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 alone. “We really had some very unusual experiences when we first moved in,” she says.
“We even contacted the previous owners to ask if they’d had any strange experiences and they said ‘no, no, no, there was nothing, it’s fine we never had anything unusual happen’.”
It was obviously a memory lapse because things did happen.
And they weren’t easy to explain. The boys each had their own room on the main floor of the house.
“It made me a little anxious because they had always slept above us in the previous house,” says Jennifer. “I was hyperaware of listening for them. There was one morning, it was very early, around 4:30 am and I could hear running in the hallway downstairs. I jumped out of bed and came downstairs and both the boys were fast asleep. The next day at the same time, I found my youngest outside on the driveway. There’s no way he could have unlocked the door. The next day he woke up, came upstairs and said, ‘I can’t sleep downstairs anymore because the boy and the girl are keeping me awake all night’.”
And other strange things happened.
Jennifer had taken photos of the house when it first went up for sale. She says when they went back some time later to look at the photos, they could see a little face gazing out from the window that was now Angus’s room.
“All of those things were unusual, but they could have explanations other than there was a ghost in the house; but at the time, there were a lot of things,” she says. “Doors were opening and closing—never when I could see them, but I could always hear them.”
Four years before they bought the house, North Shore News reporter Dorothy Foster interviewed the owner at the time. She told Foster that she was working in the garden one day when a former owner drove up and told her that she had shared the house with two ‘entities’. One she described as a lovely young woman and the other ghostly figure as an angry old man.
The current owner told Foster that she didn’t think much about the story until a friend came to visit, but refused to come inside because she had a strange feeling about the house. One day after the owner insisted she come in for a cup of tea, she came out of the kitchen to see her friend bolt out of the house, jump into her car and drive off. Later she told her that she’d seen a vision of a pretty young woman dressed in black in the living room, and was confronted by the apparition of an angry old man on the stairs.
Jennifer wasn’t able to find any explanation for her ghosts when she researched past owners, but she’s sure that it was two children. After a few months everything stopped and she figures that the move disturbed the presence somehow. “It was all kind of bizarre.”
For more ghostly stories check out these podcast episodes:
S1 E9 Three Ghost Stories and a Murder
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2 comments on “The North Vancouver Ghost”
I grew up two houses away from this house in the 1980’s and 1990’s. None of these reports surprise me at all. It was an absolutely beautiful home, but had an underlying eerie feeling to it. Even as a very small child and unaware of the concept of ghosts or spirits I felt uneasy in the home. Later, the kids who lived in the home would later talk about the ‘ghosts’ and we would usually incorporate this theme into our play. There was a lot of fun playing in the house, however I never liked being alone at anyone time in the house. I certainly felt some very cold energy while alone in the house at times in certain places. The footsteps in the ground floor hallway is something I do remember and doors opening and closing as well. The staircase leading up to the upstairs as well. People still live in this beautiful home with there family and is a testament to coexistence with the ‘paranormal.’ However, there is no empirical evidence that these things do exist. I can only rely on my experience that is all. As kids, it certainly made for good fun play on cold rainy days and when I think back on my childhood this old house was a part of some good memories. Happy Halloween!
Fascinating! Thanks so much for adding to the story. Can’t say I believe in ghosts, but can’t say I don’t either…..