Haunted Vancouver

Picture this: Oc-tober 31st, midnight. You have just come home after a long night of trick-or-treating. Your vampire make-up is starting to itch. The wind picks up and rustles the curtains of your open window. It is starting to rain. You look out your window at the Vancouver skyline as the mist and the clouds begin to roll in. You remove your cape and sit on your bed in the dark, alone.

In the corner, you see a ball of light. It soon takes the shape of a human figure. You watch it glide across the room and disappear through the wall....

Was it your imagination? Or perhaps it was your over-tired, over worked brain? Or was it real?

Halloween brings with it popular images of black cats and witches, goblins and ghouls, and of course ghosts and haunted houses. Stories that are usually relegated to the campfire are bandied about this time of the year. Here are some of Vancouver's finest ghost stories to help you get in the mood this Halloween.

The Old Spaghetti Factory in Gastown is a bustling, cheerful restaurant, rich in the colourful history of the area, and home to a spiritual inhabitant. "He likes to call your name," says Mike Gonzalez, manager, who has been with the restaurant for ten years and has had many ghostly encounters. Mike describes the experience of being alone in restaurant after closing, and hearing his name echoed throughout the building. "Rather unnerving," Mike says with a grin. "I don't usually stay much longer [in the building] after that."

The building itself was built around the turn of the century and owned by the W.H. Malkin company, famous for their imported teas and coffees. In the thirties, it was renovated for office use, and changed hands many times since, falling into disrepair in the late 60s. In 1970, along with many other buildings in the area, it was refurbished, and opened as a restaurant.

Despite many eerie experiences, Mike Gonzalez does not mind sharing his restaurant with a ghost , "I like it. I think it gives the place more character." He also says that the ghost seems friendly, but perhaps a little shy, "he only seems to show himself to long-time, trusted employees."

The most haunted area of the restaurant seems to be near the old trolley car. The trolley car dates back to the beginning of the century and was donated to the restaurant in 1970. A couple of employees have reported a ghostly figure sitting in the trolley car, and many have had similar experiences as Mike, with the ghost calling their names.

A photograph of the trolley car has also stirred up some controversy. It was taken in the 1950s when the car was unused and supposedly empty. However, a slight, shadowy figure can be seen sitting in the car. Is this a photo of the ghost that haunts the restaurant? The photo still hangs in the Old Spaghetti Factory today.

The ghost is usually heard and felt--rarely is it actually seen. However, Mike shared an experience that happened this summer. "One night after closing, a bunch of us were sitting at a corner table in the lounge. The long wall opposite us is mirrored. I know I saw a shadowy figure cross the room, in the mirror." The men quickly searched the building. No living person was found. No one knows what else might have been there....

The Burnaby Art Gallery has a long and sordid history, the perfect backdrop for a houseful of spooks. The mansion was built in 1909 by Henry Ceperley, a wealthy and powerful insurance and real estate tycoon, and christened "Fairacres". It was designed as a retirement home for himself and his second wife, Grace, who preferred the solitude of her garden. Grace was a sensitive soul who loved children and the quiet peace of her Burnaby mansion. When she died, she left the house to her husband (the mansion was in her name) with the provision that if it was ever sold, the proceeds were to go to a children's playground in Stanley Park.

In 1922, Ceperley sold Fairacres, however, instead of following his late wife's wishes, he kept the money for himself. Many people feel this is the root of the Faiacres haunting.

The huge mansion proved to be too large and expensive for private owners, and within five years, it was sold to the City of Vancouver and was converted into the tuberculosis ward of the Vancouver General Hospital. In the years before the medical advances of anti-tuberculosis drugs, one can only imagine the pain and misery felt in the walls of the Burnaby mansion.

In 1939, the tuberculosis ward was moved and Fairacres became the home of a Benedictine order of monks. The monks lived there happily for fifteen years, and in 1954, were moved to a new abbey in Mission.

It is at this point that the history of Fairacres takes a drastic turn for the worse. The mansion was bought by William Franklin Wolsey, who was wanted throughout the United States on a string of charges for bigamy, extortion and assault. He called himself Archbishop John I, heading a cult known as The Temple of the More Abundant Life. The cult involved bizarre and violent practices ranging from bigamy to incest. It also involved the ritual abuse of many young children in a school setting. Wolsey was allowed to continue these practices until he was exposed in 1960. He then disappeared to the U.S., leaving in his wake an angry public and many unanswered questions.

Fairacres was then bought by Simon Fraser University to be used as a dormitory while the campus locations were being built. They mansion saw many a sit-ins and hootenanny, and the stunning architecture and interiors, now old and in need of repairs, were ignored and abused. During a protest, a bonfire was set on the hardwood floor of the billiard room, and graffiti was spray-painted over the exterior.

The students were eventually evicted, and the city of Burnaby took over the building, opening an art gallery in 1967, in celebration of Canada's centennial. It was during the extensive renovations that the haunting began in earnest.

There were many reports of a woman in a white flowing old- fashioned dress who could walk through walls. The apparition, thought to be Grace Ceperley, always brought about feelings of peace and tranquillity, but also sadness. As well, workmen reported a figure of a man in old-fashioned dress who would stand at the top of the main staircase. At times, the sound of children crying could be heard from the unused third floor. One employee who worked in a second floor office often heard the sound of footsteps and furniture scraping the floor above her head. At first, she gave no thought to the sounds and assumed someone lived on the third floor. It was several months after that she began working at the art gallery that she discovered the third floor was unoccupied.

The third floor is not the only haunted area of the mansion; the basement seems to have a mischievous ghost of its own. An employee named Lagasse was working late one night, alone, in the basement, removing painting from their frames with a hammer and screwdriver. Every time he would set his tools down and turn his back, he would find his tools hung up on the wall several feet away. When he left the room to place the frames in storage, he returned to find the room locked, the padlock on the door swinging to and fro, as if someone had just left it.

Joanne Christensen, in her book Ghost Stories of British Columbia, raises an interesting point regarding the haunting of the Burnaby Art Gallery. She states, "Could the unhappiness of the abused youngsters have drawn back the spirit of Grace Ceperly, a woman who loved children? Or perhaps unaware of their desperation, Grace simply walks the halls of her beloved home to protest the disregard of her last will and testament."

Today, no one can disregard the fact that something is very, very wrong with the spirit of Fairacres mansion.

The Met Hotel and restaurant on Columbia street in New Westminister is one of the oldest buildings in greater Vancouver, having survived the great fire in 1886, which leveled most of New West. It is a lovely, gracious building and the owners are proud to share it with a distinguished pair of ghosts. The manager of the hotel describes the couple as wearing old-fashioned clothes and appearing all in white, surrounded by light. She says she is always filled with a "peaceful, wonderful feeling" whenever she sees them. They seem to frequent the fourth floor and more often seen, by staff and guests alike, near the elevator, chattering away to themselves.

An employee of the restaurant also talked of a spectre, George, named after a long-time resident who died in the building. He appears as a normal man who possesses the supernatural talent of walking through walls and floating down halls. She also told the story of a workman, who was working late into the night on renovations, who saw strange, inexplicable flashes of light coming from the room in which George's body was found.

Who was George, and why does he haunt his former home? Is he related, in any way, to the well-to-do couple on the fourth floor? No one knows, but the managers of the building are certainly pleased with their three supernatural guests.

The Keg across form the New Westminster Station is the place to visit if you want to be served a delicious steak, and a ghost story or two. Originally, the old CPR train station, the Keg boasts an extensive menu and a haunted basement. Staff members refuse to go to the basement alone, and more than one young waiter has had bizarre experiences. Reminiscent of the Old Spaghetti Factory's haunting, one staff member heard his name called, even though he knew he was alone in the basement. Other staff claim the basement has an evil, malevolent atmosphere. One young waitress said with a grim smile, "I don't believe in ghosts, but there's no way I'd go to the basement alone. There's something down there."

No city is complete without its urban folklore, and a classic story of a Vancouver haunting has its beginnings in the early part of the century. It was, typically, a dark and rainy night, and a Chinese railroad worker was walking along the track near Water Street in Gastown, carrying a lantern. In a hurry to get home to warmth and shelter, he tripped and fell, catching his leg in a rail. Injured, he lay on a track, no one answering his screams for help; and when a train came along, he was decapitated. The legend says that his lantern can be seen, along with his disembodied head on nights when the moon is full, and the mists of time reveal his tragedy.

Vancouver has an extremely rich oral history and documentation of ghost stories, surprising for a city whose origin dates back only a few years more than a century. This leads me to question whether these stories are merely the product of the imaginations of a the colourful people who make up this city, or are then founded on something more-- something tangible, something real?

Some expert ghost-hunters have developed a theory that ghosts thrive in wet conditions, hence the beginning of many a folk tale "It was a dark and stormy night...." Their research has posited that ghosts use hydro-kinetic energy, similar to the way we produce hydroelectricity, to strengthen the effect they have on our world.

When I began my research, I expected to have trouble finding rational people's personal experiences, and I assumed I would have to rely on urban folklore, retelling predictable combinations of well-known stories. However, after my first day 'in the field', I discovered that nearly everyone I talked to had a story to tell me, or knew someone who did. The vast number of experiences that I eventually collected, in fact, led me to doubt their validity. Surely not everyone, in today's world of "what you see is what you get," believes in "superstitious nonsense"?

However, when I explored the stories on a deeper level , and considered the people to whom I spoke (most being pragmatic business people), I could not dismiss their experiences so lightly. I believe their stories, and I believe they all experienced things beyond our understanding. Whether or not these stories prove the existence of ghosts is up to you to decide.

I've never seen a ghost. During the daylight, when I'm surrounded by friends, I can say I would like to see one. But at midnight, when I'm all alone, and it is raining and especially if it is Halloween, when I hear footsteps coming down the hall, coming nearer, I'm not so sure....

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