Saskatchewan a hotbed for hauntings

Everyone loves a good ghost story and that’s especially true at Halloween.

Several years ago, writer Jo-Anne Christensen travelled the province to research and collect some of the best ghost stories she could find.

Christensen found plenty and went on to publish the book “Ghost Stories of Saskatchewan.”

One of her favourite stories is about the St. Louis ghost train. Christensen said it’s a bit of folklore about the area.

“The story goes that there were train tracks that were torn up and taken out — but people would still see the headlight of the train following the railbed that was no longer functional, and there couldn’t be a train on it,” she said.

Christensen said many people believe it’s not a haunting, but just distant car headlights people are seeing, and adds that debunking the idea of the ghost train has become as popular as hunting the ghost train.

As for the ghost train theory, Christensen said some people she spoke to think the train travelled that line for so long it became a residual haunting. But, she said, some have more gruesome stories about a spirit on the rail line.

“The story is there was an engineer who had to get out of the train and check something on the tracks, and he was accidentally run over by the train and decapitated,” said Christensen.

Other famous ghost stories she researched centred around the old Fort Qu’Appelle Sanatorium.

Christensen said thousands of people died at the tuberculosis hospital, so many people reported seeing spirits there.

“They’ll see the same spectral nurse walking the hallways,” said Christensen. “They reported seeing shadows of wheelchairs on partially closed doors and hearing people calling out for their doctors.”

Christensen interviewed a woman who lived in a Saskatoon duplex for her book. She felt she was being haunted by a child.

“She would find little messes that weren’t there before she left her basement suite. She’d find juice spills on her kitchen floor,” said Christensen.

The woman would later learn that a two-year-old girl whose family used to live in the duplex was killed after getting hit by a car on the street in front.

Christensen has written several books about ghost stories in different areas.