Edmonton’s Arlington Apartments

10524 – 100 Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta

This red brick 5-story building was a fixture in Edmonton for a century until it succumbed to a crippling fire and eventually, demolition.

Photo from Edmonton’s Architectural Heritage page

http://www.edmontonsarchitecturalheritage.ca/structures/arlington-apartments/

Built just before WWI in 1909, the Arlington purportedly housed Edmonton’s first serial killer James “Bluebeard” P. Watson, who lived in the Arlington from 1914 to 1918. He admitted to killing nine of his 20 victims during the same period. He resided in Suite 14.

Watson ran a collection agency in Edmonton from 1914 to 1918. His love letters were found in a storage locker at the Arlington and were used as evidence in his trial in California where he was ultimately incarcerated.

In the 80’s, a group of practicing black magic witches allegedly lived in the building and were evicted from their apartments. A building supervisor was downstairs in the boiler room after the group left and apparently found little hex dolls of everyone in the building, with something personal from each of the tenants bound to the dolls. It was reportedly in a hidden panel in the wall. You wonder what they were so pissed off about or maybe they just had no sense of humor with their neighbors.

Ghosts of an elderly couple were spotted entering the elevator that sometimes didn’t work. They would enter the elevator and it wouldn’t go anywhere. When the doors were opened, no one was present inside. No one knew if they were previous residents or just a couple of fun elevator-riding ghosts.

The Arlington Apartments suffered a suspicious fire on April 5th, 2005 and eventually in 2008 it was torn down when it was deemed unsaveable.

Photo from Edmonton’s Architectural Heritage page

http://www.edmontonsarchitecturalheritage.ca/structures/arlington-apartments/

Since it was a historical building, it was very sad to see it go. I never had the chance to enter it, but I did take photos at night, and had some unusual phenomena. It felt as though there was a couple of beings watching through the windows. The hoofed beastie thing in the picture is just one of those odd spirits that could be there because of the negative witchcraft in the apartments.

It’s too bad I can’t find more information about Mr. Watson and his nasty activities. That’s a piece of history there should be more about.

I would have loved to be able to have conducted a paranormal investigation in the Arlington. I have no doubt we would have come up with some amazing stuff.