Hauntings in St. Albert

Halloween is the one time of year when it’s okay to get a bit dark and to revel in all things scary. Even if you don’t believe in the supernatural, it can be fun to let yourself indulge in the spirit of the season with horror movies, ghost stories or visits to haunted houses. Spooky movies and stories are easy enough to access for those looking to celebrate the season, but it’s worth asking: Where are St. Albert’s haunted buildings? It’s a harder question to answer than you might think.

St. Albert certainly doesn’t lack the necessary infrastructure for haunted houses to crop up. Many of our buildings have been around for 150 years, we’re home to the oldest existing European cemetery in Alberta and a there are a few plots of land here with histories that would make Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel look like a relaxation spa. Yet for all that, we don’t have much in the way of enduring Halloween folklore. There are stories of course. With a quick google search, you can find individual claims of ghost activity all over the city, from the post office to the grain elevators, to residential homes. Yet none of these stories have managed to enter into our cultural vocabulary in the same way as Edmonton’s Charles Camsell Hospital or the University of Alberta’s Pembina Hall.

Legends of hauntings usually arise in relation to stories of death and misfortune, on sites where there were events so traumatic that the very land is said to be tainted by the memory. This is certainly the case with Edmonton’s famous haunted sites, but we don’t seem to celebrate the macabre in quite the same way. Over our century-and-a-half of history, our city has seen its share of hardship, including devastating epidemics, suspicious deaths and of course, two different residential schools. But while the movies tell us to fear old hospitals, abandoned houses and indigenous burial grounds, yet the way we view our own history seems to suggest that these depictions are more than a little disrespectful.

Instead of leaving old buildings dotted around our city to contribute to a canon of spooky folklore, our city has chosen to erect monuments, establish historic sites and build centres of healing on these sites. It can be fun to scare ourselves with spooky stories that explore our own community, but having to get our scares from movies and books on Halloween leaves us free to engage honestly with the rich history that surrounds us for the rest of the year.

For more about St. Albert historic buildings click here