HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
An 1893 Ogden mansion, longtime home of David and Bertha Eccles, now a public art center where a former caretaker is said to linger
2580 Jefferson Avenue, Ogden, UT 84401
Research updated September 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission to the galleries and historic house during open hours.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Historic two-story house with galleries and a sculpture garden; ground-floor access.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1893 · National Register of Historic Places · Eccles Family Residence · Victorian Architecture · Ogden Historic Home
The house at 2580 Jefferson Avenue was completed in 1893 for James Clarence Armstrong, an Ogden businessman, in the Victorian style typical of the city's prosperous east-bench neighborhoods.
In 1896 the property was purchased by David and Bertha Eccles. David Eccles was among the most prominent industrialists in Utah, and the family occupied the house for roughly fifty years. The home and its grounds reflect the scale of an Ogden merchant family's residence at the turn of the twentieth century.
The building was later listed on the National Register of Historic Places and converted to civic use. It now operates as the Eccles Community Art Center, run by a local nonprofit, with rotating gallery exhibitions and a sculpture garden on the grounds.
The center is open free to the public on weekdays and Saturday. The combination of an intact historic interior and an active arts program is what keeps the house in regular public use, and it is in that ordinary working setting that the building's ghost story is told.
Sources
The Eccles mansion's ghost tradition centers on a figure local storytellers call 'Miss Hardy,' described as a former caretaker of the household who is said to have stayed on after death.
The most repeated detail is small and domestic: a full glass set on the piano that is found moved or emptied with no one near it. The story circulates in Weber State University's student newspaper, The Signpost, as part of its survey of Ogden urban legends, and is repeated in Ogden's local tourism material.
The accounts are modest by haunted-house standards—footsteps in unoccupied rooms, the sense of being watched while alone in the galleries, objects that seem to shift. There is no documented tragic event behind the legend; it reads as the kind of caretaker-stays-behind story that attaches itself to a much-loved old building still in daily public use.
The art center does not market the ghost as an attraction. Visitors who come for the exhibitions simply encounter the story as part of the house's local reputation.
Notable Entities
The art center occupies the restored Eccles mansion and is open free to the public on weekdays and Saturday. Visitors can walk the galleries and the historic rooms; the building's history as the Eccles family home is part of the draw. There is no staged paranormal program—the ghost story is local folklore attached to a working art center.
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