In this Halloween special we’re travelling up Indian Arm to visit the Wigwam Inn, one of Metro Vancouver’s most storied old mansions. Built in 1910 by Alvo von Alvensleben as a hotel for the rich, it’s been a brothel, an illegal casino, used to print counterfeit money and now owned by the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. Is it haunted? Of course. The ghost of Martha lives in room 209.
For five years during the 1980s, Linda Berg and her family were the caretakers at the Wigwam Inn at Indian Arm. Linda had heard stories about Martha, the ghost in room 209, but she’s a no-nonsense sort of person, and at first she didn’t pay it any attention. But it wasn’t long before she went from skeptic to believer. And, her daughter Emily, who was only four years old at the time, has never forgotten her own encounters with the ghost.
“Room 209 was right on the corner. There would be a faint light in that window and you would see the dark silhouette of a lady standing in that window,” says Linda. “That seemed to be the epicentre. Things would happen around that room more then anywhere else.”
The family’s ghostly encounters usually happened when they were the only occupants at the Inn.
Where Linda heard loud noises, footsteps and saw the silhouette of a woman in Room 209, Martha appeared to Emily as a woman in a long red dress. She spent time with the little girl, she talked to her, and she helped her put her toys away.
“When I was little, my mum sent me to my room and I remember someone coming along and comforting me and saying ‘oh don’t worry your mum won’t be mad at you if you clean up your toys, everything will be fine. And I do remember her saying she would help me, and she helped me put my things away up on the top shelf.”
Emily says she remembers a woman in her mid to 20s to 30s who wore a long red dress.
“Whoever it was or whatever it is that I remember; she was just really nice and worried that I was crying and thought I was in trouble with my parents,” remembers Emily.
Linda says while most of the activity centred around room 209 there were also strange things going on in the basement. They often heard a noise that sounded like a baby or a Siamese cat and the sound of ice clinking in a glass.
While the ghosts weren’t a bother to the family, Martha certainly terrified some of the visitors to the Inn. Linda says at one point they had two carpenters who were working on renovations. They would stay at the Inn during the week and go home on the weekends. One Friday afternoon, Linda looked out the window as the water taxi from Deep Cove docked at the wharf to pick them up.
“The young guy was hoofing it down the ramp way and across the dock and he leapt into the boat, and I remember thinking you must really want to get home badly,” says Linda. “After a few days, the older fellow came back but the young guy never did. Ever.”
Years later, Linda found out that his name was Ted and he was staying in the room across from 209. Every night things in his room would rattle, the door to his room would open and close and he would feel a presence that would sit down on his bed.
Once when Linda was in town and her husband was staying at the Wigwam Inn alone, he later told her that he had heard running up and down the hallway and lots of banging. “He said he finally ripped open the doorway to the hallway and yelled “for god’s sake Martha knock it off! And she did. It was quiet for a long time after that.”
The family decided to move back to the city in 1990. But it wasn’t the ghosts that scared them away, Linda says she had two kids by then and Emily needed to start school.
In part 11 of the podcast, special guest Greg Mansfield joins us to talk about the ghosts of the Dominion building on West Hastings Street, Vancouver.
Show Notes:
Intro Music: Andreas Schuld ‘Waiting for You’
Intro: Mark Dunn
Special Guest: Greg Mansfield, author of Ghosts of Vancouver
I stayed overnight there, I think it was around 1970. I worked in North Van with both cubs and brownies and we went there overnight. Can’t remember which group we took? It was very run down and dirty. didn’t witness any ghosts.
Nice story, in 1968 I started a job in Hixon at a placer gold mine. The first night I stayed with the Engineer and his wife, and I went to bed early. Just in the twilight zone before sleep, I heard miners with shovels hitting the rocks in the creek, they got onto the porch and opened the spring door, so I got up to see the company. The couple asked why I got up, I explained, and they said I heard the “ghosts of Hixon Creek”, and they said, tell them what you heard in the towns general store, and they confirmed what I heard. I never heard it again, and I was there three months.
Wow! That’s a great story. I wish there was a tour of the Wigwam Inn today.