public

Reported

The janitor went insane. That’s how the story begins. In the 1940s or ’50s, a caretaker at this women’s institution reportedly snapped, murdering several patients and staff before dumping some of the bodies near the dock. The girls sent here were labeled “bad,” but people say the land still remembers them — children’s voices, crying in the dark, and a heaviness near the water. Years ago, my friends and I explored the ruins, and one of them kept falling, swearing something grabbed her ankles; the scratches around her socks made it harder to laugh off. Even locals near Rainier Ave warned us to stay away.

Judge Everett T. Smith purchased this five-acre Lake Washington parcel in 1889, naming it Morningside. In 1920, the Seattle School District converted it into the Martha Washington School for Girls — a reform institution housing youth the state deemed delinquent. Dormitories rose in 1921, a gymnasium in 1930. By 1957 the state assumed control; by 1971 the school was shuttered. Vandals, then reportedly Satanists, moved through the abandoned halls. The city demolished the structures in 1989 and named the resulting park — perhaps optimistically — after the school.