The darkened bricks of Pioneer Square bear witness to over 130 years of Seattle’s history. Beneath the cracked sidewalks and weathered streets lies another, hidden city—the remnants of Underground Seattle. After the devastating fire of 1889, the original city was rebuilt above its predecessor, with street-level buildings now concealed beneath raised roads. Among these storied buildings stands the Merchant’s Café and Saloon, a landmark with a rich history and, perhaps, even darker secrets.
The Merchant’s Café opened in 1890, serving Seattle through some of its most lawless and rowdy days. During the Klondike Gold Rush, its upper apartments were converted into a brothel catering to the rough clientele of the original “skid road,” now known as Yesler Way. Today, it holds the distinction of being Seattle’s oldest continuously operating restaurant and one of the city’s most famously haunted locations.
The haunted history of the Merchant’s Café is well-documented in books and television programs like The Dead Files and When Ghosts Attack. Among the many strange occurrences, staff members have complained of being pushed down stairs, hair pulling, kitchen utensils being hurled through the air, and objects mysteriously vanishing—only to reappear in unexpected places. The most widely known spirit is that of a little girl, believed to be attached to a doll that sits above the bar. She is known to become very upset if her doll is mistreated.
In one particularly chilling incident, captured on after-hours surveillance video, a new wine rack was violently torn from the wall that it was bolted to and thrown to the ground. The broken bottles sent a river of wine flowing out the door and into the gutter. The wine rack was installed above the Merchant’s original safe, an object said to be of particular attachment to the spirit of one of the original proprietors. We can only assume he did not approve of the installation.
Mill Street, now Yesler Ave, before the great fire. The original “Skid Road”.
In 2011, a good friend and former co-worker purchased the Merchant’s Café and set about restoring its historic charm. She embraced the building’s past, keeping much of the original interior intact, with only a few additions, such as a pair of vintage Tiffany chandeliers. Among the many artworks adorning the walls, one piece particularly caught her eye—an antique print featuring a woman in a silk gown, standing on an oriental rug with a stark black background. Intrigued by its beauty, she decided to incorporate the image into the café’s rebranding and took several photographs of it.
This is where the story takes a strange turn.
Rather than simply capturing the image as it appeared, the photos revealed something unexpected. Behind the woman in the portrait, where there had once been only a jet-black background, a surreal bedroom scene began to emerge. Although the image was somewhat abstract, it clearly depicted a vanity, shelves filled with objects, and a warped ladder. The oriental rug from the print seemed to blend into this new scene, and the background style was noticeably different from that of the visible painting. Despite these eerie differences, the two elements seemed to fit and complement each other.
After several attempts produced the same results, my friend initially thought the image might have been affected by a reflection of the room. However, this theory was quickly debunked. Photos were taken from different angles, in different rooms, with different cameras, with and without flash, yet the same ghostly scene appeared. While sometimes the reflection of the photographer could be seen in the glass, it was distinctly separate from the mysterious image behind the woman.
That’s when I became involved.
Ruling out reflections, I wondered if the strange image might have been covered up by the artist as part of the original composition. I removed the print from its frame, only to discover that it was a reproduction, not an original. The simplest explanation was that someone had colored over the background, and that it was somehow showing through in photographs while remaining invisible to the naked eye. But I found no evidence of any blacked-over areas. I then considered the possibility that the image had been double-printed over another artwork, but this didn’t seem likely either. The back of the print showed no unusual saturation, and cross-sections of the paper revealed no sign of a second layer.
Determined to uncover the mystery, I researched the artist, Nathaldi Siehel. I found references to her work in the USC digital library, where several paintings, including the one in question—Oriental Dancing Girl—were cataloged. As I suspected, the original painting did not include the ghostly bedroom scene that appeared in the Merchant’s photograph. So, where did it come from!?
At a dead end, I reached out to a friend, M. Alan Miller, who works in art restoration at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I presented the evidence and asked for his expert opinion. After examining the evidence and discussing it with his colleagues, he could not offer an explanation. While it is possible for hidden layers to exist within a painting, it is not plausible that a print of a painting could contain such layers, let alone a photograph of a print.
The mystery remained unresolved until the phenomenon suddenly stopped, months after the first photos were taken. Could continued exposure to flash photography have somehow damaged or erased the latent image? I find this explanation unlikely, given that most of the photographs were taken with cell phones, not using flash. Regardless, it offers the closest thing to a scientific explanation for the strange occurrence.
I leave the mystery open for interpretation. Was this phantom boudoir some kind of spectral glimpse into the past—perhaps one of the bordello rooms from the Klondike days? Given the Merchant’s Café’s haunted history, the strange phenomenon adds another layer to its eerie reputation and leaves us with more questions than answers.
Jason Roberts is a Seattle-based author noted for his acclaimed Western Horror series The Dead Wind Trilogy and other works of cosmic horror infused with historical fiction. His web-based series, Dark Distractions, examines paranormal mysteries, unexplained phenomena, and all things strange.
