British Columbia Ghost stories file 1
We received the following report in May 2014, however the incident described occurred 3 years prior at approx 6:20am
“I was on the sky train heading downtown one morning, this was a few years ago now, and I had been on the sky train from King George station for about twenty minutes. There were lots of people on the train and there were some seats still available. We were between stations when I heard in a very deliberately audible whisper from a woman say “I saved a seat for you.”
I looked around me very briefly but didn’t spend much energy on that because there really was no point to doing so. No one was near me to say that, everybody was as they should be or as most people normally are, which is in their own little bubble. It didn’t even make sense, which is what struck me most. I had been seated since I got on the train and didn’t need anyone to save a seat for me.
I asked my buddy who was across the isle from me, we worked together, if he had heard someone say “I saved a seat for you”, to which he responded ‘no’. I shrugged it off and my friend didn’t ask, so… anyway, ahem, a few minutes later, I heard it again, exactly as I had the first time. Still made no sense, LOL and still there was no one around me to say that in the way I had heard it.
Quickly I asked by buddy if he had heard it that time, to which he replied, “Uh oh, someone’s going koo koo.” or something to that affect, then he laughed at me.
Anyway, I am 46 now and that was a few years ago. I don’t think I had a one time random schizophrenic experience at the age of 43. Never even had anything even slightly odd to report. I am a huge sceptic and it still makes me wonder about my sanity. No one else heard it.
Now, a couple of weeks ago I had another strange occurrence, I was hit with three gusts of wind while sitting on my couch in my front room. There were people in front of me and to my side and , well the gusts just didn’t add up. No windows were open and it really wouldn’t have mattered because my front door would have had to have been wide open and even then ‘three’ separated and rapid gusts, just not really possible. Is there such a thing as a schizophrenic gusting experience????
The sky train does pass by a grave yard not far from the station where I heard the voice. I also live about a hundred feet from a grave yard.”
2- Vintage North Burnaby Haunting
We received the following account in November 2013, however the events described below happened more than two decades ago. These experiences obviously affected the experiment in profound ways, and continued on after the initial haunting.
“From the evening I moved into the building, and I went to bed I felt I wasn’t alone. The air was stagnant and I smelt sweet red roses. I saw a fluorescent question mark in my head with someone else’s feelings and thoughts…very weird! This happened every night, but was not scary. One early evening me and my friend found a drinking glass that had the rim sliced off and placed over it on the counter. One morning a spoon and a plant were thrown in an arcing fashion into another room. 6 months later I called the UBC psychic society and they helped me to pass this “elderly woman” I had sensed over. She literally passed through me (very beautiful) and she was fine. She has since come back to me on 2 other occasions within 4 years!
I think she was stuck and I helped her to move on. I think she may have died in the apartment. She has come back to me with what I would say are gifts of information and my friend has also experienced this.”
Webmasters note: Strong scents such as the witness describes with “sweet red roses” can accompany reports of hauntings, and is something I have personally experienced.
3-Surrey Town Home Apparition
“I was driving into my townhouse complex, there was a woman with long flowing dark hair standing behind the gate at the end of the entrance driveway. She was wearing colourful, flowing clothing. I quickly looked away because I was startled, when I looked back it (she) was gone. I am quite sensitive to this type of presence; I prayed in the sometime after and no longer feel a presence in the area.”
4-Highway Apparitions
“We were driving heading to Vancouver and we stopped in Lilooet to let my dog out to go to the bathroom, grab some snacks etc… As we were pulling out the sun had just set over the mountain so it was starting to get dark, we saw 2 grown men dressed as boy scouts, one carrying a guitar case and one with a suitcase, they were hitchhikers. I took note and pointed it out to my mom, we laughed it off as it was really weird. So we kept driving then all the sudden about half way between Lilooet and Pemberton we see them again, NO one had passed us. My dog was on my lap and she seemed un-easy, both me and my mom got very spooked but we tried to brush it off, until again we had passed through Pemberton and were just on the outskirts of Whistler and there they were again.. NO one had passed us. This was the last time we saw them but they were the exact same men, and my dog was super uneasy by this point.”
5-Highway Apparitions
“We were driving heading to Vancouver and we stopped in Lilooet to let my dog out to go to the bathroom, grab some snacks etc… As we were pulling out the sun had just set over the mountain so it was starting to get dark, we saw 2 grown men dressed as boy scouts, one carrying a guitar case and one with a suitcase, they were hitchhikers. I took note and pointed it out to my mom, we laughed it off as it was really weird. So we kept driving then all the sudden about half way between Lilooet and Pemberton we see them again, NO one had passed us. My dog was on my lap and she seemed un-easy, both me and my mom got very spooked but we tried to brush it off, until again we had passed through Pemberton and were just on the outskirts of Whistler and there they were again.. NO one had passed us. This was the last time we saw them but they were the exact same men, and my dog was super uneasy by this point.”
The following report was received in July 2011. Our thanks go out to the witness for sharing these experiences with us. Hopefully others who have experienced or are currently experiencing similar things can take comfort in knowing they are not alone.
“I have had a number or experiences in this house. We moved in here in 1997. The house is located in a suburban neighbourhood in Surrey and built in 1972. A few months after moving in I had a strange experience. I was home with my 10-month old son when I heard an unusual crying sound. I went to check on my son, but the noise was not coming from him. The sound was quite loud and moved up the stairs from the basement, through the kitchen, and out the back door to the deck. Nothing was visible. My cat, however, became afraid of the deck for the next few days. I haven’t heard that sound again, but I have heard other sounds.
The scariest is a voice heard coming up through the heat vents. It sounds like a child. One time I heard sobbing in the middle of the night but at that time I had tenants in the basement so I could not be sure of the cause, though it certainly didn’t sound “normal”.
Visually, there have been a couple of incidents. The first was when I fell asleep on my couch watching TV at night and when I woke up there was smoke in an area of the room. I thought the house was on fire and was about to wake up everyone, but the smoke soon started to dissolve. The second incident happened recently, in May. I had come into the entrance area and was taking off my shoes when I saw what I thought was my daughter start walking down the stairs. I wanted to ask her the time, as my husband was picking me up for an appointment, so I called her name to ask her. She didn’t answer, so I called again louder. She would have been standing only a few feet from me, but I could only see this persons feet and legs from where I was positioned. I was annoyed that I received no answer from her and yelled even louder. I then saw her turn around and head back upstairs. By this time I was quite annoyed and went to the stairway and called again. Finally I got an answer – she was in the computer room. She said she was there the whole time. I was a bit freaked out, and made her stand on the stairs where I had seen the feet so I could compare. Her jeans were not the same colour, and the ones I had seen earlier had gold stitching on the seams, while the ones she wore didn’t. Since there was no one else in the house, I didn’t know what to think!
We have also had doors opening and closing on their own. Once when I was home alone I thought someone had broken in, as the door to the basement opened and closed on it’s own!(Heard but didn’t see). This scared me because I was the only one in the house and I debated calling the police. This sound has been heard by more than one person. There are other things that have happened as well.”
The following event occurred a few years ago in a cabin on Roserim Lake, East of 100 Mile House, near Canim Lake.
“Although I believe ghosts are real, I believe that not everything that is thought to be paranormal activity actually is, and that people are very good at being tricked by their own imaginations at times. The two following events I can guarantee, that I was of clear mind and that they actually happened as described.
My husband and I were newly married and had rented a House/Cabin on a secluded lake, for a week for our Honeymoon. The first night we were there I experienced a nightmare that was set in the cabin that we were renting, in it I was chased down the hall by something and into the bedroom, in the dream whatever was chasing me was rattling and pulling at the doorknob of the bedroom door. I awoke quite shaken as I rarely have nightmares and when I do they are usually meandering long dreams that play out throughout the night. A few minutes after I awoke my husband started tossing and turning, I woke him up and he told me he had been having a nightmare that someone was trying to get into the room forcefully “beating on the door”. It was not till after this that I told him I had had a very similar dream of someone trying to get through the door. We had never had something like this happen before or since, and we have shared a bed for nearly 8 years now.
That night we moved out of that bedroom and started sleeping in the living room on a futon as I felt better there. On our last night at the Cabin, I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes which has a large window in front of it. It was dark outside so I could see the kitchen and mud room reflected in the glass of the window. At the time my husband was using the bathroom which is on the left side of the cabin in relation to where I was at the sink. I had my head down, but I clearly saw what I thought was my husband walk from the left side of the cabin to the right side of the cabin where the living room is located. I was so sure it was my husband that I stopped doing dishes and went to the living room, to bug him to come help me. I found the living room empty and discovered that he had never left the bathroom.
The next two events I cannot guarantee were not my imagination getting the better of me as they both happen just as I was waking up in the morning. One morning a few days into our stay, I was awoken by a very urgent voice in my ear saying “You need to wake up, something is trying to get in.” It seemed to say this a few times before I became aware enough to realize, that I was being spoken to and that there was a hawk attaching its reflection in glass of the window next to the futon we were sleeping on. This account I cannot guarantee was not my subconscious waking me up, although I have never had anything similar happen prior or since.
On the last morning of our stay, I awoke and rolled over, looked across the living room and saw a strange man standing between the support pillar and the dining room table. He was looking back at me. I would describe him of average height, with dark hair, dressed in a heavy coat, winter boots, thick pants.”
8-Prince George Black Blob
The witness reports:
“When we moved from a downstairs suite to an upstairs one in august 2009, I began to get this strange feeling. I would get short of breath and feel as though there was something watching me. I woke up every night between 2am and 3am and would see this black “blob” (for lack of better word) in the corner of my room, on the ceiling. I would be unable to breath and would sometimes wake up with a start to see this. I was the only one in my house to feel or sense this. (my son would sometimes wake up screaming and saying he saw something, but not sure if it was the same thing or a dream of his, he was 4). My friends and I smudged the place and i stopped seeing the figure, but still sensed it. When we moved we smudged our new place and have had no issues since.”
9- Cold Spectral Hand In Coquitlam
We received the following report in August 2010:
“This happened to my husband and I between October 2001 and May 2002. I think it was closer to May, sometime in the spring, but I can’t be certain. It was, quite literally, a dark and stormy night, and it happened in the parking lot of the Silvercity Cinema in Coquitlam. We had just gotten out of a movie, and it was a torrential downpour. Vancouver gets tons of rain, especially in the spring, but that night had all the April showers in ten minutes. We were waiting for the heater to warm up, and oddly enough I remember we were parked under a streetlamp, so the interior of the car was decently lit. My husband was at the wheel and I was in the passenger seat.I saw something out of the corner of my eye — a white-mist “hand”, from just past the wrist down. It touched my husband, moving over his shoulder from back to front, traveling about 5 inches in total. When I saw it happening, I my first thought was, “Whatever that is, it *looks* like a hand. Now I wonder what it really is.” I turned my head to see, and at that very moment my husband made a full-body cringe, plastering his body against the driver’s door, looking over his shoulder and badly shaken.My husband has anxiety issues, and I didn’t want to upset him. Without giving away anything, I asked him curiously if he had felt a chill. It took him extra moments to recover, and he finally said, “That was no chill.” He started the car right away and we headed home.I felt someone in the backseat during those seconds, even though all I saw was the hand. The “information” I sensed was it was a middle-aged woman, maybe between 40 and 65, but I suspect somewhere in her early 50’s. She didn’t want to scare us, but she wanted my husband’s attention and I had the distinct feeling she was lost and very confused. Over the years I’ve sorted through the random impressions I received at that time, and I think she believed my husband was someone she knew. Riverview Hospital, the local mental-health institution here, is a little ways away from Silvercity, and I have often wondered if the spirit came from there and got lost. I also have considered (again, based on impressions) that she had some dementia.It took years before I could discuss this with my husband. When I did, he got so upset at what I saw he begged me to say I was kidding. I did what he asked, to set his mind at ease, but a few years later he found out my truth from another source. After he calmed down (the incident was unusually troubling even after so much time had passed) he gave me his version. He felt the hand, like the coldest ice, as it moved over his shoulder. It was such a powerful experience he still shivers a bit at the memory. I’m very curious to know if anyone else has a similar experience.”
10-Paranormal Experiences In Richmond
Some people, more than others, seem to share in a lifetime of strange, and inexplicable things. In this case the experiencer describes herself as an “open soul” which the webmaster feels is a lovely and apt description for those who experience these mysteries.
The witness writes:
“Both my Mother and I saw the same ghost of a woman at the top of our stairs for years and years. We did mention to each other for years and were stunned to know we were seeing the same thing. The previous owner saw the same woman and the people that bought the house from my Mom and Dad also saw the woman.I had another experience in this house when I was standing in the hallway. All of a sudden my home surroundings disappeared and I found myself in a forest with a fox hunt coming my way. It is still vivid to this day. The earth shook and I was terrified of being trampled.I have throughout my life experienced many things in other peoples houses. I feel and sense things that they may never be aware of, but I know it’s there.When I bought my first condo at age 21, I had many terrifying experiences. I was visited by a malevolent creature many times. I had visions of people walking in and out of my walk-in closet at night, I would awaken by the feel and sight of frogs etc. dropping from my ceiling. So many frightening things happened here. I would sleep with a crucifix and all of the lights on. My Mother told me of many creatures that came to play with her when she was a child. I think I am just an “open” soul.”
Steve Ramsey- Calgary – Alberta