The name
Hell's Gate arose from
Simon Fraser's 1808 description of passing through this section of the river as "
a place where no human should venture, for surely these are the gates of Hell". At a large pullout along the west side of the Trans Canada Highway, the
Hell's Gate Air Tram was built in 1970 to carry passengers over Hell's Gate, down the gorge and across the river, for a superlative view of the river and the canyon. The airtram consists of a pair of aerial trams on cables, one going down as the other goes up, the two driven by a 140 horsepower electric motor.
While most wouldn't expect such a place to be, it seems that the Hell's Gate Air Tram is haunted by various spectres, becoming known as one of the
most haunted places on the Fraser River. It turns out that one of the buildings at the bottom of the airtram was once used as a cookhouse for Canadian Pacific Railroad workers and is much older that other buildings on the site, having more time to accumulate ghosts and such.
Have a Paranormal Experience at Hell’s Gate Airtram! Trust Us… you’ll feel what we mean!
The haunted stove awaits and while your visiting you’ll get goose bumps and strange feelings as you visit all the locations that have “come to life” through ongoing paranormal investigations on our property.
Spirits such as Edward, The Smoking Man, the lady behind the gift shop door, just to name a few will be here to meet and spook you.
From the Hell's Gate Air Tram
Following is a more comprehensive account of the haunting.
THE GHOSTS OF HELL'S GATE
A whiff of cigar smoke hanging in the corner of an empty restaurant, strange disembodied voices whispering on the wind, the apparition of a lonely little girl wandering the halls of the Upper Terminal; these are just some of strange and ghostly phenomena that have been reported at the Hell's Gate Airtram, rumoured to be one of the Fraser River's most haunted attractions...
...the attraction at Hell's Gate is said to be haunted by spirits spanning more than two centuries. The building that now houses the gift shop was originally built as a cook-house for railway workers, something which might explain the phantom smell of fresh-baked apple pie and the apparition of a petite woman wearing a bonnet and old-style blue dress that have been reported there. The rambunctious ghost of a little Asian fellow who visitors have claimed to encounter on the deck could be the wayward spirit of one of the countless workers who lost their lives building the railroad.
Less clear are the origins of a mysterious man whose ghost has been seen casually smoking a cigar in the far corner of the restaurant and is suspected to be responsible for an unexplained aroma of cigar smoke that visitors and paranormal investigators have sensed wafting through the site. Another mystery is the sinister apparition of a dark and shadowy man, dubbed 'Edward' by the Hell's Gate staff, who has been seen lurking below the deck near the Gold Panning station, holding a pair of red-eyed dogs at the end of a leash. Some believe that his presence near the panning station suggest that he may be the ghost of a violent prospector from the time of the gold rush, or that he may have been a brutal overseer who was killed during the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway, but all agree that he was almost certainly an unsavoury character in life. Indeed, the profoundly negative energy that is associated with Edward's presence has been known to affect the emotions of visitors and staff in this area and to evoke a strong reaction from animals.
But despite Edward's unsettling appearance, there does not appear to be anything overtly threatening about the hauntings at Hell's Gate. Paranormal researchers who have investigated the site have found no evidence to indicate that the spirits that are said to linger there pose any real danger to staff or visitors. So while a sudden drop in temperature or unexplained knocking sound might send a chill running up your spine, the ghosts of Hell's Gate should remain more as testaments to the long, storied history of the Fraser Canyon and the river that runs through it than a source of fear and foreboding.
From the Fraser River Keeper