something else pushes the “playback” button outside of a man-made box, people don’t like it.
Whether one feels ghostly presences in spooky old mansions Rule said, depends on whether they are open to it or not.
“Some people are more sensitive to them than others,” she said.
Several psychics gathered at the Meeker Mansion for the recent Psychic Fair said they definitely felt something paranormal in the old house.
Regan Vacknitz of “APART,” Auburn Paranormal Activities Research Team, was set up in the Meeker bedroom during the fair.
“We’ve done a few investigations there,” she said. “At first we felt like we were being watched. The second time we felt more welcome and we’ve felt welcome there ever since.”
Vacknitz said during the Psychic Fair several of the other psychics commented that they had the same feeling.
“A few of the psychics said the entities in this house were happy to see us,” she said.
“In the master bedroom we always felt more of a woman’s presence. On the third floor, the one that’s not open to the public, we always felt more of a male energy.”
The mansion’s historian, Andy Anderson, shrugs off the notion that the house is haunted.
“There are two schools of thought when it comes to that kind of stuff,” he said. “You either believe in it or you don’t.”
Reach reporter Susan Schell at 253-841-2481 ext. 315 or by e-mail at susan.schell@puyallupherald.com.
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