Ghost stories

It's amazing how a train of thought can completely jump the track.

I did not intend to write about ghosts today. I didn't even plan on thinking about ghosts today. But a hilarious news item on CTV, scoped in a moment of boredom, has taken me on a 45-minute journey deep into the shadowy territory of the paranormal.

The news item in question was about two men who have been charged with trespassing after firefighters had to rescue them from the roof of the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton. While exploring the long-abandoned building with their friends, they somehow thought it would be fun to try to scale down the outside of it, and wound up getting stuck.

Apparent fun-ness of rappelling down the outside of a building without equipment notwithstanding, my first reaction to this story was: "exploring the Charles Camsell Hospital in the middle of the night WHAT?!"

As I mentioned to Laura, this building is creepy as all get-out. When we first moved to Edmonton, my boyfriend and I stayed with a friend of his who lived just down the street from the hospital. It was late when we arrived, so I wasn't able to see much of the city during the drive from the airport, but I did see the hospital — a yellow-brick monolith plopped in the middle of quiet suburbia, surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and signs warning would-be urban explorers of guard dogs that like to snack on trespassers. Not one of the building's hundreds of square windows has its glass intact.

Even in the light of day, I felt the urge to quicken my step when walking past the hospital. That had more to do with being warned that it was a popular hangout for crackheads and gangs than any suspicions of paranormal activity, but the decrepit appearance of the building, which has been defunct since '96, didn't make me feel any more comfy.

Laura's response to all this was "I bet it's haunted."

A quick Google search produced satisfying results: this guy says it's haunted, this guy implies it's haunted and has photos of the interior that certainly make it look like an appropriate setting for an Amityville-style paranormal throwdown.

The hospital reportedly has a checkered past. It housed a psychiatric ward, and a secondary structure, which no longer exists, served as a quarantine for tuberculosis patients in the mid-20th century. Darker stories suggest that Mengele-esque experiments were carried out on Aboriginal children there.

A place with such sad and morbid connotations as a hospital — especially a decrepit, abandoned one — is a perfect breeding ground for ghost stories.

Someone allegedly recorded a woman's scream on the fourth floor of the building, and if you click the second link I posted above, you can read through the debate around a photograph that purports to show a masked figure peering around the corner in the basement of the hospital. (I could totally see it, but darkness and the suggestive power of fear can tend to morph something as innocuous as peeling paint into a ghoulish apparition.)

I don't know if I believe in ghosts, but I do believe that a place can seem to exude a palpable atmosphere of sadness and fear when it is known to be the site of a distressing event.

So far, my only encounter with a "ghost" was quite a joyful one. In the summer of 2003, I worked at Restoule Provincial Park in northern Ontario, a place that really lent itself to ghost stories because of its rich history. The remains of a root cellar in the midst of a thick grove of pine trees stood testament to the first family to homestead in the area, and an archeologist had discovered evidence of an Iroquois fishing village on the banks of the Restoule River.

The more experienced park employees told of a spirit who wanders the forest by night, swinging a lantern, looking for his hunting party. A few people claimed to have seen the ghost of a small boy wandering the fire tower trail at dusk; some said they could hear the frightened sobs of a lost child.

I wrote these stories off as good campfire fodder, but then, one night, I had a strange encounter.

In August, I had come down with a bad cold, and, not wanting to bother my roommate with my constant coughing in the night, I decided to set up a tent in the staff campground and sleep there until I was better. This worked well, and so on the night in question, I set out from the staff house with my little table lantern and headed down the dirt road to the campground. I soon found I didn't need the lantern; the moon was so full and bright it cast shadows.

As I walked down the hill towards the group campground, I saw a silhouette a short distance in front of me, walking in the same direction. My first thought was that it was another camper, but the silhouette, although human, seemed insubstantial somehow, more shadow than solid flesh.

I turned on my lantern. There was nobody else on the path.

I didn't feel afraid or intimidated, just oddly exhilarated. I feared nothing that summer but the toe-eating muskies of Stormy Lake — but that's another story.

And that's where this train of thought disembarks. Ghosts — are they real? Do we want them to be? Are they gentle? Scary? Both? What say you? Is Leduc haunted? (Apparently New Sarepta is). Leave your comments.

(Photo: Casper! Via)