Haunted Canada 4 Read online

  For Charles, Bronwen and all the kids who believe, who want to believe and who will soon begin to believe …

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Horror Cinema Verité

  Rotting in a Cage

  Red Eyes in the Night

  The Hanged Man

  The Tombs of Hell

  Rebecca’s Concrete Grave

  The Family That Haunts Together

  Hospital of the Dead

  Duel to the Death

  The Mob Princess

  The Man in Grey

  The Show Must Go On and On and On

  The Shadow in Your Bedroom

  Haunted Nightmares

  Dead-Eyed Dolls

  The Bloody Battlefield

  Ghost Town Tunnels

  A Ghostly Alma Mater

  Fed Into the Furnace

  Dining with the Dead

  Where Horror and Hockey Share a Home

  The Boy in the Basement

  The Lady in Blue

  The Haunted Hotel

  The Hangman’s Knot

  The Water Ghost

  Dead and Buried, But Not Gone

  Valley of the Headless Men

  Epilogue

  Also Available

  About the Author

  Photo Credits

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  Do you believe in ghosts? If so, welcome. Take a seat and prepare yourself for a night you’ll never forget. A night of morbid curiosities, bloody murders and spirits from beyond the grave. A night of chills and thrills and goosebumps. A night of very little sleep.

  If you don’t believe in ghosts, give it time. Read a page or two. Ask yourself how it’s possible that so many reputable and educated people have claimed to see spirits if they don’t exist. How do so many ghost stories, reported by different people who have never met, match each other identically?

  These reports pop up from coast to coast and in every corner of the country. Whether you live in British Columbia, Nunavut, Newfoundland and Labrador or any point in between, chances are there’s a house around the corner from your own home that’s haunted by spirits who simply can’t rest in peace. And it’s not only haunted houses you’ll read about, either. No, ghosts have taken up permanent residence in hotels, hospitals, churches, the woods and even schools … Nowhere is safe.

  Do I believe in ghosts? You better believe I do.

  Read the stories that follow and I bet you’ll begin to believe too.

  One word of warning before you begin: if it’s already late and the witching hour approaches, you might want to wait until morning before reading any further.

  Frightfully Yours,

  HORROR CINEMA VERITÉ

  Coquitlam, British Columbia

  The sound of footsteps on the second floor when you’re alone in the house, an unfinished basement’s locked trap door rattling on its hinges, a ghastly wail in the middle of the night — if you’re a fan of scary movies, you’re familiar with these cinematic clichés. Maybe you don’t even jump when a shrieking cat leaps out of a dark corner, or when someone — or something — passes in front of the camera, unseen by the clueless characters on screen.

  But for one actor with a small role in a horror movie filmed in an abandoned mental hospital, the biggest scares happened off-camera, and they weren’t special effects. They were all too real. Riverview Hospital is home to a host of evil spirits that have plagued film crews working in the building for years. One of those spirits is particularly vicious. It has razor-sharp teeth, a wicked bite and can run incredibly fast on all fours. Big dogs can be terrifying, but coming face to face with a dead dog? The horror movie actor will tell you that’s much, much worse.

  To understand where the negative energy within the abandoned mental hospital comes from, we need to go back to its beginning. In 1904 the province of British Columbia had a problem. The Provincial Asylum for the Insane in New Westminster was seriously overcrowded. With more than three hundred patients, children were forced to live side by side with potentially dangerous psychiatric patients. Reports started to surface of inadequate care, terrible hygiene and horrendous living conditions. A new, bigger building was needed, and it was needed right away.

  The province purchased one thousand acres of land in 1904 and, in 1913, the Hospital for the Mind (later called Riverview Hospital) opened its doors in Coquitlam. It was considered to be on the cutting edge of psychiatric hospitals, but it wasn’t long before the cracks started to appear — figuratively and literally. Electroshock therapy was used in an attempt to cure patients of their “insanity,” as well as the highly controversial psychosurgery, or lobotomy, wherein a small piece of the brain is surgically removed. By 1951 there were nearly five thousand patients in Riverview Hospital, and serious overcrowding was once again a major concern.

  The problem slowly corrected itself as the medical field shifted from favouring large mental hospitals to smaller buildings with fewer patients, and the population of Riverview gradually dwindled. In July 2012 it closed its doors for good.

  Over the years the foreboding grandeur and general creepiness of the old buildings have made Riverview a beacon for film production companies. Many horror movies and television shows have been filmed in Riverview’s dusty halls, making it the most filmed location in Canada.

  But with such a powerful and long history of grief and pain etched into the hospital’s walls, the scariest events have sometimes happened after the cameras stopped rolling.

  Film crews working through the night have reported seeing former patients and staff suddenly appear and disappear. People have been shoved by unseen forces. The tunnels in the basement are said to be so full of negative energy that it’s nearly impossible to enter them.

  In 2004 an actor named Caz, quite possibly bored and most certainly brave, spent his nights exploring Riverview when he wasn’t needed on set. The horror movie was being filmed in the West Lawn Building, which had been closed for more than twenty years.

  In the infamous basement tunnels, he felt like he was being watched and sensed a bad presence. However, it was the fourth floor that turned Caz into a firm believer in ghosts.

  It was after midnight. Caz stood alone at the end of a hallway that ran the length of the building. It was pitch-black other than the dim red light from an EXIT sign. He waited, rooted to the ground because he sensed … something.

  Suddenly a dog charged at him from the far end of the hall. It was impossibly fast. And as it neared him, Caz noticed the beast was transparent. It lunged at him but, just before its teeth tore into his legs, the dog disappeared.

  Caz didn’t believe his own eyes, so he returned two more nights to see what would happen. Each night the phantom dog charged him, and each night it disappeared moments before knocking him down. Perhaps the phantom dog is charged with protecting the “Lady Bug Room,” the fourth floor room where the majority of Riverview’s paranormal activity takes place. The room received its unusual nickname in part because of the unexplained red dots, believed to be spirits, that often appear near the room in photographs.

  The Lady Bug Room is odd, to say the least. Its door is the only one on the fourth floor that’s locked. It’s also the only door without a doorknob, making it impossible to enter. Finally, it’s the only room in an otherwise uninhabited and powerless building with light streaming through the crack beneath the door.

  What’s inside the Lady Bug Room? No one really knows, but it’s rumoured that an evil presence known as “The Candy Lady” dwells within. One thing known is that the fourth floor was at one time where the lobotomies were performed.

  Caz couldn’t resist the morbid d
esire to see what was in the Lady Bug Room. He returned one night and peered in through the keyhole. He pressed his ear against the door. He slowed his breathing and strained to hear something, anything. The hall became unnaturally quiet. And then he heard it, the sound from within the locked room in the abandoned mental hospital that sent him running as fast as his legs could carry him.

  The sound of someone breathing.

  The West Lawn Building, Riverview Hospital

  Horror movies don’t hold a candle to the real-life horrors found at the end of darkened hallways, in musty tunnels and behind locked doors.

  ROTTING IN A CAGE

  Lévis, Quebec

  “There is scarcely any woman in all of Canadian history who has a worse reputation than Marie-Josephte Corriveau.” So reads the opening sentence of Corriveau’s entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. In life, Marie-Josephte Corriveau was a beautiful woman, but in death she became something vile and heinous, a sickening reminder to the people of Lévis to obey the letter of the law.

  Born in Saint-Vallier, Quebec, in 1733, she married her first husband, a farmer named Charles Bouchard, at the young age of sixteen. They had three children and remained together for eleven years despite whispered rumours that theirs was not a happy, peaceful union. The townsfolk believed that Charles was mean and abusive to his young wife. Marie-Josephte was miserable, and many thought she might be better off on her own. Nevertheless, no one suspected the woman of any wrongdoing when Charles was found dead in 1760, nor did it seem strange that Marie-Josephte should remarry a mere fifteen months later. The times were tough and she had to put the well-being of her children first, assuring they’d have a roof over their heads and food to eat.

  She married another farmer, Louis Etienne Dodier. All seemed well at first, but it wasn’t long before cracks began to appear in their relationship and it would soon come to a deadly end. A mere year and a half after the wedding, Louis was found dead in his own stable. Marie-Josephte argued that their horse must have kicked and trampled her new husband — his head was caved in and his face covered in lacerations — but the locals were no longer so trusting of the young woman. An inquiry was launched by the British military authorities who had recently conquered New France. It was quickly ruled that the horse played no part in Louis’s death.

  It was well known that Marie-Josephte’s father, Joseph, did not approve of his daughter’s second marriage and was on bad terms with Louis. The military tribunal found him guilty of the homicide and sentenced him to hang, while Marie-Josephte was found to be an accomplice and sentenced to sixty lashes and to be branded with the letter M on her hand.

  Neither punishment was carried out. On the eve of his execution, Joseph finally admitted that he had wanted to protect his daughter from the hangman’s noose and therefore hadn’t proclaimed his own innocence, but in reality he had played no part in Louis’s death. The guilt, he confessed with a heavy heart, lay entirely upon his daughter’s shoulders.

  A second trial began and Marie-Josephte testified to striking her husband twice on the head with an axe while he slept. She then dragged his body from the house to the horse stable to make the murder look like an accident. No one knows why she decided at this time to admit the truth. Perhaps her guilty conscience was too much to bear. Perhaps, like many serial killers, she craved attention. But with the admission of guilt came new speculation about the mysterious and sudden death of her first husband. And her legend has grown over the years to falsely claim she had as many as seven husbands, all of whom she murdered in gruesome fashions such as poisoning, strangulation and impalement with a pitchfork. It’s even been said she boiled one of her husbands alive.

  The charges against Joseph Corriveau were dropped and Marie-Josephte was sentenced to hang for her crimes. But that punishment alone would not be satisfactory for such an evil and treacherous person who some were now coming to believe was a sorceress with dark powers. After hanging, her corpse was ordered to be placed in an iron cage in the shape of a human body and strung up for public display.

  The terrible act was carried out in 1763. Her cadaver was hung in the cage at a busy crossroads in the woods that would later become known as La Corriveau Forest. The cage — body and all — was left swaying in the wind for thirty-eight days to serve as a warning. Her skin blackened and peeled away from her bones. Her hair fell out, and animals picked at her flesh. The stench was atrocious. But as her body withered away, so did the belief that Marie-Josephte could no longer harm the living.

  The eerie sounds of grinding metal and clattering bones kept most late-night travellers from venturing near the cursed intersection. Those who weren’t superstitious or easily spooked, and passed the swaying cage, arrived at their destinations with pale faces and stories of the rotting body that had opened its eyes, lunged for them with decaying hands and whispered their name with a guttural voice. With every passing day, the stories grew wilder and more frightening. Marie-Josephte’s body was finally moved to a nearby cemetery, but no one was brave enough to free it. Cage and Corriveau were buried together.

  The townsfolk had hoped that’d be the last they’d hear of Marie-Josephte, but they were dead wrong. Not long after she had been buried, an upstanding young man named François Dubé was travelling home to his wife. When he passed the tree where the cage used to hang, he saw an odd vision across the river. Demonic figures danced wildly around the crackling flames of a blue fire. Just as François turned to flee, a pair of bony, slimy hands clutched his throat from behind and held him in place.

  “Take me across the river, Dubé,” the rotting corpse of Marie-Josephte hissed in his ear. “I cannot pass the blessed waters of the Saint Lawrence unless a Christian man carries me.”

  François fell to the ground as he tried to free himself from Marie-Josephte’s supernaturally strong grasp. As he pulled at her arms, her maggot-ridden flesh ripped off her bones and wriggled in his hands. François finally succumbed to extreme fright and fainted in a heap on the side of the road. His wife found him there the next morning, nearly paralyzed with fear but thankful to still be alive.

  Reports of the ghost of Marie-Josephte rising from her grave to torment passersby in La Corriveau Forest still creep up today. Those who remember her tale — and it’s nearly impossible to forget — are wise to get off the roads, out of the woods and into the safety of their homes long before nightfall in the city of Lévis.

  The cage that held Marie-Josephte Corriveau’s body

  RED EYES IN THE NIGHT

  Roche Percée, Saskatchewan

  Some ghosts are peaceful, others are mean-spirited. But regardless of their disposition, most seem unable to do much physical harm to the living. That couldn’t be further from the truth when it comes to the rugeroos that haunt the abandoned Roche Percée mines. According to Native legends that date back hundreds of years, rugeroos are spirits with red eyes that cut through the dark. They are monstrously huge and can appear as a mix of man and animal, most commonly the coyote. And they guard their territory fiercely, attacking anyone who dares to venture too close.

  Roche Percée is a small village southeast of the city of Estevan. Translated from French its name means “pierced rock,” which is how the First Nations peoples who have camped in the area for many years describe the odd geological formation. The village grew in the 1880s when people discovered coal, which was dug out of the ground and transported to Winnipeg. The first large-scale coal mine was established in 1891. Within a few years there were dozens of mines in operation, and Roche Percée was a bustling community of miners and fortune-seekers. But by the 1950s most of the coal-mining companies had left, and in 2011 a massive flood forced many of the remaining residents to abandon their homes, leaving behind a ghost town of damaged buildings and empty mines.

  The pierced rock also remains, a massive landmark of sandstone that juts up from the ground like a giant, bony hand from a grave. The wind blowing through its many holes, tunnels and crevices creates an eerie screech that
has long been revered and feared by all who hear it. Those who are brave enough to enter the tunnels have felt compelled to inscribe their names on the rock walls, including General Custer and his famed U.S. 7th Cavalry in the 1800s.

  Postcard of Roche Percée dated 1917

  Rugeroo sightings have been reported by tourists and locals for as long as Roche Percée has existed. The only sound they make is a low, menacing growl. And, if their target doesn’t flee immediately, they attack. Those who are wise enough to retreat are followed by the spirit’s disembodied red eyes through the woods far from the rugeroo’s territory.

  Reports of these spirits have varied, but each description is as terrifying as the last. Courtney Chistensen was once stalked by a rugeroo. It was a fat, furry creature, taller than a deer, part wolf and part bear. Jan Drummond described a rugeroo that was spotted walking on the roof of a school. It had the head and antlers of a deer and the legs of a man. Everyone swore that seeing it was a bad omen.

  So if the sight of a giant half-man, half-beast ghost with glowing red eyes wasn’t enough to send you running, now you know that it’s also a bad omen — just in case you might’ve otherwise decided to stick around when a rugeroo confronts you in the woods.

  THE HANGED MAN

  Bridgetown, Nova Scotia

  “The Prettiest Little Town in Nova Scotia” — that’s the unofficial motto of Bridgetown (population 949), which was incorporated in 1897. Victorian houses line the streets, the small-town shops are huddled close together and people greet each other warmly on every street corner. An annual triathlon in the summer and a cider festival in the fall draw happy crowds. It’s quiet and peaceful, and that’s exactly how the townsfolk like it.

  But then the townsfolk aren’t the ones spending their evenings at the Stem ta Stern Bed and Breakfast. They aren’t the ones who have discovered Bridgetown nights can be anything but quiet and peaceful. They aren’t the ones huddled under their bedsheets, listening to the hollow rat-a-tat-tat of bony fingers upon their windows.