Book chronicles the haunting of a ‘Bothell Hell House’

By Kailan Manandic / Bothell-Kenmore Reporter

Paranormal investigators recently published findings regarding a “Bothell Hell House” that plagued multiple residents over the years.

Keith Linder, a Bothell native and recently published author of “The Bothell Hell House: Poltergeist of Washington State,” lived in the house for four years before moving out in 2016. Linder reported that various paranormal incidents plagued him and his girlfriend, including floating objects, strange symbols and spontaneous fires.

“The book itself covers our four-year ordeal with the haunting that took place in the home,” Linder said. “This was our very first [paranormal] experience, neither me nor my girlfriend at the time, Tina, had ever gone through anything remotely similar.”

Linder works as an IT project manager and published his book last April. The story follows Linder and his now ex-girlfriend and chronologically outlines the haunting. He plans to publish two more books, detailing the potential evidence he obtained and the scientific explanations behind it.

Linder added that he wanted to be detail oriented while telling his story and made a point to not exaggerate the things he saw.

“As I investigated the land, the house and whatnot, there was a family who lived there five years earlier and saw similar activity,” Linder said. “I talked to the wife and she said the house was a living hell.”

The Bothell Hell House reportedly terrorized Linder for four years and became so terrible that he reached out to the paranormal community in attempts to gather evidence that supported his claims.

“I’m not a religious guy in the modern sense, I never gave rise or thought about demons or ghosts or poltergeist,” Linder said. “But having now seen and heard [things], it does make you have to revise your inner beliefs. For me it did revise my current thinking of life after death.”

Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures” team conducted the first investigation, after Linder reached out, which found no evidence to support Linder’s claimed poltergeist. The Bothell Hell House was featured in an episode centered around hauntings in Seattle.

The initial lack of evidence partially discredited Linder and his claims. Linder said this was a dark time in his life; all he wanted was help to prove something that was a real and terrifying part of his life.

Linder kept reaching out, even internationally, and eventually contacted Don Philips, a paranormal researcher based in the United Kingdom.

“I was always interested in this type of thing and became frustrated with how the paranormal was treated in the media,” Philips said. “So I started to put my own stuff out there and I wanted to bring credibility back into what people were seeing by doing my investigations in a very evidence-based way.”

Philips is well-known in the field for his skills in finding evidence that goes beyond a simple K-II meter, which measures ambient electromagnetic fields and is often used on TV to determine a paranormal presence.

“If you use a K-II meter and it goes off and you say ‘there’s a spirit here,’ that’s a claim. You can’t prove it. Philips said. “People want to see a investigation that’s thorough. All I used was me, what I capture [on video] and a voice recorder. I don’t use gadgetry because it doesn’t prove anything.”

Philips released a documentary that details his findings earlier this month, titled, “Demons in Seattle Uncovered”.

“I wasn’t interested in just another ghost story,” he said. “I wanted people to see the evidence, the process and the objectivity behind it. This wasn’t meant to be a documentary originally, we just brought the camera to record anything we found.”

Philips and his team spent more than two weeks total in the Bothell Hell House, in contrast to the Ghost Adventures team who spent a single night in the home.

“‘Ghost Adventures’ went in there for five hours and came away with nothing. I personally think that that’s not the way to do that,” Philips said. “I’m not going to make a claim unless I have evidence, I’ve got a reputation to protect. It’s a serious documentary and Keith is a serious case. He is credible and I’ll stand in his corner on that.”

Philips added that he can’t speak to the poltergeist activity that supposedly happened in the Bothell Hell House prior to his investigation.

The evidence Philips gathered includes 427 recordings that captured possible vocal phenomena with 28 reportedly occurring in direct response to questions.

“Keith reached out to us out of pure frustration,” Philips said. “He needed proof to his claims that his house was haunted, real proof. I promised Keith, ‘If your place is afflicted with anything paranormal, I’ll provide you with evidence,’ and that’s what I did. I can’t comment on writing and symbols appearing on walls since that happened two years prior, but as far as the house being haunted, yeah, it is.”

Linder now lives in an apartment on his own, free of any other paranormal activity. He’s even seen support from the Bothell community who he says has been mostly unsurprised to hear about paranormal activity in the area.

“Believe it or not, (people aren’t) shocked,” Linder said. “There have been families or individuals who came up to me and said, ‘our house or our neighbor’s house has something similar.’ I hope my readers understand that everything happened the way we say it happened.”