Phantom noises, spectral visitors haunt buildings

Come Saturday little ghouls and goblins will roam the streets, but ghosts hangout on the West Shore year-round.

Phantom footsteps down empty halls, shuffling noises coming from an empty attic and loud bangs and crashes are common occurrences at the Coast Collective art centre in Colwood.

It has been about a year since the collective moved into the Pendray House at Esquimalt Lagoon, in Colwood.

“We don’t know who the ghost is, but we are thinking it’s Mrs. Pendray,” said Terri Rodstrom, director of the Cost Collective gift shop. “I’ve always felt the ghost was a ‘she.’”

Large banging noises are common in the building, the sounds are similar to that of a painting falling off a wall, Rodstrom said.

While no paintings have been knocked over Rodstrom said it’s common for all of the hanging paintings to be a skew.

“It used to freak me out,” said Zara Lau, associate member of the collective. “But I am getting used to it.”

While the Coast Collective has been sharing space with perhaps one ghost, Four Mile Pub in View Royal has a gang of paranormal visitors.

“I’ve seen quite a few ‘people’ in the building,” said pub owner Wendy Haymes. “I’ve seen a few children’s ghosts too.”

Staff commonly hear noises similar to a teaspoon tapping on a tea cup, a quiet voice calling out, or a brief image of someone sitting at an empty table, she said.

A couple of years ago two young dishwashers were working the night shift and saw a customer sitting at a table.

Once they alerted a server, the man was gone, Haymes said. The spooked dishwashers never returned to work, claiming the mystery customer was a ghost.

It is not uncommon for a middle-aged man wearing a bowler hat to appear at a table. Once he’s noticed he’ll disappear, but leave his chair askew, Haymes said.

During renovations, shortly after purchasing the building in 1980, Haymes was removing lath and plaster from a wall. She was nine-months pregnant and feeling the financial pressures of starting up a business, she recalled.

“I used to talk to the ghosts and that day I said ‘OK guys show me this is all worth it,’” she said.

Then on a piece of carpet she had just vacuumed appeared a shiny 1867 American nickel. “That five-cent piece was my validation,” Haymes said.

While many people consider ghost stories to be nonsense, Royal Roads University claims to have proof of its supernatural occurrences.

After decades of ghost stories and unexplained occurrences at the Hatley Castle, the B.C. Society of Paranormal Investigation and Research into the Supernatural (B.C. Spirits) conducted a one-night investigation in September 2006.

In their finding the group of psychics and occult experts left the castle with an image of a disembodied head in the foyer in the castle and an audio recording of a spirit voice saying, “there’s a psychic in here.”

“It seems some of the original residents have not departed,” said Stephanie Slater, RRU community relations director.

The castle is more than 100 years old and was built by James Dunsmuir.

A tale that’s been circulating for years is that the Dunsmuir’s maid supposedly committed suicide by throwing herself out of a third-floor bedroom window, Slater said.

During the B.C. Spirits investigation, a psychic heard the voice of man in the maid’s former room saying “It’s an accident, it’s an accident,” Slater said adding the psychic said the man was lying.

During the early 1940s when the castle was used for military purposes, ghosts often disturbed the cadets when they were sleeping.

“One night a cadet awoke to the woman trying to pull him out of bed,” Slater said. “It is believed (Laura Dunsmuir) was looking for her son.”

“I think there are a lot of things we don’t understand yet, and paranormal activity is one of them. Every castle is supposed to have a ghost and we have at least one.”

—With files from Edward HiIl