Govan’s old, spooky schoolhouse.
5. Molson
Located along the Canadian border about halfway across the state, the well-restored homestead buildings are more museum than a graveyard. The old two-story schoolhouse is full of exhibits.
Scare quotient: Unnerving. Creepy mannequins model old-timey clothes in the schoolhouse basement.
4. Franklin
A major coal mining accident in 1894 killed 37 miners in this Enumclaw-area site, but these days a grate over the old mineshaft keeps anyone from adding to the toll.
Scare quotient: Mildly chilling. Thank the cemetery of mossy headstones and, well, at least 37 ghosts.
3. Govan
The austere old schoolhouse in the prairie south of Grand Coulee Dam has a delicate cupola and a faded red exterior, but it’s thinning to its skeleton.
Scare quotient: Goosebumpy. The stark ruins make it easy to believe rumors of a nearby ax murder in 1902.
The old mining town of Monte Cristo.
Image: Museum of History & Industry
2. Monte Cristo
The old gold town off Mountain Loop Highway once teemed with miners and even hotels; now it’s rusty signs, a few buildings, and some educational placards.
Scare quotient: Knee-trembling. The log crossing used to access the hike-in site can be precarious, plus there’s known arsenic contamination.
1. Northern State Asylum
There’s beauty to this abandoned hospital in Sedro-Woolley, once a self-sustaining compound: flourishes on Spanish Colonial Revival windows, grounds designed by the famed Olmsted Brothers.
Scare quotient: Petrifying. A cemetery of 1,500 patients? Nightmare fodder. The old wards ooze horror film chic.
1,500 ghosts lurking within the Northern State Aslyum ruins? Probably.
Published in the Big-Time Fun in Small Towns issue of Seattle Met.
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