A spooky series for Halloween, starting with Downtown/Northside Edmonton and then progressing to the Southside.

Downtown Area 

Rossdale Burial Grounds

photo from http://www.edmontonmapsheritage.ca

photo from rossdaleregeneration.ca

Rossdale Burial Grounds – 200 plus Metis and European settlers are believed to have buried across the street from the Rossdale Epcor power plant. It is an old Hudson Bay cemetery and near the location of the second and fourth Fort Edmontons. When human remains were found on the site, they decided to honour the bodies and actually reburied them in a special ceremony in August of 2006. Crosses are now erected near the Epcor plant. The area where the crosses are might not necessarily be haunted, but the closer you get to the river valley and the Epcor plant, things get a lot darker and more eerie.

Old CKUA Building

photo by Kurt Baushardt/Flickr

Old CKUA building – 1945 University moved the radio station to it’s downtown location. This building has the oldest boiler in Edmonton and had a tunnel in its sub-basement that went down to the river so the horses could bring coal into the building. It was blocked up when the LRT started building. There were huge orbs that we caught with video and with the human eye coming through the area that was the closed tunnel entrance. There was also a custodian they used to have named Sam, he had some developmental issues but when he passed he apparently has stayed in the building because he enjoys it.

Paramount Theatre – Deadmonton House

photo by the Paranormal Explorers

photo from thegatewayonline.ca

Paramount Theatre – now housing Deadmonton House. There is a custodial male spirit who is at home in the theatre and doesn’t bother anyone named Frankie.
What I found walking around the building after the haunt had shutdown- 2 creepy male spirits, one with razor pointed teeth, sitting on the couch in the costume/green room, the other spirit not well defined. Enjoying the volunteers changing into character and watching the females get undressed. A spirit I couldn’t even identify in the downstairs boiler room. The creepy lurking kind. Another spirit with undefined male and female traits was in the creepy Doll Room. Someone who had been imprisoned or captive when alive. The last one was a dominant male spirit who was some type of murderer or serial killer in the Corn Field area. The poor resident spirit of the theatre, Frankie, is a very submissive spirit and was hiding most of the time.

Deadmonton Haunted House is opened in October for people to go and get scared by their dedicated actors.

Westmount Junior High School

photo from westmount.epsb.ca

**Westmount Junior High School was one of the schools in 1917-1918 used for Spanish Flu victims. I took college classes in the upper floor of the school in the early 80’s when Grant MacEwan College/University was going through renovating the west end campus and there was one spirit who always seemed to be watching and lurking around the students. Could not tell if he was one of the victims of the Spanish Flu.

LeMarchand Mansion

photo from looplink.edmonton.avisonyoung.com

 Le Marchand Mansion – The story of Felicia Graham, a schoolteacher who had come to Edmonton from Ontario to teach lived in LeMarchand. She was teaching at **Westmount Junior High but wanted to be transferred to Strathcona school. The Spanish flu broke out at that time in 1918 and she was made to be a makeshift nurse at the Westmount school. When the flu was over, her transfer came through but she never showed up to the Strathcona school and has never been found. It was one of the largest missing person cases at that time.

MacDonald Hotel

photo from commons.wikimedia.org

Macdonald Hotel – Opened its doors in 1915 to patrons. Horse and cart noises are heard in the utility area of the basement. Clydesdale horses were actually used to haul many of the heavy constructions item up to the site from the river bank. However, it seems that on one very hot July after 2 of these horses actually died in that muddy construction site. Common practice of the day was to bury the animals where they died, and of course this is what the workers did. The buried the horses in that muddy constructions site…in the hotel MacDonald’s basement…eventually it was cemented over and the hotel MacDonald grew up around it. A laundry worker died at the hotel while working and back in Prohibition, and finally, gangster Morris Cohen had a gambling den up on the 7^th floor.

Arlington Apartments

photo from the Paranormal Explorers

photo from nationaltrustcanada.ca

Arlington Apartments – Residents had seen an older couple get into the elevator but the elevator never went anywhere and they never came out.
Our first “serial killer”: In Suite #14 a man named James B. Watson or James Huirt lived there from 1914 to 1918. He fled to California where he was caught and imprisoned for murder. He was credited for 40 marriages and 25 murders. He only confessed to having 19 wives and 7 murders and had murdered them in different places one of them being in Edmonton and some in B.C. and the United States.
There was also someone who was practicing black magic in the building. The building manager found when they were changing out the boiler system, a loose brick. When he pulled it out, he discovered fetish or voodoo dolls of all the tenants in the building.
There were 2 fires that eventually demolished the structure. It was never proven if it was arson.