HGB Ep. 529 - Haunted Calgary

Moment in Oddity - Largest Male Family (Suggested by: Chelsea Flowers)

We always marvel at how many children couples often had years ago. Although many times it was due to the expectation of loosing some of their children in their younger years, sadly. One family near Jonesboro, Tennessee is on record from the 1950's, as having the most male children in a family. The Harrisons' had a total of 13 sons which led to the marvel of this largely male family. What began their 'news worthy' recorded journey, was that Mr. and Mrs. Emory Harrison suffered a fire that burned down their home. Their community rallied by supplying for the needs of the large family. As a 'thank you' to their community, Mr. Harrison sent a letter to their local press. The news editor saw the promising prospect of covering the story of this family. The editor's story of the 13 sons was sent to nationally syndicated news columns. This newly found popularity brought them to New York for a family photo that taken in Times Square. Mrs. Harrison was given the "Honor Mother of the Year" award and the family even appeared on the original "Tonight Show" as well as winning $3,200 on a game show. Later in 1959, the couple added a daughter as their 14th living child whom they named Barbara Ann Harrison.  Having a large number of children in a family can be unusual, but a family comprised of 13 sons, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The Birth of Amerigo Vespucci

In the month of March, on the 9th, in 1454, Amerigo Vespucci was born in Florence, Italy. It was the height of the Renaissance and he was born to a distinguished family with connections to the Medici dynasty. He was surrounded by the world of trade and maritime practices from the time he was young. This encouraged his pursuit in astronomy, mathematics, navigation and foreign languages. Fed by his personal passion for discovering new locations, in his 40's, Vespucci accompanied a Spanish expedition as an astronomer and mapmaker. During the explorations, Vespucci charted the constellations and also recorded various flora and fauna as well as indigenous tribes encountered. His many correspondences with friends and colleagues have become known as the "Vespucci Letters". They were touted as dispelling the belief that Columbus had reached Asia during his voyages. In the year 1507, to honor Vespucci's discoveries and documentations, a German cartographer drew a map of a recently identified continent and labeled it "Americus" in honor of Amerigo Vespucci. This is said the be "America's birth certificate"

Haunted Calgary (Suggested by: Amber Phillips)

The city of Calgary is gorgeous with the Canadian Rocky Mountains as its backdrop. The bustling city is the financial center of Western Canada. If you like rodeo, Calgary is your place as the city hosts the largest stampede in the world, the Calgary Stampede. Calgary also hosts several haunted historic locations from schools to homes to libraries to churches and so much more. Join us as we explore the history and haunts of Calgary!

Indigenous people settled the area that would become Calgary around 12,000 years ago, sometime after the last ice age. These were a nomadic people that lead up to the Blackfoot or Siksika Nation that are the First Nation people the Europeans would have met when they came. The early nomadic people left behind their field stone medicine wheels, pictographs and cairns. The fur trade brought the first Europeans by the late 18th century. Hunters and whisky traders set up fortified posts, two of which include one near the present-day Glenmore Reservoir and the other was named Fort Calgary. That second one was founded in 1876 and the name is Gaelic meaning bay farm. The first settler named John Glenn had arrived in 1873. The railroad came in 1883 and Calgary was incorporated in 1884. Calgary was known as a thriving cattle town and later was important as a transportation center and developer of oil and natural gas reserves. Many historic locations from Calgary's earlier years still exist today and several of them are reputedly haunted. 

Calgary Stampede

This is hard to believe, but the city didn't initially embrace the idea of the Calgary Stampede. And it had a very slow start. In 1884, the Calgary and District Agricultural Society formed in an effort to convince people, specifically farmers and ranchers, to move to the area. They hosted a fair and then bought land in 1889 along the Elbow River. They continued hosting exhibitions until 1895 when years of bad crops and other financial hardships forced the closure. A future Prime Minister named R. B. Bennett bought the property and later sold it to the city, so it could build a park they named in honor of Queen Victoria, Victoria Park. A new company, Western Pacific Exhibition Company, hosted an agricultural and industrial fair in 1899. The company would continue the tradition for years until the Government of Canada took over in 1908 and they widely expanded the property, adding six new pavilions and a racetrack. With these additions came a rodeo that featured trick roping and horse races. If you have listened to Ep. 101, you heard us cover the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch and the Wild West Show they hosted. One of their trick ropers was Guy Weadick. He was part of that first exhibition hosted by Canada and he came back in 1912 to convince local government officials that they needed to make the show more about the "wild west."

The government wasn't interested, but money talks, so Guy went about getting investors and convinced four businessmen to fund a new event. These men came to be known as The Big Four and were Pat Burns, George Lane, A. J. McLean, and A. E. Cross. A new rodeo arena was built on the exhibition grounds and hundreds of cowboys came to compete in front of a crowd of 100,000 in September of 1912. This was a huge success, but another event wasn't hosted until 1919. This too proved to be successful, but was just another one-off. Eventually, the rodeo event was combined with the other exhibitions in 1922 and formed under the new name Calgary Exhibition and Stampede. This new combined event was hosted the following year in 1923 with a huge parade and multiple events over a week. Locals were encouraged to dress in western clothes and the downtown businesses were decorated like the "wild west." And that was the start of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth that continues to today. This years event in 2024 takes place from July 5th to 14th.

The Calgary Stampede Grandstand, which is now called the GMC Stadium, was built in 1974 and could seat 17,000 people. During the construction, a worker was killed in an accident and people claim that his spirit is at unrest here. There are claims that strange noises are heard, disembodied footsteps are heard and his apparition has been seen.

The Deane House

The Deane House was built on the Fort Calgary site in 1906 for Captain Richard Burton Deane, for who it is named. The Captain was not only the first resident of the house, but also an actor, a gardener, a North-West Mounted Policeman and magician. Deane was described as having a drooping mustache, pale complexion with cold eyes and he had an acerbic tongue, which he used regularly against his superiors and politicians. They referred to him as a torment. He was the last serving North-West Mounted Police Superintendent in Calgary. The North West Mounted Police established Fort Calgary at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers in 1875. Before that time, this had been a place of gathering and ceremony for the Blackfoot Confederacy, which includes nine groups. The police signed Treaty 7 in 1877 with the indigenous people believing that this would be a sharing arrangement. The Canadian government claimed that they had surrendered the land and began displacing the indigenous groups.

Deane had moved his wife and five children to Canada in 1882 and initially was an inspector for the police, but he proved to be a very capable leader and was promoted to superintendent. He eventually got a post in Calgary where the house was built. Two of his children died before his wife who died in 1906. Right when the house had been built. He remarried in 1908 and his second wife passed in 1914. After that, Deane left Calgary for England and eventually moved to Italy where he died in 1930. The house was two-stories with a large wraparound porch. The Grand Trunk Railway purchased the house in 1914 and moved it to a new location to serve as the office and Station Master's house, so that it wouldn't be demolished. In 1929, the house was moved yet again, across the Elbow River to where it sits today on 9th Avenue. The Deane House was pulled across the river by steam-tractor on temporary pilings. We'll post a picture to Instagram. It's crazy and even Popular Mechanics Magazine called it an astonishing feat of engineering. For many years it served as a a boarding house under the name Jasper Lodge. Alex Brotherton bought it and renamed it to Gaspe Lodge, which ran until the late 1960s. In the 1970s, the house became an art gallery called Dandelion Gallery. Today, it is a restaurant with gardens that was redeveloped and refurbished in 2015 by Fort Calgary Historic Preservation Society. Weddings are also hosted on the property.

There is a history of hauntings connected to the house, due in part to tragic events connected to the boarding house. A boarder fell down a staircase and died. A 14-year-old boy who lived there had epilepsy and apparently after repeated bullying, he hanged himself in the attic. Roderick Umperville lived in the house in 1952 with his wife and children and one day he lost control and stabbed and strangled his wife in front of their children. He then killed himself. Owner Alex Brotherton died in the house in 1968. Visitors to the house claim to smell cigar smoke and they hear an antique piano play by itself. There is an old telephone in the museum that is no longer hooked up and doesn't even have any guts and it will ring. Storage bins will have blood stains appear that can't be washed off. Shadow figures have been seen missing their legs below the knees and they disappear. The house came from a sacred place to the indigenous population and a the apparition of an indigenous man is seen wearing a long-sleeved shirt and vest with a long single braid in his hair. One woman who saw the spirit claimed that it told her she shouldn't be in the house because it was a sacred place.

The Prince House

The Prince House is located in Heritage Park, which is a village full of historical homes and a section set up like an old west town. The Prince House started at 4th Avenue and 2nd Street in the Eau Claire district. It was built by Peter Anthony Prince who was born in Quebec in 1836 and learned the lumber business. He moved to America in 1866 and became a US citizen, but returned to Canada in 1886 where he settled in Calgary. Prince became Manager of the Eau Claire and Bow River Lumber Company, but he had his hands in other things as well. He was a hydroelectricity magnate and he obtained an exclusive contract to provide electricity to Calgary. Prince apparently fell while walking on an unlit sidewalk and decided things needed to change. He formed the Calgary Water Power Company in 1890, which harnesses power from the Bow River by building a dam. Prince also built a brewery, grain elevators and flour mill. He married four times, having three wives die before him. He passed away in 1925.

The Prince House was built in 1894 and was based on the design of a cottage from Connecticut that was featured in Scientific American in November 1893. The house was relocated to Heritage Park in 1967 after Prince's stepdaughter Nora Whitlock died in the house in 1965. All three of Prince's wives who passed before him, died in the house as well. The Prince House is said to be haunted and more than likely by the wives. Peter's second wife was Emma Wallin and she had tuberculosis so she was confined to the third floor of the house. Her spirit is said to be on the third floor, which is an area closed off to visitors because the stairs leading up there are servant stairs, so they are narrow steep and dark. A lady dressed in a white, high-collared period dress has been seen in the nursery on the second floor. The ghost wraps what looks like a baby in a blanket and then moves to sit in a chair in the corner where she rocks the baby. A security guard claimed that he saw lights turn on on the third floor where there was no electricity. Another security guard watched as a window on the third floor swung open and closed several times. He tried to get his guard dog to enter the house with him and the dog froze up and wouldn't go in the house and it had its tail between its legs. Staff have heard stomping of feet on the second floor.

This was posted to a forum on Bella Online in 2012, "I first heard about this haunted house in Heritage Park Historical Village, Calgary, Alberta, Canada on an episode of Celebrity Hauntings on the Biography Channel. Actor Drake Bell talked about his experience there while working on a movie with John Cusack. Drake Bell and a friend decided to check out the haunted house one day when they had some free time. They took a video camera with them and caught some interesting footage when they approached the empty house. The curtains on a second floor window were flung open and stayed open for several seconds as if someone was peering out at them. A few nights later, John Cusack decided he wants to check out the house. A group of people including John and Drake Bell went with the caretaker of the home to see the Prince House. As the caretaker approached the house with his dog, the animal refused to go into the building. The caretaker decided to stay outside with his dog and told everyone else to go on in. They walked up to the second floor with their flashlights as there was no electricity inside the building. As they ascended to the second floor, the mood and vibe changed. Drake went to the room where the curtain had lifted a few nights previously, and claimed that it felt very spooky. Almost immediately, although there was no electricity in the house, all of the lights in the room turned on, even the gas lamps that were only in the room for show. Drake saw a woman dressed in colonial clothing standing in the room. He ran out of the room screaming, 'Let's go!' and everyone followed him out of the house. The caretaker was standing outside waiting and showed them a picture of the house from the newspaper that clearly showed a woman standing in the second floor window, although the house had been empty at the time the picture was taken."

The Calgary Zoo Bridge

The 12th Street Calgary zoo bridge was built in 1908 to facilitate travel across the Bow River between the community of Inglewood and Memorial Drive. This was first used by horse-and-buggy, but before long, automobiles were traveling across the span. The bridge was deemed unsafe for vehicles and closed to only foot traffic in 2016. By 2017, the bridge had been removed. A horrible crime was committed under the bridge in July of 1946. A six-year-old boy named Donnie Gross had been playing with friends in a park near the Calgary Zoo when they were approached by a man named Donald Sherman Staley. He asked the kids if he could play with them and they said "no" since he was a stranger. He went away, but gave it another try the next day when Donnie was playing in the same park alone. Unfortunately, Donnie went with him under the zoo bridge and was sexually assaulted and stabbed 17 times before being dragged back to the park and left.

A tour guide for Calgary Ghost Tours said that she was hosting a tour when a nine-year-old boy on the tour asked her if he could go play with a young boy he saw under the bridge who had a ball. She looked over at the bridge and saw no child. Employees at the security shack claim to have played with the ghost boy. They throw a ball when they hear a knock on the door and the ball comes back to them. They believe it is Donnie. Donnie did reveal himself to another boy who was visiting the zoo with his mother and he told his mother that a little boy named Donnie asked him to come and play. People on the bridge would claim to hear a young boy calling for help and some have even called emergency services, but no child is found.

Alexandra Center

The New East Ward School was built in 1902 in Inglewood, Calgary. Inglewood is Calgary's oldest neighborhood. The school was designed by architect William Dodd in the Classical Revival style and is a long, rectangular, three-story school of solid sandstone. A concrete-block gymnasium was added in 1956. One of the first principals was William Aberhart who came to Clagary in 1910. He eventually became the founder and leader of the Alberta Social Credit party and Premier of Alberta. The building served as a school until 1963 when it was closed. The school was converted into the Alexandra Centre in the 1970s for use as a community center. A caretaker at the building was named Joe and he was a troubled man. He hanged himself in a stairwell in the building, so people believe he haunts the location. A shadow figure is seen and disembodied footsteps are heard as though Joe is still making his rounds. 

The Suitor House

The Suitor Residence is named for Robert Suitor who was a Quebec-born building contractor, politician and businessman who lived from 1858 to 1938. The house was designed in the Queen Anne Revival style with large gables, a circular tower with turret and octagonal corner tower and was built in 1907. The house later became an isolation hospital for patients with infectious diseases and then a boarding house for railway staff and their families. Today, it is medical offices. A young couple were one of those railway families that boarded at the house. The husband would jump into moving train cars as part of his job and one day he slipped and died. His heartbroken wife died a short time later. The widow is said to haunt the house and appears as a shadow figure or as a full-bodied apparition in a long white dress with black curly hair standing on the third floor balcony.

St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church

St. Andrew’s started as a Presbyterian church and was built and designed in the Gothic Revival style. The church has an octagonal tower with a tall open steeple on the corner and was made from brick, stone and cast concrete. The north and west facades featured ornate exterior mosaics and the interior had stained-glass windows and carved woodwork. Most Presbyterian churches joined the United Church of Canada, but St. Andrew's resisted. The congregation eventually moved to Haysboro in 1961. In 1965, an Italian Catholic parish moved into the church. Twenty years later it became a Vietnamese Catholic church and was named St. Vincent Liem Catholic Church. Today, it is no longer Catholic, and hosts the All Nations Full Gospel Church.

There was a single woman who was studying to become a teacher at a college with a strict morality clause in the 1910s. She fell in love with a young man who was sent over to France to fight in World War I. He was killed in battle there. Shortly after that, the young woman discovered she was pregnant and she was thrown out of her college. Her family also rejected her, so she came to the church for help. The church wouldn't help her either, so a story claims that she climbed to the top of the bell tower and jumped. The bells were removed in the 1970s, but that doesn't stop parishioners and neighbors from hearing bells ringing sometimes.

The Lougheed House

The Lougheed House is a grand sandstone prairie mansion that was built by James and Isabella Lougheed in 1891. James was a prominent lawyer, businessman and senator. He would buy lots of real estate and build office buildings on the properties. James owned so much that at one time it was believed he was paying half the taxes in Calgary. Architect James R. Bowes designed the Lougheed House in the Victorian eclectic style and had an irregular roofline. They added to the house in 1907. The house had all the modern conveniences of the time including indoor plumbing, electric lighting, hot and cold running water and central heating. The house featured stained glass windows and corner and rectangular towers. The Lougheeds furnished the house with Spanish mahogany and faux marble. They called the house Beaulieu, which means "beautiful place" in French. The home was a social hub for Calgary and the family was very influential. In 1916, James was knighted and remains the only Albertan to have that honor. He died in 1925. Isabella's parents were Metis, which means they were of mixed indigenous and Euro-American ancestry. She was a wonderful hostess and dubbed the "Hostess of the New West" as she entertained dignitaries and royalty. She passed away in 1936. 

The Lougheeds had four sons and two daughters. The Great Depression hit the heirs hard and they had to decide between keeping their parents beloved estate or their downtown properties. They chose the downtown properties and Calgary seized Beaulieu and everything was sold at public auction in 1938. The house was then turned into the Dominion-Provincial Youth Employment Training Program. Eighty women lived in the house as they learned nursing and housekeeping. During World War II, the house was used as a barracks for the Canadian Women's Army Corps. A blood donor clinic was established in the basement by the Canadian Red Cross. After the war, the house became a dormitory for returning servicewomen until they could find other housing and in 1947, the Red Cross purchased the house and used it until the 1970s. In 1978 they moved out and the city took ownership of the house and it fell into disrepair. The community joined forces with the Historical Society of Alberta to save the house in 1988. Through the 1990s the house was restored and the Lougheed House Conservation Society was created. Today the house is open for tours and hosts exhibits.

There are people who claim to see a translucent couple dancing in the ballroom. Other visitors have seen an elderly woman in a period dress sitting at a front window looking outside. This was a place where Isabella liked to sit and watch the bustling Calgary streets outside.

Historic City Hall

The land where city hall was built was donated by a resident in 1885. The first building was built from wood, but was demolished a few years later. Architect William M. Dodd designed the new city hall in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, which was started in 1907 and completed in 1911. Financial and design issues plagued the project and when residents wouldn't agree to provide additional funds, Alberta Building Company walked off the job. William Dodd was later fired and replaced by Hodgson & Bates. Funds were then provided and when city hall was done, it cost double the initial budget. There is a single clock tower with a Seth Thomas Clock. The interior had highly ornamental cast-iron staircase and sky-lit rotundas. City Hall doubled as a police station and city jail between 1911 and 1914 with 15 jail cells. The first prisoner was Charles Munro and shortly after that a woman named Kathleen "Kitty" Quinn arrived. Two prisoners died in their cells, William Morgan and J.W. Lewis. Today, the building is used as an office for the Mayor, members of City Council and the municipal clerk.

Security officers and employees have claimed to see the specters of a man and a woman in the building. One employee ran from the building one night after seeing a ghost. Barbara Smith wrote "Ghost Stories of Alberta" and "More Ghost Stories of Alberta" and she shared this from Don Morberg, a City communications official in the 1990s, "The man may be a former prisoner who died years ago in the police lockup. [The female ghost has been] seen on the old stairs. We have no record of any female dying in the building. I’ve heard that she might be a former alderman’s wife or perhaps a madam who had been locked up in the basement cells at one time.”

The Hose and Hound

The Hose and Hound is located in Fire Station No. 3, which was built in 1906 and served the entire east area of the Elbow River until 1952. This is a red brick building with a distinctive, protruding, second-story oriel window. There are large rounded doorways trimmed with sandstone and the roofline has metal trim inscribed with "FIRE STATION No. 3." James "Cappy" Smart was the first fire chief in Calgary and he worked out of this station part-time. Cappy was an eccentric guy who often picked fights with police chiefs. Like this was some kind of one-upmanship. Cappy really like exotic pets and one of these was a monkey. He loved that monkey, but after it built a child, it had to be put down. The monkey's spirit is said to haunt the former station where it throws cans off shelves and messes around with the billiard table, cues and balls. The restaurant claims that sometimes the dishwasher starts on its own, which makes us say that the monkey is welcome to hang out. Cappy's horse Lightning died in a fire and it is thought to be haunting the station as well. As a matter of fact, several horses have been heard in the station. TJ Kastner was a bartender and he told CTV News, "I was sweeping up a little mess and every time I’d go back to get the broom, it would be in a new spot. So, I didn’t really know what was going on. I just assumed it was the monkey because we all always kind of do."

The Cross House

We mentioned A.E. Cross earlier as one of the financiers of the Calgary Stampede. Cross was born and raised in Montreal and he moved to Calgary in 1884. Cross moved into the Cross House in 1899, but the  home was built in 1891 in the Queen Anne Revival Style with a widow walk and gingerbread trim. This is a two-story frame house with sandstone foundation. The property covered seven lots and featured a large lawn, gardens and a 1937 outbuilding that was used as a garage. A.E and his family hosted community events like polo matches and large dinner parties. While the Crosses lived there, they called it The Brewery. The Cross family owned the property until 1973 when they donated the home to the City of Calgary for use by the Parks & Recreation department and the Calgary Horticultural Society. The property downsized to two lots. The A.E. Cross Garden Cafe was opened in 1991 after a big renovation. Paul Rogalski and Olivier Reynaud took over the business in 2001 and they renamed it Rouge Restaurant, which is what it is today. The Cross family was struck with diphtheria, which killed two of their three children and almost killed A.E.'s wife Helen.

Rogalski is the chef and enough strange stuff has happened to convince him that ghosts are a thing. He watched pots and pans fly around in the kitchen, doors have opened and closed on their own and things have gone missing. Mediums claim that the Cross' three-year-old daughter Nellie haunts the location along with her mother Helen and father A.E. People have seen Nellie sitting next to A.E in front of the fireplace. Employees have heard boisterous laughter coming up from the basement and the heavy freezer door shuts on its own. Calgary Association of Paranormal Investigators, CAPI, investigated the restaurant and they captured an EVP on a camera microphone that also captured a figure flying away.

Rose & Crown Pub

The Rose and Crown shut its doors permanently in January 2023, which is a bummer because it apparently is quite haunted. And for good reason. It used to be a funeral parlor.  The first building to be on the lot occupied by the pub was built in 1902. In 1906, that building was either rebuilt or extended and David and Dora Davidson moved into it with their three children. David died in 1921 and Dora passed in 1930. Their daughter Maude lived in the house until 1931 and then a man named Harvey S. Perkins bought the house and lived in it until 1935. The house was demolished and a new building designed by  Calgary architect D.S. McIlroy was constructed. This opened as the Memorial Park Chapel funeral home and it was one of the largest funeral homes in Calgary. The funeral home operated until 1984. The Rose & Crown Pub opened three years later. 

Customers and employees have reported seeing shadow figures, being tapped on the shoulders and interacting with three spirits: a lady in white, a little boy and an older man. The lady in white is middle-aged and wearing a big white billowy dress. The little boy is thought to go back to the funeral home and was a member of the family who lived there as caretakers on the third floor. No one is sure how he passed, but he is often seen lurking downstairs near the furnace. He is the most often seen ghost. The elderly ghost is nondescript other than he is male. 

Al Hunter was a bartender at the Rose & Crown for over twenty years. He found himself having several experiences that raised the hairs on the back of his neck. In the late ‘90s, a group had reserved an area on the second level for a party. A bunch of helium-filled balloons were brought in to decorate the room. Hunter was downstairs when he watched a balloon come down the stairs, drift past him, go down another set of stairs down into the main bar, went back out and then it went down towards the kitchen. Hunter chased the balloon down and put it back upstairs in the room. The balloon did the same thing, three more times.

A couple of women from the United Kingdom took a picture of themselves outside of the bar and when they got home and developed the pictures, they were stunned to see that they captured what looked like the spectral image of a little boy standing next to them.

Lots of great historic locations in Calgary to visit. Make sure to bring your cowboy boots and EMF detector! Are these places in Calgary haunted? That is for you to decide!