Aerial survey · USDA NAIP · public domainAn 1897 Longmont mortuary where the old body-chute is still visible and a hunchbacked apparition appeared to cleaning staff in 2013
519 4th Ave, Longmont, CO 80501
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Building interior is commercial space; exterior viewable from public street at no cost
Access
Wheelchair OK
Flat downtown sidewalk access; building exterior on level ground
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1897 · Late 19th-century Longmont commercial development · Historic mortuary infrastructure · Longmont haunted history corridor
The building at 519 4th Avenue in Longmont was constructed in 1897 during the town's commercial expansion along what would become a central business corridor. Its first occupant was the Milo G. Rice Undertaking firm, which operated a full-service mortuary including a basement preparation area. Bodies were lowered into the basement through a chute set into the sidewalk at street level — a standard undertaking infrastructure of the period — which has since been permanently sealed with concrete.
The structure changed hands and uses over the 20th century, eventually becoming the Ed Jones Building. The mortuary's basement persists structurally beneath the current commercial space. Longmont's tourism documentation notes the building's undertaking history as part of the city's broader dark tourism corridor along Main Street and its adjacent avenues.
Paranormal investigator Richard Estep, author of the Arcadia/History Press book Haunted Longmont, researched the building and recorded elevated electromagnetic readings along the western interior wall during his investigation. Estep's work has been cited by Longmont's official tourism materials as substantiating the building's haunted reputation.
Sources
The most specific paranormal account associated with the Ed Jones Building comes from 2013, when a member of the cleaning staff reported seeing the apparition of a hunchbacked woman staring out through a window from inside the building. The building was locked and the alarm was active at the time, and no one was found inside when the space was checked. The account is documented in Longmont's tourism materials.
Richard Estep investigated the property while researching Haunted Longmont, his book on the city's paranormal history published through Arcadia/History Press. During his investigation, Estep recorded elevated electromagnetic field readings concentrated along the western interior wall of the building — a pattern he noted as anomalous compared to baseline readings elsewhere in the structure.
The building's mortuary past provides the most obvious context for the reports: the basement preparation room, the sealed body chute, and the physical residue of years of undertaking work create the kind of setting that generates persistent paranormal association in American folk tradition. Whether that history is causal or merely atmospheric is a question the documentation does not resolve.
Notable Entities
The Ed Jones Building is a Longmont haunted history stop accessible from the public sidewalk. The building's exterior retains its late-19th-century commercial facade; the concreted-over street-level chute used to lower bodies into the basement mortuary is no longer visible but is noted in historical documentation.
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