Just in time for the spookiest night of the year, a group of paranormal investigators visited an abandoned and purportedly haunted Fraser Canyon railway station.
“Some of the contractors who have been getting the station ready for its renovation were a little creeped out by unseen forces. It felt as though they were being watched,” lead investigator Mark Fuson said at the start of a 30-minute video set in the CN Station House in Boston Bar. Invited by the Boston Bar North Bend Enhancement Society, Fuson and fellow lead investigator Destin Phillips visited the house three times.
Built in 1914 and abandoned for over two decades, the building even hosted Princess Elizabeth on her royal tour of B.C. in October 1951. The enhancement society has been preparing to fully restore the building, turning it into a museum, cafe and washroom stop for Canyon visitors.
Howard Johnson, a member of the society’s board, said he has both seen, heard and felt ghosts, or ‘spirits’ in the parlance of paranormal investigators, in the building. A skeptic at first, Johnson said his sighting of a woman dressed in early 1900s attire and another apparition touching his arm have turned him into a believer. Johnson joked that hauntings are always good for business. And with the amount of history the building holds, there is more than enough ghost lore to go around.
The luggage bay was at times a temporary storage space for bodies of the deceased. One ghost in the basement was called ‘Harry’ by those who worked in the station when it was a restaurant for railway workers, a few of whom refused to go downstairs.
On his first visit to the station, Fuson said he experienced something very uncommon. He heard a noise that seemed to say ‘behind you’. Normally these sounds are picked up on a voice recorder and heard during playback, this time it was audible to the human ear.
Prior to this, Johnson had been telling him about the lore of the building. “The people that used to work there said ‘if you don’t look behind you when you leave, they will follow you home’,” Fuson recounted.
Intrigued by the first visit, the investigators returned twice during which the team experienced much of their equipment malfunctioning —batteries draining, files corrupting, machines turning off unexpectedly. A trail camera Fuson had left behind was one example.
Read on at The Chilliwack Progress