Canada’s expansive landscape offers numerous hidden spots where things can easily hide, lurk, and, for the most part, go completely unnoticed.
Even as a relatively newer country, many of Canada’s historical sites or buildings are old enough that the legends of the paranormal have had time to build and make their way across the country. Canada has many legends, tales, and lore, surrounding the mysterious, the unknown, or the downright spooky.
Some are well-known, like the ghosts of the many luxurious and historic railway hotels across Canada or the legendary sea and lake monsters. Some, however, are a bit more obscure and may have you second-guess a visit to any of these locations after dark. And for the skeptics, these undoubtedly make great campfire or Halloween stories.
Territories
Valley of the Headless Men
The 30,000 km2 area, devoid of roads and highways, is only accessible by boat or plane, and creates some of the country’s most beautiful mountain landscapes. The area, while breathtakingly beautiful, is also shrouded in mystery.
The area’s nickname of the Valley of the Headless Men comes from real discoveries of mysteries. Throughout the early 20th century, multiple people either disappeared from the river valley or were discovered without heads. The most notable of those discoveries were the first: Frank and Willie McLeod. They ventured north from Edmonton for the Gold Rush, but they never returned. Later, their headless skeletons were found near a creek.
Location: Nahanni National Park Reserve, NT
The Yukon Encounter
UFO sightings are always a little more interesting to learn about when the sighting had multiple witnesses.
The 1996 Yukon Encounter is one of these types of UFO/UAE situations, with many witnesses being scattered across the Yukon Territory. On December 11, 1996, DOZENS of reports were made of unidentified lights in the sky. First, a report was made from Fox Lake on the Klondike Highway. Then, four more reports of sightings came from the same highway. Additionally, people in Carmacks, over 100km from Fox Lake, reported similar sights earlier in the evening.
100km further north in Pelley Crossing, witnesses made reports of lights in the sky, while more people made reports further north in the town of Mayo. These eye-witness accounts of strange lights over the Yukon occurred on the same evening, making it a curious mystery…or encounter!
Location: various across YT
The Caribou Hotel Hauntings
Downtown Carcross’ Caribou Hotel is a designated historic site built in 1898 to accommodate the rush of people from the actual Gold Rush. It was originally built in a town in northern BC. After a devastating fire and rebuilding, the hotel was ferried across Lake Bennet to stay in Carcross, YT.
The general stories from Canada’s Gold Rush can make way for many ghost stories with the Wild West activity around these areas. This includes the Caribou Hotel, which was also the location of the hotel owners’ deaths in the 1920s and 30s. The female owner, Bessie, is often reported as haunting the third floor of the hotel.
Location: Carcross, YT
British Columbia
Ogopogo
British Columbia’s southern interior and Lake Okanagan are home to arguably one of the most infamous Canadian legends or mysteries.
The massive lake is over 200m deep in some parts, averages a depth of over 70m, and is about 350 km2 in area to create tons of room for mysteries…or for creatures to hide. Reports of ‘Ogopogo’ sightings date back as far back as the 18th Century and have roots in Indigenous culture, when Okanagan tribes, calling it N’ha-a-itk, offered ritual sacrifices for safe lake crossings. In 1890, Captain Thomas Shorts described a ram-headed, finned creature, solidifying local belief in Ogopogo.
In 1978, Bill Steciuk and about 20 others witnessed a creature with a head and three black humps before it disappeared into the lake, sparking his lifelong documentation of sightings.
Today, the area has fully embraced the legend, and Ogopogo icons are visible across the Okanagan Valley communities.
Location: Lake Okanagan
The Beban House
Nanaimo’s Beban House, named for its original owners and occupants (and the man who built the log home) is part of the city’s Beban Park.
Today, the large park includes a rec centre, arena, pool, playgrounds, and sports fields, with the house on the far south side of the park. Many of dubbed the Beban House as one of Vancouver Island’s most haunted locations. Mr. Beban passed away in the home which was eventually sold to the city of Nanaimo.
It first operated as a daycare which spurred the first apparent reports of ghost sightings. Similar accounts were made over the years, and all seemed to centre around a kid playing with a ball, or the unexplained movement of toy balls. These reports come from people who worked in the building, city officials, and RCMP.
Location: Nanaimo
More: 15 Haunted Places and Ghost Stories in British Columbia
Alberta
Hauntings at the Banff Springs Hotel
The spirits which supposedly haunt Alberta’s Banff Springs Hotel are possibly the province’s most well-known “mysteries;” so much so that the hotel often attracts paranormal tourism.
The castle-like building in the Rockies and on the banks of the Bow River is a bit of a haunting structure on its own.
The building is made with grand staircases, luxurious ballrooms, narrow hallways, and Chateauesque features to make it cozy yet grand, large, and mysterious. The ghost bride and bellman are among the famous guests haunting the hotel, while specific rooms are also said to be haunted.
Location: Banff
East Coulee School Museum
East Coulee, a short drive east of Drumheller, was once a bustling and busy mining settlement and is in the same location as the abandoned Atlas Coal Mine.
While the area’s abandoned mine and tunnels could be filled with various haunting spirits, many know more about the East Coulee School’s paranormal activity. The school opened in 1930 and served students for about forty years; it was then converted into a museum in 1985. The museum is not shy about possible hauntings and often host Haunted Overnight Stays, Haunted High Teas, or tours with more information on who might haunt the classrooms.
Location: Drumheller
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Saskatchewan
Ghosts of Government House
Regina’s Government House is a restored historical building in the city’s southeast which once served as the lieutenant governor’s residence.
Today, it is open as a museum with exhibits and regular events. Myths, legends, and lore of hauntings and ghostly happenings are a huge draw to many who tour the house. The Victoria-era building and its architecture are enough to lend active imaginations a few ghost stories. Staff have reported hearing ghostly footsteps, music boxes playing when no one is around and artifacts like chairs that turn up in different rooms.
Plus, the Government House has some more well-known ghost stories often told in the annual Ghost Tours.
Location: Regina
Ghosts of the University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon’s University of Saskatchewan campus contains a few different supposedly haunted buildings.
The campus is almost as old as the city itself at 117 years old and boasts several pieces of beautifully restored architecture. And when asking, “Which of those buildings at the USask are haunted?” one might be better off asking, “which building at the USask is NOT haunted?”
With over a century in operation, Saskatoon’s University of Saskatchewan has had thousands upon thousands of people pass through these halls and buildings, many of whom have ghostly sightings or occurrences to report. Those supposedly haunted buildings of Sask. The university includes the basement of Saskatchewan Hall, the school Tunnels, the Thorvaldson Building, and the Murray Library.
You might even spot Diefenbaker haunting the grounds. USask Campus Ghost Tours
Location: Saskatoon
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Manitoba
The Falcon Lake Incident
Manitoba is home to one of not only Canada’s, but North America’s best-documented UFO sightings. On top of this, Manitoba’s Falcon Lake Incident has spurred multiple investigations and documentaries to add to the event’s official documentation. It all started on the evening of May 12, 1967, when a young amateur geologist from Winnipeg set out to explore the geology around Falcon Lake, about 150km from the city.
While out there, Mr. Stefan Michalak not only had an apparent sighting, but also apparent contact with a UFO. Upon returning home, Stefan had felt like he had been in an accident. His family brought him immediately to the hospital where he was treated for burns, headaches, and other strange physical symptoms.
All of his evaluations are well-documented, and Stefan became public about his story. This spurred questions from the RCMP and RCAF who eventually investigated the Falcon Lake area. While results were inconclusive, these authorities DID find burnt circles of vegetation, melted metal, and radioactivity!
Lower Fort Garry National Historic Site
In 1831, Lower Fort Garry was established on Manitoba’s Red River as an HBC trading post. The imposing stone structures of the Fort, and the stories around these buildings, give the entire Fort a fully haunted feel. And reports of these haunting feelings go back well into the 19th century. The site is now open to the public from spring to fall and even offers annual ghost tours for more spooky information on the Fort!
Thomas Slack, a keyholder in the penitentiary warehouse, is believed to haunt the site. After his family’s sudden arrival threatened his life with a “country wife,” he tragically died by suicide, and staff report feeling watched in the warehouse and seeing apparitions.
Another specter, the Three-Step Ghost, is heard near the Men’s House, with footsteps that mysteriously vanish before any person appears, leaving staff puzzled and alert for invisible visitors.
Tit Loup, a loyal dog, is said to run along the riverbank at night, still waiting for his owner, Jean-Louis Blanchard, who perished long ago on a voyage.
Location: Saint Andrews
Ontario
The Guardian Case
This might be one of the strangest UFO sightings to ever have occurred across Canada. And the strangeness doesn’t even arise from the sighting itself, but rather from how it started, and from the aftermath and follow-up incidents.
The Guardian Case started with an anonymous individual sending supposed evidence of UFO activity in the Carp and West Carleton areas of Ontario to UFO investigators. The person continued to send more and more materials, increasing the interest of the investigators. Those materials include a VHS tape of “UFO footage.” The “sender” went big and put their materials out into the world to any authority who would listen.
Eventually, the story got big enough for the show Unsolved Mysteries. Then the witness sighting reports began to spill into UFO investigators: stories that aligned with what the “sender” documented. There is much more to this story, and more players involved, all well-covered in the CBC doc, UFO Town.
Location: Carp and West Carleton
Ontario’s Legislative Building
The Ontario Legislative Building in Toronto’s Queen’s Park, completed between 1886 and 1893, is a Richardson Romanesque architectural gem crafted from Credit Valley sandstone and adorned with Vermont slate and copper domes. Yet, beyond its historic beauty, the building is known for eerie hauntings.
Ghost tours reveal tales of spirits, including a hanging lady, a weeping maiden, and a gray-haired woman in rags—figures thought to be remnants of the former Women’s Mental Hospital once on the site.
Apparitions reportedly descend staircases while a phantom soldier patrols the halls, making Halloween the perfect time to explore its haunted history.
Location: Toronto
Ghosts of the Ottawa Jail Hostel
Now a hostel with bookable rooms, Ottawa’s old Jailhouse was operated, rather ruthlessly, by the British as a slammer from 1862-1972. And those who stay there today will stay in the jail’s original cells (with modern amenities).
Among its reported hauntings is the ghost of Patrick Whelan, who appears near guests’ beds, in his cell, or along the hall to the gallows, where he prayed in his final moments. Whelan, executed despite declaring innocence and claiming to know the true killer, is forever linked to the .32-calibre revolver believed to be the murder weapon, now in the Canadian Museum of History.
These hauntings around the jail, and the location’s unfortunately storied history, all make it susceptible to a handful of tales.
Location: Ottawa
Quebec
The Montreal Incident
UFO sightings, including many of those on this list, often seem to happen in more rural settings. the Montreal incident, however, brings the out-of-this-world to the heart of the city’s downtown.
In November of 1990, a guest of the Bonaventure Hotel noticed something odd in the sky above the rooftop pool: she noticed a gathering of yellowish and greenish lights. Plus, the woman photographed what she saw.
While many have argued that these lights on such a foggy night could have been a helicopter, the aurora, or reflections, it is also argued that these lights were too still for too long to be explained by those reasons.
Ponik
It might be that each province and territory in Canada has its own signature “lake monster” or Loch Ness type of legend. And Quebec is no different. The province’s lac Pohénégamook in northeastern Quebec (between the St. Lawrence and the U.S. border) is known to be home to the area’s largest legend: Ponik!
The legend and tales of Ponik go back to as early as the 1870s and as late as 2015. As witness reports go, Ponik apparently has a horse-like head, three humps, and two short flippers. Sighting seems to have peaked in the 1950s and 60s.
Prince Edward Island
The Ghost Ship of the Northumberland Strait
The tales of the Ghost Ship of the Northumberland Strait (also known as the phantom ship of PEI) date back to about 200 years ago.
The nautical apparition is usually described as a boat with large white sails on tall masts which are engulfed in flames. The Northumberland Strait waters are known to be treacherous with many shipwrecks having happened in the area; this fact provided plenty of room for ghost ship lore. And given the Strait’s position between two provinces, sightings of the phantom or flaming ship have also been made from Nova Scotia.
Location: PEI’s south coast and Nova Scotia’s north coast
The Glen Wookalark
This might be one of the more unique cryptids or mysteries on this list of Canadian legends. Prince Edward Island’s ‘wookalark’ is known to haunt the Glen and wooded areas of eastern PEI where the forests are lush and dense.
As the legend goes, the wookalark is a human body with a pig’s head and red eyes. Those red eyes are what travelers report as watching them as they make their way through the Glen.
To add to the terror of being stalked through the woods by a pig-humanoid-creature, many travelers report having car trouble through the Glen and noticing pairs of red eyes stalking them from above the tree line.
Location: Glen Road near New Harmony
Newfoundland & Labrador
The Clarenville UFO Sighting
The credibility of the Clarenville Event is helped by the RCMP who reported to have glimpsed what other witnesses had reported seeing: unidentified lights on a flying object in the night sky.
The Clarenville Event took place on October 26, 1978, in the eastern Newfoundland community of the same name. Eyewitness accounts from the night, including that of Constable James Blackwood, state that the hovering lights remained in the same spot for about an hour before quickly vanishing.
The unexplained sighting remains one of Canada’s most credible UFO encounters.
Location: Clarenville
The Ghosts of Bell Island
Newfoundland’s Bell Island is west of St. John’s and accessible by ferry from Portugal Cove. The Atlantic island is home to several inhabitants and smaller communities, cottages and hotels, the local museum, and gorgeous coastal scenery.
Plus, Bell Island is famed for its haunted lore and ghostly sightings, making it the “most haunted island in North America.”
There are said to be fairies, the Bell Island Hag, and the possibility of extraterrestrial visits.
The island’s haunted history intertwines with local tragedies, including mining accidents and WWII German U-boat attacks. The No. 4 mine is home to phantom miners who reportedly haunt tunnels marked with chalk crosses in memory of lives lost underground, sinister fairies who lure visitors into the bog haunt Butler’s Marsh.
Another haunted spot is Dobbin’s Garden, supposedly inhabited by the Bell Island hag, a spirit tied to WWII-era German sailors who landed for supplies.
Location: Bell Island
Nova Scotia
The Esther Cox Story
The Great Amherst Mystery is well-known to most Canadians, and if not, is undoubtedly well-known to anyone from Nova Scotia or, of course, Amherst.
The mystery surrounds a young woman, Esther Cox, who lived in Amherst in the mid-1800s. Around the age of 18 in 1878, Esther Cox began to report strange things happening around her sister’s house in which she resided. As more happened around Esther, more people in the house started to report strange activity as well. Furthermore, Esther became mysteriously ill as weird things happening around the house increased. As the witness numbers grew for these strange things, the mystery grew as well.
Location: Amherst
The Shag Harbour UFO
Shag Harbour is a small fishing community on Nova Scotia’s southwest coast and in Shelburne County.
From this coastal location, people are able to look out onto the North Atlantic Ocean with absolutely nothing to the south! Those expansive ocean views and incredibly dark night skies in Shag Harbour were completely disrupted and disturbed on the night of October 4, 1967, when multiple witnesses reported bright lights moving about the sky before appearing to have descended into the Atlantic waters.
Thinking it was a plane crash, witnesses reported the events to RCMP, which investigated the scene. Upon this, RCMP reported seeing lights just above the water and horizon. Authorities, including search and rescue crews ultimately ruled out a plane crash, but did happen upon a mysterious yellow foam on the water where the lights were spotted! Even more witness accounts from further east in Halifax, and from the same night, make the Shag Harbour UFO event quite the mystery for locals and authorities like RCMP or RCAF and the Navy.
More: Spooky Ghost Walks and Haunted Places to Visit in Nova Scotia
Most Haunted Places to Visit in Halifax
New Brunswick
The Dunvargon Whooper
The Dunvargon Whooper is one of New Brunswick’s most infamous supernatural stories next to the Ghost Ship of the Northumberland Strait.
The story has a dark start and is a tale which has been passed down by many generations. The story starts with a young man who worked near the Dunvargon River and in the Miramichi Woods as a lumber camp cook in the late 1800s. This man, Ryan, was said to have been murdered and robbed by his own boss while the lumberjacks were off in the woods working.
The workers said to have heard Ryan’s screams during the murder and in later days. Ryan is said to be the Dunvargon Whooper who cries, screams, and whoops into the woods and river valley- a whoop that is still heard by locals to this day.
Location: Miramichi
The Algonquin Resort Hauntings
The rumoured hauntings that occur at New Brunswick’s Algonquin Resort are often fairly compared to the famous King story of The Shining.
The hotel and resort are notable for their architecture alone, having been built in 1889 with a stunning red roof, Tudor features like turrets, and sprawling manicured grounds.
These features and the incredible restoration of the hotel over the last century all make it an extremely inviting and warm place to stay on New Brunswick’s south coast. And some of the resort’s permanent residents are what help give way to The Shining comparisons (along with the resort’s overall grandeur, like the one from the story!).
Many staff have, for example, reported funny goings on in the resort’s dining room, while the bride in room 473 is another example of paranormal, multi-witness occurrences!
Location: St. Andrews
For More: 25 Haunted Attractions & Halloween Activities in New Brunswick