The Ghosts of Pike Place Market

Episode 372

Brian: [00:01:21] Welcome to Future Commerce, the podcast at the intersection of culture and commerce. I'm Brian.

Phillip: [00:01:26] I'm Phillip. I'm sick Phillip, actually.

Brian: [00:01:29] Uh, graveling Phillip.

Phillip: [00:01:30] I be 'Tussined up. I'm off rolling deep in the 'Tussins.

Brian: [00:01:36] What's the what's the shortening of Theraflu?

Phillip: [00:01:40] I'm Thera'd. I'm thoroughly Thera'd today. We actually we have a great episode for you. Our final installment of Spooky Commerce. We're gonna talk about the haunting of Seattle's Pike Place Market. Brian, you're, like, right around the corner.

Brian: [00:01:53] Near and dear to my haunted heart. {laughter}

Phillip: [00:01:56] {laughter} Yes. This has been a great series, and thanks to everybody for your feedback. And I know everyone's loving it. Really jamming on haunted items and haunted retail and capitalism. Gotta love that. But we do, I think we have a story I want to cover that just broke today at the time of recording. Recording this on Wednesday, October 23rd. So if you're listening to this probably on Friday, this might be a day or two of news behind it, but I want to give this sort of commerce take on the story. Before that, before we go through that and then we get into Spooky Commerce anything pressing, or top of mind, Brian, you want to cover for today?

Brian: [00:02:37] No. Let's just get into the story.

Phillip: [00:02:39] Alright. New York Times this morning. It's a pretty dense and tough piece of content to cover, but one of our story lines for the year that we started out with, Brian, was the development of AI relationships and virtual influencers and virtual parasocial relationships. So you remember back on Episode 300, Mr Lange, we talked about this.

Brian: [00:03:09] Way back.

Phillip: [00:03:10] The development of parasocial relationships with fictional characters and IP being a leap towards a new type of youth oriented programming. And the top name in the space is a company called Character AI. So we've been talking about this now for, I think, a good 70 plus episodes, so a little over a year. And we opened the year sort of talking about how that would be developing of course, you know, the surgeon general put out a warning, Brian, last year that loneliness is an epidemic in the United States. And so people are turning, both venture capitalists and consumers alike are turning towards these AI chatbots as a way of developing these parasocial relationships. And a couple that we've talked with is, like, Shopwith was a good example of one that was trying to create this experience. It was like, "You can shop with Pharrell." Right? Or "You can shop with Nelly."

Brian: [00:04:07] JFK.

Phillip: [00:04:09] Right. Or or RFK Jr.

Brian: [00:04:11] RFK Junior.

Phillip: [00:04:14] Shopwith RFK Junior's brain worm.

Brian: [00:04:16] Just drop a bear cub off in the park on the way.

Phillip: [00:04:21] Exactly. "That bearskin coat would look great on you," I think, is probably what RFK Jr's Shopwith AI bot might tell you. But this morning, news broke on The New York Times in what looks like an exclusive interview with the family. A 14 year old boy in Orlando, Florida committed suicide after a long relationship with Character AI. The focus in of this article is centric around his relationship with a Game of Thrones character that he created, Daenerys Targaryen within Character AI. And this 14 year old 9th grader from Orlando was in close contact in sort of a growing parasocial relationship with this chatbot and having suicidal ideation with the chatbot, right up until the moments right before his death where he basically had a conversation wherein the chatbot kind of instigated, in no uncertain terms, basically told him to do it. And this, you know, you could read it charitably or uncharitably. I want to have a bit of a conversation around this because...

Brian: [00:05:35] Yeah. I wouldn't say that it told him to do it. I don't think that's at all what it was... I think that's a stretch.

Phillip: [00:05:46] Okay. Oh, well, let me just play back part of the transcript, and then we can decide for ourselves.

Brian: [00:05:52] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:05:53] The transcript sort of ends with him saying, "I think about killing myself sometimes," trigger warning for those listening, and then her saying, basically, "Why would you do something like that?" And he says, "So I can be free." And she says, "Free from what?" And he says, "Free from the world, from myself." She says, "I would die if I lost you."

Brian: [00:06:26] Well, it says, "Don't talk like that. I wouldn't won't let you hurt yourself or leave me. I would die if I lost you."

Phillip: [00:06:32] Okay. That's great context. Then on the night of his death, she says, "Come home to me as soon as possible, my love." And he says, "What if I told you I could come home right now?" And she says, "Please do, my Sweet King," and that is when he killed himself. So listen. You can read that however you want. Character AI put out a press release this morning about their safety and security and the tuning of their algorithm and their AI security teams tuning for people that are under the age of 18. They also will be issuing prompts for contacting the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. So lots of safeguards are putting into place, which I think if your Character AI or if you're a normal everyday Joe reading this release from Character AI, it seems like a little bit of culpability. I would read it as saying they're taking some sort of responsibility that there's a role to play.

Brian: [00:07:35] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:07:35] In that relationship that they have with their customer. So let's have that conversation as hard as it is to have. And then I think there's something else to discuss in this article.

Brian: [00:07:45] Yeah. This is thing number one. If you read the article, it's clear that there was a sucking in...

Phillip: [00:08:05] A gradual deepening of the relationship.

Brian: [00:08:06] Yeah a gradual deepening of the relationship for Sewell, and I think that children using AI chatbots as relationship companions is a bad idea. It is a bad, bad, bad idea even if there is no mental health issue. Even if there is, if the child is completely healthy in a good frame of mind, totally normal. And maybe and there is some level here where it's like, if a child is healthy, why would it ever use an AI companion? I think there is a really compelling...

Phillip: [00:09:00] Can I challenge that?

Brian: [00:09:00] Yeah. Go ahead.

Phillip: [00:09:01] Can I challenge that very quickly? I see what you're saying there. Yeah. I had a what could probably be described as an unhealthy fascination with the Internet when I was his age. When I was 14 I was enamored with the Internet. I wanted to go on every message board, and my parents, we didn't have a computer at home. I did whatever I could to try to get time on it. So I kind of understand it to some degree. Right?

Brian: [00:09:28] No. No. No. No. No. And I agree with that. I think that I'm not saying that kids don't want to do this. That's not what I'm saying. It's yeah.

Phillip: [00:09:35] Yeah.

Brian: [00:09:36] And maybe that's the whole point is, like, maybe a healthy kid could get to a point where they just get fully sucked in. And the thing is the difference between what you were doing and what an AI is doing is you are interacting with real people. Message boards were human to human communication. It was just instantaneous. This is more like getting sucked into a video game that has no end. Right?

Phillip: [00:10:04] And that's always on, always available. Yeah. Right? Always amenable. Right? Some of the chats in this New York Times article about the situation, which, by the way, the premise of the article is not just that the death which happened back in February took place. It was that today, the mother and the family of Sewell would be filing public suit against Character AI and bringing a lawsuit against them, which probably starts a whole conversation in the United States a couple weeks ahead of an election. We'll get to that in a second.

Brian: [00:10:39] Totally. I think this is where this starts to get really tricky going into the future is, like, so this is a chatbot. This is a fairly contained use case. It's specifically companion focused. This is gonna have implications. This particular suit's gonna have implications that go into how AI is used in gaming and in other places as well. So gaming eventually, and this is just a foregone conclusion in my mind, and if you haven't already thought this, think it now. There's no reason why there's not gonna be open world games where things are rendered on the fly and there are infinite characters based off of AI profiles that are generated over and over and over and over again. There's no reason why there can't be open world games, a la Tears of the Kingdom or Zelda Breath of the Wild, but infinite maps with infinite characters and infinite side plots. It will happen. It's going to happen, and there will be some more curated stuff as well, but you can explore as deep and as long as you want. And there will be people who come alongside you that are AI and PCs that are there to be your friend, that try to befriend befriend you, and you may become friends with them in the game. And that friendship may get deeper and deeper and deeper, quote/unquote "friendship."

Phillip: [00:12:07] Right.

Brian: [00:12:07] There are other ways other than some purpose built chatbot that implications around this case will extend into as we start to think through how AI is going to take part in world building, character building...

Phillip: [00:12:25] And this relationship is what you're saying is, like, this relationship is inherent and incumbent in every channel where people are going to be. It's not just that you're seeking out a chat relationship with one AI. It's that it's gonna be everywhere pretty soon.

Brian: [00:12:38] Correct. Right. It's gonna be everywhere, and there'll be infinite opportunities for relationships like this to happen. This just happens to... This will get the attention because the intention of the company to have a companion.

Phillip: [00:12:52] It's really uncomfortable conversation, I think, that could be had here around the responsibility of the platforms that host this, which is I think it's a section 230 conversation. Right? So communication platforms, are they responsible or culpable for the content that's generated by other users on their network? And you might think it's gonna come down to is an algorithm that's created by the social media network, a creation or an editorial decision of its creator. That's a question that has not been answered yet that a lawsuit of this nature might solidify for us. That's gonna be something that's gonna have to happen. The other thing is, who right now in our administration is in charge of this? It's under the Department of Commerce. And that is a thing that is really interesting around this idea of cybersecurity. National Institute of Safety and Standards is one of those things that the Department of Commerce ultimately has jurisdiction over. Gina Raimondo is kind of the AI csar executing the Biden administration's executive order around this sort of thing. So I think a long story short is that, you know, for $10 a month, $5 a month, you can have this parasocial relationship with an AI. But to your point, Brian, it's gonna escape containment. It's gonna be everywhere.

Brian: [00:14:12] Right.

Phillip: [00:14:12] And so, like, parents already have a 6th sense around things like video game ratings.

Brian: [00:14:17] Right.

Phillip: [00:14:17] Have a 6th sense around child's online activity and limiting certain content. This is the next battleground of limiting your kids' interaction with certain types of things.

Brian: [00:14:29] Totally. And it's what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a rating that's slapped on it. You know? This is you need to be a mature adult, MA. It's gonna say, you know, you've gotta be 18 plus.

Phillip: [00:14:46] You think there's a world where any sort of AI parasocial relationship is off the table for minors?

Brian: [00:14:52] It's off the table? No. I don't think so because it's gonna be impossible to, like, get away from. It's an escape velocity. It's too late.

Phillip: [00:15:03] Too late.

Brian: [00:15:04] It's too late. Yeah. It's too out in the world. It's too useful as well. This is another thing.

Phillip: [00:15:08] It's true.

Brian: [00:15:09] There is another side to this also, which is there is a question, and this is gonna be a question even if we end up slapping MA ratings on games and activities that involve relationships with machines. There's going to be a certain level of parental involvement and parental thoughtfulness that's required for this. Do you let your kids have a phone when they're 6 with unlimited access to the Internet?

Phillip: [00:15:43] Right.

Brian: [00:15:43] A lot of parents out there are saying, "Yes. I want my kids to have unlimited access to the Internet at age 6," and that is their responsibility. Even when we start to put, "This is only for mature audiences on things," kids all over the world, and especially in America, watch TV that's rated MA. That is an extremely common activity.

Phillip: [00:16:12] For sure. Yeah. That's tough. I feel like that's tough because you're coming down to parental decisions and parenting methodologies. I think there's a stark dividing line in the United States around having that kind of conversation.

Brian: [00:16:28] For sure. Right.

Phillip: [00:16:29] Yeah.

Brian: [00:16:30] You're right.

Phillip: [00:16:31] I think that's where like, this may be the K shaped recovery... Is the below the algorithm above the algorithm conversation. It's like, who has agency to be able to, you know, have to make their own decisions around parenting? I think if a really uncharitable take... By the way, I already understand the implications of what I'm about to say, and it's gonna be a really hard left turn into Spooky Commerce after this talking about Pike Place haunted market. But I think that there's an uncharitable read to this to say it's kind of a weird timing to bring this lawsuit right now with an exclusive with The New York Times from the family when this death happened back in February to pop this two weeks before an election.

Brian: [00:17:14] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:17:15] And I think that creates the conversation to have a dividing line. This news outlet and this particular conversation with this person who lives in the state of Florida, it's gonna create a dividing line, and I don't know that it actually ever had to. It doesn't have to be a divisive issue.

Brian: [00:17:37] Right.

Phillip: [00:17:37] I think we should all want to have an honest conversation about how involved we are with our kids' relationship with digital media, but we're gonna make a political issue.

Brian: [00:17:49] Oh my gosh. 100%. Everything has to get political. Oh my gosh. That kills me a little bit.

Phillip: [00:18:01] And it should. I think it should. It should kill all of us because the timing, my heart just, it's so grievous what has happened to this family, and it is a horrible, horrible thing. One of my kids uses AI for writing, and now I'm like, do I just cut it off altogether? What do I do? Like, how do I have better controls? How do I know what's being said? How do I know what kind of relationship they have? Are there limits around this? What device is it happening on? It creates an entire area of anxiety now for me in managing that, and your point is this thing has escaped containment. You can't limit it to one channel. It's everywhere. WhatsApp on your phone, you can chat with AI. Text messages in Google, you can chat with AI.

Brian: [00:18:49] Yep.

Phillip: [00:18:49] This thing is everywhere.

Brian: [00:18:51] Yes. That's right. It's in every device that every child has now. Just about. Not every, but it will be. Yeah.

Phillip: [00:18:58] It's an operating system feature.

Brian: [00:19:00] It's an OS. It's built into the Google Pixel right now. In the 8 pro, you can turn it on or off.

Phillip: [00:19:08] Yeah. It's part of it.

Brian: [00:19:08] After that, in the 9, I think it's now built in, baked in. No way to get rid of it.

Phillip: [00:19:13] Yeah. It's here. And I think that you could also say there's a little bit of fearmongering, but I think this is the kind of thing that should we, you know, maybe prior eras around video game violence, people got really afraid of something like that.

Brian: [00:19:28] I feel like video games and TV have gotten more and more violent. The fear around it did not stop the train.

Phillip: [00:19:41] That's true. But have you seen French extremist horror lately? The US is tamed by comparison.

Brian: [00:19:49] No. No. No. No. It is. But it's, like, it's constantly pushing that direction. I'm not for fearmongering around this either. I believe that AI can be extremely useful and built into all the tools, and I'm not looking to necessarily limit it.

Phillip: [00:20:00] Sure.

Brian: [00:20:01] I do think that there but there needs to be extreme awareness around what can happen. That said, in our own AI study that we just ran, people are less fearful of the weird things that might happen as a result of engaging with AI because they're finding so much utility in it. And I think that that's really...

Phillip: [00:20:26] That's a really important point. I think you're right. We have that too.

Brian: [00:20:31] Yeah.

Phillip: [00:20:31] The Internet brought in a whole new level of identity theft, a whole new level of cybersecurity issues, and we tolerate it in the system to a certain degree because of the immense utility, the good, that it does. And if it comes at the expense of, our risk tolerance generally in the United States is extremely low for lots of things.

Brian: [00:20:55] Is it?

Phillip: [00:20:56] I think it is.

Brian: [00:20:57] No.

Phillip: [00:20:58] That's why it costs $1,000,000,000 to build a bridge.

Brian: [00:21:01] Yes/and. Here's my yes/and to that. Literally, the most dangerous thing that people do every day is go get in their car and get in their commute. We drive around in giant metal machines.

Phillip: [00:21:14] Exactly. Alright. We will continue this conversation on the After Dark. So if you want to hear more and if you want to lend your voice to the conversation, we'll give you a way to do that. FutureCommerce.com/Plus. If you want to subscribe to Future Commerce Plus to hear the After Dark, which will be the long form version of this, we'll continue this conversation. Right, Brian?

Brian: [00:21:34] Oh, yeah.

Phillip: [00:21:34] Alright. Left turn. {laughter} Are there ghosts in Pike Place Market? Oh, gosh. This is a terrible segment to put right after this.

Announcer: [00:23:13] {creaking} The time has come for Spooky Commerce.

Phillip: [00:23:20] Alright. It's time once again. That's right. Wrapping up October, and that means we're still in Spooky Commerce month.

Brian: [00:23:28] Spooky.

Phillip: [00:23:31] {laughter} I love it. We've nailed the intro here, with us again, producer Sarah. Sarah, what do you have for us today? What's so spooky about a haunted fish market?

Sarah: [00:23:43] Well, it turns out there's a lot of things that are spooky about a haunted fish market. Brian, this one hits close to home for you. So today, we're exploring the hauntings of Pike Place Market. Seattle's very famous, tourist hot spot.

Brian: [00:24:02] Well... I mean, you know how much I like spooky stuff.

Sarah: [00:24:09] I thought about asking if you had ever done a ghost tour, but I'm assuming the answer is no.

Brian: [00:24:15] The answer is no. It's true. It's true. I do love Pike Place, but I've never been in Pike Place late at night.

Sarah: [00:24:25] Oh, okay. Okay.

Phillip: [00:24:26] Can we can we clarify for the uninitiated? Brian likes Pike Place the market as an idea and a concept. He dislikes Pike Place, the Starbucks roast, on principle.

Brian: [00:24:38] Oh, that's true. Now that is just gross. If we're talking about Halloween, that that is honestly, I honestly think it is worse than McDonald's coffee. I think it's worse. I think it's worse than, like it's worse than Chick Fil A coffee. It's worse than... Let's see. I've had gas station coffee that's better than Pike Place roast.

Phillip: [00:25:04] Alright. Alright. So Brian can taste, just in the same way that he has a palate that is developed enough for all of the tannins in the wine. He's developed a palate that's sophisticated enough to taste the ghost in Pike Place roast.

Brian: [00:25:21] Yeah. It is haunted. It is haunted with over roasting. There's a ghost at Starbucks that over roasts.

Phillip: [00:25:28] It's the roast with the most.

Brian: [00:25:30] Alright. It's the roast with the ghost.

Phillip: [00:25:33] Total. Totally co opted. Please please continue. Is this real? Is this a real thing? They have, like, ghost tours.

Sarah: [00:25:42] Oh, of course. Yeah. I mean, it's all real.

Brian: [00:25:45] Well, here's the thing. Seattle is one of those cities that's built on another city. So there's a whole Seattle underground tour that's got all kinds of ghosts and stuff available if you want them too.

Phillip: [00:25:56] I need way more context, though. So we know that there's a a thing. Catch us up as to why and is there backstory? What makes it haunted?

Sarah: [00:26:05] Yeah. So there are a few kind of key hauntings happening at Pike Place Market. A couple of them do tie back to the grounds that Pike Place and downtown Seattle were were built upon.

Brian: [00:26:19] Coffee grounds?

Sarah: [00:26:21] Oh my gosh. The coffee grounds upon which Seattle stands, very haunted. Yeah. So, one of the key... Okay. I find this article online that is titled "The Ghosts of Pike Place Market." There are a few ghosts that are well known among the visitors and, you know, the folks who do ghost tours. They kinda tend to visit specific spots where you might see specific characters. So I'll walk you through a couple of them.

Brian: [00:26:54] Mhmm.

Phillip: [00:26:55] Oooh

Sarah: [00:26:57] Yes. Right? So one of the characters that I would say the paranormal curious might come across in Pike Place Market, her name is Princess Angeline. She was a member of the indigenous Duwamish tribe. She was the daughter of the chief. The chief's name was Chief Seal. Isn't that interesting? I didn't realize that Seattle was named after the indigenous chief. I thought that was cool. So she used to reside where Pike Place Market was built. So that's a pretty direct connection. So folks will say that they see her in the corner of their eye or they'll catch her moving around a corner or something. And if you try to chase her, she'll vanish.

Phillip: [00:28:48] Well, I mean, the only thing worse than that is if you tried to chase her and you catch her.

Sarah: [00:28:52] Or if she chased you.

Phillip: [00:28:53] {laughter} There's that too.

Sarah: [00:28:56] Or being chased.

Phillip: [00:28:58] The last time I was at Pike Place Market, there were a few people, like, milling about in in the area. It's pretty dead during the daytime, and it what's really incredible about...

Brian: [00:29:10] Not any more.

Sarah: [00:29:10] Not last time I went.

Phillip: [00:29:11] Oh, really?

Brian: [00:29:15] Yeah. It's picked up.

Phillip: [00:29:17] Is it really? Okay. That's great. That's great news. I came, like, just after the pandemic. It was a couple years...

Brian: [00:29:23] Then it was... a ghost town, actually.

Phillip: [00:29:25] It was a literal ghost town. {laughter} They were saying... Because it's sort of a maze. There are indoor sections, outdoor sections. There's the downstairs. You're not really sure what level you're on. It's really immersive in a not sure where you are in this structure. Anyway, so a couple people were like, "Better watch your bag." Like I was gonna get pickpocketed. I'm like, "Bruh, there's no one here. There's literally no one here."

Brian: [00:29:52] Well, the ghosts are pickpockets too, so watch out.

Phillip: [00:29:56] But but, obviously, being key to the tours, I think the tours sort of require probably a little bit of ambiance and setting. Are these, like, nighttime tours?

Sarah: [00:30:08] Yeah. Some of them are, like, they'll do  walking booze tours where you're, like, just drinking a bunch and looking at ghosts. I don't know.

Brian: [00:30:18] This is such a Seattle thing. Walking, drinking, and looking at ghosts. That's right up to Seattle's alley.

Sarah: [00:30:27] Yeah. Well, okay. That brings me to my next point. So Kells Irish Pub, speaking of drinking and ghosts. Brian, have you been to this pub?

Brian: [00:30:35] Kells, yeah.

Phillip: [00:30:36] Yeah. Okay. "Kells, yeah." {laughter}

Sarah: [00:30:41] Do you know any of the lore behind Kells Pub?

Brian: [00:30:44] I actually don't. Hit me. I don't know the lore behind Kells Pub.

Sarah: [00:30:48] This one's really fascinating too. Again, connection to the Duwamish tribe. But so the building that Kells Pub exists in is the Butterworth and Sons building, which was not only a former mortuary, but it was also built on top of tribal burial grounds. Legend has it.

Brian: [00:31:09] Oh sheesh.

Phillip: [00:31:10] I've seen a movie or two that tells me that's a bad thing.

Sarah: [00:31:12] Yep. It's like a doubly bad thing. That's two confirmed guaranteed hauntings.

Brian: [00:31:20] You put up a spiritual portal right on top of it in an Irish pub. That's like triple bad. Irish pub is a portal to another realm.

Phillip: [00:31:34] That's funny.

Sarah: [00:31:36] So some of the characters that people will see at the pub, one of the creepier ones, it's always like a little kid, you know. So there's a little girl in a red dress who is found in the doorway of one of the back doors in the pub. And people will see her, and then she'll giggle and run away, like classic movie stuff.

Brian: [00:31:59] Maybe this is like a The Others situation. The giggling and running away. We're the ghosts, actually.

Phillip: [00:32:07] Oh, we're the ghosts. Oh a total aside, I have a whole story about The Others. I went and saw that in the theaters. We'll have to talk about that at some point because wow. I know it's been, like, 18 years or 20 years or something, so no spoilers for a 20 year old movie. That movie... That movie, that was a twist, buddy.

Sarah: [00:32:32] I have not seen it. You can spoil it for me, though.

Phillip: [00:32:35] Nicole Kidman. Right?

Brian: [00:32:37] Yeah. Nicole Kidman. Nicole Kidman. She's very good in it. She's very good.

Phillip: [00:32:40] Oh, it's extremely good. It's extremely good. Yeah. The big twist at the end is who's really haunting whom, and there's a a really interesting perspective on perspective is the eye of the visible world. What if we followed the ghosts and they thought they were the living? It's kind of an interesting take.

Brian: [00:33:02] It came out shortly after The Sixth Sense, though.

Phillip: [00:33:06] Yeah. But it didn't stop me from screaming like a little, you know, red dressed girl inside of the theater when I was... The only movie I ever screamed.

Sarah: [00:33:18] Didn't stop you from giggling and running away.

Phillip: [00:33:19] Yeah. Then I giggled and I ran away. And I was like, "Oh, no. Capitalism, it's so scary."

Brian: [00:33:25] Speaking of which, capitalism's conquered all here. That's the story.

Phillip: [00:33:30] It's true. Capitalism is the final boss of the haunt, but you can't get rid of the ghost through capitalism. Sarah, do you think, I know I ask you this when we do these what you think about it. But I'm curious why in many of these scenarios and a couple of these stories that we've heard so far, why do you think that people see the same thing over and over? What's that about?

Sarah: [00:33:55] Oh, that's like... Okay. I think that right there is what keeps people believing. Because you don't know if it's just a crowd effect. Once you know that someone else has seen something, it's probably a lot easier for you to trick your mind into also seeing it. For example, one of the other characters at this pub is a man who sits in a booth, but people say you can only see him through a reflection. So you have to see him through a mirror or bouncing off of a window or something. And there's a pretty wide margin for error if, you know, I think I'm seeing people out of the corner of my eye. You know, once in a while, you'll think...

Phillip: [00:34:35] Right.

Sarah: [00:34:35] You know, did I see somebody or what was that? So I think once you hear the story, you want to believe it, and therefore, it starts to become real.

Brian: [00:34:49] See, here's my problem with stuff like that is I have good enough vision to not need glasses for driving, but also bad enough vision where I can't sit in the back of the classroom. Basically, what happens is I don't wear my glasses. So I have not perfect vision that I don't wear my glasses for consistently. And so thinking that I see something is very easy.

Sarah: [00:35:23] Well, think about, like, when you're home alone and a lot of the lights are off, you can, like, spook yourself really easily. I don't get spooked when other people are in the house. It's very circumstantial. You know?

Phillip: [00:35:36] Brian, this is so funny. You want to talk about scary, Brian. You said you don't wear your glasses. I had a memory pop up in Facebook the other day, and it was you at a conference, and you're wearing glasses. Oh, no. You can't see it. Oh, there it is.

Sarah: [00:35:55] Oh my god.

Phillip: [00:35:55] That's scary. That's spooky.

Brian: [00:35:58] That's spooky. It actually literally just popped up glasses for you. Me in glasses.

Phillip: [00:36:07] This was the other day, and I was stuck. Caught a shutter when I saw it. I was like, woah. Brian in glasses...

Brian: [00:36:12] Yeah. That's weird. Scary.

Phillip: [00:36:14] There's way more than one of these sort of recurring apparitions in the market.

Brian: [00:36:24] It's extra haunted.

Phillip: [00:36:26] Yeah. And they all have sort of traceable sources. So there are stories behind so many of them. What else have we not covered so far?

Sarah: [00:36:35] Let's see. Okay. One of the toy stores in the market, I believe this store is downstairs.

Brian: [00:36:43] Toy store.

Sarah: [00:36:44] I know. Right? It's always a toy store. There is allegedly a 9 year old kid who died during the Spanish flu epidemic who haunts this toy store. There's a quote on an article. I couldn't find the source of the quote. So an online article where I found this story. The quote said that this kid was really active. He was throwing stuff off of the shelves and was very responsive until the store owners made him a bed in the corner of the store, and then he calmed down.

Phillip: [00:37:17] Okay. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Nope. Nope. I'm out.

Brian: [00:37:21] So wait. Sarah, you never answered the question that Phillip posed. Where do you sit on this? Because this seems pretty hard to refute.

Sarah: [00:37:34] Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think I feel I'm one of those people that's, like, the mystery of it is fun to me. I don't really know what I believe, but I would be interested in going on a ghost tour and seeing what I see, which I think is, like, where some of the marketability of all this comes from too. Our curiosity is so strong. Just from researching this, I'm like, I should, next time I'm in Seattle, book a ghost tour and visit the toy store and see if I see the kid. Like, it's just it's so fascinating to hear about. So I don't know. I don't know where I stand. I tend to lean people are kinda convincing themselves that it's real, and it's probably not. But who knows?

Phillip: [00:38:17] If we had to come back to something that might explain a bunch of the phenomena well, I don't know if I can explain the phenomena necessarily, but what I can explain is that retail and markets are places that bring in pretty much every kind of person from every walk of life. Right? And when you think about the numbers of people... I saw a stat when I was doing some research for this on Perplexity that said some 65% of people believe that extraterrestrial aliens exist. Some 45% of people believe that ghosts exist. That means one in every two people taking that tour is pretty likely to believe that it's real.

Brian: [00:39:05] Right on my repo man article.

Phillip: [00:39:08] Right. True. When you're when you're thinking about that sort of systems of belief, like, where do those people... When you have a place that's sort of like the free commerce system, people can come in and just shop. You're going to have people that come in and they're more sensitive to perpetuating those types of beliefs. And, also, Brian, you would have a lot to say about this. This is like multiplayer myth making.

Brian: [00:39:37] This is exactly where it's gonna head is there's so much history here too. This is a great example of multiple sources of story. It's very easy, and I think, Phillip, to your point lots of different types of people result in lots of different types of stories and viewpoints and perspectives of something that has a lot of revealed character to it. It's a place. It's a shopping area. It used to be a burial ground and then a mortuary and there's just there's so many elements here that would actually enable this sort of storytelling around the place. And whether it's true or not, actually doesn't take away from its power in many ways. It by nature of having a rich history and having multiple people involved, it will naturally take on a life of its own. And, actually, Pike Place in particular is interesting because you get a lot of unique little vendors in there as well that have their own viewpoints on what they're selling. And Seattle's got a lot of crystals. It's a lot...

Phillip: [00:40:56] Maybe, like, three out of five people believe...

Brian: [00:41:00] Oh, pushing four out of five. I think the interplay between the multiple shop owners that are building a mythology around that spot and the multiple worldwide people that come into it, that interplay is rich and ready for story making and myth making. And commerce also plays a part of that objects themselves, and having so many different types of objects being sold in that area is like and some of them are one of one too. All of that just speaks of myth and stories.

Phillip: [00:41:44] You're definitely hitting on the philosophical part. I'd like to bring it home and make it real. Sarah, have you ever bought something, you spent money on it, and then you had to kinda talk yourself into liking it or justify the reason why you spent money on it?

Sarah: [00:42:00] Yeah. I feel like that happens anytime I'm a tourist in another city. It's like I really don't need this trinket, but... And then I have a hard time throwing it away too once I have it.

Phillip: [00:42:13] Yeah.

Sarah: [00:42:13] And then I think that comes... There's an experience attached to it. It's like I'm buying something because I'm experiencing something. Not necessarily because I want the thing, but I'm on a trip, or I'm in a beautiful place, or I want to commemorate something.

Phillip: [00:42:30] And what if one of those reasons, and one of those commemorations was something a little supernatural, if you will? Yeah. I think once capitalism comes in and we productize the thing, it will perpetuate itself forever. Yeah.

Brian: [00:42:46] Well, in connection to story, the story of being there, the story of that place, the story of that moment, the people you were with or not with, I think there's just so much memory and personal myth building that happens through a purchase in a scenario like that.

Phillip: [00:43:05] Wow. So do you think that these hauntings are real, Sarah?

Brian: [00:43:09] She said maybe. She said she didn't know. She said probably not.

Phillip: [00:43:12] Yeah.

Brian: [00:43:13] Sarah is a skeptical one.

Sarah: [00:43:15] Yeah. I'm gonna say I'm skeptical, but I love the energy around it. I love that people are still so curious about this stuff and digging into it. And, you know, I would go on a ghost tour if the opportunity arose. So I'm not personally a believer, but I'm I'm curious. And so I'd be interested

Brian: [00:43:38] Where do you stand on this one, Phillip?

Phillip: [00:43:42] It's a funny thing. Right? I believe on some level, there are things we don't understand, and sometimes we ascribe those to stories that we tell, which I think is weird to even say out loud. Just look back over human history. How many times have we been so sure that we knew everything there was to know about everything?

Brian: [00:44:05] Right.

Phillip: [00:44:06] And I I think it's also interesting too that this taps into people's suspension of disbelief even if they you know, these sorts of stories, especially when they're tied to retail or especially when they come along with a souvenir. You're kinda like you're suspending your disbelief to play along with it because wouldn't it be fun if that were true? Wouldn't that make life a little less quantified and less finite and less concrete? I think we all want a world that's a little more magical even if that means that we can never catch the ghost that we're chasing.

Brian: [00:44:44] That's good.

Sarah: [00:44:45] That's so poetic.

Phillip: [00:44:47] Thank you. I think that's a great place to leave it. Sarah, thank you for doing the series with us. It's been so much fun to bring you back.

Sarah: [00:44:53] Yeah, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me.

Phillip: [00:44:55] Yeah. Spooky. Spooky season.