FORMER SEATTLE MORTUARY NOW A HAUNTED IRISH BAR

Source: The Mail newspaper (UK)
Before Kells Irish Pub in Seattle became a charming family-run bar, it served as a waiting room for  the afterlife -- a mortuary purpose-built to handle flood of dead bodies produced by plague, mining accidents and violence in the early 1900s.

The owners of the bar say a piece of that dark history has clung to their humble establishment, meaning the haunted pub serves up a host of spirits, along with pints of beer. 

Bartenders, patrons and ghost hunters all claim to have seen specters of ghosts at the pub late at night.

Inexplicable events have occurred that the owners say can only be attributed to other-worldly forces.

Mirrors have shattered, plaster falls off walls as if on cue and glasses have slid mysteriously to the floor.

The pub has been a beacon for ghost hunters in Seattle for years -- thanks to numerous reports of paranormal activity and the building's black past.

On All Saints Day in 2005, Karen McAleese says she saw something she still cannot explain walk through the kitchen of Kells pub, which her brother owns.

'He was a tall man who looked like he was part black, with a suit jacket on,' she reported to the Seattle Times.

'He had very thin hands. He walked to the end of the bar and just kind of faded.'

McAleese believes that spirit, along with others supposedly spotted in the building over the years, belongs to one of the thousands -- perhaps millions -- of dead people who passed through Kells back when it was E.R. Butterworth and Sons Mortuary.

The Butterworth Building, constructed in 1903, was Seattle's first structure built specifically as a mortuary -- to handle throngs of dead bodies piling up in the city.

Is this a ghostly child or a poor photoshop makeover?

A diphtheria epidemic, poor sanitation, mining accidents and violent crime made undertaking a growth business in those days. And Butterworth raked in cash, handling funeral arrangements for all Seattleites -- from the lowest working-class refugees to the wealthiest pillars of society.

Among the bodies to pass through the mortuary, legend says, were nearly all of the patients of a Dr Linda Hazard -- a woman who believed she could treat disease with starvation.

She denied her patients food and gave them a regimen of thin broth and regular enemas.

In 2010, the Travel Channel show 'Ghost Adventures' brought a crew of paranormal investigators to Kells pub to try to confirm reports of ghost sightings.

During their trip, the hosts claimed they snapped a photo of what appears to be a small, disfigured child sitting on the steps leading up to the main floor of the pub.


They also reported hearing footsteps above them when the building was vacant and distant, tortured whispers.

My view? I have to say that I`m not that impressed by this evidence. Zac plays around on screen with a new digital still IR camera and picks up a shape that in sincerity could be anything. But as it`s on Ghost Adventures, it can only be a ghost of a very weirdly crippled child. And `cleaned up` the imagery is even less impressive. I don`t deny this building is haunted, I just question the theatricality of it all.