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Haunted House
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One of two houses in Oak Bay with a "reputation"
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Ron Fuller photo courtesy Russ Fuller
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"Haunted House"
(late 1950s)
Harling Point |
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Glowing eyes
and rattling chains tend to give a place a reputation |
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PHOTOGRAPHS
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Click on photos to view enlargements
(photos courtesy Russ Fuller)
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Front
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Window
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Stairwell 1
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Stairwell 2
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Stairwell 1 Windows
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Do you have any photos of the Haunted House?
If yes, please specify in the form below
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ARTIFACTS
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Do you have any Haunted House artifacts?
NEWSPAPER ARTICLE, MAGAZINE ARTICLE, ETC
If yes, please specify in the form below
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RECOLLECTIONS
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I'm attaching copies of six photos (see above) of the former "Haunted House" which was at the end of Penzance Road, opposite the Chinese Cemetery at Harling Point. The pictures were taken by my father, Ron Fuller, in the 1950s, not long before the house was demolished.
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| According to the Old Cemeteries Society, the house was built in the early 1890s by James Sterling Smith, a mail carrier, and was never painted. After Smith died, his widow and son continued to live there, but moved to Vancouver in the fall of 1958. |
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The public
became really aware of the house around that time as stories of its haunting were publicized by radio stations and newspapers. |
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| The public became really aware of the house around that time as stories of its haunting were publicized by radio stations and newspapers. Three broadcasters from CKDA radio decided to check it out one morning at around 1:30am. They said they heard a baby crying and noises that sounded like rattling chains. Then they saw a pair of glowing eyes from an upstairs window, followed by some curtains blowing straight out an open window when there was no wind. |
| At least 1,000 people checked the place out over the next several months to get a thrill or steal some souvenirs. |
| In 1959, the house was bought by a couple who demolished it almost immediately and built the house that is there now. |
| There's another photo and brief write-up on the house on pages 8 and 9 of the Oak Bay British Columbia in Photographs book published by Oak Bay in 2006 for its centennial. |
| — Russ Fuller, lifetime resident of Victoria who grew up in Oak Bay, an avid local history buff, and current President of the Victoria Historical Society. |
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| My family lived in the house from 1948 until 1956. |
| The house was always occupied by Mrs Alice Smith, 80-year-old widow of Capt James Sterling Smith, along with her son, Andrew Smith (deceased). |
| Mrs Smith lived pretty well in the back of the house, which was the original kitchen. She had a cot behind the chimney of the kitchen stove. Andrew lived in the basement beside the old furnace, which he tended when needed. |
| The house had an old gravity-flow furnace which really didn't provide much heat downstairs as most of it flowed to the upstairs and then out, as there was little or no insulation in the walls or ceiling and the windows were all single pane, although a few were quarter-inch, beveled, plate glass. |
| We occupied the second floor along with Mrs Smith's granddaughter, Marilyn. My father, the late Jack M Lewers, had taken up residence with Marilyn after the separation of my parents in 1948. |
| It was a grand house to be in as a young teenager and I became very popular with my fairweather friends from Central Junior High School who all wanted to see inside the mysterious haunted house. |
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When she went into
the ballroom with her flashlight after dusk, the light and shadow effect from her through the sheets is how the haunted house rumor began. |
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The main floor on the west side of the house was designed for a ballroom, so was very large with no dividing walls. The walls were decorated wth dozens, if not hundreds, of taxidermied birds of all sizes and species.
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| As well, there were four Edison gramaphone players, amongst various other collections of artifacts, such as silverware, paintings and button hooks, etc. On one wall of the ballroom there were two larger Currier and Ives paintings. As well, there were some musket-style pistols and swords. |
| The large windows in the ballroom were draped with old cotton sheets that had been put up for privacy sake by Mrs Smith as she used the north end of the room for food storage, and that room was not to be heated. |
| When she went into the ballroom with her flashlight after dusk, the light and shadow effect from her through the sheets is how the haunted house rumor began. |
| She was herself quite reclusive, as was her son Andrew, so there really wasn't much visible activity around the old house for years until we moved in, in 1948, but the rumor had been spread around Victoria some years before then. |
| There was also a boat house on the property that had been converted into a small, one-bedroom cabin. My father eventually moved in there from the big house as he could heat it. |
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In the winter of 1956 he worked hard in the evening stocking up the cabin with presto logs for the stove for the coming week. Some say the exertion did him in, and that's where he passed away in his sleep in February of 1956.
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| — Richard G Lewers, former resident of the haunted house |
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| Haunted House built by James Sterling Smith, postman. He was a member of a pioneer family. He used a crystal chandelier from Sir James Douglas' house and a solid oak door from Carey Castle, the original Government House. His widow lived there until 1957. It was bought in 1957/58 by Ray and Jean Crowther, who demolished the house, using the old timbers to build their duplex (on the same site). | ||||
| Apparently Mrs. Smith rented rooms, and also taught Sunday school (so that the property would not be taxed). | ||||
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Cam Hutchins photograph courtesy the artist
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Harling Point House
(1956)
by Mary Lou Crerar Click on painting to view enlargement |
| It was in May,1956 that my friend, Joan South, told me about a house on Harling Point that was going to be demolished. She took me past the Chinese Cemetery to a site amongst the rocks of Harling Point where I had a view of the house that I felt showed off its lonely splendor to advantage. |
| Here I did an oil painting of the house. |
| The house had a reputation for being haunted, but it did not feel sinister to me. I only felt that it would be bad luck to tear down this once elegant home on the edge of the sea. The house was weather beaten and neglected. There were curtains in the windows and some flew out from the broken panes of glass. I wondered if there had once been a widow’s walk on the roof. |
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The finished painting was hung in a 1956 Group Show at the Victoria Art Gallery. The painting is now in the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Ken Philips, who had admired the old house when they lived in Victoria.
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| — Mary Lou Crerar, resident of Oak Bay |
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courtesy Karen Irving
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My grandmother and her son (my father)
lived on the top floor during the 1940s |
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| My grandmother, Kathleen (Appleton) Irving, and her son Gordon lived on the second floor of the semi-finished "mansion" during the 1940s. My father told me many stories about that house, which he described as old, creaky, and drafty, but certainly not in any way haunted. In fact, rumours circulated that the place was haunted while he and Nana lived there, but they both dismissed them as silly. | ||||
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courtesy Karen Irving
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View of the Chinese Cemetery from the top floor, circa 1948
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At the time, my grandmother was a single parent, and supported them by driving a taxi for the Bluebird Cab company. My father, who knew from an early age that he wanted to be a sailor, used to build rafts, which he would regularly launch in the bay. Sadly, they would just as regularly sink, usually with all hands aboard. Eventually, Nana took out a loan for $10, and bought Dad his very own rowboat. He used it to row out to Trial Island, where he'd collect firewood to keep them warm in winter. (Dad eventually did go to sea, working his way up to master mariner.) |
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| When Dad was about 12, his uncle gave him a cast-iron vise to do woodworking. Dad, who had a keen interest in homemade explosives, attached the vise to the railing of the top balcony of the house, and used it to hold a metal tube, which he filled with home-made gunpowder. He lit the fuse, with predictable results--he blew the balcony railing off, and nearly set the entire building on fire! Fortunately for him, his mother was home at the time, and was able to help him douse the flames. | ||||
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courtesy Karen Irving
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The shack at the back was my mother's family's home
from the early 1940s to the early 1950s |
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My mother and father met as youngsters, when my mother's family of five moved into the tiny, two-room cottage that had originally been intended for a grounds-keeper. It was a two-room structure, that housed my grandparents, William and Clara Boyer, their three children and, for a time, my great-grandmother. As you can see from this shot, the original building was a one-room cabin, but someone added the second room later on. |
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The “Great-Grandma Kristjanson” shot shows my great-grandmother standing in front of the house. |
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The shot labelled “Gordon in window & Glen” shows my Uncle Glen with his (far too big) bicycle in the foreground, and my father, Gordon, waving from his room in the big house. |
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Mum and Dad strung a clothesline between his room on the top floor of the big house, and the window of the cottage down the hill, and they used this to send one another messages in an old tin can. They married very young, and were married nearly 50 years when my father died very suddenly. My mother followed him about a year later.
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| — Karen Irving, parents met as youngsters when father lived in haunted house and mother lived in grounds-keeper cottage in the 1940s |
Do you have any recollections of the Haunted House?
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