Thursday, February 14, 2002

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

When the Kalakala hosts its regular Saturday grill for volunteers, there's a vacant seat at the table for a visitor no one sees, but whose footsteps often echo from the old ferry's empty steel decks.

It's a silent acknowledgement that a man long dead may still be around, at least in spirit, and that he may not be alone.

	Amateur ghost hunters came away from their field trip to the Kalakala with strong feelings and some photos in which they say they detected orbs and mists. A psychic also visited the boat. Dan DeLong / Seattle Post-Intelligencer Click for larger photo

Over the years, Kalakala workers say, they have heard footsteps aboard the famous, rusty ferry berthed on Lake Union and given chase in search of intruders -- only to find the boat locked and vacant.

Recently, a team of amateur ghost hunters boarded the boat with electromagnetic field probes and infrared cameras. They say they found ... something.

"We believe the Kalakala is probably filled with a lot of residual hauntings," said Ross Allison, president of the newly formed Amateur Ghost Hunters of Seattle, Tacoma (AGHOST). "You have to be there at the right time to catch anything."

Not that anyone should be afraid. In fact, Kalakala's ghosts seem downright warm.

"It's a very friendly, embracing place," said Patricia Woolard, vice president of the group. "I felt kind of honored being on that boat."

The group, which has posted its results on the Internet at www.theresaghost.com, sought permission from the Kalakala Foundation to use the vessel for its first field trip last month.

They probed its spiritual side with an array of instruments and were accompanied by members of the more established Washington State Ghost Society and some psychics, Allison and Woolard said. They came away with strong feelings and some photos in which they detect orbs and mists.

A psychic who visited the boat says the footsteps are those of John Martin, a janitor who worked on the boat in the 1950s. An African American in life, he is said to have felt unappreciated, and sticks around the Kalakala's friendly environment, though he is bewildered because he thinks it is 1954 and cannot find anyone.

Kalakala Foundation director Peter Bevis said a volunteer archivist is trying to find records that might show if a John Martin ever worked on the boat. In any event, Bevis is happy to set an extra place at the table.

"The ghost hunters said John is upset that he never got enough appreciation or recognition in life," Bevis said. "So I figured, well, let's put a hot dog on our plate for John and invite him to sit at our table, to honor those who came before us."

Touting the Kalakala's spiritual side is nothing new to Bevis, who waxes eloquent about the Seattle spirit that built the Kalakala, and the boat's importance as a link between past and present.

The Kalakala began life as the Peralta, a 1927 San Francisco Bay steam ferry that was towed north in ruins after a fire destroyed its wooden superstructure. At the old Lake Washington Shipyards in Kirkland, workers grafted a daring new aluminum top on the salvaged iron hull, and the Kalakala debuted on Seattle's waterfront on July 3, 1935.

It soon became a world-famous, state-of the-art attraction, synonymous with Seattle long before the Space Needle became a landmark. Billed as the world's first streamlined ferry, it excited imaginations about the future with its Buck Rogers rocket-ship lines and art deco style.

Kalakala, which means "flying bird" in Chinook jargon, carried 30 million people around Puget Sound, despite its infamous engine vibrations and poor handling characteristics.

At one time it carried an on-board orchestra and radio station, was written up in Ripley's Believe It or Not, and saw proposals, weddings and births on its decks.

In 1967, the vessel was retired, sold and towed to Alaska. It became a fish processor -- gutted, deteriorating and forgotten on a Kodiak mud flat until Bevis stumbled onto it.

Since its 1998 homecoming to a cheering waterfront crowd, the boat has been moored on North Lake Union, haunted by slack funding for restoration.Bevis said that when the ghost hunters asked permission to investigate the boat, he kept quiet about the things he knows -- and the things he suspects -- to avoid prejudicing their inquiry.

"I was sort of pooh-poohing their machines a bit because I already sense the boat is alive with a personality, like a grand dame," Bevis said, adding that he was impressed by the group's scientific approach.

"As their machines picked up certain fields in certain areas, it lent a different level of credibility," he said.

Even Mike McNeil, a Kalakala worker who doesn't believe in ghosts but who has chased the mysterious footsteps, was impressed when the sleuths noted "a lot of anxious energy" in the women's lounge.

The lounge was where 27-year-old Adelaide Bebb, a forlorn woman with a world of troubles, shot and killed herself June 23, 1940. As the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported at the time, Bebb, a secretary, had experienced the suicide of her father and the death of a sister in a car crash. She left a lonely, bittersweet note that haunts in its own way.

"I found life too beautiful, and, at once, too difficult," she wrote. "I know myself inadequate to make my life what I wanted to make it."

The group also homed in on the car deck, where Bevis experienced an unsettling night in 1998 while sleeping on the boat in Alaska.

"The boat was making all kinds of noises. I figured it was the tide settling down," Bevis recalled. "Then I heard laughter. I thought maybe the shift at the (fish) cannery next door was letting out. But then I heard what sounded like three women walking right by ... my door, and I thought, 'Now I've got to get up and chase somebody off,'" Bevis said.

He put on his shoes, grabbed a flashlight and followed the laughter and conversation in the dark.

"It was right in front of me, on the next deck," he recalled. "I followed it right down to the car deck and then up the spiral stairs. I was right behind it and heard two of the women burst out giggling," he said, still incredulous. "But I couldn't see anybody."

The next day Bevis told the tale to a caretaker who had watched the boat for years.

"He just broke out in a big grin," Bevis said. "He had heard the same thing."

Woolard said the group was surprised to hear the stories afterward. It has published a report on its Web site, and hopes to go back in a few weeks.

Bevis said he doesn't need instruments to tell him there's spirit in the Kalakala.

"The ghost hunters said the boat felt alive with good energy; I know it's alive," Bevis said. "I believe in the magic of the world.

"I'm a foundry metal sculptor. I work with metal, and I feel all the vibrations that ever shook this boat, from the conversation and laughter of the workers and families during the Depression, between soldiers and sailors in World War II.

"It's as though you can hear a million passengers sometimes," he said. "There is so much of Seattle's spirit in this boat."