The rain fell in relentless sheets. It was gloomy, dark, and chilly. The perfect night for a ghost tour of Vancouver. Setting the scene was Vancouver Trolley Tours and our guides took us all over the city as they wove stories of axe murders, ghosts, and deadly milkshakes.
The highlight of the tour is a trip to the Mountain View Cemetery to see the graves from the S.S. Sophia disaster (Vancouver’s Titanic), the mass grave from the Spanish Influenza (when people died faster than they could be buried), the Grave of Janet K. Smith (see below), and Lifeguard Joe.
The one-story I couldn’t find anywhere on the internet comes from another passenger on a previous tour. A few years ago a motorcycle accident victim was admitted to St. Paul’s Hospital. He was badly injured and spent most of his time in the only front-facing room with a balcony. While receiving treatment he talked a lot about Richard, a man who sat with his family and told stories. No one but the accident victim could see Richard, but the stories were so vivid that the nurse started to document them.
The nurse then took these stories and started to do a bit of research. Her first discovery was that a few years earlier, a man named Richard died in that balcony room. She then did some more digging and discovered that many of the stories retold by the motorcycle victim matched Richard’s life.
Now, for your Halloween browsing pleasure, some of the spooky/grisly stories from Vancouver’s past…
- The Whitespot Arsenic Milkshake Murder
- Janet K. Smith Murder
- Babes in the Woods
- Vancouver’s Most Haunted House
- Hotel Vancouver and the Lady in Red
- Kosberg Axe Murders
- The SS Princess Sophia Disaster
