by Ian Gibbs
When Agnes finished work, she usually had three options to get her to her home in Victoria West: take the streetcar that ran across the harbour (the option her husband insisted she take), walk across the Point Ellice Bridge, or walk across the train bridge. On September 22, Agnes unfortunately finished work too late to take the streetcar. This left her with the two other options. Agnes could head out in the wind and the rain and walk up to the streetcar bridge, where she would be able to walk across. It was a good five-block walk just to get to the bridge, which incidentally had hand rails and a place for pedestrians, and then she’d have to double back toward her house on the other side. Not the most enticing option on a cold, rainy night. The final option was to set out over the rail bridge directly across from the bakery, which is now the Johnson Street Bridge. The problem was that the train bridge was literally just rail ties and tracks. There was no walkway, no railing, and no safety measures of any kind. The only way we know that Agnes took the rail bridge is because that is what witnesses told the police early the next day.
As I’m sure you have guessed by now, Agnes never returned home and this story does not have a happy ending, but then, what ghost story does? Her husband, waking in the middle of the night, realized she wasn’t there and immediately summoned the police. Even though Agnes’s bakery was in a not-very-reputable part of town, the police took her husband’s concerns seriously because Agnes ran one of the few legitimate businesses in that area. They immediately canvassed the neighbourhood, asking if anyone had seen Agnes or knew where she might have ended up. One witness mentioned seeing Agnes setting off across the railroad bridge late in the night.
The police were used to seeing bodies off the side of the bridge; it was not uncommon for a sailor who had consumed one too many drinks to attempt to walk back to the naval base over the railroad bridge. Many of them would fall in, and the police would venture out with safety lines to see if they could find a body floating underneath, which they would then hook out with long poles. That’s what they started doing for Agnes. They looked across the bridge, waving their lanterns because it was still dark enough to need them, but they didn’t see anything below.
Once the police had made it all the way across the bridge, they began to look in the area of the rail yards. I don’t know if you have much experience with rail yards, but good things seldom happen to people who wander around them alone. The police began to fan out across the rail yards, looking behind shrubs and trains. Eventually one officer noticed a large number of crows sitting up in a tree making a lot of noise. The crows were circling down toward an object on the ground, and then flying back up. In the police business, they call this a clue, and so the officer ventured forth.
What the officer discovered was one of the most gruesome murders in Victoria’s history. He found Agnes lying face up. She had been cut open from sternum to pubic bone and split in half. She had been disembowelled, and her internal organs had been carefully placed around her body in a pattern. When the police told the newspapers what had happened, the papers responded in their usual mature and responsible way by immediately hitting the panic button. The headlines proclaimed things like “Devious fiend loose in Victoria” and “The Ripper in the New World.” These weren’t completely unfounded ideas as Jack the Ripper had stopped killing only eleven years earlier in London and no one had ever been charged with those crimes. There is, in fact, a widely held belief that the Ripper did escape to the New World and continued his life of crime in a place with less law enforcement, fewer traceable people, and not as much awareness of dangerous men.
As a result of these headlines, Victoria’s citizens flew into a panic. For well over a month, women did not go out alone after dark. The police, stumped for any leads, brought in a psychic. Unfortunately, the psychic turned out to be less than helpful and in fact told the media that “he did it once and he will do it again.” Naturally the newspapers gleefully shared this psychic tidbit about the killer’s intentions, as it was guaranteed to sell many copies.
However, no one was ever charged with this brutal crime. The years went by and the railway yard became smaller and not as frequently used. The yard had originally been surrounded by a First Nations village. As Victoria grew, the city founders appropriated the land from the Aboriginal people and began to develop it. Condominium buildings went up and then the Ocean Pointe Resort was built in the early 1990s. The tradespeople who were building the hotel noticed that strange things were happening in the lobby of the big building. The batteries in power tools would go dead; the workers would experience feelings of panic and fear, and their heart rates would elevate. As soon as they moved out of this one position in the lobby, they felt okay. They didn’t talk about it that much as that’s not really part of the culture of tradespeople. They are generally focused on working hard and getting the job done.
When the hotel was finally complete, there was a large ribbon-cutting opening ceremony. The ceremony was typical of its type. Plenty of Very Important People, oversized scissors, crust-less sandwiches, and much smiling and handshaking. However, there was a curious thing that was a little out of the norm. One of the parties, a gentleman who was on the stage with the Very Important People, noted that even though the lobby was full of people, there was one area of about fifteen square feet that no one was standing in. In fact, the people who were closest to the area could be seen edging away from the perimeter. The gentleman thought this strange, as every other part of the lobby was full of people for the grand opening.
Time has passed and while there have been renovations, that area in the lobby still has a strange effect. However, now it’s not power tools that are affected anymore, it’s cellphone batteries that inexplicably drain, even though they were full when brought into the hotel. There also remain the feelings of panic, fear, and anxiety, which, sadly, likely mirror the last moments of Agnes’s life.
The fact that this hotel is haunted would really not be much of a shock to anyone who had lived in Victoria at that time. Soon after Agnes’s death in 1899, a grey lady could be observed across the harbour, wandering around at the edge of the water, close to where she’d died. There is a rock very close to the Ocean Pointe Resort on the edge of the coastline that the First Nations people considered sacred. That rock was considered sacred ground on which worship and rituals would take place. Since her death, the spirit of Agnes Bing has been seen wandering the rock for hours on end. She can also be seen walking up and down the shoreline near the hotel. People who walk along these spots often feel sad, cold, and lonely—even if there is no reason for them to feel that way at the moment.
POINT ELLICE BRIDGE
ON MAY 26, 1896, the city of Victoria was celebrating Queen Victoria’s birthday. There were picnics, fairs, and, most exciting of all, a military exhibition at Macaulay Point in Esquimalt.
Getting from downtown Victoria to Macaulay Point meant hopping on the streetcar on Government Street, going a short way along Wharf Street, and then over the Point Ellice Bridge, which was built in 1885. Streetcars began going across the bridge in 1890, but the bridge was originally built for horse carts and pedestrians, not heavy streetcars. The city was aware of this. In 1892, they sent surveyors and repairman to drill holes in the bridge pilings to check the condition of the wood. They found that the wood was in bad shape and needed to be replaced, not just repaired. Four years later, nothing had been done to fix the pilings, and the holes that had been drilled in them had neither been filled nor repaired, hastening the rotting that had already begun. People continued to report that the bridge would sag whenever a streetcar went across, but those reports were ignored and the streetcars continued to cross the bridge.
At 1:40 pm on May 26, the city’s inaction finally came with a price. Car number six, one of the older, smaller, and lighter streetcars, made its way safely across the bridge. As soon as it reached the other side, streetcar number sixteen, one of the larger, heavier new cars began its crossing. The car was built to carry a maximum of fifty-five peopl
e, but was actually carrying one hundred and forty people that day. The car had gone about a quarter of the way across when the bridge began to sway. The streetcar pressed on, and the swaying increased. With a terrifying crack, the bridge dropped about half a metre. The streetcar kept going. When it reached the centre of the Point Ellice Bridge, an even louder crack was heard throughout the harbour. The centre span of the bridge broke. Streetcar number sixteen plunged into the water, landing on its side. A few moments later, the main tracks and the rest of the span fell on top of the streetcar, trapping and killing even more people, including some who had managed to survive the first part of the disaster. Some lucky ones benefitted from the rest of the bridge collapsing, because it hit the streetcar with such force that it pushed them out through the broken windows. When it fell, the streetcar landed on some of the wood and ironwork that had broken off of the bridge when it first cracked. The car was actually pierced when it landed in the water, and then debris crushed even more of the car as the rest of the bridge collapsed on top of it.
Boats that had been cruising around the harbour saw what was going on and hurried to the disaster. Many people were saved because there were so many pleasure boats sailing around due to the birthday celebration. In all, fifty-five people died in the disaster and twenty-seven were seriously injured. The rescue effort soon became a recovery mission, with bodies being laid up on the beautiful lawns of nearby homes. People used tablecloths and curtains as shrouds for the victims. It was and still is the worst streetcar disaster in North American history.
The City of Victoria and the streetcar company were both found negligent: the streetcar company for overloading the car; the city for knowing the bridge was unsafe, making it more unsafe, and doing nothing about it. The compensation they were ordered to pay rendered the streetcar company bankrupt, and the city was almost broke for the next four years. The story was in the newspapers for months; there was not a single family in Victoria that had not been affected by the tragedy.
It seems that some people still aren’t quite ready to give up looking for their loved ones lost in the disaster; they are not going to let a small consideration such as time have any bearing on whether or not they keep looking. In the 1890s, the banks of the Gorge were lined with big beautiful homes. Now, the only house left in that area is Point Ellice House. The rest of the properties lining the waterway have given way to industrial properties and warehouses. There is a path called the Galloping Goose Trail, which runs along an old rail line from downtown out to the other municipalities. Part of this trail goes under the new and improved Point Ellice Bridge, also known as the Bay Street Bridge. If you go down to the Galloping Goose Trail on a quiet night and stop just across from the old pilings from the Point Ellice Bridge, you may see proof of loved ones still searching. As you sit quietly, letting the atmosphere take you in, you will feel an eeriness surround you. If you look over to where the doomed bridge once spanned the water, you will notice something strange. Tiny lights, some yellow, some red, can be seen drifting over the surface of the water. They trail back and forth, only over one spot. Car lights do not reach that spot, nor do streetlights; it’s simply an unexplained anomaly. After the bridge fell, many people were not recovered until the next day, but through the night there were boats full of searchers going back and forth over the sunken streetcar with lanterns attached to their small boats. Many who have witnessed these lights have said that you can even hear soft sighing noises that seem to go with the lights and their motion. Are these the sighs of the rescuers slowly giving up hope? Or the sighs of the dead who congregate around you, watching their searchers, knowing there is nothing left to look for?
ST. ANN’S ACADEMY NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE
WHEN THE ROMAN Catholic nuns from the Quebec order of the Sisters of St. Ann answered a plea to come to the modest Fort Victoria in 1858 to teach the children of its approximately three hundred permanent residents, they had no idea what they were in for. Between the time they set sail and the time they arrived to run the little school, the Fraser River Gold Rush exploded. As a result, the sisters arrived to a town of thirty thousand, not three hundred. The sisters quickly overcame their shock and began holding classes in their log cabin convent. They had to expand their cabin before too long, and then ended up renting a bigger house in town. Finally, in 1860, the church began to build a proper convent on View Street. The View Street convent was eventually replaced with St. Ann’s Academy, which was built in 1871. The nuns taught on this site, building on multiple additions over the years, until the academy closed in 1973. There is a small cemetery on the grounds, which was used from 1889 to 1908. After that, the sisters were interred at Ross Bay Cemetery. The building consists of four floors. The lower two floors housed the actual academy, the third floor housed the novitiate residences, and the fourth floor housed nuns exclusively. Thomas Hooper, the architect of many of Victoria’s now-haunted buildings, including St. Joseph’s hospital, designed St. Ann’s Academy, which only further cements his reputation as Victoria’s most haunted architect.
When the academy closed in the 1970s, the building faced an uncertain future. It was essentially mothballed, but still needed maintenance and care taking. A man named Tom was chosen for the job of night watchman. It wasn’t long before he noticed things weren’t quite right. Tom would hear all kinds of things in the supposedly empty building; he even gave nicknames to some of the entities. One night, his teenage son came with him to work. The boy had begged his dad to go with him because he wanted to see what the convent looked like inside. Tom reluctantly agreed. Once inside the old academy, Tom handed his son a flashlight and instructed him to stay in the building. He warned him not to go into the basement or up to the fourth floor. Tom had to go and do his route around St. Joseph’s hospital, which he was also in charge of, then he would return to pick up his son.
As soon as his dad left, the teen headed directly for the fourth floor. As he began his ascent to the third floor, he noticed he was having trouble walking, almost as if he was being pushed backward. A black mist appeared in front of him. Even shining his flashlight at it did not diminish it. He determinedly kept climbing the stairs and finally made it up to the third floor, where he circled the staircase and started his ascent to the fourth floor. Remember, the fourth floor was for nuns only and a man certainly never would have been permitted on that floor. The determined teen had almost made it to the top of the stairs and onto the fourth floor, when suddenly he could no longer move. A white wall appeared before him and he physically could go no farther. Eventually, he gave up and headed for the basement. I would probably have skipped the basement and headed for the exit at this point, but not this guy.
As he went toward the basement and the kitchens, he heard voices, noises, and commotion. It sounded like a large party. The closer the boy got to the basement, the louder the noises became. He could hear the voices, but could not make out what they were saying. He heard pots clattering, food being chopped, and all the other sounds you would hear when a great meal is being prepared. The noise continued to grow as he got closer to the door. He reached for the door handle, but the moment his fingers touched the knob, the sound evaporated, like it had never been there. When he opened the door and went into the room, all he saw were his father’s footsteps in the dust on the floor, going in the same circle his nightly route prescribed.
Over the years, others have reported feeling watched and seeing the former Mother Superior at the top of the grand staircase overlooking the hall below. On occasion, the chapel bell has rung when Ghostly Walks groups have been outside hearing the stories of the former academy and its spirit residents. It also happens quite late at the night when there is no one in the chapel. The bell only ever rings once.
Dawn Kirkham took a group into the academy to do an investigation there. She found some remarkable things and also had some physical things happen to her. The group was even able to assist one spirit to pass over.
While there are many spirits at the academy,
three significant spirits, the ones who seem to be in charge, made themselves known to Dawn and her group. They found a grumpy priest who was a little bit nasty, but likely wouldn’t do anyone harm, as well as a rather unpleasant and extremely territorial Mother Superior. They also discovered a young novice in the chapel, but she was hiding, scared of the other two. She seemed to be nice, but sad and timid. While the group was at the academy, a few of them got trapped in the confessional. The door simply would not open. It was not locked and there was no one else in the chapel, but they were stuck in there for a time. And when the group was in the organ room, the door handle jiggled up and down when no one was near it.
When the group was in the nuns’ parlour, they all felt a significant vibe. There were six or eight people in the room, and they reached out to make contact with whoever was there. The MEL Metre (a device used to pick up on electromagnetic energy and also measure ambient temperature) went crazy; something was obviously attempting to communicate. They were able to connect with the entity—a young boy, six or seven years old, with severely disabled legs. The boy connected with one member of the group and this individual felt his sadness and loneliness very deeply. Thankfully, they were able to help the boy’s spirit cross over and free him from remaining in the academy. It was a draining experience for the group, but they were all so grateful to have had the privilege of helping the boy move on.
While St. Ann’s stood empty, its future unknown, Victorians grew anxious over rumours that it was going to be sold to a private developer. Early every morning, a security guard would clear the alcove of anyone who had decided to camp there overnight. One morning when he arrived he saw a group of nuns. They did not acknowledge him, but stared over toward the grave markers showing where the deceased nuns had been laid to rest. They never moved; they remained visible for quite some time, simply staring, until they faded away. They were seen a few more times until a statue of the Virgin Mary was installed among the graves like a protector. It seemed to do the trick and the group of nuns was not seen again.