You know I always believed that if there are ghosts they were most likely mentally unbalanced while among the living. Depression, anxiety schizophrenia, etc... These illnesses are debilitating and often leave one with a sense that all is lost. They wonder what life could have been like without such ailments and feel cheated as a result. Frustration, anger and sadness are very real emotions with the severely depressed. I should know - I do know, as I suffer from depression and anxiety, and I feel all these emotions on a daily basis. I believe these ghosts are remaining behind in hopes of attaining all that was lost in the midst of their daily battle, and now that they are free, they don't want to leave. They want to experience all that they could not while alive. That's just my view - take it or leave it. Anyways, on with the story.
Ghost Stories Of British Columbia, Jo-Anne Christensen
Hauntings usually seem to be a human connection between the past and the present, but there are indications that some places are able to make those connections on their own. In the cool, fall weeks of October leading up to Halloween, one street in Victoria, B.C. is said to make such a haunting connection - by presenting a visual memory of the dirt-packed country road that it once was.
Witnesses to the eerie transformation are usually alone in their vehicles, between two and three o-clock on a Sunday morning. As they drive along Shelbourne Street, south of the Hillside shopping centre, they become convinced they have taken a wrong turn.
The confusion is understandable, for the ordinary city street lined with streetlights, houses, and shops has unexpectedly become an overgrown country road. Wild grass grows up between the tire ruts, and flowering broom and bulrushes bunch thickly together in the marshy ditches. The dirt road is deserted and dark, but just as the lone traveller begins searching desperately for a place to make a U-turn, the bright lights of Hillside are suddenly all around.
Have people see the 'ghost' of what Shelbourne Street once was, or have they momentarily travelled back to that time? It's a rare and fascinating phenomenon that occurs each October in Victoria's early morning hours.
The Suspect Returns
The man's name was Jim Hawthornthwaite and, in the early 1900's, he was member of British Columbia's Legislative Assembly. He made his living as a politician, and his home in Nanaimo, where he shared a house with a fellow by the name of Arthur Potts.
One evening, Potts heard a commotion in the living room and went rushing in to see what was happening. There, he found Hawthornthwaite, wild-eyed and alone, waving a fireplace poker in a defencive arc.
"Did you see him?" the politician raved. "Where did he go?"
Potts assured his friend that he had seen no one leave the room, then cautiously asked what had happened. Hawthornthwaite proceeded to describe a grisly and dramatic scene, claiming he was confronted by a native man who was covered in blood and brandishing a gore-smeared axe.
It is not know whether Potts believed the wild story, but the house-mates never spoke to each other of the incident again. In fact, it was years before Hawthornthwaite breathed another word about his fright - but when he did, he found a receptive ear.
It was Nanaimo's Chief of Police who had somehow inspired the retelling of this strange tale. Perhaps, over time, Hawthornthwaite had begun to doubt his own sanity, or perhaps he expected to be greeted with the chief's mocking scepticism, but he relayed the story in a somewhat apologetic, disclaiming tone. However, the politician's seeming lack of credulity did nothing to dampen the other man's enthusiastic interest.
As Bert Binny wrote in the April 27, 1958 edition of Victoria's Daily Colonist: The description of the Indian, his appearance and the setting provided an exact replica of the scene and character when an Indian had been taken into custody in that very room some years previously. He had murdered his wife with an axe.
It was one for the paranormal record books. The politician had been telling the truth.
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