Spooky Tales at the Museum

Ghost Hunters to examine Museum

Maple Ridge Pitt Meadows Times – Tuesday, July 12th, 2005

Matthew Claxton

Do things go bump in the night at the Pitt Meadows Museum? And if so, what kind of things?

A team of self-taught ghost hunters will be trying to find out this July, staking out the museum for a day and looking for any evidence of the paranormal. A member of Vancouver Paranormal contacted the museum early in June after seeing an “unusual white smear” in the bottom corner of a photo of the store’s interior, posted on a local tourism website. The club asked for permission to do a full investigation on the building, and the museum society decided to allow them access. The group has about 20 members, and between five and 10 of them will likely come to the museum on July 16th to examine the building, said the club’s Jan Gregory. Vancouver Paranormal will spend about 14 hours in the building, along with a museum staff member.

The members will bring a variety of devices and skills they hope to use but won’t share any information with each other before or during their visit, to prevent their conclusions from influencing each other. Gregory said the members of the Society are very skeptical and aren’t focused on simply proving that ghosts inhabit every building they visit. She says she doesn’t know what causes strange images on photos, bumps, noises or odd feelings in the buildings she visits. Whether the cause is the spirit of a departed person or some unknown natural phenomenon is up in the air. “There may be some sort of scientific explanation, but we just haven’t come to it yet,” Gregory said.

Vancouver Paranormal members will be armed with a number of cameras, including digital cameras and cameras loaded with regular, night vision and infrared film. Some members also have their own electromagnetic field detectors, although those don’t work too well in modern buildings with wires, computers, refrigerators, and other devices giving off fields everywhere. The team will also bring some members who believe they can detect things without equipment. “We have a few people who may be psychic, we haven’t ruled on that one way or another,” Gregory said.

The club doesn’t charge anything for examining a building, and most of their investigations are sparked by people who call them in after failing to find any cause for unusual noises or other phenomena. “Once they have eliminated all the practical causes, then they’ll call us,” Gregory said.

There hasn’t been any such noises at the Pitt Meadows General Store building, said Norman. “Overall we’ve always found it to be a very restful, peaceful building to work in,” she said. Despite its heritage status and age of almost 120 years, little is known about the museum. It has been the site of at least one tragic death, when a person fell down the back steps in the 1970’s, Norman said. Norman said that she’s interested in having Vancouver Paranormal visit, but she isn’t sure they’ll find anything. “I tend to be a bit of a skeptic myself,” Norman said.

As for the white smear in the photo? Norman says she isn’t sure exactly what is it, but the photo was taken looking into a room with an exterior window, and there are different light levels in that room at different times of day.

The Vancouver Paranormal Society

On July 16th, 2005, the Vancouver Paranormal Society visited the Pitt Meadows Museum in order to conduct an investigation into the possibility of paranormal activity at the General Store Site. Their visit was precipitated by one of their members observing a photo taken at the Museum a number of years earlier and shown on the Fraser Valley Guide website. The photo showed some mist in the old post office area of the building and the paranormal group thought it merited investigation.

The seven members of the group spent four hours at the Museum’s two sites with the bulk of the time spent at Old General Store. The weather on that day was overcast until mid afternoon resulting in lower light levels in the building than would be normal for a July day. As well, all lights in both buildings were turned off for the duration of the visit. Four Museum staff members and two Museum Society volunteers were in attendance for the investigation, and the Vancouver Paranormal group were watched for the duration of their time in the building.

The ghost hunters asked that the Museum staff and volunteers refrain from discussing with them, both before and during their visit, any history or perceptions about the building. However, we did have coverage in a local newspaper article that ran just prior to the investigation and in it we mentioned one untimely death in 1983 that we knew of in the building. Other more timely deaths may have taken place here as family members often ended their lives in their homes prior to the advent of modern long term care facilities. Research also told us that paranormal activity is not necessarily the result of a death in the building as spirits can travel to locations they choose.

A Believer or a Sceptic?

Sandra Caddo July 16th, 2005

It started at the museum in June of 2005 when Leslie got a telephone call from the Vancouver Paranormal group. They had seen a photo from the museum on a website and were interested in something they saw there, could they come and investigate the museum buildings? The appointment was set up for July 16th, 2005, at 9:30 am.

In advance of that date Leslie exercised her newly acquired media training and telephoned the Times newspaper with a story about the group coming to visit the museum. The story ran in the Wed. July 9th edition.

The Wednesday of the week the group were coming I was there and answered the telephone to a woman who seemed a little upset and could she talk to the person in charge of the group, I passed her along to Leslie and after a lengthy conversation Leslie relayed the story she had just heard to us.

The lady was very upset to the point of tears, because on several occasions while passing the museum building, she had sensed the presence of a child in the building. She had come to visit, and she knew that there was more than one presence in the building, but she was interested in children and had concentrated on that one. She was concerned that this group of “Ghost hunters” as they were called in the newspaper article would be upsetting to the child and could she come before the people got there to take the child away?

When we talked about this we all figured that if there were an entity and had never caused any trouble or harm to anyone in the building, would it be fair to take it from where it was probably quite happy to be?

Saturday morning bright and early the students, Leslie and I were at the museum and at 9:10 am, a young lady and a child about three came to the door. She explained that because people tended to think of her as “strange” she didn’t usually say anything about the things she felt and saw but was concerned this child would be very upset and she could help it on its way to “the light”.

She had felt her in the downstairs area while crossing over the road from the Hoffmann Site parking lot, but that when she entered the building this presence retreated upstairs. Joanne and Jen went with her upstairs and in the students’ room which is the smaller of the front bedrooms where she found the “child”. They spent 15 minutes or so before coming down to the kitchen area where Leslie and I were sitting with our coffee.

The lady was holding her hands like she was cradling a ball one on top and one on the bottom, in a position just in front of her heart. Came over to me and said that the little girl was not connected to the building but to ME! (The conversation from the girls later was that she said that this spirit is connected to the lady in pink, downstairs, who likes babies and children). Did I spend a lot of time in the museum? Had I ever miscarried, because children usually want to stay with their mothers, Had I been having leg problems lately because this child was clinging to me as any child would with her arms around my leg (spirits because of their need, drain energy from those around them).

She then asked if I wanted the spirit to stay with me or was there someone in heaven who could come and take her back with them. By this time, I was very surprised and trying hard to understand what was going on. I said that the child’s father could come for her because he was in heaven.

All that time she was standing her hands were moving like one would soothe a baby and she said that I could light the candle she had brought and the smoke from the candle would allow the one coming down to get there.

When the candle had been lit, she asked if my husband had been a tall man or at least taller than her probably about 5’9” or so and did I know anyone with the name of Jamie? The man was telling her that he (Jamie) needed to be more assertive that people took advantage of him.

After moving her hands through the candle smoke, she said that my husband would stay with me for the day if that was alright and that the child would be with him. The conversation ended and we all said our goodbyes. She left just before the Vancouver group came in.

I can say that I do have that little touch of cynic in me that has stood me in good stead on a few occasions, I really don’t dismiss outright that there are things that go bump in the night, my philosophy has been if you don’t both me I won’t bother you. I will tell you though that this has given me food for thought and I will tell you why.

I have never met this lady, nor did she or anyone know that I would be at that place at that time. The Curator spends more time in the museum than myself, but up until the summer students come on for the summer, I put in about 15 hours a week helping out. I did indeed have two miscarriages in my late twenties. One that was more advanced pregnancy than the other. Of late I have been having trouble with my legs to the point that I had made an appointment with the Doctor for the week after this interview. My husband always told everyone he was 5’9” tall and it was a standing joke between us that he said that, when in fact he was 5’8 ½ “! I do have a son Jim (James on his birth certificate) and he is a caring, loving person who does tend to let people take advantage on occasion.

My hope is that my husband, child and the rest of my departed family are together somewhere, where there is love, laughter and peace and that someday I and my surviving family to follow, will all be there together. Will we be? I still can’t say for certain; I hope that is what will happen, but in the meantime, I will still be a little skeptical, a little hopeful, a little faithful and enjoy the ride while I am in the here and now!

Ghost Log

August 11th, 2006

The following events occurred in August of 2006 but were not recorded to paper until February of 2007. The incidents occurred the day after our Heritage Thursday Children’s program, Acting Crazy, in which we packed 50+ popcorn eating adults and children into the kitchen area. By the end of the workshop, the museum was left in such a total disarray that Curator Leslie Norman was remembered to have said “I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed” when confronted by the inch thick layer of popcorn, props, and costumes covering the floor and the many displaced artifacts. The museum assistants spent the rest of the afternoon restoring the museum back to order, then left for the day.

The next day, Carla Dearman and Jennifer Chernecki entered the building at 9:00 am. The two went about their regular routine and discussed the previous days session. Part of this routine includes cleaning and sweeping. It was at this point, perhaps 10 or 11 am, that the events began to occur. Carla entered the mudroom off the pantry to grab the straw broom. According to her account, she believes that the broom came away from the wall towards her and then returned to its original spot. This was significant enough that she went directly to Jennifer to tell her about it.

The ladies of the museum usually fix lunch shortly after 12 pm. The subsequent tale occurred while they were working in the kitchen. The two were standing in the centre of the kitchen, facing the sink, when the left hand cupboard door opened up and the red plastic cups used for the children’s program began to fall to the floor around the women’s feet. This was so strange that it (according to the two) seemed normal. Without even mentioning the incident they both began to pick up cups.

The third and final happening of the day occurred after Carla had left to open up the Hoffmann shop. Jennifer was working on an illustration at the kitchen table. Leftover from the previous day was a massive garbage bag of popcorn, and Jennifer frequently went into the pantry to grab a handful. After perhaps the third time, she heard a loud thump in the building. There was no train passing at the time (we mention this as in the past we have discovered that moving objects and doors that open are often caused by passing trains). The noise was loud enough that Jennifer went into the main general store area to see if someone had entered the building or if, perhaps, an artifact had fallen. Nothing was out of place, so she went back to the kitchen. On a whim, she glanced at the pantry, where an apple, which had previously sat on the counter with the rest of the fruits and vegetables the ladies keep, was now laying in the middle of the floor beside the popcorn bag.

It is nice to know that while there may be paranormal activity occurring in the building, at least they are health conscious.

Eerie web photo sparks ghost hunt

July 19th, 2005 – Sarah Fox

Pitt Meadows: Amateur ghost detective spy strange activity

A Lower Mainland ghost hunter says she believes the Pitt Meadows museum is haunted. “Speaking for Vancouver Paranormal, I can’t say for sure that [it] is haunted,” said Jan Gregory, founder of Vancouver Paranormal, a group of amateur ghost hunters. “But as a person who was there, I suspect that it probably is.” Seven members of Gregory’s group visited the museum last weekend to look for signs of the paranormal, an investigation launched after Gregory noticed something strange on the museum’s website.

“There was a very unusual blur in the corner of a photo on the website,” she said, “It was kind of like a white-light-blob… it looked very much like what we have seen in other photographs during our investigations.” Gregory and her team carted electro-magnetic frequency detectors and digital cameras to the museum to try and determine the cause of the mysterious blob. Among the team’s findings was a photograph showing a streak of light just below the ceiling of the building that did not show up in others photos of the area. Vancouver Paranormal has reported “hauntings” at other notable places, including the Stanley Theatre, the Vogue Theatre, and the Old Spaghetti Factory in Gastown.

Ghost Log

October 2006 – an investigator from Vancouver Paranormal

In the upstairs of the General Store I felt something hovering behind my right shoulder blade. At first it felt like it was just touching me gently, like a finger or something and then I felt sharp pain. This was not like it poked me, just pain where it had touched.

Ghost Log

August 10th, 2007 – A young visitor

I saw a shadow come out of the maypole room and then the door slammed open 10 seconds after I saw the shadow. The door was left open and then the bell kept on ringing

Ghost Log

September 21st, 2007 – Jennifer Chernecki

On this Friday, I opened the museum up for about a half hour to give a visiting friend, Greg Lowes, a tour. We went through the various rooms and exhibits and eventually ended up in the main section of the general store. I wound up the gramophone and tried to get it to play (it had been skipping). Greg suggested I try replacing the needle. I did so, and it worked. We both leaned back to listen and just absorb the feeling of the old building. Eventually I wandered back into the kitchen area. Greg flipped up the needle (which stops the machine) and joined me at the sink. At this point I distinctly heard a bar of music. Greg and I turned to each other and said, “I just heard music”. The music we heard was the same as what had just been playing on the gramophone. I went back to the general store to have another look, and the needle was definitely upright.

Ghost Log

September 24th, 2007 – Leslie Norman

The evening of September 24th was calm and dry and at the time the event I am about to relate took place. There was no train or heavy truck passing by. At 6:30 this evening the Curator entered the building to prepare for a school history committee meeting that was due to take place at 7:00. Gradually the other members arrived, of these four people only one was aware of the hauntings at the museum including the odd habit of the back door bell where it tings on occasion for no earthly reason. On this evening the five of us were in the kitchen area of the museum and were waiting for the last member of our group to arrive. All of the sudden the member of our group closest to the door looks towards it, waits a second and then states “that’s odd” and let us know she heard the bell tinging and thought it was our late member coming in. Another member of the group standing close to her said she heard it as well and thought the same thing. Needless to say, no one came in and the missing member of the group did not arrive until about two minutes later. Neither of the women who heard the bell have even been in the Museum before and had never heard the story about how it sometimes tings for no known reason. It remained quiet for the remainder of the meeting and only tinged again as people were opening and closing the door to leave. Odd? Explainable? Ghosts? The Curator is just happy that now people other than Museum staff and volunteers have heard it.

A Touchy Feely Ghost

2015

Earlier this year a museum volunteer who knows little of the haunted history of this building was putting chairs away after a gathering. As he entered the chair storage room, he felt a touch on the top of his head and then the light drag of something across his head. He turned to see what could have done this, but nothing was evident including no presence of a spider web. He left the room, picked up more chairs and took them to the room. Again, the same touch and then drag. He took a closer look around the area and still nothing stood out as the culprit. He then exited the room and the area. A month later he mentioned the incident to staff who also checked the room and found nothing tangible that could explain what had happened. No other volunteer or staff member has ever reported being “touched” by something intangible in the building but over the years some ghost hunters have had similar experiences.

The Apparition Who Tried to Get Out of Bed

October 2011

At the 2011 Museum After Dark event there were, among the many visitors to the site, two ladies who looked to be early into their retirement. They spent a short time in the building, thanked us, and then left. About an hour later they returned and asked for a tour of the building. This was not an unusual request as “Ghost Tours” were a component of the event. Leslie took them up the stairs and began the tour with a viewing of the room that is now the office area of the Museum but at one time was a master bedroom for the different owners over the decades. This room, by the way, is the same on the Vancouver Paranormal Group and the 50 plus visitors who attended their January 2010 presentation at the Museum heard the loud thump in the south east corner of (it was heard during a slide show the group was giving and no one was upstairs at the time and an investigation showed nothing had fallen on the floor in the room).

As Leslie took the two ladies into the room, and before she could say anything about “happenings” in it, one of the women stated that she was a retired teacher in the area and that about 25 years before she had had a student who indicated he lived for a period with his uncle in this building and that he and other members of the family had seen in one of the rooms on the second level, on more than once occasion, the apparition of an elderly man struggling to get out of bed. She also stated that since that time she has wanted to come to the building to see where the story he told her had taken place.

Leslie was quite shocked to hear the story and told the ladies that Mr. Bill (William) Struthers Senior had passed away in bed (he was confined to bed as he suffered a stroke some time before) as a very elderly man in the very room that they were all standing in and that his bed was in the south west corner of the room. This is the spot where the thump had been heard by the crowd in attendance in January 2010 and would have been the most likely candidate for the apparition the student claimed to have seen. Adding to the mystery of the death was the fact that there had been a fairly large earthquake on the day Mr. Struthers passed away and family members could not get up the stairs to check on him due to a worry about the structural integrity of the staircase after the quake. By the time they felt it was safe to climb the stairs, Mr. Struthers had passed away.

Could the apparition have ben a Mr. Struthers struggling to get out of bed after the trauma of having experienced a major earthquake? We will never know but we do have another fascinating story of a paranormal occurrence at the Museum.

Ghost Log

June 2006

In June of 2006 a series of very strange events occurred. One morning which seemed like any other morning museum employee Carla Dearman entered the washroom which is located at the top of the stairs. When she went to wash and dry her hands the paper towel she had been using was blown into the bathtub.

Without understanding how this occurred considering the window was closed and there was no noticeable draft in the room she bent down to retrieve it. Inside this very old and non-functioning bathtub she discovered her paper towel floating in 6 inches of water. The bathtub itself had been converted to storage and was full of cardboard boxes, so she found this to be very strange indeed. The Curator Leslie Norman later confirmed that it had been years since this bathtub worked and that the water to it was in fact turned off. The right thing to do in this case seemed to be to call a plumber.

The next day the bathtub was discovered to be empty and has remained so until this day. The plumber eventually came and fixed the sink in the washroom and kitchen but never made any mention of the tub.

Ghosts in the windows

2018

In the summer of 2018, our two Museum Assistants Keagan and Petra were working downstairs on a project. The Museum’s front doors were left open to let some sunshine in to the building. Keagan noticed that an elderly woman with a walker passed by the front doors several times pausing at the door and staring inside, almost like she was walking back and forth. After perhaps the fifth time of her walking past, Petra approached asking if she needed any assistance. She came into the Museum at this point. She then let the girls know that “she sees ghosts” and that she had tried to resist her gift but now that she was old, she was letting the ghosts finally speak to her.

She told them about the ghosts that occupy the upper windows of the site. She let the staff know that the ghosts were harmless, but that she always says faces in the windows when she was passing by and felt that we needed to know about them. The woman then left the building. Keagan laughed that the woman was seeing the skeleton that Petra had put in the window upstairs, but the girls felt like maybe the woman really did see the ghosts in the windows.

The staff saw the woman walk by a few more times throughout the summer, staring inside but never coming into the building again. She liked to sit on the bench between the Museum and the train tracks and stare at the building. After the summer was over, Keagan and Petra both remarked that they hadn’t seen the woman in a while. The pair haven’t seen the woman since that summer.

Odd encounters

2020

During Covid-19, staff were required to occupy separate rooms within the museum to keep up with social distancing. One of our staff members was now starting her shifts earlier, which meant that she was alone in the building for about an hour before other staff members arrived.

Usually, she would blast music to cover up any noises or things that she may have noticed happening. This morning her phone hadn’t charged the night before, so she was sitting in her office in the quiet. As she was sitting there, she heard loud, heavy steps coming up the stairs. Assuming she forgot to turn back on the bell to alert her when someone was in the building, she walked to the stairs to see who had arrived. There was no one there. She sat back at her desk, very aware that something was off.

A few days later, she left her music off again out of curiosity. After some time, heavy loud steps were heard coming up the stairs. Again, there was no one there.

She blasts her music when alone in the building now. It is easier to blame the music for weird noises.

Creaks and Quirks

2022

Throughout my time at the Museum, this staff member has noticed weird occurrences. Most can be chalked up to the fact that this is an old building and its creaks and quirks are expected. However, I have noticed a few things over the years that have given me pause.

There will be times when out of the corner of my eye, I see shadows moving. Quickly moving to check what is going on, there’s nothing there. Is it my eyes playing tricks on me, or is the shadowy figure that other investigators talk about playing around?

Often, there are strange noises in the building. A creak, a bang, a shhhh, weird noises to be sure, but those can be blamed on others in the building (don’t get me started on when the noises are from downstairs, and everyone is upstairs). One time this staff member was in the building early in the morning, alone. All the sudden I hear two male voices in loud almost angry tones, I walk to the windows to see if I can see anyone outside, doesn’t seen anyone. I repeat the process downstairs and walked outside to see if someone would have passed but there was no one in sight. I still don’t know if we have a track star in our midst that just talked and ran, or if there was something more interesting happening.

The worst for staff is perhaps the items that move. You can leave items on your desk and the next day they can be moved or gone completely. Perhaps we are all losing our minds and moving things by ourselves, or is it a train rattling things off desks, or is it something else?

There are also random cold spots throughout the Museum. You can be working in a room and all of the sudden the temperature drops. Don’t get me wrong, old buildings have questionable heat retention, but this was an anomaly. The flour room is the absolute worst, but again the purpose of that room was to keep things cold in the past and it was a part of the building that was added on so the insulation in that room doesn’t exist.

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