With Halloween just around the corner, thoughts tend to turn to the supernatural, and although the Peninsula is hardly a hotbed of supernatural phenomena, it is certainly not without its own spooky stories.
John Adams, the operator of Ghostly Walks in Victoria, recounts a few of the best known of these scary sightings.
“Benvenuto, the family home at Butchart Gardens, has reportedly had a ghostly apparition cruising through the rooms late at night. There have also been stories of a young girl riding her tricycle down the pathways late at night and inexplicable organ music that seems to come out of nowhere,” Adams said.
At least the spirits at Butchart Gardens seem to be having a good time.
Adams shared a story about a house on Admore Drive that was considered very haunted and was finally demolished when no one could be found who wanted to live there.
There’s the haunted fields at Stelly’s X Road where a ghostly farmer appears on a phantom tractor to tend his fields in the dead of night. Look away, and he’s gone.
But the strangest story involves The Stonehouse Pub at Canoe Cove.
The stone building was built in 1935 by Hugh Rodd, a British immigrant and businessman who settled in the area and started a boat-building business. The home was built in the style of an English Manor house, complete with locally quarried stone, hand-hewed beams and decorative leaded windows.
In 1940, though, the house was the scene of a horrific occurrence. The eight-year-old son of the owners was found hanging in his upstairs bedroom. Was it an accident or was there a darker side to the event? No one knows.
But, according to legend, the little tyke never left the property.
In one account, a little girl visiting the house reported playing with her friend upstairs. It was assumed that she had created an imaginary friend, but when she was questioned about the friend, her description matched the little red-headed boy to an uncanny level of accuracy.
The little girl had never heard the story about the hanged boy.
Emma Davenport, the supervisor at the Stonehouse Pub, admits that there have been several instances that have left her believing in the possibility of a resident ghost.
“It’s never anything really bad. Just stuff like lights turning on and off and glasses falling (or in one case, being thrown) onto the floor,” said Davenport. “It’ does make you a little nervous if you’re the last one here. I guess we know that there’s a presence here, but we’ve sort of accepted it.”
These days the upstairs rooms of the Stonehouse Pub house the offices and washrooms, accessible by a narrow winding staircase.
“We’ve had people say that they felt like someone was up there with them, but it’s never anything more than that. It’s more mischievous than anything else.”
Gina Armstrong, the author of “Evenings and Avenues – Hauntings in the Outskirts,” said that Victoria and the surrounding communities are known as being some of the most haunted areas in the country.
“We don’t necessarily go to any location with the preconception that it’s haunted. We learn about the history of the place and try to go in with a skeptical attitude,” said Armstrong. “Still, we have experienced knocking on walls, heard voices and seen some things that are hard to explain.”
“In the end, there are some things that you just can’t explain.”
Of course, it’s possible, said Armstrong, that people just love a mystery and tell stories of ghosts and spirits as a way to make sense of the world.
“I think that stories help us to understand ourselves,” said Armstrong. “We learn what society believes, what they’re afraid of. It all serves a purpose.
“For some it’s a way to deal with grief, or sometimes it’s a cautionary tale… keeping kids from wandering into the woods, for example. But in the end, it can also just be a lot of fun.
Surveys have shown that about 50 per cent of Canadians believe in ghosts.
