public

Heavily Investigated

They built the Butterworth Building to handle the dead — and the dead, it seems, never quite left. Kells Irish Pub occupies the basement where embalming once took place, and staff swear the building still knows it. Glasses shatter without hands touching them, mirrors crack, and cold spots bloom in the middle of a crowded room. Most often spotted: a red-haired girl, darting up the stairs and vanishing into the storeroom — mischievous, unhurried, utterly unbothered by the century between her world and yours.

The Butterworth Building, erected in 1903 by E.R. Butterworth, was Seattle's first purpose-built mortuary — constructed because the city needed one badly. Diphtheria, tuberculosis, mining disasters, and waterfront violence kept the intake brisk for nearly two decades. Butterworth & Sons closed in 1922; the building turned over to other tenants. In 1983, the McAleese family opened Kells Irish Pub in the basement — the former embalming room — and reportedly learned the building's history only after the guests started asking why their drinks kept moving.