Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel Ghosts...Haunting

Author:Mychaela Gilbert

The 131-year-old hotel has more than a few residents who’ve checked in the hotel but have never checked out. Some hotels make you want to extend residents stay, while some, like the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel  takes a further step into the afterlife. Having been around since June 1st,1888, the 764-room luxury hotel, hasa Scottish Baronial architecture set in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in Banff, Alberta(Keraghosian). The hotel isn’t shy about celebrating its famous ghost residents. William Cornelius Van Horne, appointing general manager of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), has been given recognition of the tourism potential of the Canadian West and his philosophy reflecting this awareness(Then and Now). Van Horne envisioned a lavish hotel resort along the railway through Rocky and Selkirk Mountains(Then and Now). One of the most famous of all hauntings occurring at the hotel is the story of “The Bride”(Guilbert).The story dates back to the late 1920s. On one young couples wedding day, the bride, decked out in her wedding gown, began to walk down the hotels marble staircase. Something startled her causing her to slip and fall. Some have said she caught her heel in the hem of her dress. Others have said her dress brushed up against a candles flame. Whether of which is true the bride died on those very steps. Since then the hotel staff and guests have reported seeing a veiled figure moving up and down the stairs in a wedding stress.The young bride still waiting on her first dance with her husband she never had. Luckily if you’re planning a visit to the hotel, you can get the pleasure of staying in Room 873(Guilbert). Unfortunately, this disturbed and haunted room isn’t a room anymore due to it being fully boarded up and made to look apart of the highway. The story goes about a family staying in the room when the father decided to cold blood kill his wife and daughter before committing suicide. Their souls remained, but the bodies were removed. Guests that have stayed in the room have claimed that the room didn’t remain peaceful for very long. Guests have claimed to be woken in the dead of night by harrowing screams, petrified, around turning on the lights there was nothing there except bloody handprints over the walls. Sometimes the handprints would disappear on their own, but other times the cleaning staff would spend hours trying to scrub the prints, but they would remain there for days before vanishing. Although the room is no longer available for guests, there have been incidents where screams are heard when they pass the spot where Room 873 would have been. Although seeing is believing, if one visits the hotel a skeptic the odds are,they will leave the hotel a believer (Real Stories of the Paranormal).

Works Cited:

Hotel Services and Activities -Fairmont Banff Springs. n.d,“Activities and Services”, Fairmont, https://www.fairmont.com/banff-springs/activities-services/. 25 Oct 2019.

Guilbert, Andrew. “The Ghosts of Fairmont Banff Springs.” Avenue Calgary, 8 Feb. 2019, https://www.avenuecalgary.com/city-life/the-ghosts-of-fairmont-banff-springs/.

Keraghosian, Greg. “Hotel Insider: A Haunted Stay at the Fairmont Banff Springs.” Yahoo!, Yahoo!, 14 Oct. 2015, https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/hotel-insider-a-haunted-stay-at-the-fairmont-073010720.html

“Then and Now -Banff Springs History.” Fairmont Banff Springs History -Promotions -Fairmont Banff Springs, https://www.fairmont.com/banff-springs/promotions/fairmont-banff-springs-history/?utm_referrer=direct/not%20provided.

“Real Stories of the Paranormal: Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel,Canada.” Creepy Ghost Stories, https://www.creepyghoststories.com/real-ghost-stories/fairmont-banff-springs-hotelcanada.

For even more leads than this article provides visit:

Guest Post: Haunting Legends of Fairmont's Banff Springs Hotel In Canada
https://spookythingsonline.wordpress.com/2018/10/20/guest-post-haunting-legends-of-fairmonts-banff-springs-hotel-in-canada/.
Author, Michael Mink, discusses a post that was posted back in October 2017. Fast forward to October 2018, one person answered the blog sharing a story regarding the hotel. His name was Joseph Kubal. He then writes about one famous story, Room 873. The purpose is to showcase the different haunting that Michael experienced during his time at the hotel. He then goes on to tell more stories about, “The Secret Room”, “The Helpful Bellman”, “The Phantom Bride” and many others.

Real Stories of the Paranormal: Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Canada https://www.creepyghoststories.com/real-ghost-stories/fairmont-banff-springs.
In the article Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, Canada, written on the Creepy Ghosts Stories website, it discusses the luxury four-star hotel that sits upon lush green pine trees and has of eye-catching mountains for over 130 years.

Banff Springs.
https://books.google.com/books?id=6s9xdriff2UC&lpg=PR4&dq=Fairmont%20Banff%20Springs%20Hotel&lr&pg=PR4#v=onepage&q=Fairmont%20Banff%20Springs%20Hotel&f=false
In the book Banff Springs, Bart Robinson analyzes the entire history regarding the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. He acknowledges Morley Robert's first discovery of Banff. There was a castle rising above the banks of the Bow River where Morley found a rock palace in the wilderness. It was indeed for the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel. It was like a dream in a dream itself.

The Mystery of the Wendigo

Author: Jaliyah Collins

In the 20th Century the Algonquian folklore believed the wendigo is a man-eating mythical man-eating creature native to the northern forests of the Atlantic Coast and Great Lakes Region of the Unite States and Canada.  A monster with human like features. They also believe it to be a spirit that has possessed a human’s body. As stated in the “Spirit Beings ... Boreal Forest, 1774 to 1935” article the Algonquian people called the Windigo’s many different names, such as Wendigo, Whitiko, Chenoo, or Atoosh. They also believed that all windigo’s start of as human, but become more and more windigo the more they eat.

As described by the All that’s Interesting in “The Native American Legend of The Wendigo,” the wendigo is a carnivore, but his skin is stretched tight across his bones that they are visible. He is said to stand at almost 15 feet tall and is all was looking for new victims. It is also said for him to have eyes like an owl and razor sharp large claws. Some think he is a relative of BIGFOOT. He was mostly spotted in the 1800s through 1920s, but never seen much after that.Psychiatrists believe it to be a medical syndrome with symptoms such as an increase of eating human flesh and fear of becoming a cannibal. A wendigo was allegedly made a number of appearances near a town Rosesu in northern Minnesota from 1800s to 1920s, each time someone coming up dead.

Word Cited: 

“The Native American Legend of The Wendigo.” All that’s Interesting, 26 February 2018.This article was written by the All that’s Interesting. https://allthatsinteresting.com/wendigo

“TheWendigo Gameplay/New Horror Game”Youtube, posted by ShadesOfNate , 8 Mar. 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywvfXMBRrTQ

Smallman, Shawn “Spirit Beings, Mental Illness, and Murder: Fur Tradersand the Windigo in Canada&; Boreal Forest, 1774 to 1935” Ethno history. Fall 2010, Vol. 57 Issue 4, p571-596. 26 p.

For even more information than what this article provides, visit:

The Wendigo: The North Woods of Minnesota
https://www.prairieghosts.com/wendigo.html
This  wed  source,  gives  us  more  in  site  to  when, where, or how the Wendigo moved around and survived.

The Wendigo: A terrifying beast with an insatiable hunger for human flesh
https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/be-wary-wendigo-terrifying-beast-native-american-legend-insatiable-hunger
This source, shows us how the wendigo came to be in the very first appearance he makes.

The Oak Island Money Pit

by Alexandra Anthony

Location of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada

An article about the journey of the Oak Island Money Pit by Ashley Morgan. On the shoreline of Nova Scotia in 1795, Daniel McGinnis as a teenage boy found the mysterious hole and told his two friends John Smith and Anthony Vaughan. It is known that pirates buried treasure in that pit and McGinnis, Smith, and Vaughan weren’t the first to dig that hole. They knew that by the first two feet, because of the flagstone that was covering what they thought was the hidden treasure. But it just led to more dirt. The boys continued and followed the previous walls of the hole when it was first dug out. The tunnel wall had pickaxes impressed into the walls. The hole was decreased in seven meters of the diameter. At ten feet into the pit, they found a layer of composed wood, the wooden plate gave the pit a base and was very sturdy. When they ripped up the wood believing they would be rich, they found more dirt. Twenty more feet later, the same type of wood, and the same results. They waited several weeks before they started digging again. When they went back they dug ten more feet and it felt like de ja vu to the poor boys. They went 5 more feet and then gave up.

John Smith soon bought the land of the money pit and a man named Simon Lynds joined the hunt. Lynds family settled in Nova Scotia from Ireland, and since Lynds was a “wheel-wright,” he also got the help of Colonel Robert Archibald, Captain David Archibald and Sheriff Thomas Harris. These men got a lot further than Smith, McGillis, and Vaughan. Thirty feet in the pit and they hit another wood platform, but this one had charcoal around it. Ten feet later, another wooden plate, but this one had sap to seal the tunnel. Another ten, a wooden plate is found but has coconut fibers scattered around it. This was good signs because the crew knew that coconuts were from somewhere tropical, like the Caribbean’s. They also knew that people used coconut fibers to secure the valuable cargo. Now the men were 60 feet deep in the pit, they go 30 more feet and find a stone. The stone had strange symbols, Each character of the mysterious text consisted of a unique combination of lines, arrows and dots.

Replica of stone found at 90 feet in the Money Pit.
Photo by Ken Boehner

In 1860, the stone was translated by James Letchi. Letchi believes it says “Forty feet below, two million pounds are buried.” After that stone they went another 8 feet and hit a wooden plate again but this time a metal pole came up between the timbers. The stopped for the rest of that day. When the crew came back the pit was filled with 63 feet up with water. When the men tried to drain the pit and the water came back immediately. This pit was made to toy with whoever got this deep, so it would be difficult to dig and find the treasure. Which only meant they were getting closer. The crew had multiple ideas on how to get around the water. First they asked they hired Mr. Carl Mosher to install a mechanical pump to drain the water but since was in the late 1800s the pump failed. Then they had an idea to dig from an different angle but the water flooded back into where they were digging. The Onslow crew finally realized they failed and they gave up.  

40 years later, the Money Pit, undisturbed, came the Truro Company. Anthony Vaughan, helped create the Truro Company, with John Gammell, Adams Tupper, Robert Creelmand, Esq., Jotham McCully and James Pitblado, the Onslow Company's Simeon Lynds, Dr. David Barnes Lynds. In 1849, the Truro crew removed the water and After two weeks of digging and removing timbers and was at a  depth of 86 feet. The next day, workers found that the surface of the water had returned to 60 feet again. The Truro Company thought about trying to plug the water from spilling into the pit but it failed and they gave up. The first tragedy at The Oak Island Money Pit was the Truro company decided to install a iron steel pump to drain the water. The company had trouble getting the pit drained and the pump exploded and scalded one member and injured several others. Four years later the Truro company decided to give up the rights to the pit never went back.

More companies tried to empty the pit with more expensive pumps after pumps, the companies realized the amount of money are putting into trying to get to the money just ironic. 126 feet later they hit an iron plate and they went through debris, coconut fibers, and oak splinters. As the workers were removing the debris they found a script, that said “VI.”  The script was proven by Harvard Specialist.

Photo of parchment discovered in Money Pit by Oak Island Treasure Company in 1897 provided by Triton Alliance

Franklin Delano Roosevelt joined the wreck company and was interested in the Oak Island Money Pit throughout his years of being president. He could return because of the war outbreak in Europe. William Chappell took interest in Oak Island and found the original owner of the pit, Frederick Blair. Blair allowed Chappell to dig once again in the pit. At 115 feet to 130 feet, Chappell discovered an anchor sink, an acaridan axe, miners pick, and pieces to an oil lamp. 

The next discovery was in 1979, using a camera to look inside of the pit. There was a severed hand, a corpse, and five treasure chests. Divers looked into the pit and found nothing. The Treasure Trove Act was set in place to watch over the treasure hunts. It was really the government trying regulate the money if found. Captain Kidd is believed to bury his treasure in the Money Pit in 1699. Also theorist believe that Black Beard allegedly buried his treasures there.  Black Beard stated only the Devil and himself can find his treasures. 

Works Cited: 

Dunning, Brian. “The Oak Island Money Pit.” Ancient Mysteries, Urban Legends, November. 2008, https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4129 

Morgan, Ashley. “The Oak Island Money Pit.” https://www.oakislandmoneypit.com/resources/ 

Nickell, Joe. “The Secrets of Oak Island.” Skeptical Inquiry, vol. 24.2, March/April. 2000,  https://www.csicop.org/si/show/secrets_of_oak_island 

Strochilic, Nina. “Treasure Hunt to Discover Oak Island’s Mysterious Booty.” February. 2014, https://www.thedailybeast.com/treasure-hunt-to-discover-oak-islands-mysterious-booty 

Links for further research:

Oak Island Money Pit: The Last Great Unsolved Mystery

An article by Ashley Morgan that has a lot more information that I can use to further my research. Morgan tells the story of the money pit and she writes about the theories of the Oak Island. Every company that has ever put money and time into the pit is talked about and Morgan talks about the tragedies of the pit. Even the government and the president was involved with the pit. 

The Money Pit

“The Money Pit,” by Parker Morrell is about the finding of the Money Pit and only describing the very beginning. It is an article in the newspaper in 1939, and is well descriptive. Morrell newspaper article is very descriptive and he does a good job telling the audience the excitement of the discovery of the Money Pit. 

The Wendigo

Author: Jakovia Adams

The wendigo (also known as windigo, weendigo, windago, waindigo, windiga, witiko, wihtikow, and numerous other names) is a demonic spirit believed by Algonquin-based Native American tribes to possess humans and turn them into cannibals. The term "Wendigo” is used to describe an evil spirit as well as a creature that humans can become when possessed by the spirit (Kingaton). Many legends and stories have circulated over the years about a mysterious creature that was encountered by hunters and campers in the forests. 

The Wendigo

 The Wendigo legend was prevalent in the northern United States, Northern Minnesota and Canada, and particularly roamed around woods and forests in the coldest areas where food was scarce and survival was challenging. But, Kenora, Canada is the place most known for its Wendigo sightings (Colombo). In one variation of the story, the creature could only be seen if it faced the witness head-on, because it was so thin that it could not be seen from the side. Though all of the descriptions of the creature vary slightly, the Wendigo is generally said to have glowing eyes, long yellowed fangs and overly long tongues. Most have a sallow, yellowish skin but others are said to be matted with hair. They are tall and lanky and are driven by a horrible hunger. The spirit was said to have a big appetite for human flesh and the many forest dwellers who disappeared over the years were said to be victims of the monster. “They’re hundreds of years old. Each one was once a man. Sometimes an Indian, other times a frontiersman or a miner or a hunter.” (Colombo)

According to lore, the Wendigo is created whenever a human resorts to cannibalism. During some harsh winter a guy finds himself starving, cut off from supplies or help he becomes a cannibal to survive, eating other members of his tribe or camp(Haden). Cultures all over the world believe that eating human flesh gives a person certain abilities such as speed, strength, and immortality. If you eat enough of it, over years, you become this less than human thing. Wendigos are said to be very hard to kill. The Wendigo have few weakness, as far as weapons are concerned it can only be killed by iron, steel and silver. The most gruesome method of disposal is by shattering the creature’s ice heart with a silver stake and then dismembering the body with a silver axe(Kingston).

Works Cited:

Colombo, John. Windigo: An Anthology of Fact and Fantastic Fiction. Canda. Modern Press.        1936. Print.

Haden, Blackman. The Wendigo: The North Woods of Minnesota. prairieghosts.com. Troy             

Taylor. 2002. 17 October 2012.

Kingston, W.H.G. “Adventures among the Indians.” Pararesearshers.org. John W. Lovell  company.1888.Web. 12 October 2012.

Medals, Henry. Wendigo. Photograph. http://monster.wikia.com/wiki/Wendigo, 22 February 2010. Web. 17 October 2012.

Links for further research:

http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10278

This article gives information about the Wendigo and also talks about people giving speeches about the creature.

http://dinojoe.8m.com/crypto/windigo.html

This website gives you more insight on the Windigo

http://www.wyrdology.com/cryptozoology/wendigo.html

This website compares the Wendigo to other creatures like Bigfoot.

Oak Island Money Pit

Author: Ryan Metzler

            Treasures are depicted to children as being where the “X” is on the map.  However, with the Oak Island Money Pit, there is uncertainty where that “X” is, let alone how deep it is.  It is believed to be on Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada  in a pit that has yet to be dug to the bottom.  This treasure is believed to have been the work of a pirate.  Not just any pirate, but the infamous Blackbeard the Pirate.

            Blackbeard was known for his creative ways of inflicting terror on his audience as they stood by and watched him be one of the most feared pirates on the sea.  There was points in his reign that citizens of towns and villages would awake to "a great Terror" (Butler).  Blackbeard would rob, cheat and steal to make a buck and that’s what made him not only feared but fearless.  His conniving ways to obtain his money made people search for “the world's longest and most expensive treasure hunt and one of the world's deepest and most costly archaeological digs” (Nickell).

            Blackbeard became feared because of the way he ruled the ocean.  Blackbeard would intrude on ships and overtake them.  He would rade and capture ships by determining “a ship's nationality first. Then they raised that country's flag on the pirate ship so they appeared to be friendly” (Kirkpatrick).  This reign of fear “lasted two long years. Blackbeard and his crew of pirates terrorized sailors on the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea from 1716 through 1718. They ambushed ships carrying passengers and cargo in the dim light of dawn and dusk when the pirates' ship was hard to see” (Kirkpatrick).  This shows Blackbeard’s creative mind.  I believe a person or group of people who needed to bury the Oak Island Money Pit would have to have an imagination of the like and a strong emotional connection to understand how people would react.

            I personally am not sure if this treasure truly exists.  What I do think exists is the greed of the digger.  These people are desiring the most prized possessions that any man would dream of discovering.  However, every prize comes with a prize and maybe the price of this treasure is to wait out the storm of the booby trap or maybe the lives that it has cost or the money to excavate.

The more elusive the treasure has proved, the more speculation it has engendered. Given the “immense amount of labor” presumably required to construct the pit and the accompanying “flooding tunnel” that served as a “booby trap,” presumption of a pirates' hoard has begun to be supplanted by such imagined prizes as the French crown jewels, Shakespeare's manuscripts, the “lost treasure" of the Knights Templar, even the Holy Grail and the imagined secrets of the “lost continent” of Atlantis (Nickell).

There are still many things that have yet to be discovered in this world such as jewels, manuscripts and secrets; but maybe the keeper of the past’s greatest secrets is in this money pit…or maybe not.  People’s greed will surely never die, so why should the legend? “Oak Island, in Nova Scotia, is famous for its Money Pit, a mystery that has endured two centuries, claimed six lives and swallowed up millions in life savings” (Whipps).  The search has just begun.

This video discusses the secrets of Oak Island and the possible answers to its mystery. 

Works Cited:

Butler, Lindley S. "Blackbeard's Terror." American Heritage 61.1 (2011): 29-37. Academic

Search Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.. Web. 11 Oct. 2012

Kirkpatrick, Jennifer. “Blackbeard Pirate Terror at Sea.” National Geographic. National

Geographic,. Web. 10 October 2012

Nickell, Joe. “The Secrets of Oak Island.” Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.  Center for Inquiry

Affiliate, Jun. 2012. Web. 10 October 2012.

whanethewhip. “Oak Island Money Pit Mystery.” Video. Youtube. Youtube, 6 Jun. 2010. Web. 18 Oct. 2012.

Whipps, Heather. “For Sale: Island with Mysterious Money Pit.”  Live Science.  Live Science, 7

Nov. 2005.  Web. 10 October 2012.

Links for further research:

Mysteries of Canada

http://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/Nova_Scotia/novascotia.htm

Discusses all of the mysteries in Canada.

Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIF0dBWCJf4

This video analyzes the Money Pit and its booby traps.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/treasure/treasure_hunt_01.html

This site looks at perhaps the most well-known excavator of the Oak Island Money Pit, Franklin

D. Roosevelt.