Deception Pass visitors feel ‘spirit’ calling them

It’s a common local phenomenon.

Once, Whidbey Islander Sparrow Morgan walked on the narrow sidewalk between two fences of Deception Pass Bridge, a place she had been many times. Wind from the passing traffic competed with that pushing south through the archipelago.

Headlights had little effect on the blackness in front of her, the dark waves swirling 200 feet below. Something felt strange this night compared to the others.

“One moment I was walking along,” Morgan said, “and the next I felt as if something was pulling me.”

Morgan had felt l’appel du vide before, a French term that translates to “the call of the void” — standing on a balcony, a cliff or before traffic and getting a sudden, unexpected feeling of jumping.

This felt different, she said. This felt like an invitation.

Morgan felt something cognizant, something “vaguely feminine” calling to her from below the surface of the ocean.

She came to with a friend’s arms around her, pulling her off the fence. She hadn’t realized she was climbing it, she said.

Morgan is not alone in feeling this type of energy at Deception Pass. It’s a common local phenomenon, leaving some to wonder if there is any relation to ancient stories told of the area or the bridge being a chosen place for people to end their lives. Studies have shown, however, that there is no link between the feeling of l’appel du vide and depression or suicidal ideation.

In years past, passersby on the bridge have found positive, hopeful, encouraging messages left by those who also struggle with depression as well as messages from the loved ones of people who have jumped.

Those struggling with suicidal feelings should call the 24-hour national Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

On the island, many people told Morgan a spirit dwelled beneath Deception Pass — after this night, for the first time, she believed it.

“I suspect that many of the people who jump are pulled the way I was,” she said.

Since Lou LaBombard, an indigenous storyteller and former professor of anthropology and social sciences at Skagit Valley College, has lived on Whidbey, several people have told him about strange feelings of someone calling them from beneath the bridge, he said.

Nicole Smith, a Samish Indian Nation Tribal Council member, said she has heard from visitors of having dreams of a woman standing by the water before they knew the ancient stories. Then, they read signs about Ko-kwal-alwoot, a young maiden who lived in a Samish village by Deception Pass, feeling like they had a premonition.

The famous story tells of Ko-kwal-alwoot spending her days singing and digging clams and eventually falling in love with a man living in a village beneath the sea who ruled the creatures.

They married. Her hair became tangled with seaweed and kelp, and barnacles and mussels grew on her arms.

Her skin turned to scales. She became unhappy returning home to the village, so her parents gave her permission to remain in the sea, where she promised to ensure they always had plenty of fish to catch and freshwater to drink.

To this day, Samish people believe she is there providing abundance.

“The story is really about sacrifice,” Smith said. “She sacrificed herself for her people to go into the water to make sure that everyone had an abundance and had food to survive.”

Smith said she has never heard of a reason Ko-kwal-alwoot might be calling visitors of Deception Pass, though she noted that Ko-kwal-alwoot too was once called.

“She was called to the water,” she said. “That’s how she ended up there.”

Perhaps the “call” people experience is a bit more common than some believe. Both a 2012 study in the Journal of Affective Disorders and a 2020 study in BMC Psychiatry suggest that over half of people have reportedly experienced l’appel du vide.

The former study revealed for the first time that there was not a link between suicidal ideation and sudden, unexpected thoughts of danger. The latter study similarly concluded that such experiences are not an expression of a hidden death wish.

For decades, islanders have suggested installing nets and protection on the bridge as well as increasing mental health services for people before they become suicidal.

According to RB McKeon, communications officer for the Washington State Department of Transportation, such modifications would require weight and structure analysis, historic site processes and legislative funding. Anti-suicide fencing on Seattle’s Aurora bridge, for example, took four years and $4.8 million.