Ghosts

When Sharilyn Kuehnel worked at Opus Art Supplies on the ground floor of the Dominion Building, she had a couple of ghostly encounters. The store had occupied what was once a bank. The manager’s former office had been repurposed into the store’s community classroom, while the bank’s vault became the inventory room.

When the Grays bought the house on Heritage Lane in Saanich in 1990, they didn’t know that it came with a few ghosts.  

Ryan Cameron has worked with Vancouver Fire and Rescue for the past 27 years. During that time, he’s had his fair share of burning buildings, calls to accidents, and of course, firehall hauntings. Firehall No. 19 You can find Firehall No. 19 at 12th Avenue and Trimble Street in Vancouver’s West Point Grey. The original… Continue reading The Ghost of Vancouver Firehall No. 19

Jose Lee and her sister bought a house on Vancouver’s Glen Drive in 1984. For a time they shared the house with the previous tenant who had died some years before. This is an excerpt from a story in Sensational Vancouver. When Jose Lee bought her house in 1984, she said it had the most… Continue reading The Ghosts of Glen Drive

  Earlier this month, St. John Alexander invited me to hang out at Overlynn, a Burnaby mansion for a CTV news Halloween segment. I spent an amazing Saturday with St. John, Greg Mansfield and Amanda Quill—two experienced ghost hunters. Listen to Cold Case Canada podcast Episode 34 Charles Peter: As the history geek in the… Continue reading Overlynn: Burnaby’s most haunted mansion

As Chef Jean-Francois Dube discovered in 1999, North Vancouver’s Pacific Starlight Dinner train was haunted In 1997, I was the Vancouver Correspondent for Marketing Magazine and one of a few dozen media invited along to launch BC Rail’s Pacific Starlight Dinner Train. It was a fantastic night, beginning with a musical send-off from the old… Continue reading The Ghost Train

Irving House was built in 1865 in New Westminster by Captain John Irving. He died in 1872, but never really left.  This is an excerpt from my book  At Home with History: The Secrets of Greater Vancouver’s Heritage Homes. Irving House is built in the Gothic Revival style and overlooks the Fraser River on what’s… Continue reading Irving House: A Gothic Ghost Story

The Fireside Grill is situated on a ley line that runs down West Saanich Road, through Wilkinson Road, toward the Four Mile House—a reputedly haunted inn—to the Portage Inlet and Esquimalt Harbour. This story is an excerpt from Sensational Victoria. Tim Petropoulos, co-owner of the Fireside Grill since 2000, is a self-described skeptic when it… Continue reading The Ghosts of the Fireside Grill

A little before 10:00 am on October 3, 1975, David Samson, an inspector with the Canadian Grain Commission, was walking down the tracks to the Burrard Terminals when he saw a few of the workers he knew moving quickly away from the grain elevators. The full story is in Vancouver Exposed: Searching for the City’s… Continue reading The Grain Elevators, a Fire and a Ghost Story:

There’s a female ghost who haunts Salmagundi. She hangs out downstairs and begs the odd customer to look through old photos, find one of her and take it home. Once a customer told owner Anne Banner that a ghost wanted her to take an antique doll out of a birdcage. Anne, who has never experienced… Continue reading Vancouver’s Salmagundi West

Happy Halloween. And, in honour of my favourite non-holiday, here’s a completely true ghost story from the pages of Sensational Vancouver. When Jennifer, Patrick, Graham, 6 and Angus, 3 moved into their home, they didn’t realize they’d be sharing it with strangers. But to Jennifer, an interior designer, it soon because obvious they were not… Continue reading The North Vancouver Ghost

Now a Cold Case Canada Podcast: Halloween Special – Three Ghost Stories and a Murder  For over six decades a large white house stood at the corner of Williams Street North and Portage Avenue in Chilliwack. The stately old manor had a three-storey tower with a turret topped off by a witch’s hat roof, and… Continue reading The Chilliwack Hostess with the Ghostess

This totally true ghost story took place in the West End’s Mole Hill. The full story, and those of other haunted houses appeared in Sensational Vancouver Mole Hill: In the 1960s, the City of Vancouver started buying up a mixture of Queen Anne and Edwardian houses along Comox Street in the West End, intending to… Continue reading The Ghosts of Mole Hill

Ghosts are said to be attracted to houses where there is a lot of activity. For Jim, a carpenter, and Lou, a massive renovation of their Queen Anne home on Townsend Place, in New Westminster, seems to have awoken them. Townsend Place: Whatever the reason, for a few years the old house was haunted. Jim… Continue reading The Ghosts of Townsend Place

The Victoria Heritage Foundation lists over 150 buiildings on its heritage inventory for James Bay. Some day back to the 1860s.