Hey, There's A Weasel Eating My Editor: June 2023

Care For Some Ghosts With Those Scones?

Walking into the stunning lobby of the Fairmont Empress in Victoria, BC, Canada, with its amazing multi-faceted crystal chandelier, you'd never know that, among the thousands of tourists, walk several ghosts.

Its designer, Francis Rattenbury, who died a very lonely death in England after being bludgeoned to death by the very young lover of his second wife is reported to be one. As a bold young architect he moved to Canada and won his first blind entry into designing the BC parliament buildings by signing it, local Canadian architect. Then built the five star hotel that everyone views as they come into Victoria, The Fairmont Empress.

Another is Margaret from Calgary, an elegantly dressed older woman, taking afternoon tea, always searching for her would-be beau. On the outlook for the man that admired her large-brimmed hats. She passed away in her room, having lived there for months on end in the winter. The room later became the un-rentable room as lights would flicker and TV channels would change.

Working on the redesign of the hotel when the Fairmont chain bought it two construction workers quit when they spotted a man hanging from the rafters. In fact, a man did hang himself in that room decades earlier in the fifties.

There are reports of maids being spotted long after their deaths, still servicing the rooms. A woman who knocks on the suites' doors trying to find her room. Guests who try to help her are surprized when she leads them to the elevators and vanishes.

Bastion Square, in central Victoria. The site of the original cemetery, was covered over and built on. None of the nearly thirteen hundred bodies moved only the headstones, some of which were found in an old storehouse. "You left the bodies and you only moved the headstones". Okay, I pinched that from a very famous movie (PS. I’ve talked to some of the store owners and yes they have crazy stories of things that have happened). Wonder if things fly about in nearby buildings! Perhaps that, and the fact that ley lines are reported to cross the area, is the reason that Victoria is the most haunted city in North America.

The weirdest true story is courtesy of the doorman of the Empress. While waiting for the valet to return my vehicle, I struck up a conversation (as I usually do) and asked if he'd any ghost stories to help me with my novel. Apparently one couple, looking very ashen, told him that they returned to their locked room only to discover the wife's luggage had been taken out of her suitcase and "ghost clothing" put in. "Ghost clothing?" I asked. "Very old clothes," he said.

As a writer, the question I always ask myself is; what if? What if there's a ghost walking about on his tourist travels, dressed like us. I think after that sobering thought something stronger than the great tea they serve there is required.

I myself have never seen a ghost. But would love to hear from people that have, I went to a Writers Convention in Calgary, When Words Collide https://www.whenwordscollide.org/ and my talk was the last of the night, nearly at midnight, and after asked if anyone had ghost stories and several told me of theirs, this I’ll put in another blog, some for the first time sharing. Glad they felt free to open up.

So if anyone want to share their ghostly experiences with me I might add to the next blog or safe it for a novel idea as well.

PS. I did put the Fairmont Empress doorman’s ghost story into my novel, The Mystery of Ms. Teak and yes he was walking around in modern day clothing, you’ll have to buy the book to find out who, but all I’ll say is he signs his dinner bills with Local Canadian Ghost.

Bio

A natural storyteller, whose compelling thoughts are freed from the depths of the heart and the subconscious before being poured onto the page.

Literature written beyond the realms of genre he is known to grab readers; kicking, screaming, laughing or crying and drag them into his novels.

Or as he has often said: Write like your soul is on fire and the pencil is your voice screaming.

You don’t have to be mad to be a writer, but it sure helps.

To date he has over fifty articles/short stories, sixty blog posts and fifteen novels written or published. One, The Joining, top three finalist in the Canadian Book Club Awards in 2020, out of nearly two hundred entries. Another, The Lure, finished a quarter finalist in 2018 Screen Craft Cinematic Book Competition. Made top 35% of 106,000 Projects and top 24% of manuscripts entered. In 2000 my novel, Raven's Lament, formerly Haida Windsongs, it made it to the Chapters Novel Contest semi-finals with 48/50 points. It also went to the last round of acceptance and lost out to the non-fiction version of the true story entitled, The Golden Spruce by John Valliant, by Harper press in 2004. One of my short stories, A Sun-catchers Tears was voted #1 by the readers in an anthology of three hundred entries.

Sincerely

Frank Talaber
Canada's Foremost Off beat Author

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