For more than a quarter-century, the stories have centered on children—phantom figures said to shimmer with an iridescent glow. Neighbors claim these spectral babes come into nearby homes on Beacon Hill, where they rummage through toy chests, scatter playthings across stairs, take porcelain dolls from glass cabinets, and set dogs a-snarling.
In 2001, one woman who lived near the cemetery told the Post-Intelligencer’s Jon Hahn that she had tried to sell her house several times, always in vain: “Everyone knows about the ghosts.”
But the strangeness of Comet Lodge, the historic cemetery on South Graham Street in Beacon Hill, runs deeper than tales of glowing children. For much of the 20th century, the burial ground was a place of concealment and confusion, where things grew tangled, hidden, and forgotten. Stories of Poltergeist-style desecrations still cling stubbornly to the site (“They moved the headstones, but they didn’t move the bodies!”). Yet the truth is stranger, sadder, and messier than the tales would have you believe.
***
It’s possible to draw a straight line of progress (scare quotes implied) from the Denny Party’s arrival on November 13, 1851, to Lake View Cemetery, which usually gets top billing as Seattle’s pioneer burial ground. Lake View overlooks both sets of mountains, and its founder monuments (the Dennys, the Borens, etc.) are not far from the celebrity graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. The cemetery is kept in tip-top shape, and in the springtime, cherry blossoms rain down a celebratory pink confetti.
But there are other tributaries of Seattle’s history, and one of them ends here, in this cemetery just off I-5. It began on September 14, 1851, when the Collins party landed at the mouth of the Duwamish River. Luther M. Collins, Jacob Mapel, Samuel Mapel, and others in their group are generally credited as the founders of Georgetown—which became a Seattle neighborhood in 1910—and, more broadly, of King County itself.
Samuel Mapel was the first white settler we know to have been buried on the land that became Comet Lodge, in 1880. His father, Jacob, followed a few years later, along with another member of their party, Henry Van Asselt. In burying their dead here, the settlers are often said to have been echoing the Duwamish, the first people on this land.
Standing at the edge of the cemetery on a golden September day, Ken Workman—a Duwamish Tribal Councilman and descendant of Chief Seattle—says his people likely had a relationship with the land that became the cemetery. “It’s in the right spot,” he notes. “Just down at the bottom of the hill, there were longhouses and camas fields, so there was a Duwamish population in the area. If we were going to bury somebody, this would fit all the criteria.” Though the Duwamish are best known for placing their dead in trees, Workman explains, they also practiced earth burial, especially after settlers arrived with their devastating diseases.
In the 19th century, fraternal orders provided settlers with social networks and insurance, including burial insurance. Washington Territory newspapers brimmed with reports of their activities, written with an avidity today reserved for social media influencers. In 1893, some of the Georgetown settlers, including the Mapels, formed Comet Lodge No. 139, a chapter of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Two years later, the lodge opened a five-acre cemetery intended to serve the rapidly growing community forever.
Forever lasted barely a few decades. For perhaps a dozen years, burials were frequent, and the cemetery became home to many of Georgetown’s blue-collar dead, who labored in the mill, in the Rainier brewery, and at other jobs that fueled the young city. It also became the final resting place of Emma Rigby, one of the area’s first female doctors.
But the cemetery was difficult to reach, perched atop a steep hill. In 1959, P-I columnist Frank Lynch describes how “It was quite a trip from [Georgetown] to the upper west slope of Beacon Hill in the fading days of the last century. One man out of that time and place told us he remembered the funeral processions winding up the old road. The drivers stopping two, three times to blow the horses. Hot summer days and the clouds of dust.”
The long climb up the hill may have been part of why burials stopped at Comet Lodge around the 1910s. In 1908, the lodge sold the cemetery to Georgetown undertaker H.S. Noice (for $1), and in 1912, Noice sold the land to Dr. Hiram R. Corson (for $10). Around this time, the fraternal chapter went out of operation. And it is here that the murk began to settle over Comet Lodge Cemetery. It would sit there for the better part of a century.
***
Around 1997, a man began knocking on doors near the cemetery, telling neighbors their houses had been built over the graves of children. By then, the place was so overgrown that many people had forgotten it was a cemetery at all—it appeared to be nothing but a tangle of wild brush, a repository for old car parts, a playground for rats. Whatever was happening there, it had a very bad aura. So it’s not surprising the stories took root.
It’s true that Hiram Corson, a prominent member of the community back in the early 20th century (you might know his avenue), had chopped the cemetery he then owned in half, selling the northern half off for development. After his death, the title to the cemetery passed to family members, then disappeared into a legal quagmire. The burial records were lost. By the late 1930s, the county had become the owner of the site through a tax foreclosure process, although they didn’t quite know what to do with it. In a 1948 letter to city council, the city treasurer and his deputy reported: “We have personally investigated the cemetery and found it to be in a deplorable condition. Graves were sunken, tombstones were scattered here and there, and the brush has overgrown everything with the exception of a few foot paths.”
That’s not to say there weren’t restoration attempts—to fight back against the vines, the gloom, and growing amounts of garbage. In the 1930s, ’40s, and ’70s, people tried. But toward the end of the century, two big restoration attempts went badly wrong.
In the late 1980s, a Beacon Hill resident named Don Kipper claimed to have bought the cemetery from Corson’s descendants. He talked a good talk, saying he wanted to restore the place and add a garden to feed the neighborhood. But residents soon watched in horror as he brought in bulldozers that destroyed trees and graves. Kipper was acting without any government authority, and the state cemetery board eventually issued a cease-and-desist order. But by then, many of the headstones had been destroyed, nearly a century of history crunched in the maw of a giant machine. Kipper apologized, then vanished.
The blackberry vines moved in again. But Kipper’s destruction did have one big upside: It reminded the county that they owned a cemetery. So when a man named John Dickinson came forward in the late 1990s, saying he wanted to restore it, the county was willing to listen.
But Dickinson, too, went rogue, at least in the eyes of the local government, cutting down trees without permission, one of which reportedly fell and injured a county worker. The county issued a cease-and-desist, and eventually banned him from the site. Research (including Hahn’s column back in 2001) points to him as the one knocking on doors back in 1997, telling neighbors their houses were built atop baby graves.
***
Is there any truth to those rumors?
Many cemeteries did have a “Babyland” for child burials, says Mikala Woodward, a curator at MOHAI and former director at Rainier Valley Historical Society (she’s leading a tour of the cemetery on October 18). And the section for child graves at Comet Lodge is often described as being in the northwest. Yet “it wouldn’t have been legal at the time to sell [the northern portion] for development if people had been buried there,” Woodward says. “So you tell me.”
Research by Andi MacDonald, once president of the Washington State Cemetery Association, and by Steve Sheppard with the Department of Neighborhoods in 1979, describes the northern half of the cemetery as almost certainly vacant when it was sold. So while it’s impossible to prove no one ever buried a baby beneath those houses, if we’re talking about settler ghosts, chances are they’re crawling over from the cemetery rather than coming up from the foundations.
However, some of the ghost stories predate Dickinson. They may date back to the early 20th century, when little kids played in the section with child graves, Woodward says. “The kids who came, they felt a connection to the kids who had died,” she says. “You know, our culture doesn’t let us really face death directly. So we have to do it through ghost stories.”
Today, the ghost stories help ensure we remember this place. Though it was restored more completely by the county around the turn of the last century, it only holds a fraction of the graves it once did. (Estimates hover around 100, out of 450 or so.) As soon as it began going to ruin, those with means moved their dead. The gravestones that still dot the site are placed decoratively, but have long since become unmoored from the plots they once marked.
On a bright fall afternoon, Comet Lodge looks peaceful—a humble patch of land with a hard-won dignity. The blackberries are kept to small, pretty tendrils, the rats long since banished. It’s not showy, but it is serene, and perhaps that’s what its founders would have wanted.
Yet perhaps the stories persist because something here resists silence. The ground will not forget its history, even if the living do. And so, when dusk settles over Beacon Hill, neighbors still glance toward the cemetery, wondering if the faint glow at their window belongs to headlights—or to the children who never quite left.
Former Rainier Valley Historical Society director Mikala Woodward is hosting a tour of Comet Lodge Cemetery Oct. 18. RSVP at rainiervalleyhistoricalsociety.org.
I am very grateful for this article. I drive by the Comet Lodge often and have long wondered of the history of it. Denny and Mercer may get all the glory – but there were many other settler parties and to learn about what came of them is always interesting. One wonders if the bodies laid down were in simple boxes and have returned to the Earth, whence they came. Or if they used vaults or steel (iron) or some such. If it’s the former, I am certain with the hillside and the vegetation, there are no remains to speak of – but hallowed ground is hallowed ground.
Curious what “culture” Woodward speaks of? I think ALL cultures “deal with death directly”, as all cultures experience death directly (aside from vampires). Also lot lines back then were probably not as rigid as they are now. Curious as to how many aggrieved parents were looking for a quiet place for their departed child away from the hustle and bustle of the remainder of the cemetery, say in that NW corner – along 22nd or 23rd.
Thank you for the “spooky” article.
I used to go to the cemetery to eat my lunch back when I was a travelling electrical hostess in that area.
Although I will quibble a bit with the door-to-door dead baby guy. The houses were almost certainly built on the site of the former baby graves, not atop them. The dead babies were probably bulldozed when they dug the foundation. How’s THAT for ghoulish? 🙂
“The drivers stopping two, three times to blow the horses” Lucky horses!
I am the rogue door-to-door baby guy, and appreciate any press to keep the story of the departed alive, even though so much of the author’s story is misguided (false), lazy, with info from sources l wouldn’t take to any bank. I appreciate The Stranger’s editors directing anyone to “get a story out before Halloween!” about the Comet. The author could have read Tantri Wija’s excellent article printed twice in our newspaper of record. https://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/comet-lodge-cemetery-holds-history-and-gravestones-dating-to-the-1800s/ Her story has been the closest. (“… bulldozed by the City…”, Or the author may have checked into my SU Master’s project. http://worldperc.com/comet/ with a read of the Records transcribed from the originals. http://worldperc.com/comet/records.shtml instead of relying on Andi MacDonald who after her lies was awarded around $100,000 to her recently formed “cemetery association. Or perhaps talk with Carla Cole who perjured herself after she insisted that the City and County sue me. (I have copies of hundreds of her emails and records of her visits to their offices) Living across the street, the Comet was Carla’s second digging grounds for bones to use in her home. And her perjury at trail “John down trees with nesting internationally protected red-tailed hawks.” Dr. Snow and Brooks (Board members) both advised me to tape everything, and I did. One tape recorded director of horticulture and Ciscoe Morris both directing me to cut down the dangerous cottonwood trees. One tape showed a two in sapling I cut without hitting the County’s prison worker, while the county claims a 10″ tree. Judges in all trails were so inflamed by me destroying birds, tree and employees would not allow my tapes. Babyland is “impossible” to prove even with the 1910 photo placing baby gravemarkers under current homes: http://worldperc.com/comet/JohnnyJones-1910.PDF . Or talk with Cecile Hansen – Tribal Council Chair, 1975 – present, Board member, and the Tribal Roll of those buried in the Comet. I ask if the Stranger could issue a retracting new write. I am glad to help. https://cometlodgecemetery.blogspot.com/ signed w/ a Halloween story for the kids…. http://johndickinson.info/
“No customs of any people are more deeply rooted
than those which have to do with the interment
or disposal of the dead…” In the words of Sir James Macintosh,
‘The desire to honor the dead is one of the
safeguards of morality,’ “…and only the superficially
informed sociologist or economist can possibly make light of the
universal desire on the part of the rich and the poor,
the educated and the ignorant, to provide for the dead…”
June 4, 1919, Frederick L. Hoffman, LL.D.
Halloween for the kids
One day seven of our concerned citizens were driven to an unkempt park-like setting. All shared their different reasons for their vision impairments that they had in common. All had different sexual orientations, different heights, different weights, different socio-economics, different mobility issues, different educations, different cultures, different languages, and all brought home different observations and conclusions. All were wrong, all were right.
Crawling around,
Jo could feel a six inch high old concrete fenced area. Jo would later describe the findings on a Braille keyboard: “I found what was a tiny garden, long unkempt, and in disarray. And it smelled!”
Another Jo was led to a polished large square stone. Jo could feel the cold stone and its polished surfaces.
Jo could feel each surface deeply etched with the word STONE, and knew immediately what it was.
Jo would later describe the findings on a voice to text computer: “I found a large highly polished stone with the word STONE deeply etched in capital letters on each side. It was obviously part of a pop art sculpture exhibit. And it stunk!”
Another Jo described the findings: “I know what I found. It was a tree trunk with ivy around its base and the limbs. But it was made of stone! And it reeked!”
Another Jo touched a pile of polished stones in various sized cubes, and said “I have no idea what these shaped stones are doing piled up against a tree or why they smelled.”
Another Jo felt a stone sculpted like an opened book. “That was a monument near a library. I am positive. It smelled badly.”
Another Jo was carefully led around the rough terrain of the unkempt park in the middle of Seattle. Jo described the difficulty of walking and the smells.
“It was a jungle, perhaps a dogs run free from pickup park from the smells I experienced.”
Another Jo was taken to another stone that Jo could read:
“That was a gravestone! It is obvious we were in a cemetery.
I read FATHER SAMEUL J BEVAN BORN AUG. 9, 1828 DIED JUNE 30, 1911 He’s gone, the one we loved so dear, to his eternal rest.He’s gone to heaven, we have no fear, to be forever blest.”
Jo told the group in Zoom. They all thought that they all might be right with that observation, and that they might all be wrong.
The moderator explained what was right and wrong.
It is not a cemetery, sorry to shatter that finding. It is still the Sacred Burial Grounds for our first settlers, the Duwamish First Nation. In 1885, the land was surveyed, declared, dedicated, and registered as the International Order of Odd Fellows Comet Lodge 139 Cemetery. Following their chartered mission, they buried the very first settlers off the boat from the East, including Civil War Veterans.
Included in the 500+ they buried were the babies buried and marked with white crosses in Babyland to await a family plot purchase.
“Approved this 24th day of Sept. A.D. 1895. Fred Gasch Chairman Board of County Com’s, Attest Nathan Beman County Auditor. No. 142368 Filed for Record at the request of E. Teachnor, on this 24th, day of Sept. A.D. 1895 at 30 min. past 2 P.M. and recorded in Vol. 9 of Plats, page 19. Records of King County, Wash.”
In 1986, Seattle rezoned the cemetery. Babyland in the northern two thirds, became single family housing. The southern third became retail space. It is not a cemetery but it is still a graveyard. We had parked on 23rd Avenue south. 600 feet of the street lies atop burial sites.
Jo, what you thought was a garden fence was the only accurate markings after Seattle’s desecration, that of the Johnny Jones burial site.
The 1910 photo of mourners shows the still existing Maple house. If the photo is magnified the baby grave marking white crosses are shown where there are now houses, including Beverly Washington’s, RIP. “We loved your short time we had together. Rest in peace baby Michael”
Jo, what you thought was a gravestone, a monument, a tombstone, a headstone, or a grave marker was a cenotaph, a stone that doesn’t mark a gravesite. That cenotaph you read from Jo, is protected by Samuel’s great, great grandson at his home, your moderator. Of note, Mr Bevan was the first Mayor of South Park before its annexation to Seattle. The last Mayor of South Park and his entire family were also bulldozed.
To all you Jos, you are all correct when you trust your sense of smell.
This park is the Ron Sims, Dow Constantine, Norm Rice, Paul Schell, Greg Nickels, Mike McGinn, Ed Murray, Bruce Harrell, Tim Burgess, Jenny Durkan, and Bruce Harrell Memorial Dogs Run Free From Pickup Park.
Jos all asked how did this happen?
They were told
“No customs of any people are more deeply rooted than those which have to do with the interment or disposal of the dead…” In the words of Sir James Macintosh, ‘The desire to honor the dead is one one of the safeguards of morality,’ ” … and only the superficially informed sociologist or economist can possibly make light of the universal desire on the part of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant, to provide for the dead…” June 4, 1919, Frederick L. Hoffman, L.L.D.
After the City rezoning, to make way for a deeply trenched sewer main to service the homes in Babyland. The Daily Engineering Report dated November 2, 1987, (All Souls Day, Day of the Dead) was plainly marked “Historical Cemetery”
My Masters project at Seattle U was to restore the Comet Lodge Cemetery, a resting site of my ancestors. King County granted our NGO the rights to restore these sadly desecrated grounds with my promises to restore it with sensitivity, dignity and integrity. I promised the homeowners in Babyland that they would not have to move from their homes.
My Masters also promised that I had found funding for the graveyard’s restoration, that no local taxes would be used.
Seattle denied the cemetery’s existence, denied houses atop baby gravesites, denied that it bulldozed the Historical Cemetery, and more.
There had been twenty two other efforts to save our history etched in stone. I was determined to not fail the promises made to the ancestors of those buried here.
Seattle then sued me for “cutting brush without their permission” even though I had recorded permission from the director of horticulture. My tape was not allowed to be entered in trial.
The City’s case relied upon perjury of a Seattle worker, Carla Cole, who used the cemetery as her private digging grounds for bones used with her Tibetan Buddhism faith.
King County took away our permit, and also sued me.
Then King County Executive Ron Sims promised the ancestors and neighbors that they would restore the grounds. When asked if they would restore it with sensitivity, dignity and integrity, Ron Sims answered angrily “Yes, we survey ball fields all the time!”
Their case also relied on perjury by a King County employees, “He fell a 10 inch diameter tree onto the back of my prison employee, injuring him.”
I had video tape showing this lie. The tape could not be entered into trial.
And then there were the repeated lies about my destruction of internationally protected endangered red tailed hawks nests in a cottonwood tree the City horticulturist directed me to remove. “We are removing all cottonwoods in close proximity to the public, and we have settled a nursing mother’s suit,”
I had this tree safely felled in January, and taped. Carla Cole’s perjury was to be allowed into trial by the now outraged Judges even though with snow on the ground this tape showed no nests.
https://seattleterrors.com/comet-lodge-cemetery/
https://youtu.be/K8gQkYr2MXM
https://youtu.be/y29-wcF5in4
https://youtu.be/nXhLa3hqS_g
http://cometlodgecemetery.blogspot.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Lodge_Cemetery
I remain sincerely yours,
John Dickinson
Of some interest is the list of burials, some with locations, some with comments.
http://worldperc.com/comet/burials.html
“I remain sincerely yours, John R. Dickinson”
I think your spellcheck accidentally changed “utterly bonkers” to “sincerely yours.”