Things Not Seen
Ghost Stories: Uncovering Fairhaven’s Haunted Past
STORY AND PHOTOS BY STEPHANIE VILLIERS
Taimi Gorman was once afraid of ghosts. This fear, however, never stopped her from trying to track them down in the old dwellings and structures lining Fairhaven’s streets.
Rain pounds the sidewalks lining Bellingham’s historic Fairhaven Neighborhood. Thunder crashes overhead. Gordman is gathered with psychics and photographers in the Fairhaven Carnegie Library to seek out spirits rumored to reside in the building. The group sits on the library’s floor as the psychics begin a meditation exercise to sense the presence of beings from the otherworld. The photographers snap away, trying to capture apparitions with their cameras that cannot be seen by the naked eye.
“Oh my God, they’re all around you,” one of the photographers cries while staring at the back of her camera.
The image on the screen showed the group surrounded by white, circular, floating spheres known as orbs, believed to be remnants of energy left behind from the dead — or from those who never lived at all. Encircled by haunted beings she cannot see but whose presence she was starting to feel, Gorman is terrified.
Paranormal Energy
Gorman, author of the 2012 book Haunted Fairhaven, has spent months investigating supposed haunted buildings around Fairhaven by interviewing shopkeepers and historians, as well as consulting with psychics who claim they can speak with the dead. The neighborhood’s extensive history stems from its inception in 1883, and Gorman says this is one of the main reasons the area shows signs of being haunted.
According to Gorman, Fairhaven’s apparitions take the form of both active spirits — souls of the dead in ghost form — and what she refers to as residual spiritual energy. “If a really strong emotion has happened in a particular place, the energy stays even though the people are gone,” Gorman explains.
She describes how the spirit of a woman is often detected in Skylarks Hidden Café, usually by the booths in the back around closing time. When the woman was alive, she came into the restaurant for breakfast, and a photograph of her now sits atop the café’s fireplace. Gorman says this may be residual spiritual energy because the woman enjoyed coming into the restaurant and a part of her may remain in the establishment.
Active spirits and residual energy alike seem to inhabit Fairhaven Carnegie Library, which Gorman says is the most haunted place in Fairhaven. The orbs she encountered in the library are a type of spiritual energy, which cameras are able to detect, and these same manifestations have been seen in photographs in other Fairhaven buildings, she says.
“I liken it to a cell structure because when you look at them in the photographs they seem to have an aura around the side with different colors coming out,” Gorman says.
Trauma Stuck in Time
One evening about 15 years ago, April McAllister was painting a suite on the second floor of the historic Mason Block, now referred to as Sycamore Square, on the corner of Harris Avenue and 12th Street. McAllister is the property manager of the building and was fixing up its empty rooms to lease out to businesses at the time.
It was getting late, but she wanted to finish painting before leaving for the night. Although McAllister was alone in the building, she felt something was moving around behind her as she applied the final strokes to the wall.
“Then the room got cold,” McAllister says. “And out of the corner of my eye, I see her just walking by. And it was… it scared me.”
She describes what she felt as being almost transparent, but still visible, and wearing a green dress from the early 1900s. McAllister calls her the Lady in Green and believes she is the spirit of Flora Blakely.
During the turn of the century, Blakely and her husband J.A., Fairhaven’s sheriff, lived in an apartment in the corner of the top floor of the building, which is visible from the ground-level lobby in a hotel-like design. Blakely died unexpectedly one day in the building, and her funeral was subsequently held in the lobby.
While the cause of her death is unknown, Gorman encountered theories in her research that suggest Blakely died during childbirth or possibly from falling over the fourth floor balcony. No physical evidence is available to prove either possibility, but Gorman says certain deaths can leave a spiritual mark on a place — especially if a death was intentional.
“You get a lot of residual energy where there’s suicide. You may even get a person that’s stuck there because it’s so traumatic that they’ve forgotten what they did,” Gorman says. “They don’t realize what they’re still doing there, so you find them wandering around and they can’t seem to break free of where they are.”
Connecting with the Supernatural
During her ghost hunting investigations, Gorman reached out to local psychics — both for material for her book and for help overcoming her own fears. Months of searching in the darkness of hundred-year-old buildings left her feeling as though spirits were following her home, and she didn’t know how to escape from them.
“I used to get really creepy feelings and not want to go into particular places,” Gorman says. “When I finished the book, I was so freaked out by everything I’d learned and seen.”
Gorman sought help from psychic Jill Miller, founder and director of Simply Spirit Reading & Healing Center in Bellingham, who claims to be able to communicate with spirits. Miller is periodically commisioned to clear spirits out of houses around Bellingham, including some in the neighborhoods around Fairhaven.
“There are techniques that you can use to help clear the space and move spirits out,” she says, adding that this includes channeling energy throughout rooms and summoning other beings to protect the home. “We’re not powerless against a spirit that might be bothering us.”
Gorman attended Miller’s psychic classes at Simply Spirit for two years after she completed her book, and she says the training allowed her to almost completely vanquish her fear of ghosts.
Things Not Seen
Are spiritual beings actually haunting the buildings in Fairhaven that so many students, residents and tourists often visit? Gorman and Miller believe so, and they both say they don’t feel the need or care to convince anyone who doubts their experiences with the supernatural.
“I think almost everybody has had some kind of psychic experience,” Miller says. “Even if it’s just the phone ringing, and you pick it up and it was your friend you were just thinking about. Now, some skeptics might call that coincidence, but to me, we all have those experiences and they really are real.”
Gorman went back to the Fairhaven Public Library to take another look around with some more psychics and investigators. She stood in the empty, echoing ballroom on the second floor, with light streaming in through the towering windows and a dusty piano sitting neglected in the corner. As she breathed in the musty air of the vacant space, she heard something growl at her, and she ran out as fast as she could. Gorman says she will never go back in there again.
“There are a lot of things you can’t see,” Gorman says. “You can’t see gravity. There are a lot of color frequencies you can’t see, and there are a lot of gasses we don’t know are there. So why wouldn’t it be that there things that are close to us but are not visible?”