Victoria's Most Haunted

by Ian Gibbs

  Unfortunately for the newly expanded building, dark times lay ahead. The First World War and prohibition effectively sank the city of Victoria into a depression between 1914 and 1921. First World War restrictions were put on most of the land, so coal and lumber barons packed up and went to Vancouver. During prohibition, the hotels around Bastion Square could not afford to stay open without saloons, so many of them closed. A lot of office buildings ended up being used to store furniture or accept shipments that were coming in from the docks. In an effort to continue to make a profit, the building went through a succession of lives as different hotels. The Bedford Regency was once known as the Bastion Inn, the Alhambra Hotel, and, at its most infamous, the Churchill Hotel. The Churchill Hotel was open from the 1940s to the 1970s. Its roughest and most notorious time occurred in the 1960s when the new courthouse opened on Blanshard Street in 1961. At that time, many Victorians viewed the rundown and dilapidated Bastion Square area as ready to meet the wrecking ball.

  The Churchill was a disreputable destination in the 1960s. It was well known for its beer parlour in the basement, its biker clientele, the friendly professional ladies, and, of course, the run-of-the-mill thugs and drunkards. The bar was so infamous that legend says there was a particular biker who became upset enough that he drove down the steps into the bar from Government Street on his motorbike.

  Two of the most famous characters from the Churchill were featured on a segment of a television show called Creepy Canada. Their names were Brady and Charlotte, or Lady Churchill as she was known. Brady worked at a local radio station in the 1960s and by all accounts had a face for radio. He was a big man and what people always remembered about him was the ever-lit cigar clamped firmly in his mouth and the cloud of cigar smoke that surrounded him. Charlotte worked in the hotel. That is, she rented room number forty-nine in the hotel and entertained gentleman clients there.

  Charlotte was a creature of habit. Every afternoon around four o’clock, she would head down to the beer parlour and have half a pint of whatever was on tap. It was also a good opportunity for Charlotte to meet potential or current customers. Everyone knew when Charlotte was there as she too was known by a signature scent: a strong, cheap floral perfume, in which she seemed to douse herself every morning.

  As fate would have it, Charlotte and Brady met down in the bar one afternoon and hit it off. Soon they were spending quite a bit of time together and Brady made the progression from customer to favourite customer, then to heavily discounted customer, and suddenly—to everyone’s amazement—fiancé. Brady and Charlotte spent a lot of time talking about the new life they would have in Vancouver, usually over breakfast on the weekends. However, not everyone in the beer parlour was happy about their relationship. There was one patron who was, in fact, very upset. It is assumed he was a client or former client of Charlotte’s who was upset that she was no longer offering her charms. He was so angry that one afternoon when Brady came to meet Charlotte for her four o’clock drink, the former customer confronted Brady. They exchanged some words and as Brady rallied to the defense of his fiancée, the furious man got even angrier. He told the courts later that he’d only meant to scare Brady, but he’d been drinking. He smashed a beer bottle on the edge of the bar and thrust it at Brady’s face. Instead of merely threatening Brady, the man slashed the carotid artery in Brady’s neck. Brady turned to climb the steps up to Government Street, but he didn’t get very far. One person was quoted as saying: “Everyone knew Brady was dead when the cigar he always had lit rolled down the stairs and extinguished itself in a pool of his blood.”

  When Charlotte came down, she quickly discovered her fiancé, and perhaps one hope of changing her life, was gone. Within a few weeks, Charlotte herself was gone. Unbeknownst to most of the people who knew her, Charlotte was addicted to heroin. One night when she was alone in her room, she overdosed and was later discovered dead.

  The years rolled by and the Churchill finally closed in the late 1970s. It was purchased, renovated, and reopened as the Bedford Regency. Ironically, room forty-nine, Charlotte’s room, was expanded and turned into the bridal suite. People staying there have experienced a shimmering light in front of the door before they put their key card in. There have been many reports of singing coming from the room, even when it’s empty. Other times the poor occupant has been in the bathroom and heard singing in the main part of the room. What is always present when Charlotte is around is the unmistakable scent of a strong, cheap floral perfume.

  One night, two of the Ghostly Walks guides were doing a tour together. A mother and daughter approached the guide who was standing at the back of the group while the other guide told the ghost story about the Bedford Regency. The little girl pointed to the fourth floor and asked if the hotel had a ghost in it. The guide explained that the other guide was in the midst of telling the story of that very hotel and that very floor. The girl explained that she and her mother were staying in room forty-seven, and she kept hearing the sound of a woman singing from the room across the hall, room forty-nine, but when she asked the front desk about it, she was told there was no one staying in that room. At least they had confirmation that the girl was right, even if they didn’t get a good night’s sleep.

  When the hotel was renovated, the new owners, rather wisely, decided not to reopen the basement as a beer parlour. Instead, they stripped out the bar components and made it into a staff room. One morning in the late 1980s, a man approached the front desk and said that he used to be a bartender in the beer parlour. He asked if there was any chance he could see what the old place looked like now. One of the room attendants overheard and invited him down to have coffee with her so he could see his old place of employment. The gentleman accompanied the woman down to the old bar and was introduced to the other staff sitting at the table. They hadn’t been down there very long when everyone noticed the distinctive odour of cigar smoke. One of the room attendants looked over to the old stairs that led up to Government Street. The doors at the top were not only locked, but chained up. The attendant saw a man, as solid as any normal man, coming down the stairs. He was a large figure, and she said she could see cigar smoke around him, or so she thought. He appeared so real that she actually forgot the doors were unusable and stood up. She said, “Excuse me, but we’re no longer open down here as a bar.”

  The man coming down the stairs simply vanished, but the smell of cigar smoke remained. The former bartender went pale and quietly said, “I know who that was.” It was, of course, the unfortunate Brady, who must have come back to check out the old bar as well, or perhaps his spirit was drawn there by the former bartender whom he had known and seen every day.

  One of the current staff members, Andrew, had been the night custodian at the Bedford Regency for about a year when I asked if he had any stories for me. I was not disappointed. Andrew’s duties include cleaning the hotel and the attached Garrick’s Head Pub. Built in 1867, the Garrick’s Head is one of the oldest English pubs in Canada. Andrew explained he has experienced all kinds of phenomena in and around the hotel and pub. There is a back staircase to the hotel where Andrew has heard footsteps coming and going when no one is around. One night Andrew was alone in the pub after it had closed for the night. He was cleaning the men’s bathroom in the basement of the pub. While he was in a stall, the tap on the right-hand sink suddenly turned on full blast. Andrew turned around as soon as he heard the tap, but no one else was in the bathroom. He turned off the tap and left the bathroom, deciding he would finish cleaning later on.

  Andrew said that the maintenance man has also experienced strange phenomena. He complains that items and equipment have been moved around in his workshop, a place to which he is the only keyholder. The maintenance man also told Andrew that he has witnessed fully formed apparitions floating into walls. This actually makes some sense as the hotel has been remodeled so many times there are walls where doors used to be and vice versa. You will often see spirits behaving in the same way they would have during their own l
ifetimes. Sometimes when Andrew is mopping up in the Garrick’s Head late at night, he will see two figures in the booth by the fireplace. They’re usually talking and he can hear their voices, but he cannot quite make out what they’re saying. Andrew has also experienced cold spots heading downstairs; he has smelled cigar smoke in the old beer parlour, and heard footsteps and glasses clinking.

  The original owner of the Garrick’s Head, Michael Powers, was murdered in 1899. He was coming home to the pub, which he lived above, around three am when he was hit from behind with a five-pound sack of sand. Powers went down hard and was then beaten mercilessly. He was taken to the Royal Jubilee Hospital and died four days later from a ruptured liver; he never named his attackers. Police records show that one of the people involved in the attack may have been a woman dressed as a man. Michael was a hard-living, hard-drinking kind of guy, and not the sort of man to keep his opinions to himself. Records show that he clashed with local prostitutes about meeting customers in his pub, and he very publicly disparaged a local woman who was a well-known beauty and whose husband was often out of town. This woman was not a prostitute, but she did work in a local hotel. Michael had brought up her lack of fidelity more than once. It’s doubtful we will ever know who decided to take Michael’s life, but there was no lack of suspects.

  Guests have also reported strange happenings. The glass of the old-school fire extinguisher cabinet once spontaneously shattered when no one had been near it; the scene was caught on a surveillance camera. Guests have also reported hearing running in the hall, so loudly and so often that they open their doors to see what the commotion is but nothing is there. People have reported hearing voices singing or laughing, and doors opening and closing on their own—all of the standard things you expect to experience in a haunted location.

  As for Andrew, he accepts all of this for what it is, but sometimes he admits he gets a bit freaked out (once he heard the voice of a child ask him his name and if he wanted to play). Luckily Andrew is interested in ghostly things, so he has picked a great place to work.

  When I spent time in the hotel, it was in the newly renovated pub on the main floor called the Churchill. It’s a great place with great food and fast service. I felt nothing really strange there, but when I went out into the hotel proper to use the bathroom, I definitely felt some unrest. The main floor washrooms aren’t that bad; if you’re not sensitive to this sort of thing, you probably wouldn’t even notice the unrest. When I was in the Garrick’s Head, however, it was a different story. I could feel at least three presences around me, and the basement washrooms had me looking over my shoulder. I would have loved to go into the old beer parlour in the basement, but that is no longer a public space. I totally believe Andrew when he tells me there is a cigar-smoking presence down there. After the other things I’ve sensed in the hotel, how could there not be?

  THE BARD & BANKER

  THIS BUILDING IS a staple of Ghostly Walks tours, and is one of the best stories to tell. The building that is now the Bard & Banker pub was originally built as the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in 1855 and was designed by the same architect, Warren H. Williams, as the Craigdarroch Castle. When this story took place, banks employed young men as tellers; part of their job was to live above the bank so they could be used as security if need be. The men understood they were expected to protect the bank and ensure the money remained where it was supposed to: in the vault.

  There was a young man who worked for the bank who was very superstitious. He was so superstitious that he avoided walking past the bank’s neighbour, a funeral parlour. This young man, named Robert, would go out most nights to the pubs down on Wharf Street. Even though the quickest way home was to walk up Government Street and past the funeral parlour, he wouldn’t do it. He would take the long way round so he could approach the bank from another direction and avoid the funeral parlour altogether.

  One night, Robert couldn’t face the long way around as the town was being lashed by a major storm. As he made his way up Government Street, he noticed something that filled him with dismay. The door to the funeral parlour was open and there were lights moving around in the corner closest to the bank. Robert immediately assumed that criminals—who were actually funeral home workers—were taking advantage of the storm to break into the vault through the unprotected wall of the funeral parlour. He knew it was up to him to stop it.

  Robert inched his way in, planning to take the robbers by surprise. It was pitch black inside. He felt his way slowly and surely toward the source of the light. Suddenly, he tripped over something on the floor and fell forward. He landed on something quite spongy. As he fell, he let out a cry and the men, gathered in the corner, rushed over with their lanterns to see what was happening. Their lamps illuminated a ghastly scene: Robert was face to face with a corpse.

  During the storm, the steamship S.S. Clallum had foundered and gone down, taking fifty-five people with her, including many women and children. The ship had been running for less than a year and was on the Tacoma–Seattle–Port Townsend–Victoria route. When she was launched, the bottle of christening champagne missed the bow, and when her flag was unfurled for the first time, it was upside down, which is the universal sign for distress. Both incidents were seen as bad signs. The S.S. Clallum made her maiden voyage in July of 1903 and she sank in a storm on January 8, 1904. The storm had been dumping corpses on to the local beach all day. The funeral parlour had run out of room, so they had resorted to setting people out on the floor for identification the next day. Poor Robert was terrified of anything to do with death, and there he was lying within kissing distance of a drowned man. The dead man’s eyes and mouth were open, as if gasping for one last breath, and his lips were a horrible shade of blue. Robert picked himself up and ran out of the funeral parlour and into the bank. But if he thought his experience was over, he was wrong.

  Unfortunately for Robert, every time he closed his eyes, he saw the faces of the drowned shipwreck victims. This soon led to a lifelong issue with insomnia. Very soon he wanted out of Victoria; there were just too many reminders of the worst night of his life. When Robert approached his boss about transferring to a different branch, there was only one place available. The bank had opened up a new branch to accommodate a recent gold rush. It was located in Dawson City in the Yukon. There were not many people, other than those searching for gold, who were excited to go to the far north. Robert went, but his insomnia followed. He started to write poetry to give him something to do during the night. The verse (as he called it) became longer. Soon he was writing some significant pieces, including “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Robert Service became one of Canada’s most celebrated poets.

  Sometimes ghosts don’t haunt where they died. Sometimes they return to significant places in their lives where they feel an emotional tie, or where they had a life-changing experience. One of these ghosts haunts the Bard & Banker. This presence was first noted in 1958 by a woman named Lily. Lily lived across the street from the building and taught weaving in her room, which was in an old hotel on Government Street. She was distressed by the fact that a man on the upper floor of the bank was standing at the window, staring straight into her room. This happened night after night. Finally Lily was so unnerved that she called the police. They spoke with the bank staff, who apologized but explained that the upper rooms were no longer in use. The police did their job and asked to see the room that was causing so much distress. Sure enough, upon investigation it was clear to the officers that no one had been in any of the upstairs rooms for quite some time. The dust had not been disturbed; no human being had been in there for ages, at least not a live one.

  It didn’t take long for someone to connect the dots. In the 1950s, a keen reporter from Harper’s Bazaar had gone to the south of France, where Robert Service had been living and eventually died. He wanted to interview Robert specifically about his wild and exciting life in the Yukon. Unfortunately, Robert, then in his eighties, was only
interested in talking about his time in Victoria and his face-to-face encounter with a recently drowned corpse. The poor reporter wasn’t able to pry much more out of Robert, so the story became part of the feature. Coincidentally, one of Lily’s students remembered reading the article and was able to explain to Lily who she was probably seeing.

  I’m not sure how much comfort the information brought Lily, who now knew she was being watched by a ghost, but it certainly helped when it came time to choose a name for the pub, which opened in 2007. Robert Service was both a bard and a banker; the pub is named after him. If you visit the pub, there is a real possibility that you might feel Robert on the stairs; he is sometimes seen descending the staircase through the middle of the pub, although not as often anymore. His bank is a bit more crowded than he’d like. But there are still reports of people seeing him in the upstairs window on the far left. If you really want to see a ghost, though, this may be one way to do it: go into the pub, find a seat, and ask your server for a bottle of Robert Service Ale. His picture is on the bottle.

  ROGERS’ CHOCOLATES

  IN 1885, THIRTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Charles Rogers moved to Victoria to become a green grocer. He married a local girl named Leah, who was twenty-one at the time. Together they attempted to run their business. They quickly realized that while they had customers, they couldn’t get truly fresh fruit and vegetables. For the most part, the vegetables weren’t a problem; carrots, potatoes, and turnips have an exceptionally long shelf life. But the soft fruit, things like strawberries, raspberries, peaches, and plums did not fare as well on the long journey to Vancouver Island. Charles and Leah began to take the almost-spoiled fruit, dip it in sugar, coat it in dark chocolate, and then put it out for sale. To say they had a hit on their hands was an understatement. Every morning they opened their store with fully stocked shelves, and within forty-five to sixty minutes they would be sold out. Once Charles invented the Victoria Cream, there was no looking back. Rogers’ Chocolates, with Charles running the business side and Leah in charge of the storefront, was a genuine success. They worked together to make the chocolates and created one of Canada’s first world-famous brands. Queen Victoria herself was quite the fan and many boxes of chocolates were shipped to England and around the globe.