HGB Ep. 510 - Legend of the Grim Reaper

Moment in Oddity - Soldier Carries Eyeball

During World War II there was a skirmish on Mount Croce, in central Italy. The temperatures were freezing but the Winter Line of German Field Marshal Albrect Kesselring was to be held at all costs. But in November of 1943, U.S. paratroopers forced the Germans off the mountain top. The Germans brought an onslaught of weaponry against the American Infantry with almost a constant barrage of bullets, mortar and artillery shells exploding all around them. The American troops held their ground  with small firearms. The conditions were terrible with frozen rations and shallow trenches lined with ice. Many wounded would not make it out alive and the wounded who could travel had to make it down the steep mountain to medical aid. One such wounded was Sergeant Robert Akers. The man had a flurry of shrapnel hit him in his face. One piece had popped his eye out which he retrieved and was carrying in his hand. The eye was intact and still attached to its cords. The journey down Mount Croce was precarious at best, slipping and sliding down the nearly perpendicular incline traveling where even goats would slip and fall. Akers did in fact make it to the base of the mountain and to medical aide. He was rushed to a field hospital where his eye was popped back into the socket and reattached to the cords. Incredibly, the Sergeant would regain 100% of his sight and he returned to active duty before the end of the war and that certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Gateway Arch

In the month of October, on the 28th in 1965, the last piece of the Gateway Arch was fitted into place in St Louis, Missouri. The Arch was founded by the National Park Service in 1935 to celebrate Thomas Jefferson's vision of a transcontinental United States. However, it wasn't until 1948 that a nationwide competition took place to determine what the shape of the memorial would be. Then in 1963 construction began on the stainless steel arch, designed by architect Eero Saarinen (Eh-row Sah-ruh-nuhn). The expansive arch stretches from the Old Courthouse in Downtown St Louis to the riverfront steps of the Mississippi River. 2022 saw 1.6 million tourists visit the Gateway Arch and a tram ride can take ticket holders for an incredible journey to the top of the arch for an amazing city view. The St Louis Gateway Arch stands as a symbol of the national westward expansion of the United States, as well as an engineering triumph and example mid-century modern design.

Legend of the Grim Reaper

There is a pretty standard description of the Grim Reaper. Generally speaking, people envision a cloaked skeleton carrying a scythe. But there is so much more to this figure that has become the personification of death. On this episode, we are going to explore the centuries of mythology around the embodiment of death and explore whether this is an actual entity. And is this someone or something that we should fear?

A computer scientist named Randy Pausch was dying from pancreatic cancer when he wrote a book entitled The Last Lecture and in it he said, "We don’t beat the Grim Reaper by living longer, we beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up. It’s too late to do all things that you’re gonna kinda get around to." The listeners have probably also heard the sentiment expressed about the dash line on a gravestone between the birth and death dates: It's what you do with the dash that matters. Blue Oyster Cult in their song (Don't Fear) The Reaper sing, "All our times have come, Here but now they're gone, Seasons don't fear the reaper, Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain, We can be like they are." Death is a complicated thing and something we all face. Perhaps that is why humans have created stories around death and the various figures that legends claim come to us to guide us through. There is some comfort in the notion that after death we will be accompanied by someone who knows the ropes.

The entity that was named "The Grim Reaper" popped up sometime in the 15th century, but clearly, cultures throughout the centuries have personified death. Humans seek ways to make the transition from life to death easier. We'll never know what the earliest people thought about death because there was no written form of language, but surely they shared verbal stories. The Greeks were some of the first to write down death mythology. The term "psychopomp" comes from them. A psychopomp is a guide whose primary function is to escort souls to the afterlife, but they can also serve as guides through the various transitions of life. The term originates from the Greek words pompos (conductor or guide) and psyche (breath, life, soul, or mind). Every culture has their own version of psychopomps. In many mythologies, Death is personified in male form, while in others, Death is perceived as female. Since we get psychopomp from the Greeks, let's begin with them.

Greeks

In Ancient Greece, Death was portrayed several different ways, sometimes as a bearded and winged man and others as a young boy. They gave Death the name Thanatos and he was thought to be cruel and carried a sword. He was the son of Nyx, the goddess of night. Thanatos had a twin named Hypnos who was the god of sleep. Thanatos guided the dead to the underworld until they reached Charon who was a boatman that would take them over the River Styx to the underworld. Charon expected payment for the trip and if he didn't receive it, he would dump the person on the shores of the Styx where they would wallow for a hundred years. Thanatos had sisters as well who were called the Keres and they appeared as these females who had fangs and talons and they always wore bloody garments. Probably because they feed on the bodies of the dead  brought into the underworld, particularly those who died violent deaths. The god Hermes was also given the role of psychopomp. He was not only a messenger, but he was a god of border-crossings and he would also guide the dead to Charon.

Romans

The god Mercury is the Roman equivalent of Hermes, so he too is a psychopomp. There is a crater lake in Italy called Lake Avernus and one of Mercury's duties was to guide souls there because it was thought to be the entrance to the underworld. Roman writers used Avernus and Hades interchangeably. Virgil writes about it in his Aeneid and Odysseus also ventures to the underworld from here. One of the people Mercury guided to the underworld was a beautiful nymph named Larunda. He fell in love with her and sired two children with her along the way. So clearly, this was a bit of a long trip.

Etruscans

The Etruscans were from ancient Italy and had a significant influence on the Romans who eventually defeated the Etruscans at the end of the 3rd century BC. Their death figure was named Charun and was known as the "Demon of Death." Charun would come upon a person who was set to die and beat them over the head with a hammer until they died. he would then be joined by the goddess of the underworld, Vanth, and they would take the soul to the underworld. There, Charun would administer punishment to those who were evil in life.

Celtic

The Celts had a creepy form of the Reaper in the Breton region and they called it Ankou. Ankou appeared as a tall, haggard figure with long white hair. It wore a wide hat and drove a cart with a creaking axle that was piled high with corpses. Ankou generally appeared in the form of a skeleton and its head swiveled so it could see everyone, everywhere. If Ankou and his cart stopped outside of a house, it meant instant death for someone inside. The Irish had a creature known as a dullahan that tucked its head under its arm. This creepy creature had large eyes and a broad smile that reached to the ears. The dullahan would ride a black horse or a carriage pulled by black horses making stops at houses and calling out the name of the person who was going to die. The person would die the moment the name hit the air. Now, don't go looking for the dullahan because it doesn't like to be watched and will use a whip made from a spine to lash out your eyes. Or it could throw a basin full of blood at you and that means that you are the next to die. The Irish also have the Banshee, which is a female spirit who serves as an omen of death by wailing outside the home of someone who is going to die. If you hear the wailing it means she is coming for you shortly. References to the Banshee began in the 14th century, slightly before the Grim Reaper showed up in mythology. She usually wears a black cloak. The Scottish had a dog as their psychopomp. They called it Cù Sìth and it could be black, white or dark green in color. This dog would take dying souls to the afterlife. The Scottish also have Bean Nighe, which is an ugly entity with one nostril, one big protruding tooth and webbed feet. She usually wears a green dress and is found near deserted streams where she toils away at removing the blood from the clothes of people who are going to die.

Poland

The Polish have a figure that is similar to the Grim Reaper that they call Śmierć. This figure is actually a woman though who is skeletal and rather than wearing a black robe, she wears a white one. 

Scandinavia

Norse mythology's goddess of death was Hel and she ruled over hell where she received a portion of the dead. The Norse also had Pesta who was known as the "plague hag" and she was depicted as an old woman who wore a black hood and carried either a rake or broom. People wanted to see her carrying a rake because that meant some people would survive the plague, but if she brought a broom, everybody was going to die. There were also the Valkyries who were flying females that chose which soldiers would live or die in battle. Men chosen to die would be carried by the Valkyries to Valhalla, where they’d await the epic battle of Ragnorak. 

Hindu

The Hindu word for death is Mrityu and the lord of death in Hindu is called Yama, or Yamaraja. Yamaraja is depicted riding a black buffalo and he carries a rope lasso to capture souls so that he can bring them to Naraka or Yamaloka, the place of the dead or Hell. Yama is also the King of Dharma or justice, so punishment is dished out in Hell by him. And the decision where a soul will reside in the next life due to reincarnation is also decided by Yama. An entity named Chitragupta keeps track of a soul's good and bad deeds.

East Asian 

The Chinese have Yanluo as their god of death and he is the ruler of Di Yu, which is the underworld. Yanluo derives from the Hindu Yama and Yama actually spread into all Asian countries. The Chinese version wears a Chinese judge’s cap and traditional Chinese robes. Korean mythology has the Netherworld Emissary who works for Great King Yŏmna. This is a stern figure who escorts all people whether they were good or evil to the netherworld. Japanese mythology has the goddess Izanami as the goddess of death. She didn't start out this way. She died while giving birth to the fire god Hinokagutsuchi and goes to the perpetual night realm called Yomi-no-kuni, which is the underworld. Her husband attempts to rescue her and they have this big argument, which leaves Izanami promising that she will take a thousand lives every day. This, of course, makes her the goddess of death then. The Japanese also have  death gods called shinigami, which are similar to the Grim Reaper. They are called monsters and creatures of darkness. Buddhists refer to one of the shinigami as Mara, which is a demonic entity responsible for suicide ideation. Shinigami can also be oni, which are demons that are ox-headed or horse-faced. Buddhism also has Jizo who greets people after they die and guides them into the afterlife. Jizo especially looks after children since they are too young to understand the teachings of the Buddha and this could mean they would become stuck on the banks of the river Sai.

Latin America

Let's start back with the Aztecs. The Aztec underworld was called Mictlan and the god of lightning and death was named Xolotl. He appears as a man with a dog's head, but also sometimes is just a skeleton. He carries the dead to the underworld with his most famous transportee was the sun, which he protected when it ventured into the underworld at night. The Aztecs also had Mictecacihuatl as Queen of Mictlan and Mictlantecuhtli as King of Mictlan and they watched over the bones of the dead and presided over ancient festivals of the dead. The Queen had a defleshed body and her jaw was agape so she could swallow the stars during the day. In South American countries like Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, there is San La Muerte, which appears as a skeletal figure holding a scythe. Mexico has the similar figure of La Santa Muerte, which is a feminine skeletal folk saint. Both of these figures have been blended into a type of Folk Catholicism. Mexico also has La Calavera Catrina, which means the "skull of Catrina." She is a representation of death that is supposed to be less threatening than the Reaper, so she wears bright colors and usually is seen smiling and dancing.

Australia

The Aboriginal people of Australia had Barnumbirr, also known as Banumbirr or Morning Star. In the Yolngu culture, she was a creator spirit who brought humans to Australia, but she also had a strong association with death. She showed the way across the waters to the distant Island of the Dead.Dolphins were also thought of as psychopomps guiding the dead to the underworld.

Egypt

The Egyptian underworld is Duat and the jackal-headed god Anubis guided the dead there, specifically dead kings. Anubis was the son of Osiris and Nephthys and he would place the hearts of kings on the scales of judgement before his father Osiris. A feather would be placed on the other side of the scale. The result would decide whether the king could enter the afterworld. Ammit was a demon who would devour the heart if the king was found lacking.

Canaan

The Canaanites of the Ancient Near East had a god of death named Mot. They believed that Mot was one of the sons of El, who was the creator god and above all gods. He was the favorite son of the god El, and the most prominent enemy of the god Baal, a god of springs, sky, and fertility. Mot was the god of sterility and the master of all barren places. Traditionally, Mot and Baal were perpetually engaged in a seasonal struggle in which Baal, like many similar harvest deities, was annually vanquished and slain. Mot, however, was also annually killed by Baal’s sister Anath, who thus aided Baal’s resurrection.

Azrael

Azrael is the angel of death in Islam, Judaism and Christianity. While he plays a role in the latter two, Islam gives Azrael a significant place as a psychopomp. He guides each and every soul directly to Allah. His appearance depends on the person’s life. If they were good they would see a beautiful being, but if they were evil they would see a horrific monster. In Talmudic lore, the Angel of the Abyss is named Abaddon, which literally means "The Destroyer." There is also an archangel named Samael who is said to be both good and bad, but he works as a seducer and accuser and is nicknamed "The Venom of God" and is the executioner of death sentences decreed by God, so that doesn't sound good. Some traditions have the archangel Michael as a good angel of death. The Bible also uses the term memitim, which means destroyer to identify destroying angels. Proverbs 16:14 uses the term "mal’ake ha-mavet" for destroying angels. For most Christians, tradition holds that an angel comes to guide the dead to the afterlife. This could be an angel of death or a guardian angel.  

One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up in the Bible in Revelation 6 and the fourth is the one representing Death. Verses 7 and 8 read, "When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, 'Come!' And I looked, and behold, a pale horse! And its rider's name was Death, and Hades followed him. And they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts of the earth." The pale horse could signify illness, but we've also heard that the word has been mistranslated and actually means green. There is a crossover here with Greek mythology in that it is believed that this is Thanatos. Weapons carried by Thanatos include the sword, hunger, death and beasts. Or it could be another entity entirely since this one seems to be more of a figure bringing death, rather than just guiding the dead.

The Grim Reaper

And this brings us to the star of this episode, The Grim Reaper. This figure usually appears skeletal and shrouded in a dark, hooded robe with a scythe to help him "reap" human souls. The name fits perfectly as the term "grim" describes someone who is ghastly and sinister in appearance and character and has a stern disposition. And reaping is gathering together. There is a lot of symbolism around the depiction of the Grim Reaper. The skeletal figure represents the decay of the body and what is left when the flesh is gone. Many people not only feared death, but the obliteration it brought. The skeleton is that obliteration. The black cloak that is worn not only represents the clergy who officiated wakes, but black was long associated with death and mourning. The cloak gives the Reaper an air of mystery and menace too. The scythe wasn't what the Grim Reaper originally carried. He first held arrows, darts, spears or crossbows and these were used to cut down his victims. The weapons were traded in for the scythe, which was a farmer's tool for cutting down and gathering grain and this better depicted the job of the Grim Reaper. The scythe fit better with an agrarian society who were focused more on the harvest, rather than war. Many times an hourglass is depicted with the Reaper and this symbolized that the days of humans are numbered. When the sand runs out, our time is up.

The Grim Reaper showed up during the Black Death in the 14th century. One third of Europe's entire population perished during the Plague, so death was at the forefront of people's minds. Artists struggled for a way to depict all the death around them. The Grim Reaper fit the bill and the entity started showing up in sculptures and paintings, usually looking as though it were waiting in the wings to take people away. The naked skeleton eventually hid away in the black cloak in artistic renderings. Artwork shows the Reaper to be both a travel companion to the afterlife and the bringer of death, which is sometimes depicted as a skeletal finger reaching out to kill a person with a single touch. Lore that went along with the Reaper claimed that if a person could provide a good enough reason to be allowed to live, the Reaper would leave them be. Other stories claimed that the Reaper could be tricked and a person could then live longer. 

And this brings us to stories of people encountering the Grim Reaper and living to tell about it. There are many stories set in hospitals. Nurses have reported seeing what they described as a figure in a long cloak. One nurse reported in 1997, "I was running down the hall to my patient’s room so I could relieve the nurse in charge. I ran past this room, across from the central floor nurses’ station and had run past five rooms before it registered what I saw. I did not believe it! I went back down the hall and stopped at the room. I glanced into it. On the bed was a little gray-haired lady dressed in lace, propped up with pillows. Beside the bed stood this tall figure dressed in a monk’s robe with its head covered. It looked up at me when I appeared in the door. His face was a skull with tiny red fires for eyes. His hands, skeletal, were patiently folded over each other inside the dark sleeves. My impression was he was just patiently waiting."

A man named Ralph claimed to have an encounter with the Grim Reaper after having a heart attack and being admitted to the hospital. He was lying in bed and had a sudden chill come over him that felt below freezing. Then, a figure appeared at the foot of his hospital bed. Ralph described it as being a dark, gray, cloaked stranger with no face. When asked how he knew it was the Grim Reaper, Ralph replied, "I don’t know. I just knew. The other thing I knew was I wasn’t bad enough or sick enough to go with him."

Username itsaboutpeople wrote on Reddit in 2021, "Last night I was having a bad night, tossing and turning. I woke up, fully able to move (so I'm guessing no sleep paralysis) and looked around the room. The light in the hallway was on and I looked at the doorway. I saw what I can only describe the Grim Reaper looking at me. He had a gold Scythe and what is strange a gold/yellow skull or face. It was blurry but I would say more that it was his skull. He was in his dark black robe. I looked around a bit scared but he didn't come towards me. After a minute or so he disappeared. It took me an entire day to get over this feeling. I don't think he was evil or there to take me."

Rosie wrote in 2019, "I knew in September of 2016 that my mother was close to death. She was 85 years old and had been chronically ill for over 30 years. The last 15 years of her life, she lived with my husband and I. It was about a month away from her 86th birthday and I came home from work one day and the whole atmosphere of my home felt different. The house felt gloomy, depressing and sad. I didn't figure out exactly what it was that had changed until my husband said that he caught glimpses of a dark, hooded figure going into my mothers room. I knew instantly that death had come for my mother. I would find a quiet place in the house and address it verbally. I'd say things like, "I know you're here and I know why you're here. If you've come for my mother all I ask is that you take her as quickly and painlessly as possible. If you could take her in her sleep, that would be even better because I don't want her to be afraid." Over the holidays, we made several trips to the emergency room and a couple of weeks of hospital stay. When they released her from the hospital the last week of January, 2017, they told me they were going to send her home on hospice care. Every day she was home after that I'd hug her, I'd sing to her and took extra special care to let her know how much I loved her. At 11:53 P.M. on February 7, 2017, my mother drew her last breath. She'd been sedated so she would sleep through the night but around 11:30, the night nurse woke me up to let me know she was breathing her last. If she had passed 7 minutes later, she would have died on my 56th birthday. At the moment she passed, I felt death leave my home. My husband had seen it and I had felt it. When she passed, the heavy depressing, sad feeling seemed instantly lifted."

Theoreo wrote in 2014, "I am psychic, I see people on the other side, I have lived past lives. I remember them all, especially the years leading up to my death or how I died. So here I am, I have had a lot of crazy things happen to me lately. Has anyone ever seen the Grim Reaper before? Because I have on multiple occasions before someone dies. The first time it happened was years ago, just before my cousin died. I saw the Grim Reaper standing in my grandparents bedroom, he woke me up during the night and there he stood. A dark cloaked figure, in the corner of the room. He held what I believed was a scythe in his hand and since I was young I buried under the sheets to hide. I swore the room temperature dropped and then after a few minutes of rocking under the sheets I looked up to see the Grim Reaper to be gone. It repeated over the years in several episodes where he would come see me and someone would die. One such episode happened in September of this year when I was at this play. I felt the chills and I looked to my right to see the Grim Reaper standing over a man. I was at the end of the aisle and this man was sitting in the aisle across from me. The man went into a seizure and the Grim Reaper looked up at me and brought his dark finger up to his lips or face if it were there as if saying "hush." People around me began screaming and rushing to help the man who had gone into a seizure. I was frozen stiff because I was horrified, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Anyways the man was unconscious from what I believe after his seizure, but after the mans spasming stopped the Grim Reaper or whatever the hell he was vanished. And paramedics took the man away. Now I feel like the progression has gotten worse, I can now sense when death is close for someone. I have predicted before and both had happened in this past year."

Is the Grim Reaper just an escort who takes the departed from this world to the next or does this figure bring death? Are these legends and myths merely a way that people have tried to comfort themselves when it comes to death? Or could some of these entities be real? We guess none of us will really know for sure what will greet us on the other side. The answer to that question is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 403 - Butterworth Building

Our sponsors for this episode are Best Fiends, a mobile game you can download for free on the App Store or Google Play, and HelloFresh, go to http://HelloFresh.com/bump14 and enter code bump14 for 14 free meals, plus free shipping!

Moment in Oddity - The Devil of Scott County (Suggested by: The haunted Scott County Jail in Tennessee)

The town of Helenwood got its name from a tragedy. In 1935, the town suffered a horrific explosion and the townspeople referred to it as "Hell in the woods" and that name stuck and became Helenwood. This name seems oddly appropriate since the Devil came to Helenwood and Scott County in the 1920s. Cruis Sexton was a resident of Scott County who had recently come back from China. He had been fascinated by the statues he saw in China and decided to build his own. He found some clay near an abandoned coal mine and he started building a demon-like statue that was taller than any man and very detailed with horns, the muscles were outlined and there was a chain from an arm to a leg. Sexton's mother soon found out what he was doing and after the man moved the statue to a relatives house, word started to spread that the Devil was in Helenwood. So many people wanted to see the Devil that Sexton and his relative set the statue in a massive coffin and took it to the railroad station. People came from all around the country to see it. They paid 25 cents for a 20-minute view. Some people fainted at the sight of the creature. The Devil eventually ended up getting sold to the World's Fair. The Devil of Scott County certainly was odd!

This Month in History - Washington Lays Capitol Cornerstone

In the month of September, on the 18th, in 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone for the Capitol. The United States had no official capital building as a new country and members of Congress had met in eight different cities. Washington probably had no idea that the building would take a century to build and that he would feature in the center of the dome rotunda with Constantino Brumidi's The Apotheosis of Washington. This is a weird and highly symbolic artistic rendering of Washington rising to the heavens in glory surrounded by the gods of mythology. The dome was made from cast iron. The original design was created by Scotsman William Thornton, but a series of project managers and architects would work on the capitol through the decades. Some people may not realize that the Capitol's dome is meant to serve as the womb to the Washington Monument's phallic symbol and that it was inspired by the way the Vatican is set up. The cornerstone laying ceremony was headed by the Masons of which Washington was a member and he wore full Masonic regalia. Many people probably also do not know that the building was going to be called the Congress House, but Thomas Jefferson insisted on calling it the Capitol after the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Capitoline Hill, one of the seven hills of Rome. That's why you sometimes hear the Capitol referred to as the Temple of Democracy. And now all state's have a capitol too.

Butterworth Building

The Butterworth Building in Seattle, Washington is home to Kells Irish Restaurant & Pub. This building had once been home to a mortuary and the man who built and ran that is credited with creating the terms mortuary and mortician. Nearly all of Seattle's dead at that time passed through the doors here and with that many dead bodies, there is little surprise that this building has many ghost stories connected to it. Join us as we explore the history and hauntings of the Butterworth Building!

The Butterworth Building is uniquely designed because it is on a hill. The part of the building on First Avenue has three stories while the side on Post Alley has five stories. To us, the building almost looks like it is squeezed between two other large and taller buildings. The building is close enough to Pikes Place Market that it is included in that historic district. There is a great history here for us HGB people. We love our cemeteries and mortuaries. And this building was specifically built to be a mortuary. How lovely is that? Edgar Ray Butterworth had the building made and he was the first mortician and this guy is going to be fascinating to talk about because he never meant to be an undertaker.

E. R. Butterworth was born in the Boston suburbs in 1847 and as a teenager worked as a hatter there. Then he studied law. With that start, no one would think he would end up as a cattleman in Kansas, but that is what happened. While in Kansas, he met up with a settler whose wife and newborn baby had just died. The settler needed to make a coffin, but there was no lumber around. Butterworth tore wood off of his own wagon and fashioned a coffin for the man. In 1881, Edgar moved on to Washington and found that this was not a place for cattle, so he built a steam-powered flour mill. He and his family, which consisted of his second wife - the first died in childbirth - and a son, moved to Centralia, Washington. Butterworth started a furniture shop and got involved with politics serving as mayor and then in the state legislature. Then an epidemic of black diphtheria hit and Butterworth was called into action with building coffins and his life as an undertaker was under way.   

Seattle had a problem with bodies piling up from mining accidents, epidemics of diphtheria, tuberculosis and Spanish Flu, crime and poor sanitation. The situation was so dire that bodies would regularly just appear on the streets of Seattle and the city issued a standing offer to any undertakers that they would be paid $50 for each body they took off the street. Call this a morbid community clean-up program. Butterworth had relocated to Seattle and he saw a real opportunity here because he already been offering coffins through his furniture business. He purchased a controlling interest in the Cross & Co. Undertakers that was located in the Masonic Temple on the northeast corner of Second Avenue and Pike street and had five of his sons join him in business. These would be Gilbert Butterworth and his half-brothers Charles Norwood Butterworth, Frederick Ray Butterworth, Harry Edgar Butterworth, and Benjamin Kent Butterworth. Butterworth named the business E. R. Butterworth & Sons. There are claims that Butterworth would pocket half of the $50 for every body brought to his mortuary, if a regular citizen brought the body in and there are even claims that there was some kind of undertaker race that the Butterworths took part in as they tried to be the first to get to all the dead bodies. Descendants say that any claims of corruption are just wrong.

Butterworth decided he needed to build a bigger location specifically made to handle the dead, so in 1903 he hired English architect John Graham. Graham's firm would go on to build the Space Needle. For this project, he designed a five-story building with a chapel that could hold up to 200 people, a casket showroom, a crematorium, a columbarium and the very first elevator on the West Coast. It took eight design changes before Butterworth saw what would become his perfect palace of death that he would later dub a mortuary. The building was built in the Beaux Arts architectural style of the era and featured four sculpted lion heads on the facade and the inside had lavish embellishments of bronze, mahogany, brass, stained glass, Flemish oak and Victorian filigree. The bottom floor held the horses and hearses and was level with Post Alley, so that the moving of bodies was discreet. The heating plant for the building was located here too. The first floor was above the grade of Post Alley, but still below the First Avenue grade and this had what they called the "stock room." There were fireproof vaults here for storing bodies. This was the first time Seattle had a place to properly store the dead while families made decisions about what they wanted to do as a memorial for their family member. 

The main floor faced First Avenue and had the chapel complete with a choir balcony, an embalming room, morgues, private offices and a storage room with flourish items like pedestals, canopies and laying-out beds. There was a private room for clergy and family to meet as well. A best show room featured the high end caskets that could cost as much as $890, which was pretty expensive for that time. The upper floor had three flats for employees to live in and right below them was the main showroom. On this floor, there were women's burial garments, a consulting room, a showroom for child coffins and a private reception. The variety in burial clothing and coffins revealed that this was a mortuary for everyone in the city, whether they were poor or rich. And Butterworth & Sons was the main mortuary for everyone in the city. Some of the bodies that came through here reputedly belonged to victims of Doctor Linda Hazzard who we covered on our episode about Starvation Heights. She starved her patients to death. There is a scandal connected here because Butterworth cremated the emaciated body of Claire Williamson quickly and presented a different body at the funeral. The mortuary had also picked up the body without a license and one of the employees plead guilty to that charge. The Butterworths were never charged with any wrong doing, but people in town did whisper and despite E.R.'s protests, papers claimed they were friends with Hazzard.

The Butterworths revolutionized the funeral business and introduced many of the rites that we still carry on today. Funeral packages included transporting of the body via a hearse service; washing, embalming and dressing the body; publishing death notices; providing flowers; a choir and musicians; burial permits and an air-sealed vault. Everybody in town seemed to love the Butterworths and there were always plenty of handshakes and pats on the back when they walked the streets. They were a part of the elite class of Seattle, members of the Masonic order and regulars at the Arctic Club, which was a cognac-sipping and cigar-smoking salon where the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was planned. This club is today a DoubleTree Hotel by Hilton, but it still features the walrus head carvings that decorate the outside. And wouldn't you know, this place is supposedly haunted. The Arctic Club was started by two men who made their fortunes during the Yukon Gold Rush. This would become a club where adventurers traveling to and from Alaska could stop in to drink and share their stories. Later, the offices of congressman Marion Zioncheck would be here and this guy was quite the character, given to outrageous antics and even some mental health breakdowns, the last of which led to him leaping to his death from the fifth floor. His spirit is said to haunt the building now. People feel cold spots, hear a disembodied male voice and disembodied footsteps. And the elevator can be erratic and likes to stop on the fifth floor even when nobody has pushed that button. Some people even claim to see the residual body of Zioncheck on the street.

Gilbert and Frederick would continue on in the business after the passing of their father and several of their own sons joined them in the business. The Butterworth Building would lose its death anchor in 1923 though, when the business moved to a different building on Melrose. This had more room. The former chapel at the mortuary hosted the second funeral of Bruce Lee and would go on to become the Chapel Bar and then The Pine Box Bar. This location is apparently haunted by to ghosts: an angry older man and a little girl. White Noise Paranormal investigated in 2013 and they caught an EVP of a little girl asking, "We're asleep?" and a whispered, "Go home." And they heard an audible "no." A chain mechanism that was installed in the basement was attached with a screw that takes 47 turns to get it to come free and one night the staff heard it crash to the floor. They have no idea how it came undone, but when they counted to see how many turns it took to release they were blown away wondering how a ghost managed to do that.

The Butterworth Building now no longer was a mortuary and ownership gets a bit murky. Unfortunately, much of the interior was lost over time. On the first floor where the old chapel and mortuary office once was, there was a restaurant here for a bit called Cafe Sophie owned by Scott and Sue Craig that lasted until 1997 and then a restaurant called Avenue One owned by Arnie Millan was here from 1997 to 2002 and then a Chinese Restaurant owned by John David Crow called Fire and Ice Lounge, which opened in 2003 and finally the Starlite Lounge was here until 2007. Restaurants had a hard time staying in this space. Patrick McAleese and his sister Karen opened Kells Irish Restaurant and Pub in 1983 in the basement, which has managed to stay here through the decades. The stock room is used as a private banquet room. Word is that this pub holds the city’s largest collection of single malt scotch. Throughout their time here, they have done a lot of renovations which stirred up activity. During one period of renovation, Kells lost their construction permit because construction was going on in the building at 4am. Karen explained that it was just the ghosts and the city responded by taking their permit away for a year.

It is not surprising that a former mortuary has ghost stories. There are at least two spirits in the building according to most employees and patrons. One is a little girl who appears to be eight-years-old with long red hair. She seems to like to play, but this playing usually comes off as pranks. She is most active during the day when there are other kids in the restaurant and she likes Irish music and appears when that is playing. It is believed that she died during the 1918 influenza outbreak. One reason people believe that is because the paranormal activity here seems to ramp up in November and it was during November of 1918 that the flu hit Seattle especially hard. 

The other ghost is thought to be male and has the name Charlie or according to another account we read, Sammy. Charlie seems to be attached to a mirror for Guinness beer. He'll show up in the mirror and then quickly disappear. He is always wearing a derby hat. Some say that you'll see him in the mirror looking right at you and then he'll vanish and then if you look away and then look back again, his visage reappears and this time he will be smiling at you. He can leave the mirror too though because musicians claim he is more active when live music is being played and they have witnessed his dark shadow near the stage.

Sue Craig from Cafe Sophie once saw shoes in a stall in the bathroom that disappeared. Arnie Milan of Avenue One said, "Two wine bottles flying off the rack, narrowly missing a manager’s head. A long-missing vase inexplicably placed on a window table that had just been set; a diner who fled after he was sure he saw an old woman hugging a shawl disappear into a wall." When the Fire and Ice Lounge was here, Crow claims that he watched a hanger straighten itself and then rock like a seesaw on a door handle. The wife of his business partner was in the restaurant late at night and she heard a door shaking. She went to the door and put her hand on the door and it stopped shaking. When she pulled her hand away, it started shaking again. Crow decided to call in a Shaman and the Shaman claimed there were 19 ghosts in the building. The Shaman blessing did little to help. A pastry chef was working at 2am and witnessed a female apparition in an "unearthly white linen dress" float by. A restaurant manager claimed to see the same apparition at a different time. Michelle Mace, a former Fire & Ice manager who worked many late nights, said, "You always feel someone is there and no one is there."

The bartenders at Kells claim to see glasses move across the bar top all on their own and sometimes even slide off, crashing to the floor. Karen McAleese tells a story about a mirror in the bar. They came in to the pub early in the morning and they see the mirror on the floor shattered, but none of the pieces of the mirror had scattered. The mirror was still all together. Karen also said that they were watching security footage one day to see who had gotten into the pub at night. Their camera was motion sensitive and would come on if triggered. It was triggered many times, but they never saw anybody in any of the recorded footage. Karen has seen two full-bodied apparitions. She told the Seattle Times that on All Saint’s Day in 2005 she saw "a tall man who looked like he was part black, with a suit jacket on. He had very thin hands. He walked to the end of the bar and just kind of faded.” And she also saw the little girl. She described her as wearing a red taffeta+ dress carrying a Raggedy Ann type of doll.

A few people have seen hands pressed upon the windows that leave behind dirty hand prints even though there is no person attached to any of this. Mercedes Carraba, had run the Market Ghost Tours and she claimed to have spotted a pair of muddy, dirty hands pressed up in the windows of the First Avenue entrance to the building. Carraba says that area outside of the bar was near a Duwamish burial site and that a 19th-century settler’s graveyard is just a block away and perhaps this spirit is connected to either of those things. The Duwamish were the area's only indigenous tribe. There may be other spirits here though too. After all, how many bodies came through this place? Candles are kept all around a small, ornate whiskey bar in a back corner of the restaurant and they often all light up by themselves. Silverware levitates and a chef who worked at Cafe Sophie claims that he set a knife down on the butcher block and it started spinning around on its own. He took off his apron, threw it on the ground and left, never returning. And the stairs in the back seem to have a lot of activity. People catch orbs and hear disembodied voices. A contractor was once up on a ladder changing a light in the chapel and when he looked down, he witnessed a parade of people walk through the chapel as though it were a funeral procession and then it all just disappeared.

Ghost Adventures investigated the building during Season 4. As happens so often when Zac is interviewing owners, the guys had an experience. Nick Groff was running the camera and he thought he saw a male figure peek out from behind a corner that was down a hallway from where Zac and the owner were standing. They all thought that maybe it was the audio guy until he stepped out from where he was on the other side of a wall, which had no access to where Nick had seen the figure. They captured an EVP that said, "Get off that thing." Zac claimed that some people have seen the ghost of a miner on the upper floor and they used some gold they panned earlier as a trigger object. Nothing really happened with that. Karen joined the guys for an EVP session in the chapel and they captured an EVP that she actually was able to decipher and she thought it said, "Get me outta here."

I watched a video featuring a tour guide who regaled her tour group with a bizarre story. The Fire and Ice Restaurant had signed a seven year lease for the building. They lasted nine months. On their final night of business, something so horrifying happened that the owners ushered the patrons all out of the restaurant while they were still eating and they locked up the doors. People passing by for a time afterward could look in the windows and see the meals still sitting on the tables. Every one, including employees had left the restaurant in a hurry. Mercedes tried to find out what happened and they would not tell her.

Kells looks like a great Irish Pub to hang out at and have a pint and with a great history connected to mortuary history, it's right up our alley. Is the Butterworth Building haunted? That is for you to decide!