While it’s true that Victoria is a beautiful place to live, there’s one aspect of the city that doesn’t get much attention for most of the year.
As Halloween approaches, however, and old beliefs come to mind, we tend to realize that there might just be an otherworld that exists beneath our charming community, just out of sight.
Halloween, after all, has roots to the ancient festival, Samhain, when it’s said that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead are blurred and spirits roam the earth.
Of course, hauntings are not restricted to Halloween. Victoria has long been considered to be haunted and, whether it’s the presence of water, or the limestone deposits under that city that seem to trap energy, the stories of hauntings abound. Perhaps, some say, it’s the often-violent history of colonial settlement, brothels, hangings and unmarked graves.
Legends aside, it’s the personal stories of unexplained happenings that tend to send chills up the spine.
There’s the story of a woman who, travelling down the highway near Mill Bay, clearly saw the figure of a woman in the middle of the road. The driver slammed on the brakes, only to find that the woman had vanished.
Or the night worker at Royal Jubilee Hospital who was waiting for a porter to come and retrieve the body of a patient who had died. She was terrified when the call bell in the room went off repeatedly, even after having been disconnected.
And then there’s Nichole Moem’s experience.
Moem is a resident of Victoria whose first unexplained experience happened when she was about 20-years-old.
“I woke up in the middle of the night after a vivid dream about a fire downtown. I looked at the clock, and it was 3:35 a.m. I shrugged it off and went back to sleep,” said Moem.
Moem says when her alarm went off in the morning, the first thing she heard on the news was a story about a fatal fire downtown that broke out at the same time her alarm went off.
Moem says that since then, she’s seen ghosts out of the corner of her eye on several occasions and once experienced a haunting that involved a loved one coming into her room to chat.
“I’d joked with this person, as they were very ill, saying that if they passed, they should come and see me,” said Moem. “They took me up on the offer.”
Another Victorian, Lee Shanks, recalls how, after a career in government communications and a retirement necessitated by some health crises, she had settled down to a quiet life raising chickens and ducks on a small farm near Victoria.
“We had this favourite rooster who got injured in a fight with another rooster and I made him a little pen so he could heal,” said Shanks. “I was getting tired of caring for him and one morning I said to him, ‘Mr. Handsome (that was his name) you have to get better soon.”
That’s when something very strange happened.
“I heard a voice as clear as day right behind me. He said, ‘Don’t worry. This is the last time you’ll have to care for him.’”
Shanks wheeled around to see who had spoken, but there was no one there.
“The next morning, I came out and the pen door was open and all I found were feathers.”
Since that time, Shanks has heard the voice several more times. Now, as the co-owner of the Blue Caterpillar Emporium tea shop, she said that she has seen the ghost of a long-departed owner of a previous tea shop at the location.
“She comes to visit sometimes. Her name is Dolly and, honestly, I’m not the only one who’s seen her. We’ve had a lot of customers ask who the strange woman with the cat was. It’s not easy to explain.”
Perhaps the best versed individual on Victoria’s ghostly characters is John Adams. He’s collected scores of stories about the hauntings in this place of gardens, tea and crumpets, but his expertise isn’t just based on second-hand stories.
“Some years ago, during my student days, I had a job at the Empress Hotel and was tasked with cleaning the offices on the sixth floor,” said Adams. “Now, in those days there was no air conditioning, and those rooms were hot and stuffy, but, on this one occasion, the room I was in suddenly became very cold. Suddenly I felt a hand on my arm, and I was forcefully grabbed. There was no one else in the room.”
That wasn’t the only experience that Adams had on that floor.
“On another occasion, I saw the figure of a woman walk across the room. She seemingly came through one wall, crossed the room and went through the opposite wall,” recalled Adams. “She was wearing a cap and apron, and I learned later from other staff that this had been the uniform of a chambermaid named Lizzie McGrath who had died in an accident on that floor of the hotel, years before.”
Since that time, Adams has become very well known as the primary guide in Victoria’s Ghostly Walks. Those walks take place throughout the year and explore the haunted history of the city.
“There have been several times when people tell me that, while I’m speaking of a spirit at some location, they’ll see the figure of a woman behind me, listening intently to what I have to say.”
Whatever these people are seeing might be up for debate by the more skeptical amongst us, but for the folks who have had ghostly encounters, there is no debate.
As Nichole Moem said, “It’s not whether I believe or not…it just is.”