Edmonton has its share of home-grown ghost stories
With Halloween on Monday, it's time to explore some of the city's eerie establishments
A bump in the night, the hoofbeats of galloping horses, a piercing scream.
From strange apparitions to jilted spirits, if you thought Edmonton was free of the supernatural, you could be dead wrong.
Some say Alberta's capital city is haunted, with many of the most mysterious happenings taking place in the city's oldest buildings.
With Halloween fast approaching, CBC Edmonton explored the some of the spookiest landmarks in the city.
Walterdale Playhouse and Walt the Wraith
This century-old building, which served as a fire hall until the early 1950s, is said to be haunted by a resident ghost named Walt. Legend has it the spectre was one of the building's first firefighters, and died inside in 1910. The hoofbeats of horses and the dank smell of manure will sometimes envelop the halls, in tandem with the mysterious clang, clang, clang of a ringing bell.
La Bohème Restaurant Bed and Breakfast and the Boiler Room Butcher
In the basement of this 1912 apartment building, you'll find an ancient creaking furnace, doors open, its black innards caked with ash and rust.
The perfect place to dispose of a corpse.
And that is apparently what happened at the turn of the century, when a young woman's body was dragged down to the basement and heaved into the incinerator by her murderous husband, a former caretaker of the old rooming house.
The bride still haunts the rooms, and it's said she has made her presence known to many guests, often with a sickening thud-thud-thud upon the staircase.
Hotel MacDonald and the Headless Horseman
If ever you have booked a room for one, be forewarned, you may not be sleeping alone. Guests and staff alike at the historic hotel have often been startled awake by strange reverberations in the night.
Those who have heard the otherworldly rumble say an unseen apparition of a horse-drawn carriage often makes a nightly trip through halls of the top floor.
The Princess Theatre and Embittered Bride
Built in 1915, this vintage cinema is one of the oldest theatres in Canada. A scorned spirit is said to haunt the building. According to legend, a bride who hung herself in her wedding dress in the rooming house in the 1920s still wanders the darkest reaches of the theatre.
Still garbed in white, her shadowy figure has been seen wandering through the lobby and down the grand staircase, or hovering over the projection room.
McKay Avenue School and the century-old spirit
One of Edmonton's first schools, some say this building has been haunted by a kind of poltergeist for more than a century. The ghost runs amuck, scattering chairs, turning on lights and banging hammers.
The story says a construction worker tragically fell to his death during renovations in 1912, and his spirit remains trapped inside the brick walls, unable to depart to the afterlife.
Is there a haunted habitation you would like to see on our list? Share your ghost stories in the comment section below.