My name is Mercedes Yaeger. Primarily, I am a writer, performer and tour guide who loves Seattle and loves sharing stories about Seattle. I also work as a producer in film and television.  My family moved to Seattle in 1979 from Altea, Spain. My father is the honorary Mayor of the Pike Place Market. I grew up amongst the vendors, fish mongers and crafts people of the Market and I am what they call a "Market Baby." My parents own Studio Solstone in the Atrium of the Market.

As a tour guide I believe in researching and telling the stories shared by the people of an area, that is one reason ghost stories are so interesting to me. Oral History is a vibrant way to learn about the past and the way a story is passed down is also very interesting. A story can change and grow just depending on who tells it. I research the history not only around an event but also around the story as it has been passed down.

I was twelve years old the first time I saw a ghost. My family lived on Bainbridge Island at the time, in a large house situated on Winslow Way, within walking distance of the ferry. Below my room, which was on the second floor, there was a small room that housed the television set and office space for my mother and father. One morning, I was walking down stairs and I happen to sense something in that room. I looked through the window of the doors (they were similar to french doors, they opened into the room and had stained glass windows in them). I saw at the bay windows an older Japanese woman. She was sitting by the window and her hand was holding open the curtain which was drawn shut. She turned to look at me and she appeared terribly sad and worn out, she also appeared to be longing to see something outside. I remember that I was not afraid or even really concerned about what I was seeing. She was kind but very sad.

Before that age I had had many dreams in which I was assisting people die. They were very powerful dreams and I had begun to think that I might actually be "flying" to the sides of people as they passed on. In the dreams they were always terribly sad and afraid of leaving. I always talked to them quietly, petted their foreheads and held one of their hands until I felt the heat leave their body. The dreams had started at about age 10. That is one reason I was not afraid of seeing her, she seemed to be at the same place. Although I knew she was already dead, I felt that same apprehension as I had from people in my dreams. I felt that it was my responsibility to find out who she was and why she was there. Here is what I have learned. Thanks goes to my father for this, as he had also seen her and had started to find out what had happened in the little farm house on Winslow Way. Japanese Americans were interned in WWII and Japanese residents on the island left Bainbridge for internment camps leaving behind land, possessions, businesses and perhaps,... this woman in our house. The house that we lived in had been a meeting place for Japanese before the war. Both my father and I feel that she stayed behind during the internment, perhaps she was not a legal citizen or nobody knew she was hiding there. She stayed there and waited and died before members of her family, or friends, returned from the internment camps. She was looking out the window while the curtains were drawn so that no one could see her. She was never seen when the curtains were open and for some odd reason, my mother frequently kept those curtains drawn even on sunny days.

I started taking Japanese when I was 13, and I excelled at it. I won Japanese language competitions and I was planning on majoring in Japanese. Just after my family moved out of that house while I was in college for some reason, at the same time I stopped pursuing the Japanese language. Sometimes I think that she wanted me to learn it so that I could communicate with her the same way I had with other people in my dreams, she wanted me to help her find peace and move on.

I take my role as a guide very seriously. By telling the stories of the ghosts within the Market I hope to help them make the transitions they need to and I hope to entertain and enrich each of your lives as you take the tour. I work in film and television production to put bread on the table and then find a way to live out my passions as a storyteller both here in Seattle and internationally. 

In some ways the work I do in film mirrors that which I do with tours. I tell stories or help others tell stories, and working in documentay film, it's often about the past. Someday all of these different yet similar paths will make sense...

 

My nickname is "Slip Lip Cedes", given to me after a dog bite to the face in 2005. The right side of my top lip tends to slip a little. Fort Dudak, graphic novelist and artist did this rendition of me, stomping, farting and having fun. www.fortdudak.com