Walk around almost any corner in Victoria, BC and you will find yourself face-to-face with historic storefronts, lavish manors and ancients landmarks designed in the ornate, gingerbread-style that defines 19th-century architecture. While the old school flavor combined with spectacular harbor vistas are quite a draw, the mystery around these iconic buildings is what makes Victoria truly exciting.

Discover Victoria Getaways

The period of rough and tumble “Wild West” days during the foundation of Fort Victoria and the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, filled the streets with pleasure houses, saloons, public hangings and opium dens, leaving in their wake a trail of intrigue, misadventures, revenge and unfinished business. These factors may help explain the many hauntings and paranormal events that are scattered like ashes throughout the city.

While some may joke and whisper that these stories are merely legends, there are others who claim they are very real. If you are not afraid of encountering a lingering spirit or two, grab a lantern, venture out on the town and pay a visit to these Victoria haunts. Perhaps you’ll even return with a few spooky stories of your own.

Ross Bay Cemetery

Many famous Canadians and Americans, including Sir James Douglas, Robert Dunsmuir and Emily Carr, are buried in this captivating cemetary. Photo: Tourism Victoria
Many famous Canadians and Americans, including Sir James Douglas, Robert Dunsmuir and Emily Carr, are buried in this captivating cemetary. Photo: Tourism Victoria

One of the few historical burial plots in the city, the hauntingly beautiful Ross Bay Cemetery is a great place to start hunting down ghosts. Stroll along the winding, tree-lined carriage ways and stop and read the epitaphs on the marble, sandstone and granite tombstones to get a flavor of the lives and deaths of the inhabitants of Victoria. You may stumble across the ghost of Isabella Ross (the first women in BC to own land) as she roams the through grave sites that now fill the grassy fields where her farm once stood.

Other souls wandering about include David Fee (who was murdered on the steps of St. Andrew’s Cathedral on 1890) and an elderly couple in Victorian clothes. Even if you don’t see any spooks, stop and soak in the spectacular views of the nearby Ross Bay and Cascade Mountains.

St. Ann’s Academy

Contsructed in 1858, you can't walk past St. Ann's Academy without feeling the presence of the souls who once occupied the building. Photo: Kyle Pearce
Contsructed in 1858, you can’t walk past St. Ann’s Academy without feeling the presence of the souls who once occupied the building. Photo: Kyle Pearce

Continue to Humboldt Street, where a tall steeple looms over two rows of perfectly manicured beech trees, beckoning you to the massive, white St. Ann’s Academy. In fact, even the bell still tries to lure people to the imposing structure, as the low, reverberating sounds of its toll are heard even when no one is in the building. A former convent and boarding school, the Academy housed a number of nuns over the years, with nine of them buried in the original cemetery on the grounds. In the early morning, watch for misty, white apparitions, believed to be the nuns, wandering the grounds, keeping watch over their old school.

Rogers’ Chocolate Store

Rogers' Chocolates may be full of tasty treats but is also home to a few ghosts.
Rogers’ Chocolates may be full of tasty treats but is also home to a few ghosts.

Follow the tantalizingly sweet scent of freshly made chocolate to the Rogers’ Chocolates Art Nouveau storefront on Government Street to bite into a decadent, Victoria Cream and seek out a little ghostly activity. Charles and Leah Rogers first made their famous, creamy confections in the back of this historic store, often sleeping in the kitchen, and apparently have never left. Employees claim Leah regularly rearranges the displays and Charles tosses milk chocolates on the floor, which he loathed and were not produced by the company until after his death. Be sure to pay close attention to the mirror high above the door, as a child’s handprint often shows up on its surface.

Bastion Square

Photo: Gord Webster
The eerie Helmcken Alley was once a passage from the jail to the courtyard and is filled with the spirits of prisoners. Photo: Gord Webster

A mere five minute walk up the road from Rogers’ lands you in the heart of Old Town, in the brick and cobblestone filled Bastion Square. The former site of the city’s jail, courthouse and gallows, the grounds saw their fair share of interesting and unsavory characters. The jailhouse is now gone from Helmcken Alley, but the spirits of many of the prisoners who resided in the building are not. If you hear the thump, thump of heavy footsteps next to you down the alley, they might not be those of your companion. Rather, those of a man dressed in old prison garb, with chains shackled to his wrists and ankles, who was murdered by a guard on his way to his execution.

As you pass the building on the right of the alley, listen for the faint, eerie strains of an organ, where a phantom musician plays inside the building where he once worked. The neighboring old Supreme Court building is said haunted as well, since the edifice was constructed on top of the city’s first gallows. Many of the men, who were hung from the tree beside it, still lie buried under the building and haunt the space, along with Judge Begbie, who hung them.

Chinatown

Victoria's historic Chinatown brims with spooks come nightfall. Photo: Tourism Victoria
Victoria’s historic Chinatown brims with spooks come nightfall. Photo: Tourism Victoria

Make your way through the alleys to the oldest intact Chinese district in all of Canada, Victoria’s Chinatown. Although guarded by the colorful, intricately decorated Gate of Harmonious Interest to keep evil spirits away, this little borough is no stranger to ghosts. The boom of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in the 1850s transformed the neighborhood into a bustling city center with more than 3,000 inhabitants. This surge in population also brought saloons, brothels, gambling and opium dens and even murders. Rumor has it the town also houses secret tunnels, allowing shady characters to slip between illicit chambers, but whether they actually exist remains a mystery.

However, at only approximately three feet wide, the famously narrow Fan Tan Alley is real and is even haunted. As you squeeze your way through the tight quarters of the brick-lined space, the hair on your neck raises as you feel an extra puff of air push past you. Look up to catch a glimpse of the ghost of Chung, a young Chinese man who murdered his girlfriend and then fled down the alley, shoving people out of his way.

Hatley Castle

If walls could talk, the 40 rooms in this stunning castle would have their fair share of stories to tell. Photo: Tourism Victoria
If walls could talk, the 40 rooms in this stunning castle would have their fair share of stories to tell. Photo: Tourism Victoria

The boom of the gold rush also produced the spectacular, 565-acre Hatley Castle, owned by coal miner, and later Lieutenant Governor, James Dunsmuir, his wife Laura and their 12 children. Covered in a tangle of crimson ivy and topped with a notched battlement, the castle looks like something straight out of a fantasy land. Thus, it comes as no surprise the stone edifice serves as a filming location for TV shows and movies, showing up as headquarters in the X-Men film series to the Lex Luthor’s Mansion in Smallville.

When it is not housing other-worldly creatures, the castle is home to the Dunsmuir family ghosts. Climb up the carved wooden staircase, and you might see a ghostly, white figure presumed to be Laura, gliding between the 40 rooms and banging pots together in the kitchen. When the castle became a naval academy in 1948, Laura was known to drag cadets from their beds or tug off their blankets, in an attempt to prevent them from going to war or in search of her own son Jim, who was killed in WWI.

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, Victoria’s rich history lends itself to many colorful stories. Bells ringing seemingly on their own, floating figures gliding between rooms or doors opening and closing by unseen hands. As you creep through the quiet city streets on a darkened evening, the chills on your spine maybe a gust of crisp, cool ocean air or the spirit of an early settler who cannot rest and continues to leave his mark on the city.

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Feature Photo: Tourism Victoria