Halloween is not far off and that means the Pitt Meadows Museum will soon be celebrating “Museum After Dark.”
This year, in honour of the city’s 100th year, the event is bigger than ever with more than a dozen new items added to the scavenger hunt and a surprise birthday cake – eat it if you dare.
Museum After Dark is now in its fifth season at the museum’s two sites and this year runs for the full week before Halloween, kicking off on Sunday, Oct. 26 from 1 to 7 p.m. and running on Oct. 29 and 30, as well.
Is the museum haunted?
This is a fairly regular question from visitors, especially those who come through our doors in October.
Most staff and volunteers have never experienced a paranormal moment while in the building, but we have had visitors and passersby who tell us they have seen unusual movements in the windows when we are closed.
Possibly the most unusual story came from a local, recently retired teacher who related the story that, a few decades ago, she had a student in her class who told her he lived in the building with some relatives, and that on occasion they had seen the apparition of an elderly man struggling to get out of a bed located in a room on the upper floor of the site.
None of us has seen the apparition, but we took notice of the story due to the fact that, in the 1940s, an elderly man did pass away in the building while confined to his bed located in the corner of a bedroom on the upper floor of the site.
Adding to this, some years ago during a public paranormal presentation being given in the kitchen area of the museum, a large “thunk” was heard on the floor in the corner of the room above the area the presentation was being given in.
No one was on the upper floor, and a quick investigation showed nothing was amiss in the area of the room the thunk was heard from.
Coincidentally, this is the room and the corner where the bed was located that the elderly man passed away in.
Is the Pitt Meadows Museum haunted?
You be the judge. Come out and visit us on Oct. 26, 29 or 30.
Leslie Norman is
curator of the Pitt Meadows Museum