Seattle Central Community College
(South Annex)

College Annex near Broadway in Seattle, WA

The South Annex of Seattle Central Community College, which once housed the Burnley School of Professional Art, has housed a particularly playful ghost for over 40 years.

Since the mid 1940s, when the art school was founded, students reported strange sounds in the halls at night.  The Burnley's daughter even served as a receptionist for a brief while and would lock certain doors at night only to return in the morning to find them unlocked.  The story has it that the playful spirit, who has been known to dump grabage cans, open random desk drawers, and walk loudly down the halls, is the ghost of a young Broadway High School student who was killed in a fight after a basketball game.  However, no records have been found to corroborate this tale.

The school was purchased from the Burnleys in 1960 by an artist named Jess Cauthorn.  It was after this that the strangest occurrence involved a large five-foot platform used for modeling clothing.  One night, alone in a locked building, a student had taken a break from painting the platform to have a quick snack.   While eating his hamburger downstairs from the room with the stand in it, he suddenly heard a loud crash from above.  When he went upstairs to examine it, he found that someone or someTHING had moved the model platform from one corner of the room to the other.

Thinking that there was a rational explanation for the goings-on at the school, such as someone unknown to him or his staff having a key, he changed the locks.  No change.  So, he installed a security system that would set off a silent alarm when someone was in the building.  This worked all too well.  The alarm would go off at all hours of the night, but when someone went to investigate, nothing would be found, and all the outside doors and windows would be secure.

The art school moved out in 1986, and the bulding became part of the Seattle Central Community College campus.  Since then the building has been remodeled, but apparently the ghost remains, taunting and tormenting the students and staff who use the facility.

Source: Haunted America by Beth Scott and Michael Norman, ©1994