In the town of Bellingham, Washington, on its eastern edge where it begins to run into tall forested hills and deep foreboding lakes, lays Bayview Cemetery, home of most of Bellingham’s illustrious dead. Decades ago it used to have a fine view of the bay, though it is a poor view now, mostly obscured by trees grown tall.

Despite the aborted view, it remains a scenic cemetery. There is a small jewish section, an early 19th century area with many worn down obscured stones, a section laid down when laying your dead in graves, rather than cremation, was in fashion. And masons were experimenting in more interesting, more abstract forms. To one side is a deep gully, through which runs a beautiful creek. On the opposite side is a highway which will take you to either the lake, or into town and its collection of Pizza Huts and gas stations.

Among all the individual unique gravestones is a particular one with its own mark on local folklore. They call it “Angel Eyes.” There’s a large, tall base, on top of that a column, on top of that, a statue of an angel.

It’s very much a twentieth century angel. It doesn’t look like the multitudes of angels and cherubim you see in churches and cathedrals if you ever happen to visit merry old England. Maybe it’s a little bit gauche, still, it’s an angel. There’s something a little bit off about its eyes.

The tombstone is, supposedly, haunted. It’s the stuff of local folklore, or urban legend.The basic story goes, if you enter Bayview Cemetery, maybe even sneak in, around sunset, and you stand or kneel before Angel Eyes, you have an opportunity. If you make a wish, and Angel Eyes finds you worthy, it might come true. If not, you die that very night. Whether or not your wish comes true, in the fading light, the eyes of the angel began to glow.

You can search it on the internet. You’ll find variations of the same basic story.

The prime of the tales come from the 1980s. Naturally stories like this appeal to the youth. And naturally the story involves untimely deaths of youth. And, as an extrapolation, youth very rarely die of natural causes, so in the rare event that they do die, Angel Eyes often presents herself as an explanation. The common cause of teenage deaths involves traffic accidents, usually drunken or otherwise reckless driving.

The heart of the stories involve Robbie Hintz. A local teenager, from out in the valley, just north of Bellingham. The story goes that in the late afternoon, a little too early, he stood before Angel Eyes, and asked a wish, one summer in 1988. A half hour later, driving out in the valley on his motorcycle, Robbie decided to race a train to an intersection. Naturally, as stories go, he didn’t make it. Robbie, quite literally, lost his head. The photos the police took show a decapitated body, and a motorcycle helmet, laying by the side of the tracks.

This story goes, somebody took revenge. In some tales it’s a girlfriend, in others a secret gay lover, or a best friend, or a father. Regardless, the events are the same. The aggrieved party busts through the front gate of the cemetery. Marches down to Angel Eyes. Then with a hammer and chisel, some stories say a flathead screwdriver, carved out the stone eyes of Angel Eyes.

At first, this vengeful figure was pleased with their work, but when they looked down at their left hand, they were horrified.The two stone eyes that they carved out were glaring up at them, still glowing. Terrified, this person cast the two stones into the gully that bordered the cemetery, and Angel Eyes never troubled the people of Bellingham again.

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On the surface, the story appears absurd. Statues, like this gravestone, are one single block of stone. There are no separate eyes to carve out. The strange thing is, there are holes where the eyes should be in the angel gravestone. If you carefully examine it, you can come to the conclusion that this is simply artistic expression. The holes are meant to suggest the negative space- pupils, not empty eye sockets.There is stone there that, if viewed skeptically, represent sclera and irises. Knowing thist, it’s easy to understand this “carved out eyes” aspect of folklore.

The gully that borders Bayview Cemetery is a deep ravine that has been carved out by Whatcom Creek. This creek stretches from Whatcom Lake, perhaps a mile east of the cemetery, down through a locally beloved park, complete with popular swimming holes and photogenic waterfalls, through a nearly inaccessible ravine, past Bayview Cemetery, through suburbs, light industrial areas, under downtown Bellingham, into the old town, past a salmon hatchery and a lower set of picturesque falls, and into Bellingham Bay.

At three thirty in the afternoon, June 10th, 1999, a pipeline that happened to cross Whatcom Creek near the park entrance ruptured, spilling thousands of gallons of gasoline into the gully and downstream. At its peak there was more gasoline flowing through the creek bed than water. This spill continued uninterrupted, until something, likely a passing car over a bridge, ignited the giant cloud of fumes that all this gasoline emitted.

Naturally, a giant fireball roared up and down Whatcom Creek, incinerating pristine old growth forest, and killing three people. One was an eighteen year old boy who had been fishing, he likely was overcome by the fumes and asphyxiated before the gasoline ignited. The two others were younger boys who had come to the park to play. Both died hours later, in terrible pain, of massive third degree burns over most of their bodies. The one who was still capable of speaking begged listeners to tell his parents that he was sorry. Weeks later, during the investigation, the CEO of the company which ran the pipeline blamed the two young boys, making the claim that they had been playing with fireworks, and that they were the ones responsible for the fire. Why else would the boy say he was sorry? The investigation found the pipeline company responsible, having been the ones who originally damaged the pipeline and failed to perform basic repairs. They were given a fine.

The details of this story can also be found on the internet. Unlike Angel Eyes, the specifics are not up for debate.

On June the 13th, 1999, with the park completely closed off to the public, an Interloper entered the grounds, disguised as one of the environmental workers assessing the damage. He came late in the evening, as the sun was going down, just as the others were leaving. He waited a couple of hours, until full darkness, then set to work.

The forest had been reduced to what the governor described as a “moonscape.” All ash, broken here and there by black smoldering stumps of what had been massive trees. Even with all of the underbrush cleared by the devastation, it took the man hours to find them. Two small round stones, finally made visible because they still glowed in the dark and the fire had uncovered him. The angel’s eyes.

He gathered them up in a small wooden case and took them home. At the time, he lived in a fine old house, on a hill overlooking much of Bellingham, but with a particularly close view of Interstate 5, and Exit 253. There he got on the phone and contacted certain persons who would want to know.

The man would place the two stone eyes, in the wooden case, in a drawer, in an antique roll-top desk, on the third floor of the house, near a window. The eyes remain, though the man is long gone.

Engineers for the Washington State Department of Transportation have been perplexed. For the last twenty some years, traffic accident fatalities over a stretch of Interstate 5, near Exit 253 have increased over four hundred percent. No matter how many improvements they make, no matter how much they increase the signage, no matter how much they increase police presence, people keep dying.