In the town of Saint Andrews, you’ll hear tales of many ghostly happenings. At the Charlotte County Courthouse, executed convicts are said to haunt its halls, while Genii, spectral men from a shipwrecked crew just off the coast, are doomed to wander the beachfront.
But the most haunted of dwellings is the Algonquin Resort – a true haunted house where several ghost stories and reports of paranormal activity linger in the hallways.
“Luckily, all of our ghosts are friendly,” says Alex, a bellman at the Algonquin and one of the knowledgeable guides for the daily ghost tours offered by the hotel. “We haven’t had a crazy, negative experience from anyone being chased out of a room.”
Meet the Algonquin Ghosts
The Algonquin is said to be haunted by several different ghosts. One such ghost is the night watchman, a security guard who worked at the Algonquin and whose footsteps and clanking keys have been heard down in the service tunnels of Matthew house residence. There is a bellman, whose ghost was said to have chatted with a couple checking into the hotel late at night, even though there was no bellman on duty – his description, however, matched a retired worker who had passed not long ago. And there is even the ghost of a little boy, who met his untimely demise prior to the original structure of the Algonquin burning down, while chasing his beloved red ball out of a third-storey window.
Ghost Stories and Paranormal Activity at the Algonquin Resort
The most concrete piece of evidence that ghosts live at the Algonquin is this photo. You’ll notice in the first chair in the bottom left of the photo is a ghostly silhouette of a little boy looking at his ball, a boy who had passed at this very hotel in its earliest days.
Photo: Courtesy of the Algonquin Resort
But the most popular tale is that of the bride.
The story takes place in the bridal suite, room 473, where the bride was staying for her wedding taking place the very next day. She was to marry a merchant sailor sailing out of Saint Andrews, but while he was at sea, the sailor got caught in a ruthless storm and could not return in time for their wedding.
As he was unable to communicate this to his beloved, the bride thought her fiancé had left her at the altar and took to her suite in hysterics. The next day, she was found dead in her room.
And while romantics like to say the bride died of a broken heart, others believe she died by suicide.
Ever since, the strangest of ghostly happenings are said to take place in this very room. The hotel staff have received noise complaints about crying and screaming coming from the room, even when it isn’t rented. The bride’s silhouette has been seen from the hotel’s highest tower, even though the key to this tower has long been lost. Guests have also been known to complain about a puddle of water found on the floor of room 473, a true blunder for the maintenance staff as the source never seems to yield from a leaky pipe or roof. Instead, it’s believed the puddle is a pool of the bride’s tears, forever staining the floor in this haunted room.
Hunting for paranormal activity
During my most recent visit, I opted to spend the night in this haunted bridal suite to see what I could find beyond its doors. And while I certainly got a sense of the supernatural in this space – particularly in the pitch black during the witching hour – the ghosts did not seem to have warmed enough to me to trust gracing me with their presence.
The most resonating occurrence for our guide, however, is one that happened to his brother, Andrew, another bellman at the Algonquin Resort who has worked in these halls for the past three years.
“My brother got a phone call one day from the bell stand, which is the stand across from the lobby, and it was a dead line – which happens sometimes, someone may have called accidentally,” recalls Alex. “About fifteen minutes later, he gets a call from the same room. It was dead again. At this point, he was pretty concerned, he hangs up the phone, looks up the number to see who is staying in the room and noticed that it was unchecked. He connected it with room 473 and thought someone was playing a joke on him.
“So he ran up to the room, checked all the closets, made sure nobody was playing a joke on him because he had a job to do. He runs back downstairs and about fifteen minutes exactly, he gets another call from the room. Getting annoyed, he runs upstairs, unplugs the phone and runs back downstairs to continue his work. About fifteen minutes later, he gets a phone call from the room exactly across from it, which was also unrented. All dead phone calls. He still goes white in the face when he tells the story.”
Enter if you dare …
While the ghosts of the Algonquin are known to play many pranks on the staff throughout the hotel, from switching up silverware to hiding laundry hampers and even inputting data into the hotel logs, they typically shy away from interacting with guests.
But during your stay, be sure to have your wits about you, as you may just feel a rush of cold pass through you while wandering the halls; notice doorknobs turning ever so slightly as you try to catch some sleep; or perhaps you, too, will be escorted to your room late one night by the deceased friendly bellman.
One thing is for certain, whether these sounds and slights come from the old building or are ghosts trying to make their presence known, strange things are happening at the Algonquin Resort.
New Brunswick Ghost Stories
While the Algonquin Resort is said to be the most haunted building in New Brunswick, there are other eerie places across the province that are no stranger to supernatural happenings. Here is a list of some of our most popular ghost stories throughout the ages.
Blackville: The Dungarvon Whooper
At a lumber camp during the 1800s, a young Irish cook named Ryan was murdered by one of the loggers for the money belt he carried with him. This logger had told the rest of the crew that the cook had fallen ill, dying suddenly, and so they buried him in the nearby forest.
That same night, a terrible “whooping” sound scared the crew off and they refused to return to the area. To this day, it is believed that young Ryan’s ghost continues to howl along the banks of the Dungarvon river.
Bathurst: The Phantom Ship of Chaleur Bay
Legend has is that a 16th-century Portuguese vessel was set afire when its captain sailed to Bathurst in search of his brother, who captured numerous Micmac natives for the slave trade. All who were on board perished and its ghostly ship has since been spotted on the north side of the island, typically during a storm or full moon.
The ship’s appearance, said to surface as a flaming three-mast galley similar to that on the New Brunswick flag, varies from black overlapping shadows to glowing fiery light, but always disappears on close approach.
Hillsborough: Grey Island Cemetery
There is a white stone statue on a grave at Grey Island Cemetery. A husband, distraught by the loss of his wife, had the statue made in her likeness to place upon her grave.
It is said that if you were to walk around the statue three times and stand with your back to her that the statue would reach out and tap your shoulder.
Many people have suffered horrible shocks testing this claim; it happened so often, the story goes, that the cemetery eventually removed the statue’s hand.
Miramichi: The Headless Nun
Sister Marie Inconnue haunts the Miramichi searching in vain for her lost head, which was decapitated from her body as she died.
While one version of the story suggests a mad trapper cut off her head and ran into the woods with it, the most popular notion is that two pirates beheaded her in an act of vengeance when she refused to give up the location for treasure in the newly settled community during the mid-1700s.
Miramichers have since sworn to seeing her ghostly silhouette during their wanderings.
Moncton: Rebecca Lutes Grave
At 16 years old, Rebecca Lutes was found guilty of sorcery during the 1870s for her psychic ability. She was then hung from the branch of a large poplar tree near Gorge Road. Buried at the base of that same tree face down, her grave was covered in concrete to ensure she can never dig her way out.
Now, her grave is the site of numerous unusual occurrences, including sightings of strange lights, mysterious fires, occult rituals and freak accidents – a ghostly black cat has also been spotted numerous times crossing the road near here.