vicemag: Seattle Has a Haunted Soda Machine As about 45 percent of us know, ghosts are definitely real and casually walk among us. Some...
Seattle Has a Haunted Soda Machine
As about 45 percent of us know, ghosts are definitely real and casually walk among us. Some have a post-life agenda of stealing our socks or manifesting as apparitions on burned toast; others prefer to spend their time banging around abandoned children’s hospitals for Syfy Channel reality shows. But there’s one ghost who has taken an industrious approach, choosing to operate a creepy Coca-Cola machine on an innocuous corner in Seattle’s Capitol Hill. Like an endless Encyclopedia Brown story, the machine has been an ongoing source of curiosity and fear from locals for decades due to its weird location, outdated appearance, and reputation for being continuously and strangely stocked by a seemingly non-existent operator. It brings to mind the famous line from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory that gave entire generations of children the heebie jeebies: “Nobody ever goes in, and nobody ever comes out.”
With its sun-bleached buttons and charmingly antiquated Mountain Dew logo, the Mystery Coke Machine has been spitting out sodas on the corner of John and Broadway for upwards of 15 years, but no one seems to know exactly for how long—or who re-stocks, maintains, or collects money from the thing. It’s as though it fell out of a wormhole and landed free-standing onto this lonely corner. From the get-go, its 70s appearance evoked a sense of cheery yet ominous nostalgia, as if Matthew McConaughey’s character from Dazed and Confused would fit right in with it, leaning against its side while he’s busy winking at you. Prior to encountering it, you may not consider how unusual and even intimidating a vending machine looks standing alone on a sidewalk. It’s almost as though it’s forever waiting for something, or someone in particular, to show up.
It’s a TARDIS.
…waiting for her Time Lord to find her…
