Halloween in Canada

Every year Statistics Canada releases Halloween stats that include the latest demographics on trick or treaters, the number of Canadian farms with pumpkin patches, the amount of money Canadians spend on Halloween candy and even a list of places in Canada that may give you the creeps.

Based on recent travels across the country, we came up with our own list of creepy places:

Bone-chilling tales including a famous cold case…

“Lizzie Borden took an axe, Gave her mother 40 whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father 41”  Lizzie was later acquitted of the 1892 double-ax murder which over a century later remains unsolved. Expect this kind of bone chilling tale and more as the “dead” gather October 29 and 30 to celebrate the ancient ritual of All Hallows Eve at Kings Landing Historical Settlement near Fredericton, New Brunswick. A mysterious soul and a headless horseman will greet you at the Kings Landing gate and escort you down a lonely gravel road to the King’s Head Inn. There you’ll join others for dnner and a night of murder and mayhem.

Canada’s best haunted house:

Last June on a road trip near Lethbridge, Alberta, we stumbled across what we think is THE best haunted house in Canada. It was broad daylight when the owner gave us a tour of the Haunted Stirling Mansion. It didn’t matter. I still  jumped out of my skin when I saw a strange “dude” peeking out from a door slightly ajar. The set design in this place is so well done, my imagination ran wild. Fright Nights run October 28-31.

 

The Atlas Coal Mine:

With all the miner news of late we couldn’t resist including the Haunted Atlas Coal Mine.  It stands next to the ghost town of East Coulee, south of Drumheller, in the Canadian Badlands of Alberta. The mine’s grey-timbered tipple is creepy enough in daylight let alone at night when Hallowe’en guests are invited to explore it armed with only a flashlight. A former bathhouse has big meat hooks attached to ropes on pulleys hanging from the ceiling. Miners once used these to hang their street clothes on, above the coal dust. The Drumheller Paranormal Group thinks this national historic site is haunted. You can judge for yourself. Special Big Boo and Little Boo tours are offered October 30.

 

Best post-Halloween event:

The Pumpkin Parade in west end Toronto’s Sorauren Park is a feast for the eyes. Every year hundreds of families bring their carved pumpkins to the park at dusk the day after Halloween. The pumpkins are then lit along a path that runs the perimeter of the park.