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| Beloved pack of freaks. |
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| The dangers of creating monsters for a living.... |
This year I've been lucky enough to land a job doing special fx make-up for the Kube 93 Haunt down in Georgetown. It's been great fun, creating horrifying monsters, unfortunate mental patients who have suffered terrible accidents, surgeons who have gone round the bend and transforming beautiful people into malformed freaks of nature.
The actual haunt is too scary for yours truly to even walk through alone....even without any actors in it! This veritable House of Horrors includes all manner of creepy characters to scare the life out of you!
I highly recommend this place for a good scare this Halloween...come on down and see my handiwork, we are located in the Georgetown Morgue, which for those of you who don't know, is a real morgue from the 1920s that now houses our lovely haunt, and doubles as a metal concert venue, with a rather disturbing history...
The current building has undergone
major renovations since it was first called Kolling Mortuary Services of
Seattle in 1928. At that time the three-story facility was used to
process and prepare the deceased for funerals. In
1939, Charles and Henry Broughton bought the mortuary and the name
changed to Broughton Brothers Funeral Services. By 1943, they had built a
crematorium that prepared about 100 bodies a day. Along with the
crematory, two 110-foot smoke stacks were also added to the extended
facilities.
Charles and his wife lived in the brick home connected to
the mortuary. During the Broughton Brothers’ ownership, a series of horrific events occurred. Supposedly,
in 1947, jazz trumpeter John “Figgy” Dorsey’s body was reported missing
from the embalming table at the Broughton Brothers Mortuary. The dead
man was found the next morning on Mrs. Dorsey’s front lawn at her home
in Ballard — dismembered. She sent the body parts back to Broughton
Brothers so they could piece him back together for his funeral, but the
explanation as to who committed this horrific act, and why, is still
unknown. Figgy Dorsey was also a shady figure. There were two jazz
musicians named Dorsey, a Jimmy and a Tommy, but no Figgy.
But
the story gets stranger. A tragic incident occurred April 29, 1965,
involving one of the Broughton brothers, Charles. A “strong, rolling
earthquake rocked the Pacific Northwest at 8:29” in the morning,
according to The Seattle Times. At the time, University of Washington
seismologists gave the earthquake a magnitude of eight or nine on the
Mercalli Scale of 12. While most businesses only had minimal damage, one
of the towers of the mortuary caved and destroyed the west wing of the
building, killing Charles.
While
death is natural at a mortuary, it seemed to haunt the Broughton
Brothers Funeral Services. There are no live witnesses or any captured
suspects to tell of the events of Oct. 25, 1968. On that night, all nine
employees of the morgue were having a business meeting when maybe two
or three, probably armed, men came in and bound every Broughton
Brothers’ employee, according to the Historic Morgue Society (Strangely
enough, the main page of that site is currently defunct). The employees
were supposedly forced in the crematorium and all burned alive.
Even
now, this gruesome crime is still unsolved and seems to be dead and
buried, so much so that there is no record of it. However, there were
rumors that the Broughton brothers knew where all the bodies were buried
— you could say, in more ways than one — and were involved in a bit of
dirty business. But nothing was proven or charged. The aged brick walls of the home, mossy dilapidated roof and windows
covered up by wooden panes are the only hints of the morgue’s shady
past. Supposedly, Charles’ wife continued to live there after his death
until she committed suicide in 1979.
So come on down, don't be shy. Here are the hours and dates we are open. We are open for the rest of the month. Happy Halloween, more pics to come soon! ^_^
