Image via Shutterstock Jeff Whyte
Have you ever wondered about the things that go bump in the night? Perhaps you even have a tale of spooky spectres or something strange you couldn’t explain. Whether you’re a believer or not, Edmonton has its fair share of ghost stories. And we’ve rounded up the most haunted spots in the city.
Edmonton Ghost Tours has been scaring Edmontonians for the last 20 years with chilling Canadian tales of the macabre, and we spoke to resident specialist Nadine Bailey, host of the Tours as well as the Haunted Canada Podcast.
Bailey tells Curiocity how she “knocked on the doors of the businesses in Old Strathcona” at the beginning to get first-hand accounts.
“Everyone was just so lovely, and so supportive, and told me their ghost stories, and then that’s sort of how the first tour started.”
Since then, Edmonton Ghost Tours has kept growing, with 6 different tours available around the city. So we asked Bailey if she could tell us about the 5 most haunted public places in Edmonton – and she did not disappoint!
The historic Waterdale Theatre is an iconic landmark with a hidden past.
“The theatre itself is steeped in history and goes back to when Strathcona was originally being built up as its own town,” says Bailey.
But as you might guess from its exterior, this place was not always a theatre. It originally served as a fire hall and home to Strathcona’s first volunteer fire department in the early 1800s. The bunkhouse was located on the second floor, the same place that later became the theatre’s makeup and dressing room.
Sometimes, when actors are preparing for a performance, “their large cases containing that makeup will suddenly just slide from one side of the counter to the other.” But that’s not all. “Items, props, will disappear only to reappear just moments later.”
It is believed that these strange happenings are caused by the ghost of Walter, a fireman who worked, slept, and passed away in the second-floor bunkhouse back in 1919.
Bailey told us, “One of the most strange and eeriest stories that I actually tell on my tour, was told to me by a friend of mine who was actually performing at a show at the theatre.”
This friend was getting ready for an opening night performance in the second-floor dressing room. The final touch was a platinum blonde wig that had been sitting on her makeup table all afternoon. She turned away to put on her costume, and when she turned back for the wig – it had vanished.
“Now with only one hour to showtime, a frantic search began within the theatre” with every actor and staff member searching for the missing wig. Five minutes to showtime, the wig was found on center stage, and no one knows how it got there.
It’s a story that’s still told among actors and staff. And they’re all convinced that “the ghost of Walter is still wandering throughout the theatre.”
The Strathcona Hotel hails from a different time. Built back in 1891, it’s a very historical building that’s amassed its fair share of spooky tales. But this one takes the cake.
Bailey says that former staff members told her about a female apparition “dripping in blood, wandering throughout the second and third floor of the hotel.” Even more chilling, she appears to be missing her head.
“The story of the woman looking for her head actually goes back to a murder that happened in the 1980s,” says Bailey.
A man brought a woman back to his hotel for an evening, but things took a sinister turn and he ended up murdering her in his room. He stayed with her body for 3 days in a panic, before deciding to chop her up, put the pieces into different suitcases, and throw them all into the North Saskatchewan River.
It wasn’t long before he was caught and jailed for his crime. While most of the woman’s body was recovered… one piece is still missing.
The old building caught fire many years ago and has since been extensively renovated. But staff still report seeing the ghost of a woman, dripping in blood, and wondering morosely “Where is my head?”
If you’ve ever been to Fort Edmonton Park, you may have noticed a small, nondescript home open to the public. What you may not know, is that many believe it’s haunted.
“The Firkins house has had many strange things happen over the years,” Bailey tells us.
While the records are a little murky, it looks like the home was built sometime between 1911 and 1912, and donated to Fort Edmonton Park later in 1992. While no one knows the names of the spectres that inhabit those walls, “they believe that it’s the spirit of a woman that roams the house to this day.”
Bailey has been told by park staff that “they’ll often hear strange noises in the house. Doors opening and closing.” Or even more unnerving, the sound of footsteps on the second level. However each time they go up to check, ”there’s nobody upstairs.”
Others have reported catching glimpses of someone out of the corner of their eye in the kitchen or dining room. But of course when they turn to look, there’s nothing there.
We may not know who it is wandering the halls, but everyone who’s ever worked there has a story. It’s enough to give you chills.
The historic Fairmont Hotel MacDonald was originally opened back in 1915. Being such an old building, it has many ghostly tales. “But a lot of the stories go back to when the hotel was originally being constructed,” Bailey tells us.
The hotel was built back in a time when horses were used to pull equipment up the riverbank to the work site. The sad part is that many “were literally worked to death.”
“Animals, when they died at the worksite, they were usually buried where they died.” Such is the case for 2 workhorses that perished on the site where the future basement was built.
To this day, hotel staff will report strange sounds and smells throughout the hotel. Like the clip-clopping of hooves on the tile floor, the smell of horses, or echoes of neighing in the halls.
Perhaps those same horses are still hard at work so many years later.
In the heart of Old Strathcona, in Edmonton’s oldest theatre, you’ll find the tragic tale of a Woman in White.
“This is a story that I originally unearthed over 20 years ago, ” Bailey says.
Back in 1915, The Princess Theatre opened its doors and quickly rose to acclaim as one of the grandest theatres of its time. But there’s more to the story.
“It’s always been a theatre,” says Bailey. “But the second and third floors have sometimes been used as an office space or as a rooming house.”
Here begins the tragic story of Sarah Anne, a woman who came to Edmonton alone in 1916 and rented one of the rooms on the theatre’s third floor. Not long after her arrival, “she found herself in somewhat of a predicament.” She was pregnant but unmarried, and this was not the time in history to be an unwed mother.
At first, it seemed like everything was going to be alright. The father said he would marry her, and Sarah happily got herself a simple white dress made for the big day.
“But three days before the wedding was going to take place,” Bailey says, “the fiancé called off the whole wedding, hopped on the first train, and left town.”
Poor Sarah Anne was devastated. So she went back to her room on the third floor of the Princess Theatre, put on her white wedding dress, and hung herself.
Up until the day the theatre closed down, staff would claim to see “the apparition of a woman in white hovering above the projection room, walking around the lobby, and up and down the side staircase.”
At least now she has the place to herself.
If that gave you the creeps, you can get a whole lot more by checking out one of Nadine Bailey’s local Ghost Tours. The Old Strathcona Ghost Tour will even take you to a few of the spots mentioned here.
Now the only question is: are you brave enough?
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