December 23, 2025 • 20 mins
In a quiet suburban neighborhood in Bothell, Washington, a family began experiencing unexplained disturbances inside their home. What started as small, dismissible events slowly escalated into more than 600 reported paranormal incidents over the course of a year, witnessed by multiple people. Objects moved, sounds followed occupants through the house, and visitors noticed disturbances without being told what to expect.
In this mini episode of State of the Unknown, Robert Barber tells the story of the Bothell Hell House exactly as it was reported by those who lived through it, before stepping back to examine what can be verified, what remains unclear, and why this case continues to be discussed decades later.
This episode explores how prolonged, relentless activity can wear down a household without a single dramatic breaking point, and what happens when a home stops feeling neutral and begins to push back against the people living inside it.
Further Reading & Research
The Bothell Hell House: Poltergeist of Washington State
A firsthand account from later occupants of the home, documenting repeated disturbances, physical activity, and multiple witnesses over an extended period of time.
Haunted America
A U.S.-focused overview of reported hauntings and long-running cases, offering historical and regional context for how stories like this one are recorded, shared, and debated.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:02):
You don't move into a house expecting it to push
back.
You expect quirks and noise.
At first, that's exactly whatthis felt like.
Small things that were easy toignore.
Sounds you could explain away ifyou didn't think about them too
hard.
But over time, the house stoppedfeeling neutral.
(00:24):
Things began happening whenpeople were present.
Not dramatic events, just enoughmovement and disruption to make
it hard to relax.
Enough to make sleep difficult.
And once that feeling sets in,it's hard to shake.
Because this isn't a place youcan leave at the end of the day.
(00:45):
This is where you live.
The house sat in a quietsuburban neighborhood, the kind
of place where nothing about itwould have raised concerns.
It wasn't old, it wasn'tisolated, and it wasn't known
(01:08):
for anything unusual.
A couple moved in expecting anormal home in a normal area.
For a while, that's exactly whatit was.
What followed unfolded over thenext several years as activity
inside the house became harderto ignore and even harder to
live with.
(01:52):
Today we're headed to aresidential neighborhood in
Washington State, where a familyliving in an ordinary suburban
home reported physicaldisturbances that gradually made
the house difficult to stayinside.
This is the story of the BothHell House.
Let's get into it.
(02:14):
When the family first moved intothe house in Bothel, nothing
about it stood out.
It was a normal place in anormal neighborhood.
The kind of house where youexpect to learn the creaks and
quirks over time and then stopnoticing them altogether.
The first things that felt offwere easy to ignore.
A sound from another room whenno one else was home, a door
(02:37):
that didn't seem to be in thesame position it was left in.
The sense that someone had justmoved through a space, even
though everyone was accountedfor.
None of it happened often enoughto feel urgent.
It felt like the kind of thingyou'd brush aside without
mentioning.
At first, that's exactly whatthey did.
(02:58):
Houses make noise, air moves,floors shift, and once you start
paying attention to a place, younotice things that you'd have
missed before.
Those explanations worked,especially during the day, when
everything felt ordinary again.
The house sounded differentafter dark.
Not louder, just more active.
(03:21):
Footsteps could be heard when noone was walking.
A sound from upstairs would pullsomeone's attention, only to
stop as soon as they listenedfor it.
When they checked, there wasnever anything out of place.
Sleep became uneven.
At first, they didn't talk aboutit much.
No one wanted to be the personwho turned normal house noises
(03:43):
into something bigger.
So instead, they adjustedwithout really acknowledging
why.
Lights stayed on a little longerthan usual.
People paid it closer attentionto where everyone else was in
the house.
It didn't feel like fear yet.
It felt like caution, likelearning how a place behaves.
(04:05):
What made it harder to dismisswas that the activity didn't
stay random.
It started happening when peoplewere present.
Sounds followed movement throughthe house.
If someone entered a room,something would happen somewhere
else shortly after.
Not dramatically, just enough tofeel connected.
By then, the house no longerfelt neutral.
(04:29):
It felt aware.
And once that feeling set in, itchanged how the family
experienced being inside theirown home.
Once the activity started tofeel connected to people being
present, it became harder toignore.
Objects didn't stay where theywere left.
(04:51):
Things were moved just enough tobe noticed, but not enough to
make sense.
A chair would be pulled outslightly from a table.
Items left on counters ended upon the floor.
Not thrown, not shattered, justdisplaced.
No one ever saw it happen.
That was part of the problem.
(05:12):
There was never a moment youcould point to and say, that's
when it happened.
People would leave a room, comeback later, and immediately
notice that something wasn'tright.
The longer they lived there, thequicker they picked up on those
changes.
The sounds changed too.
Early on, the noises were easyto mistake for a house settling.
(05:35):
Now they had wait.
Footsteps were heard movingacross the house, not randomly,
but in a way that suggesteddirection, from one room to
another, down a hallway, acrossthe ceiling above where someone
was standing.
If someone stopped to listen,the sound often stopped too.
(05:56):
That made it worse.
Because it felt less likebackground noise and more like
something reacting to attention,as if whatever was causing it
knew when it was being noticed.
Sleep became a problem foreveryone.
Nights were interrupted bymovement or noise that didn't
fully wake the house, but pulledpeople just far enough out of
(06:19):
sleep that they couldn't relaxagain.
Sometimes it was a sound.
Sometimes it was just the sensethat something had shifted
nearby.
People began waking up tense,already braced for the day.
The lack of rest started toaffect how the family
interacted.
Small disagreements escalatedquickly.
(06:41):
Everyone felt worn down.
It wasn't just fear, it was theexhaustion of never fully
letting your guard down.
There were moments when activityhappened close enough that it
couldn't be brushed off.
Sounds came from rooms that wereclearly empty.
Doors moved on their own.
On more than one occasion,something fell or shifted while
(07:04):
someone was nearby, close enoughthat they were certain no one
else could have caused it.
At that point, the explanationstarted to thin.
You can dismiss one strangemoment.
You can even dismiss a handful.
But when the same kinds ofthings happen over and over in
different parts of the house atdifferent times, it becomes
(07:27):
harder to tell yourself itscoincidence.
The family began checking inwith each other more often.
If someone heard something, theyasked if anyone else was
responsible.
When the answer was no, thesilence that followed felt
heavier than the noise itself.
The house felt larger andsomehow more crowded at the same
(07:50):
time.
Certain rooms became difficultto be in.
It wasn't that anything specifichappened there.
It was the way those spacesfelt.
People didn't linger.
If they needed to go into aroom, they did what they needed
to do and left.
Doors were closed more often,not for privacy, but for a sense
(08:13):
of control.
By this point, the house hadstopped feeling like a backdrop.
It felt involved.
Whatever was happening didn'tfollow a schedule, but it did
follow presence.
Activity increased when peoplewere home.
It became more noticeable whenthe house was quiet.
(08:35):
And it didn't seem to calm downwith time.
Living there started to requireeffort.
By then, the question wasn'twhether something strange was
happening.
It was how long they could keepliving with it.
Eventually, the family stoppedkeeping what was happening to
themselves.
(08:56):
At first, it came up casually, acomment to a friend, a passing
remark to a neighbor.
Something like, Does your houseever make strange noises at
night?
Most people laughed it off.
Houses do that.
It didn't sound alarming when itwas framed that way.
But once other people spent timeinside the house, the
(09:18):
conversation changed.
Visitors noticed things withoutbeing prompted.
Someone would pause mid-sentenceand ask if anyone else heard
that.
A sound from another room wouldpull attention away from
whatever was happening in themoment.
More than once, a guest assumedsomeone else was moving around,
only to realize everyone wassitting in the same room.
(09:40):
That mattered.
It's one thing to question yourown perception.
It's another when someone elsereacts before you do.
Some visitors were more affectedthan others.
A few brushed it off and didn'tthink much about it afterward.
Others left uneasy, even if theycouldn't explain why.
(10:01):
At least one visitor experiencedactivity directly.
Objects moved while someone waspresent.
Sounds came from rooms they hadjust left.
In one instance, somethingshifted close enough that it was
impossible to pretend that noone was nearby.
That moment removed anyremaining comfort the family had
(10:21):
been holding on to.
The house no longer feltprivate.
What had been happening wasn'tlimited to the people who lived
there.
It didn't depend on familiarity.
It didn't disappear when someonenew walked through the door.
If anything, it seemed torespond to the presence of more
people.
(10:42):
That made it harder to believethe problem was internal.
By this point, the family hadbegun looking for help, even if
they weren't sure what kind ofhelp they needed.
They talked to people who hadsome experience with unexplained
disturbances.
They listened to suggestions.
They tried small things thatwere meant to calm the situation
or bring a sense of control backinto the house.
(11:05):
Nothing made a difference.
The activity didn't escalatedramatically all at once.
It stayed consistent,persistent, just disruptive
enough to keep everyone on edge.
By the time the family stoppedtrying to explain individual
events and started looking atthe pattern as a whole, they
(11:26):
were no longer talking aboutisolated disturbances.
They were talking aboutrepetition.
Over the time they lived in thehouse, the number of reported
incidents kept growing, not justsounds or impressions, but
moments where somethingphysically changed in the space,
objects displaced, movementwithout a source, activity that
(11:49):
interrupted sleep and dailyroutines again and again.
Later summaries of the casewould estimate that the total
was well over 600 separateincidents.
At that point, the exact numbermattered less than what it
represented.
Whatever was happening wasn'tflaring up and fading away.
(12:12):
It was persistent.
It was cumulative, and it wasn'tgiving them any clear indication
that it was going to stop on itsown.
That realization changed how thefamily thought about the house.
It wasn't about getting throughone more strange night.
It was about how long anyonecould reasonably live inside a
(12:33):
place that required constantattention just to feel normal.
The house never gave them aclear reason to panic, but it
also never gave them a reason torelax.
That's what finally pushed thesituation toward a breaking
point.
Not one terrifying moment, butthe slow realization that the
(12:55):
house wasn't going to settledown on its own.
That whatever was happeningwasn't tied to one person's
stress or one bad week or oneexplainable cause.
Living there had become aconstant negotiation.
And at some point, the familyhad to decide whether staying
made sense anymore.
(13:20):
Up to this point, everythingyou've heard comes from the
people who lived in the houseand from others who were present
when the activity occurred.
Now it's worth slowing down andlooking at what we can actually
confirm, what holds up acrossretellings, and where the story
becomes less clear.
In later interviews and writtenaccounts, the people who lived
(13:42):
there chose to share whathappened publicly, even though
much of their personalinformation has been kept
private.
There are a few things aboutthis case that are consistent.
The house was real.
The family lived there.
And over a period of time,multiple people reported
disturbances that went beyond asingle strange incident.
(14:04):
Sounds, movement, and physicaldisplacement were described more
than once and by more than oneperson.
What stands out is the pattern.
The activity wasn't centered onany one dramatic event.
It didn't spike and disappear.
It was described as ongoing anddisruptive, especially at night,
(14:26):
and especially when people werepresent in the house.
At the same time, there arelimits to what can be verified.
There are no official reportsdocumenting specific paranormal
incidents, no recordings thatconclusively show objects moving
on their own.
No physical evidence that pointsto a clear cause.
(14:46):
What we have are first-handaccounts from people who are
living under sustained stress ina place that had become
difficult to tolerate.
That doesn't mean thoseexperiences weren't real to
them, but it does mean that wehave to be careful about how far
we take any one explanation.
One way people interpret caseslike this is through a
(15:08):
poltergeist-style framework.
Not a traditional haunting tiedto a specific spirit or history,
but disturbances connected tothe people living in the house.
Activity that seems reactive,that escalates over time, that
centers on presence rather thanlocation.
That idea lines up with parts ofwhat was reported here,
(15:31):
especially the way the activityfollowed people and intensified
when the house was occupied.
Another explanation focuses onenvironment and psychology.
Poor sleep, constant vigilance,and prolonged stress can
heighten perception.
And when multiple people aresharing the same space, that
(15:53):
awareness can feed off itself.
That context matters.
Still, it doesn't fully explaineverything people described.
Reports of physical movement,especially when visitors were
present and hadn't been primed,are harder to dismiss outright.
So is the fact that somedisturbances occurred close
(16:14):
enough to witnesses thatmisinterpretation becomes less
convincing.
Over time, the story also pickedup a reputation and a name that
sound more dramatic than theevents themselves.
That's common with long-runningcases.
Certain moments get emphasized,others fade.
The narrative tightens as it'sretold.
(16:36):
What remains is a case builtmore on experience than
evidence.
There's no single explanationthat accounts for everything.
Some people see a form ofpoltergeist activity.
Others see stress andenvironment amplifying ordinary
phenomena, and some believe it'sa combination of both.
(16:57):
The evidence doesn't force aconclusion.
It leaves us with a questionabout what happens when a place
stops feeling neutral and startsreacting to the people inside
it.
This case also didn't end whenthe family moved out.
In the years that followed, itcontinued to draw attention from
writers, researchers, andtelevision producers interested
(17:20):
in long-running disturbancecases rather than isolated
events.
Those efforts didn't settle whatwas happening, but they did keep
the experiences fromdisappearing quietly.
If you want to dig deeper, I'veincluded links in the episode
description to additionalsources and reading focused
specifically on the BothellHellhouse.
(17:42):
There's no final explanationwaiting at the end of this
story.
Just a house that drove peopleout, and a question that never
followed them when they left.
(18:08):
This wasn't a family looking forsomething strange.
It was a normal householddealing with small disruptions
that slowly added up.
They didn't jump to conclusions.
They adjusted.
They tried to live around it.
They waited for it to pass.
Honestly, isn't that what mostof us will do?
(18:29):
And that's what makes it sounsettling.
The idea that a house couldslowly wear you down without
ever giving you a clear reasonto leave.
That discomfort can buildquietly until staying feels
harder than going.
Even if you strip away everyexplanation you don't believe,
(18:50):
what's left is stilluncomfortable.
A home that no longer feelsrestful.
A space that requires constantattention.
A place that reacts when it'soccupied.
You don't have to decide whatcaused it to recognize that
something about that environmentwasn't working for the people
(19:10):
inside it.
And sometimes that's enough.
This has been State of theUnknown.
Before you head out, if you'relistening on Apple Podcasts, the
biggest way you can support theshow is by leaving a quick
(19:30):
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(19:53):
miss new episodes when theydrop.
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strange that you think wouldmake a great mini or even a full
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You can send a message or even avoice note at state of the
unknown.com slash contact.
Thanks for listening and forstepping into the unknown with
(20:17):
me.
Until next time, stay curious,stay unsettled, and remember
that sometimes it isn't oneterrifying moment that drives
people away.
It's the slow realization that aplace no longer feels like home.
You don't move into a house expecting it to push
back.
You expect quirks and noise.
At first, that's exactly whatthis felt like.
Small things that were easy toignore.
Sounds you could explain away ifyou didn't think about them too
hard.
But over time, the house stoppedfeeling neutral.
(00:24):
Things began happening whenpeople were present.
Not dramatic events, just enoughmovement and disruption to make
it hard to relax.
Enough to make sleep difficult.
And once that feeling sets in,it's hard to shake.
Because this isn't a place youcan leave at the end of the day.
(00:45):
This is where you live.
The house sat in a quietsuburban neighborhood, the kind
of place where nothing about itwould have raised concerns.
It wasn't old, it wasn'tisolated, and it wasn't known
(01:08):
for anything unusual.
A couple moved in expecting anormal home in a normal area.
For a while, that's exactly whatit was.
What followed unfolded over thenext several years as activity
inside the house became harderto ignore and even harder to
live with.
(01:52):
Today we're headed to aresidential neighborhood in
Washington State, where a familyliving in an ordinary suburban
home reported physicaldisturbances that gradually made
the house difficult to stayinside.
This is the story of the BothHell House.
Let's get into it.
(02:14):
When the family first moved intothe house in Bothel, nothing
about it stood out.
It was a normal place in anormal neighborhood.
The kind of house where youexpect to learn the creaks and
quirks over time and then stopnoticing them altogether.
The first things that felt offwere easy to ignore.
A sound from another room whenno one else was home, a door
(02:37):
that didn't seem to be in thesame position it was left in.
The sense that someone had justmoved through a space, even
though everyone was accountedfor.
None of it happened often enoughto feel urgent.
It felt like the kind of thingyou'd brush aside without
mentioning.
At first, that's exactly whatthey did.
(02:58):
Houses make noise, air moves,floors shift, and once you start
paying attention to a place, younotice things that you'd have
missed before.
Those explanations worked,especially during the day, when
everything felt ordinary again.
The house sounded differentafter dark.
Not louder, just more active.
(03:21):
Footsteps could be heard when noone was walking.
A sound from upstairs would pullsomeone's attention, only to
stop as soon as they listenedfor it.
When they checked, there wasnever anything out of place.
Sleep became uneven.
At first, they didn't talk aboutit much.
No one wanted to be the personwho turned normal house noises
(03:43):
into something bigger.
So instead, they adjustedwithout really acknowledging
why.
Lights stayed on a little longerthan usual.
People paid it closer attentionto where everyone else was in
the house.
It didn't feel like fear yet.
It felt like caution, likelearning how a place behaves.
(04:05):
What made it harder to dismisswas that the activity didn't
stay random.
It started happening when peoplewere present.
Sounds followed movement throughthe house.
If someone entered a room,something would happen somewhere
else shortly after.
Not dramatically, just enough tofeel connected.
By then, the house no longerfelt neutral.
(04:29):
It felt aware.
And once that feeling set in, itchanged how the family
experienced being inside theirown home.
Once the activity started tofeel connected to people being
present, it became harder toignore.
Objects didn't stay where theywere left.
(04:51):
Things were moved just enough tobe noticed, but not enough to
make sense.
A chair would be pulled outslightly from a table.
Items left on counters ended upon the floor.
Not thrown, not shattered, justdisplaced.
No one ever saw it happen.
That was part of the problem.
(05:12):
There was never a moment youcould point to and say, that's
when it happened.
People would leave a room, comeback later, and immediately
notice that something wasn'tright.
The longer they lived there, thequicker they picked up on those
changes.
The sounds changed too.
Early on, the noises were easyto mistake for a house settling.
(05:35):
Now they had wait.
Footsteps were heard movingacross the house, not randomly,
but in a way that suggesteddirection, from one room to
another, down a hallway, acrossthe ceiling above where someone
was standing.
If someone stopped to listen,the sound often stopped too.
(05:56):
That made it worse.
Because it felt less likebackground noise and more like
something reacting to attention,as if whatever was causing it
knew when it was being noticed.
Sleep became a problem foreveryone.
Nights were interrupted bymovement or noise that didn't
fully wake the house, but pulledpeople just far enough out of
(06:19):
sleep that they couldn't relaxagain.
Sometimes it was a sound.
Sometimes it was just the sensethat something had shifted
nearby.
People began waking up tense,already braced for the day.
The lack of rest started toaffect how the family
interacted.
Small disagreements escalatedquickly.
(06:41):
Everyone felt worn down.
It wasn't just fear, it was theexhaustion of never fully
letting your guard down.
There were moments when activityhappened close enough that it
couldn't be brushed off.
Sounds came from rooms that wereclearly empty.
Doors moved on their own.
On more than one occasion,something fell or shifted while
(07:04):
someone was nearby, close enoughthat they were certain no one
else could have caused it.
At that point, the explanationstarted to thin.
You can dismiss one strangemoment.
You can even dismiss a handful.
But when the same kinds ofthings happen over and over in
different parts of the house atdifferent times, it becomes
(07:27):
harder to tell yourself itscoincidence.
The family began checking inwith each other more often.
If someone heard something, theyasked if anyone else was
responsible.
When the answer was no, thesilence that followed felt
heavier than the noise itself.
The house felt larger andsomehow more crowded at the same
(07:50):
time.
Certain rooms became difficultto be in.
It wasn't that anything specifichappened there.
It was the way those spacesfelt.
People didn't linger.
If they needed to go into aroom, they did what they needed
to do and left.
Doors were closed more often,not for privacy, but for a sense
(08:13):
of control.
By this point, the house hadstopped feeling like a backdrop.
It felt involved.
Whatever was happening didn'tfollow a schedule, but it did
follow presence.
Activity increased when peoplewere home.
It became more noticeable whenthe house was quiet.
(08:35):
And it didn't seem to calm downwith time.
Living there started to requireeffort.
By then, the question wasn'twhether something strange was
happening.
It was how long they could keepliving with it.
Eventually, the family stoppedkeeping what was happening to
themselves.
(08:56):
At first, it came up casually, acomment to a friend, a passing
remark to a neighbor.
Something like, Does your houseever make strange noises at
night?
Most people laughed it off.
Houses do that.
It didn't sound alarming when itwas framed that way.
But once other people spent timeinside the house, the
(09:18):
conversation changed.
Visitors noticed things withoutbeing prompted.
Someone would pause mid-sentenceand ask if anyone else heard
that.
A sound from another room wouldpull attention away from
whatever was happening in themoment.
More than once, a guest assumedsomeone else was moving around,
only to realize everyone wassitting in the same room.
(09:40):
That mattered.
It's one thing to question yourown perception.
It's another when someone elsereacts before you do.
Some visitors were more affectedthan others.
A few brushed it off and didn'tthink much about it afterward.
Others left uneasy, even if theycouldn't explain why.
(10:01):
At least one visitor experiencedactivity directly.
Objects moved while someone waspresent.
Sounds came from rooms they hadjust left.
In one instance, somethingshifted close enough that it was
impossible to pretend that noone was nearby.
That moment removed anyremaining comfort the family had
(10:21):
been holding on to.
The house no longer feltprivate.
What had been happening wasn'tlimited to the people who lived
there.
It didn't depend on familiarity.
It didn't disappear when someonenew walked through the door.
If anything, it seemed torespond to the presence of more
people.
(10:42):
That made it harder to believethe problem was internal.
By this point, the family hadbegun looking for help, even if
they weren't sure what kind ofhelp they needed.
They talked to people who hadsome experience with unexplained
disturbances.
They listened to suggestions.
They tried small things thatwere meant to calm the situation
or bring a sense of control backinto the house.
(11:05):
Nothing made a difference.
The activity didn't escalatedramatically all at once.
It stayed consistent,persistent, just disruptive
enough to keep everyone on edge.
By the time the family stoppedtrying to explain individual
events and started looking atthe pattern as a whole, they
(11:26):
were no longer talking aboutisolated disturbances.
They were talking aboutrepetition.
Over the time they lived in thehouse, the number of reported
incidents kept growing, not justsounds or impressions, but
moments where somethingphysically changed in the space,
objects displaced, movementwithout a source, activity that
(11:49):
interrupted sleep and dailyroutines again and again.
Later summaries of the casewould estimate that the total
was well over 600 separateincidents.
At that point, the exact numbermattered less than what it
represented.
Whatever was happening wasn'tflaring up and fading away.
(12:12):
It was persistent.
It was cumulative, and it wasn'tgiving them any clear indication
that it was going to stop on itsown.
That realization changed how thefamily thought about the house.
It wasn't about getting throughone more strange night.
It was about how long anyonecould reasonably live inside a
(12:33):
place that required constantattention just to feel normal.
The house never gave them aclear reason to panic, but it
also never gave them a reason torelax.
That's what finally pushed thesituation toward a breaking
point.
Not one terrifying moment, butthe slow realization that the
(12:55):
house wasn't going to settledown on its own.
That whatever was happeningwasn't tied to one person's
stress or one bad week or oneexplainable cause.
Living there had become aconstant negotiation.
And at some point, the familyhad to decide whether staying
made sense anymore.
(13:20):
Up to this point, everythingyou've heard comes from the
people who lived in the houseand from others who were present
when the activity occurred.
Now it's worth slowing down andlooking at what we can actually
confirm, what holds up acrossretellings, and where the story
becomes less clear.
In later interviews and writtenaccounts, the people who lived
(13:42):
there chose to share whathappened publicly, even though
much of their personalinformation has been kept
private.
There are a few things aboutthis case that are consistent.
The house was real.
The family lived there.
And over a period of time,multiple people reported
disturbances that went beyond asingle strange incident.
(14:04):
Sounds, movement, and physicaldisplacement were described more
than once and by more than oneperson.
What stands out is the pattern.
The activity wasn't centered onany one dramatic event.
It didn't spike and disappear.
It was described as ongoing anddisruptive, especially at night,
(14:26):
and especially when people werepresent in the house.
At the same time, there arelimits to what can be verified.
There are no official reportsdocumenting specific paranormal
incidents, no recordings thatconclusively show objects moving
on their own.
No physical evidence that pointsto a clear cause.
(14:46):
What we have are first-handaccounts from people who are
living under sustained stress ina place that had become
difficult to tolerate.
That doesn't mean thoseexperiences weren't real to
them, but it does mean that wehave to be careful about how far
we take any one explanation.
One way people interpret caseslike this is through a
(15:08):
poltergeist-style framework.
Not a traditional haunting tiedto a specific spirit or history,
but disturbances connected tothe people living in the house.
Activity that seems reactive,that escalates over time, that
centers on presence rather thanlocation.
That idea lines up with parts ofwhat was reported here,
(15:31):
especially the way the activityfollowed people and intensified
when the house was occupied.
Another explanation focuses onenvironment and psychology.
Poor sleep, constant vigilance,and prolonged stress can
heighten perception.
And when multiple people aresharing the same space, that
(15:53):
awareness can feed off itself.
That context matters.
Still, it doesn't fully explaineverything people described.
Reports of physical movement,especially when visitors were
present and hadn't been primed,are harder to dismiss outright.
So is the fact that somedisturbances occurred close
(16:14):
enough to witnesses thatmisinterpretation becomes less
convincing.
Over time, the story also pickedup a reputation and a name that
sound more dramatic than theevents themselves.
That's common with long-runningcases.
Certain moments get emphasized,others fade.
The narrative tightens as it'sretold.
(16:36):
What remains is a case builtmore on experience than
evidence.
There's no single explanationthat accounts for everything.
Some people see a form ofpoltergeist activity.
Others see stress andenvironment amplifying ordinary
phenomena, and some believe it'sa combination of both.
(16:57):
The evidence doesn't force aconclusion.
It leaves us with a questionabout what happens when a place
stops feeling neutral and startsreacting to the people inside
it.
This case also didn't end whenthe family moved out.
In the years that followed, itcontinued to draw attention from
writers, researchers, andtelevision producers interested
(17:20):
in long-running disturbancecases rather than isolated
events.
Those efforts didn't settle whatwas happening, but they did keep
the experiences fromdisappearing quietly.
If you want to dig deeper, I'veincluded links in the episode
description to additionalsources and reading focused
specifically on the BothellHellhouse.
(17:42):
There's no final explanationwaiting at the end of this
story.
Just a house that drove peopleout, and a question that never
followed them when they left.
(18:08):
This wasn't a family looking forsomething strange.
It was a normal householddealing with small disruptions
that slowly added up.
They didn't jump to conclusions.
They adjusted.
They tried to live around it.
They waited for it to pass.
Honestly, isn't that what mostof us will do?
(18:29):
And that's what makes it sounsettling.
The idea that a house couldslowly wear you down without
ever giving you a clear reasonto leave.
That discomfort can buildquietly until staying feels
harder than going.
Even if you strip away everyexplanation you don't believe,
(18:50):
what's left is stilluncomfortable.
A home that no longer feelsrestful.
A space that requires constantattention.
A place that reacts when it'soccupied.
You don't have to decide whatcaused it to recognize that
something about that environmentwasn't working for the people
(19:10):
inside it.
And sometimes that's enough.
This has been State of theUnknown.
Before you head out, if you'relistening on Apple Podcasts, the
biggest way you can support theshow is by leaving a quick
(19:30):
rating or review.
Even a short one makes a hugedifference.
It helps new listeners find theshow, and it really does help
the show grow.
If you're listening on Spotify,you can rate the show there too.
Just tap the stars.
It just takes a few seconds andit helps more than you might
think.
And while you're there, makesure you hit follow so you won't
(19:53):
miss new episodes when theydrop.
If you've got a hometown legend,a family story, or Or something
strange that you think wouldmake a great mini or even a full
episode, I'd love to hear it.
You can send a message or even avoice note at state of the
unknown.com slash contact.
Thanks for listening and forstepping into the unknown with
(20:17):
me.
Until next time, stay curious,stay unsettled, and remember
that sometimes it isn't oneterrifying moment that drives
people away.
It's the slow realization that aplace no longer feels like home.
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