Fat Lady Barber of Pike Place

Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about creepy things that surprised us around the internet. That medwin. I'm Michelle. Let's get pulped. Okay, okay, I guess we'll get started on our show. Now it's Scary Mystery Surprise. I can whisper because my mic is good. Why are we whispering? You know? I can't whisper. I can't whisper? Shall you can't? Why not? I always sound like this. I'm like the awkward person you don't invite to sleepovers, the one that the librarian's always like, sh that's me. That's me at the movies. So I'm just like, can you move home, please? Edward? That's your full voice. So today we're doing something that's near and dear to my heart. I grew up in Washington, everybody, so I felt like I needed to talk about since it's overcast today, it's making me nostalgic. I thought i'd talk about the Pipe Place Market. So the market itself was founded in nineteen oh seven, and so it's one of the oldest and largest continuous operating public markets in the United States. It has farmers, crafters, small businesses, and people live there. They have like a lot of low income housing there and a lot of services to help people there in that area. But the market is one hundred and fifteen years old and it's continuously been working since nineteen oh seven. If you've seen Sleepless in Seattle, they shot a lot of iconic scenes there. Anytime you see Seattle in like generic stock footage, there's usually footage of the guys at the fish counter throwing a salmon. People go and they see the fish, the guys throwing the fish. Oh okay, I've seen that. That's there. Yeah, that's where that is. The first Starbucks was there, like in the plaza. But also don't go there because you'll be waiting around the block to just go to a Starbucks. Like because people love to go to the first Starbucks and say they've been to the first Starbucks. But don't do it. That's just a local tip. Don't do it. Do you pass the Starbucks while you're waiting in line to go to them? I'm pretty sure you could. It's just that stupid. It's like, literally, go walk a block in any other direction and go to another Starbucks. You can get your machiato anywhere. Also, there's better coffee shops in the Pipe Place Market. Does it look old? Yeah, it can be very crowded too, because it is touristy. But as someone who grew up there, I still like to go to Pipe Place Market and wander around because it's so cool. There's parts of it that are so weirdly magical and stuck in time that you do feel like it's nineteen oh seven. Still, it's very weird. It's very cool. But here's the thing. It is probably the most hand place in Seattle, if not the most haunted place in Washington. Okay, that's odd. Well, yeah, I mean it's really old. The first haunting I'm going to tell you about, one of the market's most famous and popular visitors is Princess Angeline, the eldest daughter of Chief Seattle. Her Dwamish name is kick a Solo, which I looked up so Dwamish is the tribe, so it's spelled like Kiki so blue, but it's pronounced kicka Solo. The early settlers changed her name because they thought she deserved a quote unquote nicer name than that. They dubbed her Princess Angeline, so they called her princess, and they called her Angeline better than Mary. Yeah, better than Mary, I mean just some sort of generic no. I like her for her real name. Yeah. Through the eighteen fifty five Treaty of Point Elliott, it required all Duwamish Indians to leave their life for reservations, but Princess Angeline ignored the order and remained in the city, living in a waterfront cabin on Western Avenue between Pike and Pine, which is basically where the market is now. Angeline made her living taking in laundry, selling handwoven baskets on the downtown streets of Seattle, becoming a familiar figure. The bent and wrinkled old woman, most often seen with a red handkerchief over her head, a shawl around her shoulders, and strolling with the aid of a cane, became a familiar site along the waterfront. So there are like famous photos of her, and she's like a scrunched old woman, Like she's very hunched, and she's very wrinkled, and she's very Yeah, she just looks small in these photos, Like she looks like a little bit like a raisin, you know, like one of those women that's maybe become a Raisin at the age of eighty five. Princess Angeline died on May thirty first, eighteen ninety six. Here's the twist. Angeline was apparently not ready to leave, as she has been spied at the Place Market for decades. The market, built upon the site of her former cabin, is said to remain the home of her restless spirit. Over the years, many people have reported seeing her, believing that she is a real person, until she suddenly disappears in front of their eyes. Oh wow, Okay, that's cool. Just like the real Angeline. This spirit is said to move very slowly, as if her feet barely touched the ground. Others have reported that the figure sometimes changes color from a glowing white shade to lavender, blue and pink. She's most often sighted near a rough wooden column in the center of the lower level. Several have reported that the column is seemingly surrounded by cold air, and that photographs have displayed abnormalities. I guess Several Native American Shamans have tried to do several exorcisms in an attempt to free her. Wait, so they think that she's evil exer No, no, no, they're just trying to release her. I think, I think she's not evil, but she continues to roam the market. You know. The way that is described is it's really is. I just imagine like her like on a hoverboard, changing colors, just just like cruising, like this old lady with this really cute little red bandana, and she's just changing colors on a hoverboard, just so Angeline could be haunting any of the old floors on her hoverboard. Yeah. So yeah, she's just like cruising around. So it's it's an actual building building, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I imagine it like a parking store. I want to look this up. Yeah, look it up. There's like a lot of cool old videos too. Oh wow, okay, so it looks whoa Okay, I like the sign, yeah the sign, the sign is iconic. Okay, so it is is a building? Does it? Does it have underground floors to it? Yeah? That's what it's so like. Yeah, so you're looking at it where the sign is, that's like what you think is ground level, right, but then below that is like like so like below that wow, okay, Yeah it looks really cool. Yeah, it's it's cloudy on all of these well hence you know, it's great that it's cloudy here, because it's always cloudy there. Oh man, but it's cloudy and hot here. No, it's humid. It'll be humid, but I mean it's like when it's fifty degrees people wear shorts because it's humid. So that's pretty common. And socks and sandalstrae, socks and sandals. Okay, lots of socks and sandals in the Northwest. Okay, So I still have some a few other entities that wander. The restless spirit of Arthur Goodwin, the nephew of the original Pipe Place market developer, Arthur Silhouette is often seen looking down from the library and you'll also, this is why I included it, because it was hilarious. He's also been seen swinging a golf club in his old office. Go okay, that's like a weird ghost Silhouette to see, you know, like that's sing yeah, just swinging away, just practicing so random as a slap. And then the golf he's got to practice his his like his putting swing. How do they know that it's him, Like it it's just because it was his office, it was his old so they're just assuming it's him. This next ghost Fdwin was going to go to pipe place market, he'd want to go to this place. So there's this magic shop, old like Houdini Magic tricks, magic shop. This magic shop is said to be haunted by the spirit of a woman who inhabits a crystal ball. Her name is Madam Nora. This restless spirit haunted Pharaoh's Treasure Shop before landing at the current magic shop. According to the tale, Pharaoh's Treasure received the crystal ball from an old woman who wanted to trade it for a scareb Sure, what for a scaup? Like, you know, one of those weird little Egyptian beetle scab things. I know because I watched The Mummy in the nineties. Though the old woman warned the shop owner that the spirit of Madam Nora was residing in the crystal ball, the owner thought little of it and made the trade. It seems like why why, Like, if you're warned someone's living in a crystal ball? Why why doubt it? I kind of get it, And of course, almost immediately, unexplained things began to happen. Most notably, numerous objects began to move during the night. Madam Nora is said to have been a woman who ran a place called the Temple of Destiny in the early days of the market. She is known to have practiced crystal gazing, Egyptian sand divination, and Indian psychic projection. She continues to leave her paranormal imprint today, wearing of the strange occurrences in Pharaoh's Treasure. The crystal ball was passed on to the Pipe Place Market magic shop owner. Is it still there? Yeah, it's still there. Oh, okay, that's cool. Yes, I do want to see that, and I do want to go there. Yeah, you'd love it. You'd love it. It was like such an old, old timey spot. And you know, I remember when I was a kid and I went to Disneyland. Main Street had a magic shop there, and I'm still there. I was so excited. I was like, oh my yeah. But it was obviously it was. It was modern and neat. But I always imagine, you know, how they describe it in the movies was just like, hey, the magic shop owners like, let me show you something. It's exactly that. It's exactly that, which is like so weird to be like, yeah, it's exactly that. It is. It is the magic shop from movies where there might actually secretly be magic there because obviously there's a cursed there's a cursed crystal ball has Madam Nora stuck in it? Also, that makes me think of the haunted Yeah, the haunted mansion and that the woman and then you also mentioned the floating objects or but you know, the Haunted mansions supposedly has Poltergeis stops. That's a good spot for a break. So back to the story. Obviously, there's several ghost children at the market. Everybody. Obviously people see children up in the main arcades wearing knickers and little white shirts and they're darting between people in Crossing Pike Place, and there are children that are seen on the lower levels. Quite a few of them have actually interacted with shop owners, and the shops have named them because there's they're so common, yeah, so common. So basically I just grab some quotes from this article from Kuow. So there's this pub near the first Starbucks and it's called Kel's Irish Restaurant and Pub, and it was the first mortuary building in Seattle, And of course it's like right across the street from the market, right, So like this is probably also why there's a lot of hauntings, but they say there is a cute little redhaired girl who scares everybody. She haunts the stairs that go between the levels. Wow, I like that. I like the because you said she scares everybody, so she's probably really creepy looking at here. Yeah. And then there was or a boy who's been seen at night by the janitor and a teacher. When the Pipe Place Market childcare in preschool was on the third level of that building, they used to see a little boy hiding in the shops. This is the quote. He's all the time playing hide and seek, but when you see him, he's got brown hair and he has no eyes. Oh no, you know. It had a little pause there because I was actually imagining. I was like, okay, what does that look like? And no, okay, that did it. That was a good that's a good one. Actually I got chills, Michelle, I straight up got just took me a little bit to like see it. And I was like, you know, they're so calm about all the like in that story too, and these are just quotes from that story, but like they're so calm about all the ghost children. And then they just it's like a throwaway line that he had no eyes. Just like, that's not good. Guys, that's not good. That's not like a normal kid that got me. Oh yeah, that's not normal. Oh yeah, Oh no, that changes it because it's what I mean to learn the stories firsthand. I think it's it's it's cool unless they're just trying to, you know, scan the tourists. Nah. I mean like there might be a little bit of that, but I think there's enough weird secondhand story. Like, you know, I was doing research for this and I was like looking at the comments on different articles and stuff, and someone was like, oh, yeah, twenty years ago, I totally felt Princess Angeline. That story's legit. Like I totally sensed her around me. And I'm just like, that is such a random like comment to leave on an article. But okay, like there's just weird stuff like that everywhere where. People are like, oh yeah, I saw a little kid who was in a bead shop and blah blah blah. You know, like things like that creepy still very creepy, Like I think, yeah, the raisin on a skateboard or whatever that things coverboard, coverboard, Sorry, that's creepy. Yeah. The last the last fart. Oh man, that got me. This is my favorite story, which just cracks me up because it's the one that I pitched you in order to even talk about Pipeline market. But it's called the Fat Lady Barber. And I don't know why I just love this story so much, but maybe it's because it's just so visual. Yes, Fat Lady Barber. Another legend tells of a spirit most often referred to as fat Lady Barber. I knew you were going to not be able to get through that who continues to lurk around the market at night. Evidently, in the fifties, this fat barber woman was known to This fat barber woman was known to sing her customers to sleep with soft lullabies, and then after they were comfortably snoozing, she'd pickpocket them, and then she'd wake them up and collect her money for aircut. She would just take enough. Yeah that's how I imagine it. You just take enough so they don't know she's just taken a little extra, and then she takes the money for their haircuts. When they wake up, if they don't have any money left, she's just like, okay, just give me your watch. So the market was renovated in the seventies, it like fell into disrepair basically in the seventies. They ended up making it a nonprofit to save it. So that's just like a weird little history lesson. So before the nineteen seventies, the market was in rough shade. So there's two different ways this part of the story is told. One way that it's told is that a customer woke up while she was robbing them and he beat her basically to death. But while he was beating her, she fell through the rotten floorboards because she was overweight, and she got stuck with her feet, half of her feet dangling through the floor, and then half of her struggling above that kind of thing, and then she finally died. And then there's another part of the story where it's just like, oh, she just fell through the floor, which probably feels that probably feels more accurate, is that she just fell through the floor because of the rotten floorboards at this place. So she got beat up and then fell to the floor. That's one way that it's told. Yeah, oh no, but I mean like she was busted for pickpocketing, you know, like a customer busted her for being a little nefarious. The rough reaction though, it's like you're robbing you it's this woman and you beat her up. I know, it's a little weird. Flashing forward to today, maintenance workers report that when they're like around the stairs near the barber shop, which is still there, they'll hear the sounds of soft lullabies while they're cleaning at night. And then I was also watching a ghost tour video on YouTube and they were like, and when you're walking around the barber shop, hold on to your valuables as you walk by, because now she is at the perfect height to pick pockets. Like, holy shit, wow, fat lady barber is one of my favorites because now she is I like her like that. Now she isn't the perfect height to pick pockets. That line just her cruising around on the floor. I imagine seeing that. Imagine it's nighttime, you hear a lullaby and then you just see you look down and you just see that woman on the floor sticking her hand in your pocket taking out your receipts. Yeah, taking out my right aid receipts should be like what is this? Why is it so long? It's like, wait, where's your where's your cash, and it'd be like, I don't have cash anymore. Do you take the cards? Yeah? Use card. I'm sorry. She's like, why is this receipt so long? But that's the pipe place market you sold me on it. I want to go. Well, we've established is maybe I should be a salesperson for the market Tells ghost Stories anyway. Be sure to rate and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Yeah, and let us know what you want us to talk about next. I'm excited. I want to know. I want to visit places too, So you get the places tell us hunted places from your hometown, weird weird places, weird old spots that you know, there's got to be some some juice. There's got to be some juice there. Yeah, just that we want to know. Hello at Scary Mysteriesurprise dot com or find us on social The links are in the description of this episode. See you, guys,