We aren’t as experienced as Sam and Dean Winchester of Supernatural, and we don’t own a 1967 Chevy Impala named Baby, but we still know a thing or two about the supernatural!
As it just so happens, Alberta is home to some of the most haunted places in Canada.
So if you are looking to follow in tire tracks of everyone’s favourite supernatural hunting brothers this spooky season, here are a few stops to check out. Just remember to bring salt, silver, and an extra pair of pants!
The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel
BANFF – Need a place to rest your head after a long day on the road? Why not live in luxury at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel? You might need to sleep with one eye open though, especially if you stay in room 873.
For better or worse, Banff is regarded as a tourism icon in Alberta and you don’t become a tourism icon without hotels. The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is one such hotel, but it is famous for more than just room service and hand towels.
The famous hotel was born from the idea of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s General Manager William Van Horne, who wanted to build a grand hotel in the Rockies to encourage travel along the railway.
When it opened to the public in 1888, the hotel saw immediate popularity. It attracted the attention of King George VI of the United Kingdom and Queen Elizabeth, who visited the hotel during their Royal Tour of Canada in 1939.
In addition to kings and queens, celebrities like Marylin Monroe and New York Yankees outfielder Joe DiMaggio have stayed at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel.
The eleven-story hotel features over 740 guest rooms, several event spaces, dining rooms, a grand ballroom, a terrace garden, and a spa.
All sorts of people stay at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, but not everyone checks out. Rumour has it that a murder-suicide involving a family took place in room 873 of the hotel.
Driven to madness or possessed by something sinister, the father murdered his wife and daughter before taking his own life. Eager to bury the grim incident, the murder was cleaned up and room 873 was reopened to guests.
However, the incident didn’t want to stay buried. It wasn’t long before guests staying in room 873 started reporting disturbances. From bloody handprints to dreams of being choked, the reports were endless.
Eventually, the hotel sealed and covered the room. People walk past room 873 every day without knowing of the horrors that took place behind what is now a wall.
Is room 873 really haunted? Some people have their doubts. You would be hard-pressed to find anything about a murder-suicide at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel.
Room 873 is still technically accessible. According to the hotel, room 873 was merged with room 875 to create a large suite, which is verified by the floor plan.
If you want to know if room 873 is really haunted, why not book a stay in room 875? The best sleep of your life could be your last!
The Gibbard Block
EDMONTON – After driving for miles, you might have worked up an appetite, so why not stop at Fox Burger? There isn’t anything particularly scary about Fox Burger; It’s your standard restaurant.
However, the restaurant is part of the Gibbard Block, a historic landmark in the Highlands that has homed several offices and local eateries over the years.
The Gibbard Block was developed by the Magrath-Holgate Company. The company’s plan was to build a business and apartment block that would attract retail and working-class people into the area.
One of the development’s financiers was William Thomas Gibbard, a furniture merchant from Napanee, Ontario. Gibbard footed a third of the expected $30,000 price tag on the condition that he would receive naming rights.
Construction of the Gibbard Block started in 1912 and before long, the block was welcoming retail tenants like Belleview Meat Market and Highlands Cash Grocery. The block’s success was short-lived.
The Gibbard Block’s development is estimated to have cost three times as much as originally planned. The Magrath-Holgate Company eventually pulled out of the development and Gibbard died in 1920.
Their interests in the Gibbard Block were foreclosed on in 1926. Afterward, the block was passed through the hands of many different owners.
Like many historic landmarks, Gibbard Block is packed with stories, one of which involves a grisly murder. During the Great Depression, the building’s caretaker was jealous of his wife for reasons unknown.
His jealousy drove him to allegedly murder her in their third-floor bedroom. After killing his wife, he dragged her lifeless body down several stairs to the basement. Thump, thump, thump.
The building’s caretaker proceeded to dismember his wife’s body before feeding the pieces to the basement’s coal-fired boiler. Employees noticed bone fragments in the boiler, eventually leading to an investigation and a murder conviction.
Similar to the murder-suicide at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, there are no news releases or official police reports related to the murder at the Gibbard Block.
Former employees have reported several supernatural occurrences like flickering lights, ominous shadows, and the distinct sound of the caretaker’s wife being dragged down the stairs.
The Gibbard Block’s haunted past might have you second-guessing your visit to Fox Burger, but we promise there’s nothing shady happening here! As far as we know.
The Johnston House
DRUMHELLER – Digging up the past is nothing new for Drumheller, Canada’s Dinosaur Capital of the World, but if scary movies have taught us anything, it’s that old bones should stay buried.
However, not all ghosts are hellbent on your demise. Some are actually quite friendly and like the attention! Enter the ghosts of the Johnston House.
The haunted house was originally built in 1885 by Dr. Robert Johnston. Most sources claim his last name was Johnson, but the current owner of the home refer to him as Johnston, so let’s go with that.
When he wasn’t saving lives, Dr. Johnston enjoyed hunting, a hobby that led to his unfortunate death. While packing his rifle for a hunting trip, the rifle discharged and killed him.
Dr. Johnston was a loving father to his daughter Marjorie. A few years after his death, Marjorie passed away at 14 years old. The deceased family continues to live together in the Johnston house alongside its current owner, Justin Bolin.
“There really isn’t anything scary in the home, it’s very friendly and they never really try to frighten you,” said Bolin.
Bolin’s first encounter with the Johnston family happened shortly after he moved in. He was lying on the sofa in the living room when he heard the leather of the chair behind him stretch as if someone or something had taken a seat.
Can you guess what he saw when he turned around? Nothing. Bolin isn’t the only one to have experienced the paranormal. His family, friends, and previous owners all recount paranormal experiences.
If you aren’t convinced, you can always explore the house yourself! Bolin and his paranormal team offer tours through the Victorian-era home that are about two hours in length.
Bolin starts the tour by explaining some of the paranormal experiences people have had in the past. Some of these experiences include distant voices, the energy detected under the upstairs bed, and Dr. Johnston playing with the hair of guests in the living room near his safe.
He also talks about the tools he uses for paranormal investigations, the home’s history, and what life might have been like for the family. Dr. Johnston and Marjorie haven’t made any complaints, so it’s safe to say Bolin is doing a good job!
Tours are available for $40 and can be arranged on Bolin’s official Facebook page. Group rates are available for groups of four or more. Tours are held on Friday and Saturday nights.
Bolin’s tour has received rave reviews on Facebook, with some guests claiming the tour is worth the money for the history alone, but you aren’t here for a history lesson, are you? Many guests claim to have experienced the paranormal firsthand.
“We all had experiences, alone and together…We even heard disembodied noises in a room nobody was in. Too many experiences to share them all, but it was nice meeting ‘all’ the residents. Thanks for a very cool night!” wrote guest Colleen Bergh-Brooks in her review.
It’s not every day you get to interact with ghosts, let alone friendly ghosts, so what are you waiting for?
The Galt Museum
LETHBRIDGE – When it comes to bone-chilling museums, it doesn’t get much scarier than House of 1000 Corpses, but the Galt Museum comes close.
During the day, the Galt Museum is just like any other. The museum’s archives contain a diverse collection of over 17,000 artifacts and more than one million archival documents and photographs.
However, the Galt Museum wasn’t always a museum. The historic museum was once a hospital, or rather, part of one. The museum was originally located in the former Bowman Elementary School but quickly outgrew the space.
In need of a larger space, the newly renovated Galt Hospital presented the perfect opportunity. A red brick building was added to the original 1891 Galt Hospital in 1910.
The new buildings served as a hospital with wards, operating rooms, a morgue, and administrative offices until 1955. Once the building was no longer needed for long-term care, it was turned over to the Lethbridge Health Unit.
The Lethbridge Health Unit used the main floor of the new building while the Galt Museum made itself comfortable on the second floor and in the basement.
Hospitals have a reputation for being some of the most haunted places in the world, and for good reason. Doctors can’t save everyone, and many deceased patients are believed to still inhabit the Galt Hospital and Galt Museum to this day.
One of these ghosts is George Bailey, a man who died at the hospital in 1933 while being wheeled to the operating room for a routine appendectomy. Bailey was still half asleep from the anesthesia, giving him little to no control over his body.
Everything was going smoothly until Bailey arrived at the elevator. Staff had pushed him halfway onto the elevator when it started to rise with the doors still open.
The front legs of the gurney Bailey was on got caught on the elevator, leaving Bailey dangling above the elevator shaft before eventually dropping him head first onto the basement floor.
Bailey wasn’t given a swift death. He survived the plummet and was actually standing when staff arrived. Bailey passed away the next day from head injuries.
Today, people have reported feeling a presence lurking in the hospital, accompanied by the sound of shuffling feet and blasts of cold air. Bailey isn’t the only resident inhabiting the Galt Hospital and Galt Museum.
More recently, there have been reports of quiet chattering and the laughter of children in the upper level of the museum where the nursery and children’s sections of the hospital used to be.
One night, a man was studying late at the museum. As he was leaving, he suddenly had the urge to turn around, almost as if he had no control over himself.
When he turned around, he saw a young girl waving goodbye to him from the window of the room he was just in. An Indigenous elder working after hours at the museum reported a similar experience.
He recalls seeing Indigenous children waving to him from a window. He assumed the children belonged to an Indigenous cleaning lady, only to discover that the museum never employed someone fitting the profile he described.
Lost Lemon Mine
CROWSNEST PASS – the area is a gold mine for not just gold, but ghost stories, too. One of the more popular stories is that of Lost Lemon Mine.
Back in the 1870s, many men from the United States came to the Rockies for a chance to get rich during the gold rush. Two of these men were Frank Lemon and Blackjack.
While panning for gold somewhere between Crowsnest Pass and Highwood River, the pair saw shimmers of gold. They followed the gold upstream and discovered a legendary gold deposit.
Without the right tools for the job, Lemon and Blackjack decided to call it a night and return the next day, but Blackjack never woke up. Lemon allegedly murdered him in his sleep.
Overcome by guilt or madness, Lemon fled to the United States and confessed his crimes to a priest before moving to Texas, where he eventually passed away. In 1872, the priest assembled a team to search for the gold ridge.
The priest hired a man named John McDougall to lead the expedition. McDougall found the gold mine with ease, along with Blackjack’s remains. Word spread of his success and McDougall was hired once again to locate the mine.
The mining party that hired him waited at Crowsnest Lake for McDougall, who had business at Fort Benton in Montana. McDougall stopped for a few drinks at Fort Kipp on his way to meet up with the mining party.
He ended up drinking himself to death on rotgut pseudo-whiskey, taking the secrets of the mine with him. Since then, many have tried to find the mine themselves with no success.
However, McDougall wasn’t the only one who knew of the mine’s location. On the night of Blackjack’s murder, there were two witnesses. One of these witnesses was a Stoney Indigenous man named William Bendow.
Bendow was sworn to secrecy by his chief who feared a gold rush on Stoney land. Bendow broke his promise during the winter of 1912 when he agreed to lead a party to the mine.
During the expedition, Bendow mysteriously died. On the night of their return, Bendow’s son-in-law died in the same way. Is Lost Lemon Mine protected by a curse? There’s only one way to find out!
If you’re lucky, you might find a gold mine worth a fortune. Just don’t tell anyone about it or you could end up like Bendow.
Countless haunted places are scattered across Alberta, so you will need to hit the road if you want to see them all! What better time for a supernatural road trip than Halloween?
These recommendations only scratch the surface of our province’s horrifying history. If you have been to any of these places before, maybe you have a paranormal story of your own to share.
