Seattle Museum of the Mysteries

 

3

25

Katy H.

Seattle, WA

:) I hate to say it, but if you discover this place though yelp it won't be as cool. You're experience is much better if you just stumble across this place and wander in off the street accidentally.

They do weird/fun things like ouji board poker night where they deal in a ghost hand and also they have regular ghost tours around the neighborhood, which is a pretty good history of the local area.

I love that it's a paranormal/bigfoot/Bruce Lee museum!

Plus afterwards you can get great food next door because the area is restaurant heaven.

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Elite '08

166

231

Mary T.

Seattle, WA

The mother of my aunt's best friends' cousin told us about this place. It seems that years ago, round about 1973, a group of middle-school girls and two chaperones went on a picnic near this very spot. When they were late getting back home for dinner, a search party was dispatched. The only thing that was found of them was a fresh crop circle that tested positive for radioactivity and, lying alone in the middle, one left sock and one Brownie camera. The camera's film was partially destroyed, probably due to radiation, but there was one photo that was discernible that could be either bigfoot, or a woman with a beehive hairdo that is erupting with spiders that have eaten through her brain. And everyone knows that beehives were already out in 1973.

How this place came to be...is a mystery. How they afford the rent is, too. You pay two dollars, you can apparently hang out all day and read from their well-thumbed collection of books and even play with their theremin. The photos are poorly hung, the displays are makeshift, the patrons are a bit whiffy.

But I give it three stars for the very fact that it exists. It does! You can tell everyone that a friend of your friend told you.

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6

7

Marc Kevin H.

North Miami, FL

Black curtains. Comfortable chairs. Shelves filled with tomes of esoteric lore from Time-Life books. A DVD player running documentaries and spooky films. Plaster casts of Bigfoot prints. Tarot cards, Ouija boards, and ESP tests. Bruce Lee & Kurt Cobain memorabilia. A smattering of history. A theremin. An oxygen bar?!

Okay, I don't have a theremin or an oxygen bar, but I do have cats running around. That puts my living room on roughly equal footing with the Museum of the Mysteries, and I don't charge $2 for entry.

I don't want to be too negative, though. The staff was pleasant, and it seems to function as a kind of Mystic Brotherhood Reading Room. Perhaps I am just spoiled by Miami, where every block you can find a bustling botanica.

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51

48

Frances H.

San Carlos, CA

Hahahaha.

No.

*ETA on 05.05.08* Alright, I'll give it another chance.

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5

33

Gina B.

Seattle, WA

K so we did the whole ghost tour thing in what the museum calls a lock in. You basically meet in the museum (which has a giant Sasquatch out front) just before 10pm on Saturday and they go through a pretty interesting history of the darker side of Seattle's past. Speakeasy's and deaths and local haunts. We didn't see any ghosts but they did play a game of fake poker to try to set the mood for a regular that apparently haunts the museum. No worries no cheesy "we are gonna try to freak you out" BS. They do take you on a short walking tour of the theater next door and give you the background on the place. It is still beautiful and used today and you may not get the same experience just going alone. The tour guide leader really knew her stuff and she had a few enthusiastic "assistants" .... if you want to call them that... mostly a few irritating girls and their friends that acted like this was their personal party and were pretty rude and distracting to the whole group... but about 3/4 of the way through they "reveled" that they were able to see the ghosts so apparently they had a purpose. (Pst they are the only reason this tour doesn't get ore stars.)
My recommendation is this is a must do for a interesting Saturday evening. Its pretty inexpensive and you can always hang out in Capitol Hill after. One thing I would say is call ahead to RSVP your spot because while they will take as many as they can fit they place is really small and a big group can get uncomfortable.

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Elite '08

165

303

Ari C.

Daly City, CA

Thanks to Alyson L for mentioning Museum of the Mysteries. Otherwise we wouldn't even know this place existed. Located in the Capitol Hill, I felt like I was back in SF's Haight-Ashbury area, but much much cleaner and much less bums. My fiance said he kept expecting to see Amoeba Records at the corner of the street. Unfortunately there was no Amoeba, but we did go to a used CD/DVD place and bought South Park the movie.

The museum itself is not really a museum. More like someone's living room full of personal collection of books, videos and news/magazine clippings about anything paranormal. Admission/donation is $2, but if you get the $12 pass, you get access to the oxygen bar once a week, I think.

Once inside, you are welcome to look around, read books and clippings and play DVDs if no one is using it. Exhibits include Bigfoot, crop circles, D.B. Cooper, etc. They also hold "museum lock-in" a couple times a week where you spend a couple hours from 10-midnight inside the museum and play ghost poker. I think they have ghost tours too, but I didn't really look into that. Very fascinating place to visit, especially if you're a paranormal/sci-fi geek. I've heard the phrase "I used to have this book as a child!" at least twice while I was there.

There's also a little hallway of fame dedicated to Bruce Lee. The lady is such a Bruce Lee fan that when we told her that we're from SF, she lighted up and said "Oh! That's Bruce Lee territory!". I thought that was cute.

Do find some time to visit this place at least once. Feed your inner geek!

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Elite '08

116

517

patrick g.

Seattle, WA

I came to a presentation awhile back regarding Mel's Hole.  Um...I know that sounds funny right off the bat.  Here's a link to the faux legend: http://en.wikipedia.or...

Go here if your into Bigfoot, UFOs, Ghosts...all that great stuff.  Great place to visit and browse.  Cheap!  Ghost tours available.

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Elite '08

178

155

Alyson L.

Seattle, WA

OH MY GAWD! I'm the first to review this place? Unreal.

If you haven't gone to the Museum of Mysteries, you must - ASAP. Or the next time they have an interesting event there.

They are (from their web-site)
"Washington State's only Paranormal Science Museum"
Come explore the Legends and Lore of the Northwest
UFO History, Bigfoot and Ghost Museum
Seattle's only Oxygen Bar
Ghost Tour - Capitol Hill Historical Ghost Tour

I had noticed this place in my travels around Broadway when I lived on the hill in my younger days, but my first venture inside was when I saw a most intriguing blurb in the section in The Stranger where they always mention the swinger parties and bdsm stuff (have you noticed the innocuous events they sneak in there between the dirty stuff?).  Anywhoo, they claimed they were going to have a screening of the Wizard of Oz, synced with The Wall and an actual interview with one of the Lollipop dudes AND they would discuss the rumors about one of the cast hanging himself on set....Seriously, how could you pass that up? AND it was only a few dollars as a "suggested donation" to get in.

After some explanation about the theories and yada, yada, and watching the videotaped interview with a former cast member and dispelling the rumor about the hanging and talking to one of the members of the ridiculously huge fan club (and author of his own Oz books - apparently you can do that) and handing out the breakdown of where things seemed to match up in the movie, they actually got to the part where they play the movie. It only took them like 5 tries and 20 minutes to get it started. I would've stayed to watch the whole thing, but me and my also-not-tall companion were sitting behind a gargantuan couple that seemed to know every time we leaned to see around them and shifted to block the previously open view.

Alright, now for my second trip to the Museum, I decided to go whole hog and went for the guided tour. This place is about as big as most of the basements I've been in, but it was worth every penny of the $3 I paid to get in. Your best bet is to go when the co-director Philip Lipson is working - it will be an experience you will NEVER forget.

Seriously, if you live in Seattle and haven't been here yet you're crazy. Or just totally missing out.

It's a little hard to find - it's between Roy and Mercer on the North end of Broadway
in the lower atrium beneath Aoki Sushi, once you look down the stairs you'll know you've found the place.

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65

228

Bob G.

Bothell, WA

Went here based on Alyson L.  We took the $3 guided tour.  It was interesting.  They have a lot of resource material and are good talkers.

That being said, they had little in the way of museum pieces and our guide got way carried away on Bruce Lee, and Frances Farmer.  She didn't talk about Nikola Tesla, whom they evidently have some stuff on and would be a very interesting subject.  (Look him up on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.or... and go from there, especially if you are into weird physics.  In his later years he became somewhat of a "Mad Scientist")

They have information on Bigfoot, UFO sightings around the area.  They didn't get into Native American legends / stories about UFO's though.

The "guided tour" was worth the $3, and a good way to spend a rainy afternoon.  For an additional 2 bucks, you can go on the Capitol Hill Ghost Tour (my wife wouldn't go - she was a bit annoyed after our guide diverted a lot of attention to Bruce Lee and Francis Farmer.)

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