The Haunting of the Heriot Bay Inn Virtually every community has its fable of spectral phantoms; according to local legend the Heriot Bay Inn on Quadra Island is home to one of the most active ghosts on the entire west coast. The Inn was built in late 1894, in the sheltered cove of Drew Harbour on the east coast of Quadra Island. The protected waters of the harbour and easy access by boat insured that the Heriot Bay Inn would quickly become a popular hub for loggers, fisherman, prospectors and settlers who congregated from the entire central and North Island region. At the turn of the century, law and order was thin on the northern reaches of the district, the population was largely transient, the land was largely crude and un-colonized, and life was harsh and unrelenting. Stories of outlaws and murder were not rare and the dispensing of justice was sluggish owing to the distances, elements and hardships in preserving solid evidence. At that time, the Heriot Bay Inn was a principal drinking location for dozens of lonely men whose only respite from long stretches of hard work in isolation was to drink themselves silly, play a few games of cards or pool and carouse with the local women (if there happen to be any). A Body Never Found It was a typical Saturday night and the patrons of the pub werent’t any drunker than they Haunting of the Heriot Bay Innnormally would have been. A bar room brawl broke out between an unknown logger and a few other better known but elusive transient fishermen; the skirmish was quickly dispensed out of doors to keep the damage to a minimum inside the pub. There is no account of what happened after the fight was taken outside but it was rumored that the lone logger, who was never to be seen again perished that night, he never went back to his room and his body was never found. It was the buzz that his body was buried in a vacant lot close to the Inn. Since then and on frequent intervals, the lone logger walks the corridors of the Inn, he is not particular as to how many people hear him and his activities are varied and reported to be somewhat noisy. A prodigious number of people over the past 100 years have heard or seen this tall thin man, wearing old style rather worn out Standfield long johns with suspenders and logger type falling pants overtop ankle high top steel toed style boots. The Bartenders Tale “I had just come on shift in the pub and was cleaning up and preparing for the day when I looked up and saw a logger standing in front of the inside of the door to the pub. I turned and said to him, “Sorry fella; I am not ready but if you give me 15 minutes I should be able to get to you.” I turned around to face the mirror behind the bar ready to count the cash and I glanced at the mirror, there was nobody there. He couldn’t have left because the door was locked and he didn’t have time to walk across the room. I thought “Oh My God I’ve just spoke to a ghost.” Three are Better than One “It was a stormy night, the kind of south-eastern storm that can only happen on the east coast of Vancouver Island and rather spooky as storm ridden, dark nights in the middle of winter can be. There was no-one staying at the Inn which was OK because there were the three of us and we had a lot of maintenance work to do. It was coming onto evening when we heard a real ruckus upstairs and being that we knew no one was staying at the inn we thought the wind had broken a shutter loose so all three of us went upstairs. What we found startled us a little. All the doors to every room were open, all the window shutters were secure, so we shut all the doors and went back downstairs to the dining room, thinking that that was a little odd. About a half an hour later we heard the banging again so once more all three of us went upstairs to find all the doors to all the rooms wide open again. It gives me shivers just to think about it; needless to say we did not stay in separate quarters that night”. Accounts of the haunting of the Inn are as numerous as there are perspectives and even today people request the rooms over the pub in the hope that they too may have a close encounter with an old time logger whose whereabouts was never confirmed and whose bones have never been found. The logger is not the only spectral being seen at the Heriot Bay Inn, there has been numerous sightings over the years of an older woman knitting, and although no-one seems to know why, it seems she is actually waiting for someone. An other good one :) Ginette
Posted on: Mon, 04 Nov 2013 14:39:51 +0000
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