Galt Museum lives up to its haunted reputation for LNN reporters WATCH: Strange occurances at the Galt Museum
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LETHBRIDGE – I will be honest. I LOVE a good ghost story, tale of paranormal activity or strange goings-on at any time of year. Especially so, at Halloween.
Do I believe there are actually ghosts? Not reaaaally. But I do think that sometimes there are things we just can not explain. Those times when you get a sense of something just not right in a home or building you’re in; those times when you think you see something out of the corner of your eye and dismiss it. Or those other times when you get goosebumps and that unmistakeable shiver down your spine that you weren’t expecting.
Such was the case when fellow reporter Patrick Burles and I arranged to spend a couple of hours at the infamously haunted Galt Museum on the night of Oct. 24.
Now, before I go into what actually happened, be aware of this: the staff there tend to play tricks on other staff members now and again, or perhaps on some gullible reporters who really REALLY want to see something unusual.
We weren’t sure whether that happened this time…or not.
Patrick and I arrived at the Galt Museum as the sun was setting with several cameras, tripods and microphones in tow just before 7 p.m. and were greeted by Galt Museum Executive Director Susan Burrows-Johnson. She asked whether we wanted to set up right away, or to take a tour. We opted for the latter.
I asked her how many people were in the building at the time, and besides the three of us, there were two others: the janitor and Evelyn Yackulic, the museum’s Operations Manager who was helping to set up a new data base. She, according to Burrows-Johnson had some odd things happen to her in the past.
Exactly what we wanted to talk about.
When we got to the third floor, Burrows-Johnson explained how the museum used to be a hospital, and how the area we were going to used to be the children’s ward; the area where much of the activity went on, according to psychics and paranormal investigators who had visited the wing in years past.
She told us how two children–a boy and a girl–had been heard on many occasions talking, laughing or playing pranks on some of the staff. One of those people was Yackulic.
“When I first started working here, I didn’t know anybody very well. You know, you’re just brand new and stuff. And Belinda (Crowson) used to go around doing the – whatever [ghost stories]. And I actually thought at one time, because every day I’d come to work, and there would be finger prints all over my screen. I actually accused her of doing it to freak me out, cause I told her I don’t believe in ghosts, right? She still to this day laughs cause she says ‘why would I ever do that?’
“There would be little finger prints. I’d clean them up, and they’d come back… they were just little fingerprints.”
We set up a camera at one end of the children’s ward and left it running while three of us went to the basement of the museum. Upon reviewing our tape, other than the janitor moving from place to place, we caught some odd music playing.
For a good 2-3 minutes, with the volume turned up, we could hear a man singing something like big band-type music from the 1930s or 40s.
We could not rule out music the janitor had been playing on his mobile phone at the time (although he was cleaning the bathroom about 100 feet away, at the end of the hall), so we did not include that in our video.
As the three of us left Evelyn upstairs and made our way to the basement, Burrows-Johnson explained to us how the elevator also opened and closed at night, randomly. According to the technicians servicing the elevator, that was perfectly normal.
She showed us where the old elevator used to be in the building, and told us the story of George. He’s the man who, back in the 1930s, was in the middle of being wheeled into the elevator before surgery, when the elevator malfunctioned, and dropped him to the basement where he landed on his head. He was found by staff shuffling around the basement, but died of his injuries the next day.
There are many stories of George approaching people in the basement of the museum and saying hello, sounds of shuffling etc. We set up a second camera, facing the old woodworking shop, about 10 feet from the location of the old elevator.
I asked George to make an appearance for us a few times. With Patrick video taping, we visited the old morgue, the nurses quarters, and then went into the woodworking shop, where we again, asked George to do something. Nothing happened for a few minutes.
As we exited the shop, and interviewed Burrows-Johnson, our camera at the opposite end of the hallway caught something: with our backs to the camera, a motion sensored light in the bathroom–the exact location where the old elevator used to be–turned off. Moments later, it turned back on.
No one else was in the basement. There was no wind coming through the bathroom, no mouse or anything else that moved. It was something we could not explain. That happened twice. We had no idea it had happened, until we reviewed our video the next day.
Back upstairs, the three of us talked a bit more about how the alarm in the children’s ward would go off in the middle of the night. It too, was motion sensored and it happened numerous times, until the alarm company replaced it. No other alarm in the museum triggered. Faulty wiring? Some other technical error? Perhaps.
As we packed up our gear and made our way downstairs Burrows-Johnson told us about the security cameras, and how sometimes they also re-set at odd times. Just as we were leaving, a flashing light caught our eye. It was the airplane display in the exhibit room across from us, flashing on and off. The room was locked and no one was supposed to be in it. We noted that we had just left Evelyn upstairs, and the janitor was on the main floor now, but further down the hallway.
Burrows-Johnson asked us to come with her, and Patrick began taping again on his iPhone. She unlocked the doors and we stepped into a pitch black room, with the exception of the flashing light coming from the plane exhibit.
Just as we began asking what could have set off the blinking lights, a voice in the blackness said “Hi, my name is Paige.”
It was the Lethbridge Herald exhibit, which contained a motion sensored computer, speaking to us from across the room.
All three of us turned sharply, and wondered what in the world was happening? We all walked over to the display clear across the room. It did not turn on again, until one of us stood in front of it.
Could someone else have been there? Maybe. But the three of us also walked together through the rest of the room and couldn’t find anyone there.
Could it have been the wind or vent? No. The display was at the back of the room, far from any breeze or the entrance to the room.
As we left the room and it was locked up once again, Patrick and I thought “either something strange really DID happen, or that was a really, really good prank.”
We put together a video, showing what happened.
You decide.
