Vancouver is haunted - and not just by Canucks' playoff failures

Terrifying trolley! (Photo by Vancouver Trolley Co.)

Was she a ghost? She looked like one, but I couldn't be sure...

That's a question you'll have to ask for yourself, if you go on the Vancouver Trolley Company's Haunted Trolley Ride.

In keeping with the spirit of the Halloween season, the company offers an annual "haunted ride" around Vancouver.

It's quite a trip.

When you first embark, you enter a bus full of skulls, spider webs, bats and other Halloween paraphernalia. Scary sounds echo over the sound system. And, of course, your guides look like they've stepped right off the screen from old reruns of the Addams Family or the Munsters.

Looking around, even some of your fellow passengers may look a bit scary...

Isn't that Ichabod Crane over there with the pumpkin head? And that looks like Dracula...albeit, a bit on the young side for a 300-year-old count. And is that really the Wolfman - or did that guy just run out of razor blades (about 2 months ago)?

It's all in good fun, of course.

Is that a faceless pumpkin? A bat-head? Or Ichabod Crane?

After everyone boards, the bus proceeds to make several stops around the city of Vancouver, places where there have been unsolved murders, inexplicable occurrences, and reported hauntings throughout the years.

Some of them look like they would make a good setting for movies like The Amityville Horror or Black Christmas. But other places, you'd never suspect...

For example, did you know there is (supposedly) a body buried under the intersection of 33rd Avenue and Fraser Street in Vancouver? That's what a local legend tells...

You'll learn more about that and other ghostly Vancouver sites during the tours.

Eventually, you do end up walking through a cemetery...in the dark...late at night...maybe under a full moon...

Be on the lookout for wandering wraiths. The one I think I saw, I caught out of the corner of my eye.

After traipsing through the graveyard, you'll have another Halloween treat: a stop at the Vancouver Police Museum. There you'll meet a rather unconventional M-E (certainly nothing like the ones on Castle or Hawaii Five-O) who will take you on a tour of the old city morgue.

After that, you might want to pop out for a cold one - or perhaps not.

The tours only run until Oct. 31 though, so you better hurry if you want to participate. That gives you two more days to get your ghost on, in Vancouver.

If you can't make it to a trolley tour, there are other spooky events you could attend...you could ride the Stanley Park Halloween Ghost Train, an eerily good time; or, stroll through the haunted halls of the Burnaby Haunted Village.

There are other "haunted houses" in the Greater Vancouver area, there's a list here.

Just be sure to keep the number for Ghost-Busters handy. Because if you get spooked, who else are you gonna call?


Ray Parker Jr. Ghostbusters by Celtiemama