Showing posts with label Princess Theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Princess Theater. Show all posts

Thursday, April 23, 2026

HGB Ep. 634 - Haunted Edmonton

Moment in Oddity - Silver Wraith (Suggested by: Michael Rogers)

The status of owning a luxury car can signify that one 'has arrived'. Rolls Royce cars have been considered a luxury car since their inception. The Rolls Royce Silver Ghost (and you know we love that name), was dubbed "the best car in the world" for its quiet and reliable performance. This cemented the brand's reputation for luxury in 1907 with the company only having begun in 1904. After WWII, Rolls Royce began manufacturing the Silver Wraith. And in 1954, there was a very unique Silver Wraith which was one-of-a-kind. This vehicle was built for a lover of luxury and it literally was a 'throne on wheels'. However, it may not be the type of throne that you are thinking of. This Silver Wraith had some very different 'bells and whistles' for the time. A coachwork company, Vignale (vin-YAH-lay) transformed this particular Silver Wraith into quite the conversation piece! This car had a TV in the back, sofa-like bench seats, fold-out desks, a car phone and even a throne built for a king! **cough cough, well, not really. This unique Silver Wraith was built with a concealed toilet under the right-side rear (no pun intended, well, maybe) passenger seat. The investor that purchased the custom commode, dumped a load of cash into this restroom equipped ride. In today's dollars the $65,000 custom car would equate to about $800,000. This one of a kind car was decked out to the hilt. However, there was something it was lacking..... no water tank, flusher or receptacle on the toilet. We have all been on the road where we could call the traffic and such a 'shizzle show'. Well, this particular Silver Wraith would create one, literally, because if the call of nature came, the by-product would be left all over the road. The owner of the vehicle, Joseph J. Mascuch (MASS-kuck) was an industrialist and inventor, and he sold everything from missile launchers to giant cranes. The missiles launched from his Rolls Royce were to be avoided at all costs. Dumping human waste onto the road, obviously, is illegal. However, it is said that the commode was used far more often as a hidden compartment to chill champagne. Ewww! So if one is flush with cash, a vehicle like this Silver Wraith is one way to thumb your nose at the masses and let them know you don't have to take their shizzle! Regardless of its purported use, having a hidden toilet installed in a mid century luxury car, certainly is odd. 

Haunted Edmonton (Suggested by: Brodi Tallman)

The city of Edmonton got its start as a place of trade like so many other Canadian cities. It eventually would be the Gateway to the North. Edmonton has come up on the podcast before when we covered Fort Edmonton. While the fort is one of the most haunted locations in the town, there are several other places with ghost stories. These include theaters, schools, hospitals, restaurants and a cemetery. Join us for the history and hauntings of Canada's Edmonton!

The area that is now known as Alberta, Canada was first settled by the Cree, Blackfoot and Blood. These semi-nomadic tribes followed the buffalo herds and traveled in groups of lodges, which was a term for the family group that shared a teepee. The Blackfoot traveled as 10 to 30 lodges, which could equal up to 240 members. In 1670, King Charles II of England granted trading rights to the Hudson Bay Company for Alberta, which was called Rupert's Land at the time, having been named for the King's cousin Rupert. He was the one who received the Royal Charter and land grants for “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay.” The Hudson Bay Company named itself for this sea and they made it a practice early on to build their forts near the water and they endeavored to trade with the native people there. Another company called the North West Company came into the territory and there was a rivalry for a time until the Hudson Bay Company absorbed the North West Company in 1821. Alberta eventually became a province in 1905 and the town of Edmonton was selected as her capital. The city of Edmonton was an area bought by the Canadian government from the Hudson Bay Company in 1870 and is almost in the center of the province. In 1892, Edmonton would formally be incorporated as a town. Not many called the place home until the Klondike Gold Rush started in 1896 and Edmonton became a hub for supplies. In 1930, Edmonton became the "Gateway to the North" and when oil was discovered there in 1947, its economy changed forever. Today, it is the petrochemical center for western Canada. It also, clearly, a very haunted area of Canada. 

Mount Pleasant Cemetery

Mount Pleasant Cemetery is located at 5420 – 106 Street, which is one of the highest land points in Edmonton. The Strathcona Cemetery Company officially established the cemetery in 1900 when it bought nearly 7 acres for a burial ground. The City of Edmonton took over operation of the cemetery in 1942. The cemetery grew to almost 19 acres and is known for its scenic, park-like, and quiet setting. The south side of the cemetery is where most of the haunting activity takes place. People have reported seeing shadow figures, camera batteries dying, orbs and strange lights that are hazy. 

Walterdale Theater

Walterdale Theatre is located at 10322 83 Ave. in Edmonton’s Old Strathcona area. This building is a really cool piece of architecture and the reason why is that this was originally a fire station. This had been Strathcona Firehall No. 1 when it was built in 1909 and was designed by architects Wilson and Herrald and built by J. M. Eaton. The two-story building was made from brick and featured space for nine horses and three fire wagons on the ground floor and the second floor had the chief's office, general hall, bedrooms, band room, and bathroom. In 1912, it became Edmonton No. 6. This was the oldest fire hall in Alberta. From 1954 to 1974, the building was used as a storage facility. The Walterdale Playhouse was founded in 1959 by the Walterdale Theatre Associates and this makes it one of Western Canada's oldest amateur theater groups. The theater group moved into the fire hall in 1974. This is a small and intimate theater with only 145 seats. The building is said to be haunted by a former volunteer firefighter named Walt who died on the second floor of the firehall. This room is now a make-up room and people have reported seeing Walt walking up and down the stairs and items like wigs, make-up and costumes get moved around or disappear and reappear. It's not just Walt though. Patrons and performers claim to hear phantom hoofbeats, they smell horses and a bell rings from somewhere unseen. 

Princess Theater 

The Princess Theatre, located at 10337 Whyte Avenue, became Alberta's preeminent theater when it opened in 1915. John W. McKernan financed the building, so this is called the McKernan Block. The building was designed by prominent Edmonton architects Wilson and Herrald with an exterior of marble. The interior had frescoes, brass mirrors, gold leaf embellishments, a freight elevator that was unusual for the time and the lighting was gentle on theatergoers' eyes. There was also a forced air ventilation system and ahead of its time, there was an electric ticketing machine and electric time-projecting clock. 

The theater offered 660 seats and the largest stage in western Canada with the second and third floors of the building hosting small apartments. There were vaudeville performances, concerts and movies. The basement featured a billiards parlor. The theater closed in 1958 and reopened as various retail stores, but in the 1970s, it became a theater again and was renamed the Klondyke Theatre. There were regular movies for a while, but eventually "blue movies" found their way to the screen. In 1978, the name was changed back to the Princess Theatre and this became a repertory theater. Live acts also took to the stage. For awhile in the 1990s, it fell into disrepair. Then it became a first run movie theater and was quite successful until Covid-19 in 2020 forced the theater to shut down and it remains closed today. There is a young female spirit in white that is seen in various parts of the theater. She sometimes hovers above the projection room. Since she is seen in what seems to be a wedding dress, a legend formed around her that claims that she was a scorned bride who hanged herself inside the building in the 1920s.  

Fairmont Hotel MacDonald 

The Chateauesque-styled Fairmont Hotel MacDonald sits perched over the North Saskatchewan River at 10065 100 Street. This grand hotel opened in July of 1915 and served luxury rail passengers. It was designed by architects Ross and MacFarlane for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway and it was built from Indiana limestone with a copper roof. 

The hotel was named after Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. Macdonald. The hotel was a masterpiece and cost $2.25 million to complete. The hotel features turreted towers, majestic archways, detailed balustrades, cornices, and hood moldings and a main portico with two pilasters that are detailed with gargoyles, as well as the provincial crest of the four provinces that comprise Western Canada. The interior had the Confederation Lounge with a replica of Robert Harris’ Confederation at Québec in 1864 and the Empire Ballroom was adorned with amazing bas relief carvings and the Wedgwood Room had Wedgwood detailing. For those who don't know, these are intricate designs found on Wedgwood china.Some notable people who visited the hotel were King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. They came in 1939 and apparently caused quite the traffic jam. The hotel named the grandest suite in honor of The Queen Mother. Queen Elizabeth II also visited. In 1953, the hotel added an addition, which was 16-stories and had 292 rooms. It's style was very different from the original hotel and so it eventually was demolished. In 1983, the hotel closed because it had fallen into disrepair and it was set to be demolished, but in 1985, the City of Edmonton declared the hotel a Municipal Heritage Resource and they saved it. Canadian Pacific Hotels bought the structure in 1988 and spent millions restoring it back to its former glory. They added specialty suites to the attic and reopened in 1991.

The hotel is said to be haunted by a horse, a sailor and 1950s music from an old CBC broadcast. The story behind the horse is that it died from exhaustion during the construction in 1914. Guests have reported hearing phantom galloping on the eighth floor and in the basement. Some people have seen a horse-drawn carriage in the hallways. The spirit of a man has been seen smoking a pipe while sitting in a wingback chair on the eighth floor. People call him the "boatman" and believe he is the ghost of a sailor from 1913. Employees had repeatedly taking calls from an empty sixth floor room. Also on the sixth floor, some engineers were doing work and found that room had been dead-bolted, but no one was in the room.

Charles Camsell Hospital (Suggested by: Tania Turner)

The former Charles Camsell Hospital has been converted into apartments today, but it has a very dark past, which is probably why people claim it is one of Alberta's most haunted locations. This place comes up in a eugenics archive if that tells you anything. The hospital started as a Jesuit college and opened in 1913. The Alaska highway was being built in the 1940s and the US Army took over the building in 1942 to house personnel who were working on the highway. That highway was completed in 1944 and the Army left, so the building was reopened as the Edmonton Military Hospital and it remained that for two years. And then came the Department of Indian and Eskimo Affairs, which was seeking a place to treat tuberculosis in First Nation patients. They opened the building as the Charles Camsell Hospital for that purpose. Most people just called it the "Indian Hospital." The official name was for Canadian geologist and Deputy Minister of Mines and Resources, Dr. Charles Camsell. A new building was constructed in 1964 and the college building was demolished in 1967. In the 1970s, the hospital opened as a regular hospital for general treatment and in 1992, the hospital merged with the Royal Alexandra Hospital. The hospital closed in 1996. The building sat vacant for years and in 2004 a developer bought it with plans of refurbishing the building into apartments, but the plan was rejected by the public. By the summer of 2008 outbuildings on the property had been razed. The City Council of Edmonton finally okayed a plan for apartments in 2008, but the developer had a hard time financing this so the building just sat some more. The Taproot Edmonton newspaper reported here in March of 2026, "The developer and architect behind the Inglewood Lofts at the former Charles Camsell Hospital has sold the development for $60.5 million now that an art restoration project is complete. 'When this project was rezoned, this mural was recognized as sort of a masterpiece, but it was in pretty rough shape,' said Gene Dub, the owner of Five Oaks and a principal at Dub Architects. 'The mural, I think, is one of the most interesting things about the hospital.'" So perhaps the building will finally have its new purpose. In 2025, a lawsuit was settled that addressed allegations of widespread abuse, medical experimentation, and forced confinement, with the settlement providing individual compensation, a $150 million healing fund, and over $235 million for commemoration, education, and locating unmarked burial sites. 

Now about the dark history here. Stories about this place include doing weird experiments on the native population here, many of who were hospitalized against their wishes. Patients would disappear, never to be seen again. And since we mentioned that eugenics archive, you've probably already guessed that the First Nation patients were forcibly sterilized. There are reputedly unmarked graves on the property that have never been found, despite $200,000 being paid by the developer to try to find the graves.  

Historical-Ocelot-95 wrote on Reddit, "For a little back story, this took place in Edmonton, Alberta in Canada. A city near where I grew up. This would have taken place in the Spring of 2016. There was an abandoned hospital called the Charles Camsell hospital that my friends and I would explore quite often. I’d been at the hospital multiple times, you’d have to sneak inside as the place was in the process of being torn down at the time and there was constantly security patrolling the perimeter. Each time i had been there, my group of friends & I had weird experiences, like odd sounds (not unusual for a big abandon building, also probably housing homeless people) and sometimes an odd melody that faintly played, almost like elevator music. Multiple people have similar experiences to an odd melody playing. But this one time in particular was more chilling than any time before and just thinking about it creeps me out even after all these years. In late spring of 2016, my 3 friends and I went to explore the hospital late at night. The Hospital had a large perimeter fence that you had to hop and walk through the field behind the hospital to get to. We wanted to go inside but the usual small access window had been Re-Bared up again by the city to prevent access. Distraught, we decided to leave as we couldn’t get in. We began making our way back through the field behind the hospital (where apparently there is a large unmarked native American burial grave) back to the fence to leave. As we were walking (4 of us side by side) we all stopped dead in our tracks as we all heard an elderly, frail sounding male voice say (mind you this voice sounded like it was directly behind us and in our ears, as if he was no less than a foot away from us). “You know you shouldn’t be here”. My 3 friends all took off running after hearing this voice but i stood there completely still as it just froze me and chilled me to the bone. As i stood there for maybe 2-3 seconds after my friends ran off The same old frail man voice, but this time in a much deeper, serious tone said, “If I were you, I’d run too." This made me bolt and take off running for the fence and I actually blew by my friends and got there before they did, I was that scared. The only logical explanation I can chalk it up as, is it was a homeless person laying in the field but this theory doesn’t sit right with me because it wasn’t pitch black in the field. The hospital is located in the middle of a neighborhood, so there were homes not to far away with front lights on and street lights, lighting up the streets around the perimeter of the field. It was dark but you could make out where you were walking, the odds of the 4 of us walking side by side and not seeing him or stepping on him seems unlikely. And 2. The voice sounded like he was directly over our shoulders, behind us, especially the 2nd time when it was just myself who heard his reply. I could swear it sounded like he was no less than 1 foot from me, almost speaking directly in my ear. We got the hell out of there and made it back to my car. All of us totally freaked out, but the rest of them even more freaked out after i told them what i had heard after they took off running. I cant logically make sense of it either than it was a paranormal encounter. With the history of this place and the location we were walking in supposedly being a mass grave, it all makes too much chilling sense." 

People claim to feel an intense, heavy, and negative atmosphere in the hospital. There are the unexplained sounds of wheelchairs moving and crying and also many people have heard screams. Elevators without power would move on their own. A paranormal group that visited in 2005 said that their walkie-talkies said strange things .

shortsweet2 wrote on Reddit, " My friends and I enjoyed exploring the abandoned hospital near my home when we were teenagers. We weren’t the only ones who liked to do so, and would frequently run into other teens around our age who were likewise exploring it’s halls. There were also the tell tale signs of the homeless, sleeping mats and little portable toilets. One night we ran into a rather well dressed man on the third floor. He didn’t seem like the regular “urban exploring” type. He was cordial enough and said that he didn’t mind us exploring as long as we respected the place. I thought maybe he was the property owner, or something to that effect. We explored a little while longer, but the encounter had kind of soured the evening for us. We made up our minds to leave, and my friends headed toward the stairwell. I stayed behind momentarily, my eye drawn to a wall of photographs, covered in dust and cobwebs, probably dating back to the hospitals founding nearly a hundred years earlier. My breath caught in my throat as I recognized a grainy black and white image of the man I had spoken to on the third floor. He was cutting the ribbon at the hospitals grand opening. I ran to rejoin my friends, and have not been back to the hospital since." 

Alberta Block 

The building referred to as the Alberta Block is located at 10526 Jasper Avenue. This building was the home of CKUA Radio Network from 1955 to 2012. That's a long run! The structure itself was built in 1909. 

DJ Lark Clark - great name - was spinning some tunes late one night just before Christmas in 1997, when she had a strange experience. Clark recalled to Tanara McLean in her an article from 2021, "I heard footsteps coming down the narrow hallway to the broadcast booth, and I thought, 'Who would be here in the building late … on a Saturday night?'" Her back was turned to the door leading to the hallway and she was facing a glass wall. The microphone and broadcast control board were directly in front of her. She was mid-sentence on live radio when a silvery glow reflected off the glass wall, hovering over her shoulder. She said, "In that silvery light was a profile of a man's face [and] head passing by the window behind me. I actually thought that maybe I would call out to the audience and ask one of them to call 911. And then I thought, What am I going to ask them to do? Call Ghostbusters?" This figure is thought to be a former caretaker named Sam. A former DJ named Chris Martin told McLean, "Not long after I started, people started asking, 'Have you seen the ghost?'" Ken Regan worked as a journalist at CKUA and later, as its CEO and he shared, "According to the story, Sam had been lobotomized because at some point in his life he threatened the Premier. The story goes that Sam died on the job one night at CKUA and that months, years, decades after this incident, people working late at CKUA or working in the building from time to time would hear someone singing opera or they would smell cigar smoke in the building or in an area of the building where there were no other people. People who I have great respect for and whom I trust and who I know are not the kind of people that would invent these kinds of stories, told me of things that had happened to them." These things include playing pranks like turning on the taps in the bathrooms when people are walking out and taking keys, so that people think they are lost and then they find them a little later, exactly where they left them. Regan invited The Alberta Paranormal Investigators Society to come investigate in 2009 and they spent a night in the basement. Many of the sounds they captured they could explain, but they couldn't explain away an EVP that featured the voices of two little girls singing, "Go back, go all the way back." There are no public records of this Sam, but it does seem that someone in ghostly form is here. 

McKay Avenue School (Suggested by: Tania Turner)

The McKay Avenue School is located at 10425 99 Avenue and was named for Dr. William McKay, a physician for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Architect Henry Denny Johnson was contracted to design the building, which is a three-story, eight-room school built in the Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style. This replaced a former school that had been on the site starting in 1881. 

The new school was  built by RJ Mason and was completed in 1905 and took in its first students in September of that year. The province of Alberta also needed a new Legislature building at that time and this wouldn't be finished until 1913, so the Legislative Assembly of Alberta used the McKay Avenue School for its first two sessions in 1906 and 1907. Edmonton was confirmed as the provincial capital during that time and the assembly also founded the University of Alberta. Attendance at the school dwindled after several decades and the school eventually closed in June of 1983. The building now houses the Edmonton Public Schools Archives and Museum. This is a public research facility. A recreation of the 1881 schoolhouse is behind the museum. Fun Fact: Leslie Nielsen was an alumni of the school. 

Ghostly activity here includes the sounds of children running around getting into mischief. That mischief includes flushing toilets, banging on the piano keys and they love to pull the blinds in this building and also the little schoolhouse. There might also be the spirit of a construction worker who died during renovations. He likes to move chairs, bang a hammer and turn the lights on and off. 

La Boheme (La Bo-EM) Restaurant and Bed and Breakfast

La Boheme Bed and Breakfast is no longer opened, but the building it occupied at 6425 112 Avenue still stands on the historic Gibbard Block. The location was originally financed by furniture merchant William T. Gibbard under developer Magrath-Holgate Company in 1912 as luxury apartments that featured running water and electricity. A streetcar running up the Avenue made this really attractive as well. The building was constructed in the Edwardian-style from pressed bricks. There were three stores on the ground floor and eleven suites on the upper two levels. There were big plans and dreams poured into this, but it eventually went bust with the market crashing. The Gibbard Block was foreclosed on and the title went to the Kingston's Queen's University and they had it until 1945. What followed was a low-rent boarding house for transients that fell into disrepair. And then Austrian immigrant Ernest Ender opened a French restaurant on the first floor that he named La Boheme in 1979. He saved up his money and within six years, he had bought the building. The upper floors were turned into a bed and breakfast and ran as such for nearly forty years. Mike and Connie Comeau (Coe mue) took over the bed and breakfast in 2006, but they closed it down in 2016. The Comeaus hosted their wedding here and regular guests included Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. They sold to Antoine Palmer of Sparrow Capital who planned to restore the building to its former glory and make the place energy efficient. The building reopened with two restaurants and a boutique liquor shop on the first floor, office space on the second floor and rooms on the third floor as long term rentals. 

The story behind the haunting here claims that the building caretaker during the Depression-era became jealous of his wife and so he killed her in their third-floor bedroom. He then half-carried, half-dragged her body to the basement where he dismembered it. Then he used the coal-fired boiler to burn up the body. Eventually, some employees in the building noticed that there were bone fragments in the boiler and reported this to the police. The caretaker was arrested as his wife had mysteriously disappeared. The legend goes on to say he was convicted. No newspapers carry any stories backing any of this up. But it is possible that someone could've died in the building through the years. Whatever the case, an upper room is said to be haunted by a female ghost, seen wearing white, so they sometimes call her "The Bride." A strange thud, thud, thud is also heard on the stairs sometimes. 

Concordia University

Concordia University Edmonton is located at 7128 Ada Blvd. NW. The University was founded in 1921 by the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod. I'm very familiar with Concordia Colleges as was raised Missouri Synod Lutheran. There are seven of these still active in the US and Canada has two. Initially, the school was opened to prepare young men for preaching and teaching in the Christian church and was more of a high school level. Women were invited to enroll in 1939. Concordia affiliated itself with the University of Alberta in 1967 and offered first-year university courses. Second-year courses began in 1975. In the 1980s, it expanded to four-year programs. It officially became Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) in 2015 and broke from its religious focus into a secular institution. The Lutheran Church had stopped funding it years before that. The school bought the historic Magrath Mansion in 2021, which hosts a haunted house experience at Halloween. Some claim it is haunted by its former owner, William Magrath. There are other haunts her too. The Comstock Theater at the school is haunted by a spirit that likes to erase names from playbills and signs his own obsessively, which is Al Gersbach. In the library, students claim to see a skeleton roaming between the shelves. They hear the creaking of a jaw and rattling of bones. The men's dorms is haunted by a ghostly choir that is heard singing. Schwarmann Hall has a teacher's spirit dating back to the 1960s who likes to follow students and is seen in the halls. There are extreme temperature drops when he is around and doors slam on their own. Some students even reported feeling someone grab their shoulders when there was no one there. 

Athletes practicing on the soccer field in front of the Ralph King Building give a tree planted by a rival team wide berth because a legend claims that any player who encounters the tree at any point will experience an injury shortly after. And there are several documented injuries that back this up. One girl was injured so bad a few years back that she was out for the season. In one of the class buildings, a young girl haunts the third floor and it is said that someone had pushed her over the banister when she was leaning against it. She joins students as they walk up the stairwell.

University of Alberta 

The University of Alberta was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, the university's first president. It started as a single, public provincial university and was modelled after American state universities. The university started in the city of Strathcona and became a part of Edmonton when the two cities combined in 1912. Forty-five students were in the first class, seven of them were women. Those women formed a sorority called Seven Independent Spinsters. It became the Wuaneita Society in 1901. That word is a Cree word meaning "kind-hearted." The group ended in 1973. Percy Erskine Nobbs & Frank Darling designed the master plan for the university. During World War I, 82 staff and students from the University of Alberta died during their service and hundreds more were wounded. Degrees were offered in traditional fields like law, medicine and theology. We mentioned eugenics earlier and in 1928, the university's senate was granted the power to oversee and appoint half of the Alberta Eugenics Board. Today, there are nearly 40,000 students pursuing degrees in every possible field spread over five campuses. The Spanish Flu of 1918 hit hard here. Pembina Hall had just been built and it was decided to turn this into a makeshift hospital for awhile. A nurse from the era seems to have lingered and she is seen hurrying through the halls sometimes. A legend claims her fiancé died from the flu and she is searching from him. We think its more likely that this is something residual. A student said, "I'd walk this path once a week, every week, after my class and nothing weird had happened, but this night I was walking down the hall and out of the corner of my eye something catches my attention. I turn to see what it is and I see what I can only describe as an apparition of a woman and it looks like she's wearing a nursing outfit from like the 1950s. She has the cap and everything and I freaked out. I didn't know what to do. I ran out of the building and I haven't been back to Pembina Hall since."

The North Power Plant Building has tales of disembodied footsteps and things falling to the floor on their own. There is a pub here called Dewey's and an employee from there said, "After an event one evening, I was cleaning up the bar near the pool tables. I went to bring some things to the kitchen. When I got back to the bar, there was a little girl standing in front of the bar. When I went to go talk to her, she disappeared." A ghost named Emily has been seen drifting across the stage at Corbett Hall.

Athabasca Hall was built in 1910 and construction workers and their families set up camp along the river. One of the families had a little boy who liked to play along the river bank and he remembered one night that he had left his jacket by the river. His parents were asleep, so he decided to go retrieve it himself. His parents found his frozen body on the side of the river. His parents couldn't bare the grief and they left Edmonton. Perhaps that is why the boy continues to haunt the Hall - he might be seeking his parents. Students describe him as wearing wool pants and a button-up shirt. His lips appear to be blue. A woman hosting a video about the ghost stories shared, "In my first year of University, I was taking Linguistics 101 and how they do the lab participation portion is they lock you into this little room in Athabasca Hall and they make you sit down. You put these big clunky headphones on, so you're totally immersed in the project. Anyway, so I was sitting there and I was just going through the project and it was fine and then all a sudden I started to feel like a shiver, like a chill and so I took the headphones off. I looked behind me and I thought I saw a little boy, but it was like he disappeared really fast." 

Edmonton is said to be an underrated city with a thriving culinary scene. It is nicknamed the "Festival City" because it hosts so many festivals. Does the city possibly host ghosts? Are these locations in Edmonton haunted? That is for you to decide!  

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Ep. 259 - Melbourne's Princess Theater

 
Moment in Oddity - The Mars' Cursed Sunken Treasure in Baltic Sea
Suggested by: Markus Watt

The pride of Sweden's 16th century navy was a warship called Mars. Fittingly, it was named for the Roman god of war. It was equipped with 107 guns and measured 48 meters, which made it the perfect flagship for the Swedish fleet and it lead it into the Northern Seven Years' War. In 1564, during the battle of Öland in the Baltic Sea, the Mars caught fire and it sunk beneath the sea, consigning 800 to 900 Swedish and German sailors and a fortune in gold and silver coins to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Some believe that the ship was doomed from the start by a curse. King Erik XIV had an ego and he enraged the Catholic Church when he confiscated church bells to melt down and make cannons for the Mars. The church felt the ship was too big and too powerful and some wonder if it didn't do something to ensure its fiery fate. Other stories persist in telling stories of ghosts that rise up from the ship to conceal its location. And that would nearly seem true as it took until very recently for archeologists and treasure hunters to find the Mars. The most unusual thing though is that the Mars was found nearly fully preserved, despite being on the bottom of the sea for hundreds of years and that, certainly is odd!

This Month in History - Hoover's Claim About Black Tuesday

In the month of May, on the 2nd, in 1930, President Herbert Hoover made the idiotic claim that the stock market crash was a temporary setback. On October 29, 1929, Black Tuesday hit Wall Street with a catastrophic crash of the Stock Market. Investors traded 16 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day and billions of dollars were lost. Very wealthy people lost everything and many of them took their own lives in their desperation. Despite the fact that this threw the industrialized world into a downward spiral, President Hoover made this statement, "While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States-that is prosperity." As history would reveal, the Great Depression ensued as the longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world up to that time lasting ten years.

The Princess Theater in Melbourne
(Suggested by listener Rick Kennett)

Melbourne is the capital of Victoria and home to close to 4 million people. This city is a center of diversity and for the history of Australia it is a symbol of the independent spirit. Victoria and Melbourne were established as autonomous colonies, working outside of government regulation and permissions. This attracted men with that same spirit. One of them would re-purpose an amphitheater as The Princess Theater. This is a theater with roots running as far back as the founding of Melbourne and with that kind of history, one just knows this theater is ripe for hauntings. And there does seem to be some ghostly activity going on here. Join me as I share the history and hauntings of Melbourne's Princess Theater!

The Kulin Nation used to live on the land that is now the city of Melbourne.  That nation is made up of five separate aboriginal language groups: Boonwurrung (Boon-wur-rung), Dja Dja Wurrung (Jar-Jar-Wur-rung), Taungurung (Tung-ger-rung), Wathaurung (Wath-er-rung) and Woiwurrung (Woy-wur-rung.) The Kulin are represented by the Bunji, which is the wedge-tailed eagle and symbolizes the creation spirit and the Waa, which is the crow and symbolizes the protector of the waterways. *Fun Fact: There are 1500 Kulin archaeological sites with around 200 of them within the Melbourne metropolitan area itself.*

The British were the first to occupy Victoria and their original reason for this was out of fear of possible French settlement. British Lieutenant David Collins brought a party of convicts and free settlers to Port Phillip in October 1803 and established a small colony. Through the early 1800s, the area became popular with whalers and sealers. Initially, settlers from Tasmania filtered into the area and began squatting on the land. When the government tried to remove them, they resisted. John Batman was an Australian entrepreneur and explorer and he was one of the first white men to live in Melbourne. He came to Port Phillip Bay in May 1835 and 'paid' the local Aboriginal people in blankets and trinkets for about 243,000 acres of land near the Yarra River. This would become the township of Melbourne by 1837 and Captain William Lonsdale was named magistrate. New South Wales was frustrated at the lack of compliance from the autonomous Victoria and they were forced to recognize it as a successful colony. This lead to the Port Phillip District gaining independence from New South Wales in 1850 and they established a separate police force, a customs office and a separate Lands Office. Things really boomed for Melbourne after that as the gold rush hit.

In November 1851, alluvial gold was discovered north of Melbourne at Clunes, Anderson's Creek, Buninyong, Ballarat, Mount Alexander and Bendigo. Ships from all over the world brought miners into the town of Melbourne. The colony swelled from a population of 80,000 to 300,000. By 1856, more than 86 million grams of gold were mined, which equalled around $100 million. This eventually made Melbourne Australia's major financial centre and Victoria became an extremely wealthy colony. The good times were not always rolling though as the town was hit with depressions in both the 1890s and 1930s. After World War II, many migrants from Europe arrived and today the city is considered a culturally diverse city. One of the historical sites in this town is The Princess Theater.

The Princess Theater stands in the footprint of a previous theater. That first theater dates back almost to the founding of Melbourne and was an equestrian amphitheater name the Astley Ampitheater after the Astley Royal Ampitheater in London. This was built by Tom Moore during the Gold Rush. In 1857, that amphitheater was remodeled into a theater and opera house by George Coppin. Coppin had spent his entire life on the stage, making his first appearance as an infant. At the age of seven, he and his sister had their own act. He was born in England, but set his sights on Australia in 1842. Actually, that's not entirely honest. A coin set his sights on Australia. If it had been tails, he would have been headed to America. He started in Sydney working in theaters and bought a hotel. He moved on to Melbourne eventually and started converting buildings into theaters. He also started importing luxuries that included ice, deer and live turtles. But it was theater that he really made his mark on Australia. He only owned the newly remodeled amphitheater for a short period of time and the theater changed hands almost every year. Due to the constant change in ownership, the building deteriorated and was basically taken down to a shell and rebuilt from scratch in 1865. The theater was successful again after that, but by January 3, 1885, it was closed after falling into disrepair once again.

Three of Australia’s most influential theatre practitioners, JC Williamson, George Musgrove and Arthur Garner, formed The Triumvirate and they bought what was left of the theater, demolished it and rebuilt the theater that stands today at a cost of £50,000. The architect was Willaim Pitt. Construction took nine months and the new Princess theater opened on December 18th, 1886. The theater was built in the Second Empire style. The Second Empire refers to elements from the Second French Empire. This can be seen in the theaters three four-sided gambrel-style mansard hip roofs with dormer windows on each side. Each of these roofs also has its own crown made with cast iron filigree. The middle section of the exterior features two sections of exquisite stained glass. These were added in 1901 to outdoor terraces to create a Wintergarden Bar. The front foyer and stairs were made from marble and were said to be equal to that found in the Paris Opera, the Frankfurt Stadt and the Grand in Bordeaux. The stage lighting was state-of-the-art. The most unique thing about the theater was the retractable roof. The first performance was of The Mikado.

Ownership changed again in 1910 and the poor theater found itself in the hands of several owners again. In 1915, theatrical producer Ben Fuller took control and partnered with American stage actor and dancer Hugh J. Ward. Several years later, they hired architect Henry Eli White to extensively renovate the auditorium and foyers and the grand copper awning was added at that time. The theatre reopened on December 26, 1922 with a performance of The O'Brien Girl. In 1933, Efftee Films purchased the theater and the initials FT were carved over the proscenium arch for F. W.Thring, the theater entrepreneur. He made the Princess Theater the first home of his radio station 3XY. When he died, Ben Fuller took over the lease once again and eventually purchased the theater with Garnett Carroll. From 1942 to 1947, the Princess ran exclusively as a cinema, due to the scarcities of World War II. Fuller died in 1952 and Carroll assumed full control bringing an array of opera, ballet, musical comedy and drama to the stage. His big moment was hosting the National Theatre Movement’s gala performance of The Tales of Hoffmann for Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Carroll was fond of American musicals and produced many of them including, Kismet (1954), The Sound of Music (1960), The King and I (1960) and Carousel (1964).

Garnett Carroll died in 1964 and ownership of the Princess passed to his son, John Carroll. He eventually leased the theater to the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. In 1973, the theater was listed by the National trust. David Marriner purchased the theater in 1986 and refurbished it back to its 1922 state, minus the old technical stuff. 2,000 paint samples were microscopically analyzed to ensure an accurate reproduction. Painters were trained on-site in the special techniques used in 1922 like colour glazing, which is the colors being blended from a darker hue to a lighter range near the central sunburst. Original light fixtures were found and replicated. The Princess reopend yet again and this time it was the musical Les Misérables, followed by The Phantom of the Opera. That production of Phantom would become the longest running show ever staged in Victoria. Today, the Princess Theatre is known as the home of musical theatre in Australia. And on the topic of phantom's, the Princess has its own resident ghost it would seem.

Frederick Baker, known to the world as Federici, was an Italian-born opera singer who performed during the late 1800s. He was world renowned for his work in the bass-baritone roles of the Savoy Operas written by Gilbert and Sullivan. His career started in London in 1872 when he was 21 and he eventually originated the role of the Pirate King in Pirates of Penzance. In 1887, Federici traveled to Australia with his wife and kids and joined J. C. Williamson's company. This brought him to the stage at the princess Theater. He played Florian in the first production in Australia of Princess Ida. Other roles in Australia included the Mikado, the Pirate King, Dick Deadeye, Colonel Calverley and Strephon. His final role would be at the Princess Theater in 1888 and he played the role of Mephistopheles in Faust. Eerily, as he was traveling down a trap door through what looked like smoke and flame to portray his character's plunge into Hell, he suffered a deadly heart attack. 

Even though the actor's body was removed from the theater, his spirit has not left. There are many stories of people experiencing the ghost of Federici. Stories come from past and present staff and theater patrons. The first story is about the night he died. Many of the cast had no idea that he had passed away until after the final curtain call. When they were told, they were shocked because they all swore that he was on stage with them taking that final curtain call. Many people have seen what they describe as unexplained balls of fluorescent light that hover about the stage. Equipment malfunctions during performances. Unexplained noises are heard coming from within the wings and corridors. More harrowing are the bizarre accidents that have taken place.

“Fred is very much a benevolent presence, nothing nasty ever happens. He’s more of a friendly poltergeist,” says Jesse Cain, the theater's business development manager. When a documentary was made nearly 80 years later, by Kennedy Miller in the early 1970s, a photograph of the film set revealed an ashen-faced, partly transparent observer. Nobody had seen anyone matching that person on the set that day. Ernest St Clair took on the role of Mephistopheles after Federici's death and he swore that every time he stepped forward to take his bow, invisible hands pushed him backwards. During a late night rehearsal, a staff member saw a figure sitting in the dress circle and asked his staff who had let a visitor in. The employees said they hadn't let anybody in and a search was called for to find the stranger. He was never found.

Many performers have seen the full-bodied apparition of Federici walking in the halls. His ghost is most often seen in the dress circle. (For those who don't know, the dress circle is the second level of seating or first few rows of the first balcony.) He is seen dressed in evening attire complete with cloak and top-hat. His specter seems to be scrutinizing the stage performances. His apparition is seen sitting in a seat also and has stayed so long that people can make out the finer details. When his spirit is seen on an opening night, it is thought to be good luck for the run of the production. The theater staff always ensure a vacant seat within the dress circle on opening nights to better ensure that his spirit makes its appearance.

An article about the Haunted Melbourne Ghost Tour says, "Early theater owners spotted a way to get a bit of good publicity for the theater and offered up 100 pounds to any member of the public prepared to spend a night alone in the theater. There is no record of anyone ever taking up their challenge. In the very early 1900's a new fire alarm system was placed in the theater. The resident fireman was required to punch a time clock every hour, triggering a light on a switchboard at a nearby fire station. If he failed to clock in, an alarm was raised and a brigade dispatched to the theater. One particular night during a heat wave no message came through on the hour and within minutes the brigade was dispatched. On reaching the theater the firemen, finding no sign of a fire, discovered their colleague huddled in a corner terrified beyond belief. He later claimed that he had opened the sliding section of the roof to let the heat out and some air in. As the panels opened, bright moonlight came into the auditorium revealing a figure standing, statue-like, on center stage. He described this figure as a tall, well-built man with distinguished features, dressed in evening clothes with a long cloak and a top-hat. The best known sighting of the ghost occurred in 1917. The theater's wardrobe mistress was working back late to finish costumes for an upcoming production. At approximately 2.30am a fireman knocked gently on her workroom door and stuck his head inside and asked her if she'd like to see a ghost. The skeptical woman's curiosity got the better of her and she went with him. They went up some side stairs to a landing beside the dress circle. The fireman pointed to Federici who was sitting in the middle of the second row of the dress circle. He was staring down at the empty stage as the fireman and the wardrobe mistress looked on. They eventually left the ghost and returned back to their work quite amazed at what they'd seen. A couple of years later another fireman had an experience. He saw the ghost standing in the same spot on two separate occasions."

The Princess Theater was unique and innovative in its day with a retractable roof. The theater faced many years of disrepair and neglect and then renovation. This alone with the emotions connected to acting usually ensure that a theater is going to have ghostly activity. Throw in the death of an actor and you might just have yourself a haunted theater. is Melbourne's Princess theater haunted? That is for you to decide!