What happened
Banff Springs was opened in 1888 by the Canadian Pacific Railway as one of Canada's first grand railway hotels; after a fire in 1926 it was rebuilt in the style of a Loire château. Its most famous resident is the “Banff bride.” According to legend, in the late 1920s a young woman in her wedding dress was descending the stone staircase to her reception when she tripped on her train (or her dress caught fire from a candle), fell and broke her neck. Since then guests have reported a white figure dancing on the stairs and in the ballroom. The second ghost is Sam McAuley, a long-serving Scottish head bellman who promised he would come back and is said to keep helping guests – an older man in uniform opens a door that would not open, then vanishes. There are also tales of a “missing room,” 873, bricked up after a tragedy. In 2014 the bride's story appeared on a Royal Canadian Mint coin in its “Haunted Canada” series.
Witnesses
Hotel guests and staff; the stories are collected by guidebooks and by the hotel itself on its ghost-stories page.
Explanations and hypotheses
The hotel openly admits there is no record of a bride dying, or even being injured, at that time, so the story is most likely invented; versions differ even by decade. Sam McAuley's death is dated variously to 1975 or 1976. The tale of the bricked-up Room 873 rests on isolated accounts and has no confirmation. A huge old building in the mountains with creaking floors is the perfect setting for such legends, which are happily used in promotion.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Parks Canada – Banff Springs Hotel National Historic Site of Canada
- Coin World – Haunted Canada: Ghost Bride coin launches series from RCM (2014)
More: Wikipedia (en)