SEATTLE—Appearing initially in the far corner of the living room and then several minutes later on the threshold between the kitchen and the hallway, local roommate Kelsey Stahl was, by multiple accounts, seen skulking around the edge of a house party Friday like a Victorian ghost child. According to sources, the unspeaking, expressionless 26-year-old was never witnessed exiting her bedroom, instead seeming to materialize out of thin air on the outskirts of a conversation circle as if she were the apparition of an English nobleman’s daughter who died of typhoid in 1868 and possibly went by the name Gwendolyn or Abigail. Several unsettled witnesses reported how, at one point, Stahl was seen standing rigid and silent a dozen feet beyond the dining area table that had been set up as the bar, looking out at all the revelers with a blankness in her eyes that suggested she had become trapped between this world and that of her girlhood in a mid-19th-century countryside manor. Wearing a skirt and top that may as well have been a calf-length, puff-sleeve dress with a lace collar and a large silk waist bow, the host’s roommate reportedly entered the kitchenette at one point for a glass of water and, just a moment later, appeared standing behind the couch like a spectral figure who perished suddenly at the age of 9 and has ever since drifted across the face of the earth unimpeded by walls or other physical surfaces. According to reports, roughly an hour into the festivities, several partygoers felt a sudden chill of cold air and looked around to find Stahl nowhere in sight, leaving them to wonder if she had ever even been there in the first place.

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