Downtown Area Continued
MacKay School

photo from commons.wikipedia.org

Little Blue Schoolhouse – photo from flickr.com
MacKay School – Built between 1904-1905, it had the first 2 sessions of the Alberta Legislative Assembly in the building. It was named in honour of Dr. William MacKay, a physician for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Sounds of spirit children running around and making noise pianos playing and toilets flushing and a male spirit (supposedly named Peter). There is the little 1881 schoolhouse behind MacKay where children make the blind pulls move back and forth. I have taken ghost tours of people there and the children never fail to move the blind pulls for me.
Warehouse District

photo from zkahlina.com
Warehouse District – Revlon (Boardwalk) building, Great West Saddlery building. I have been in both buildings in the early 1990’s and there were definitely spirits in each. In the top floor area of the Boardwalk building, the northeast corner and in the basement where the washrooms were at the time, had spirits residing there. The Great West building had a spirit that was in the loading dock area.
Mercer Warehouse – The Mercer warehouse has been plagued in the past by negative and unforeseen happenings. Originally a warehouse that stored liquor and cigars. At one point in time, there was a tannery in the basement.
Over the decades, allegedly:
One man died after being accidently locked in a safe; another man died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the basement garage area. A young man accidentally hung himself on the top floor trying to scare people when there was a Halloween event for charity; allegedly. In 2000 a certain company constructed a giant Ouija board on the upper floor of the building for a Halloween event allegedly which in hindsight probably wasn’t the best idea. There is a possibility there was a portal opened by the action of creating the Ouija board. Now, there is a great tavern and business start-up place in the building.
General Hospital

photo from cbc.ca
General Hospital – Built in 1895. One wing of the hospital is closed. It is reportedly haunted; with what, I don’t know; we have never been in there. Majority of hospitals (I would think ALL hospitals) don’t want people to think they’re haunted or have spirits wandering around the facility, so paranormal investigators are not going to be able to investigate an active working hospital.
Hospitals are notorious for being haunted with patients who have died on the operating table or in a hospital bed.
North Side
Commonwealth Stadium and Clarke Park

photo from football.ballparks.com
Commonwealth Stadium and Clarke Park – These structures are on the site that used to be the Edmonton Penitentiary. On April 15, 1909, a prisoner axed the Deputy Warden, Richard Stedman, to death. He was later hung on the morning of July 14, 1909 for the crime. Jails and penitentiaries are notorious for being haunted because of prison violence and death.
We haven’t heard of anything creeping around either facility, but we haven’t interviewed any staff to see if they have experienced anything paranormal. It’s a large area……
La Boheme

photo from tripadvisor.ca
La Boheme – Restaurant and B&B. There are too many stories about someone was murdered or a woman’s head was chopped off that aren’t true. No one died in La Boheme. The only verifiable haunting evidence I have is when I used to bellydance there in the 90’s in the basement where they had the Moroccan Room and also a Wine Cellar. There was definitely a male spirit that liked to watch us change into our costumes and he would lurk behind the staircase and also go into the wine cellar. I can’t verify the hauntings upstairs in the B&B part, but there are stories that people have who’ve stayed there.
The Charles Camsell Hospital

photo by The Paranormal Explorers
The Charles Camsell Hospital – First established as a Jesuit College in the early 1900’s, it was then used as a military base for U.S. army soldiers building the Alaska highway in world war two and it eventually served as a hospital for service men with tuberculosis. Between 1946 to 1966 some aboriginal adults and children were forced to go into the Camsell for unknown periods of time. Some never made it out. There were also rumors of medical procedures that included shock treatments, nutritional experiments and sterilization. The original Camsell Indian hospital was torn down and rebuilt in the late 1960s as a provincial hospital where it operated until the late 1990s. In late 2005 it was purchased by architect Gene Dub and has not made much progress with it turning it into a functional building.
Some of the things that happened when we were there: on the Psych ward floor there was a young fifteen year old female spirit, she had bandages around her wrists and she asked me when was her mother and father coming to get her. You could hear people walking above you, which is impossible since it’s a 2 foot concrete ceiling. There was a horrifying scream on the Psych ward that didn’t come from any of our people who were there. In the basement where the morgue was, the elevator that had no power going to it made a ding noise and the doors opened. We walked towards it and the doors closed and the elevator appeared to go up. In the auditorium area which is also in the basement there were some aboriginal spirits sitting on the benches. The energy was full of sadness and despair and there was one aboriginal elder who communicated with me saying, ”we did not ask to be here”. People could smell cigar smoke on the one floor, I could not.
It is an extremely haunted building and very creepy to look at when it’s dark. The building and land need a spiritual cleansing and spirit removals done. With a proper ceremony performed by Aboriginal elders/leaders.
Here is our page on the paranormal investigation into the hospital:
http://wp.me/p4uPqS-N