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Communities throughout British Columbia will shudder in mock terror tonight as, once again, ghosts and goblins haunt the streets for another brief Halloween.
Victorians are perhaps fortunate. None of them is old enough to have lived through a solid, spine-tingling week when readers of the Colonist thrilled to the eerie rattling and ramblings of a not-so-innocuous phantom, and marvelled at hints of a hidden murder...
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As we’ve seen, the aged and decrepit steamship Clara Nevada appeared to be doomed from the moment she cleared her Seattle dock in February 1898. But, somehow, bound for the Klondike gold rush with passengers and freight, she managed to make it to Skagway.
A Seattle newspaper termed her safe but eventful arrival as nothing less than a miracle.
Read MoreThe old store at the corner of Quadra and North Park Streets, for 80 years a Victoria landmark, is long gone, another victim of progress. But it wasn’t forgotten by its former owners who cherished memories of barley sugar sticks, hooped skirts, hand-blended teas–and of locked doors that slammed in the night when no mortal walked its darkened hallways.
Read MoreIt was said of the Eliza Anderson that “no steamboat ever went slower and made money faster”.
Read MoreThe story of Doris Gravlin has travelled world-wide over the years, mostly thanks to the internet and an almost insatiable interest in the supernatural.
Read MoreIn my day, I doubt there was a teenager growing up in Victoria who hadn’t heard of Doris Gravlin.
Read MoreOne of his best stories is that of Anna Ullman, a young woman who set out to hike the Yukon Telegraph line from Hazelton to Telegraph Creek in 1932.
Read MoreYou may recognize the names of renowned Victoria architects Samuel Maclure and Francis Rattenbury who’s as well remembered for his having been murdered by his wife’s lover as he is for having designed the B.C. Parliament Buildings. But how about Thomas Hooper?
Read MoreI've wanted to write this story for years. But I was missing a key element so I set it aside then misfiled it. It's been so long now that I forgot how I happened to learn of it in the first place.
Read MoreThere’s nothing quite like a mystery, and Victoria certainly has had its share over the past 180 years. Some, of course, were solved. Others, like that of the “small haunted cottage” remain unanswered—and as tantalizing today as when they first intrigued Victorians.
Read MoreI’m becoming a believer in coincidence. I’d no sooner decided to write about beachcombing and secrets that have been given up—or withheld—by the sea than an article in the Times Colonist caught my eye. Researchers from Universite du Quebec a Rimouski are trying to determine if a letter that washed up in a bottle onto a New Brunswick beach in 2017 is genuine.
Read MoreBefore getting down to things that go bump in the night I must introduce you to Hudson’s Bay. Co. fur trader John Tod. Not only was he one of a kind but so is this unique description of him by the gilt-penned historian Hubert Bancroft.
Read MoreAs I admitted in last week’s promo, I ‘borrowed’ this great title from authors and historians Ian Baird and Peter Smith. Several years ago they coined it for their ‘hiking and biking’ guide book to abandoned railways on southern Vancouver Island. These included the two major former railway grades in the Cowichan Valley which are now the Cowichan Valley and the Trans Canada Trails, formerly the E&N Railway extension from Duncan to Lake Cowichan, and the Canadian National Railways mainline from Sooke to Lake Cowichan.
Read MoreFor almost a century, hundreds of witnesses have claimed to have seen B.C.’s fabled sea serpent, Cadborosaurus, better known as “Caddy,” frolicking in southern Vancouver Island waters.
Their sightings have inspired legends, jokes and, thanks to Victoria’s enterprising Chamber of Commerce, world-wide publicity.
I’ve never been able to quite believe in UFOs (flying saucers). Or Sasquatch. Or ghosts.
Mind you, I’ve wavered a few times, if only briefly; sometimes from reading or hearing particularly credible news reports or solid firsthand accounts of alleged sightings. Mostly, my skepticism has come closest to losing its resolve after
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