A good friend of ours teaches at Cornish College of the Arts, a local private institution devoted to the arts - painting, sculpture, theatre, music and dance. It was founded around the turn of the century by Nellie Cornish, the piano playing daughter of a Tennessee sheep farmer. She moved to Seattle in 1900 and founded the school with no initial support from the city. It thrived and grew into an important Mecca of local cultural life.
In 1921, Nellie commissioned a local firm to build a permanent home for the school. The building has been described school as "a quietly elegant building of Mediterranean persuasion" in architectural guides. The building included an apartment on the top floor for Nellie. The school remains in the same building today. Dancer Martha Graham and painter Mark Tobey are among the members of the faculty over the years.
Our friend is a vocal teacher at the school. He had a coaching sessions scheduled with a student one evening. The friend on the top floor (Nellie's old apartment) and a secretary in the first floor office were the only people in the building at the time. He seated at a table, grading some papers when someone came up from behind and started massaging his shoulders and neck. When he turned, there was nobody there. He dashed downstairs and walked into the office. The secretary confirmed that his student hadn't arrived and that they were the only two people in the building. She noticed the look on his face and said, "Oh . . . Nellie came to see you, huhn?" The student arrived at his scheduled appointment time about 20 minutes later.
It turns out if you work there long enough, you inevitably have some sort of ghostly encounter with the ghostly Nellie. Its sort of an unspoken agreement that stories aren't shared until the new staff member has their first episode with Nellie. Its an old building, so cool spots & drafts are usually written off part of the territory, but my friend says without a doubt, someone was giving him the start of a great neck rub and there's no other explanation.
