Ghost story...

Oh yes...the Rodmay has ghosts...I myself don't know too much about them but hotel co-owner Joan Campbell does and this is the story.

 

Turning the key in the lock, Joan Campbell slowly opened the door at the top of the staircase. “This is the third floor,” she said. “It’s very much the same as it was in the 50’s. No renovations here yet.” A long corridor stretches forward, lit only by what sunlight can spill through from long-abandoned rooms.

 

“As far as I know,” said Campbell, “there are five ghosts in the Rodmay. Maybe more.”

 

The Rodmay would certainly be entitled to its share of spirits. The hotel has been standing in the Townsite absorbing its history for nearly a century.

 

Construction in the Townsite began with the mill, the doctor’s house, the mill manager’s house and the hotel. The Powell River Hotel, later the Rodmay, opened in 1911. It was added onto in the 20’s and 30’s, and still retains its personality and its secrets.

 

After being closed for several years the Rodmay has been undergoing renovations and remodeling since 2005.

 

Campbell is one of the new owners. She’s examined the building from top to bottom. She loves it, and sees a great future for the old hotel. But in her travels, she’s made some startling discoveries.

 

“Now, I want to say that I’m never ever afraid in this building,” said Campbell. “I’ve been up here on the third floor measuring and making plans so late it’s become completely dark. I was working by flashlight. I’ve never felt scared.” Campbell’s tone is convincing. But walking through the corridors and past the derelict rooms, with their emptiness and disrepair, their old fixtures and eerie stillness, it would be very easy to be spooked. Campbell walked into a room. “Oh yes. Here we are again,” she said. “I always check that the windows are closed up here. And each time I come up there are a couple of them open.” She pulled the window closed and latched it.

 

“There are two ghosts up here on the third floor,” said Campbell. “One of them is a little girl. A boy saw her. He said he saw a little girl in old fashioned clothes.” Campbell stopped in the hallway. “And staff on the floor below have often heard footsteps running overhead where this hall is. Quick steps. Just like a child.” Campbell says there’s no story to go with this child ghost. Nothing in the history of the place that would answer the questions about why she lingers.

 

“But we think we know something about the other ghost up here,” said Campbell. The other inhabitant of the third floor is a man in a suit. He wears a hat. “A fedora,” said Campbell. “Some who’ve seen him say he looks like a gangster. But I don’t think so. In the early days of Powell River, there are stories of some goings-on. Maybe even rum-running. I think he was a federal agent. A kind of ‘Elliot Ness’.” Campbell thinks he was caught up in an accident or maybe a raid. “He certainly wouldn’t harm anyone or try to scare them,” she said. “But he’s not happy. He still seems to have issues that need to be resolved.”

 

There are other unresolved issues in the hotel. Although ghosts have not been seen on the second floor, there have been a few traces of their presence. “Every once in a while,” said Campbell, “there will be a depression on a freshly-made bed. Just as if someone sat there.” She smiled. “We get a lot of little pranks played on us.”

 

On the main floor, there are many stories to tell. And one of them is very real to Campbell.

 

“There’s a woman in the lounge. I saw her. She’s tall. When we first took over the hotel about two years ago I walked by the lounge and saw her at the end of the bar. I thought it was a real person. So I went in to talk to her. But it was a silhouette. She had high hair and a long dress with a high collar. She vanished.” Campbell has seen this woman twice. “She’s very dignified,” said Campbell. “I don’t know who she is, and we don’t have a story about her that would explain her presence. But she seems to want to see grace and dignity in the lounge. Very Victorian.”

 

There’s a café on the main floor that is still being remodeled. There are booths and tables in the room, and a long, angled counter with wooden swivel chairs. This is a favourite haunt of one of the most popular ghosts of the Rodmay Hotel. “Ah yes,” said Campbell. “Charlie.”  There have been many experiences of Charlie. “Charlie, as we call him, was a Chinese cook,” she explained. “His real name may have been Chan, but he’s long been known as Charlie.” Charlie was one of the Chinese employees who worked in the hotel and lived in the basement. “We’ll go there next,” said Campbell, “after I show you what Charlie gets up to.” Campbell says she’s heard Charlie was quite a personality. He was a gambler. He’d tease and play jokes. He loved giving marbles to children. Charlie isn’t reluctant, apparently, to make his presence felt. Campbell opened the door to the empty café. “Aha!” she said. “See? This happens all the time. We’ll line up all the chairs, and then come in and one will be turned. And it’s not always the same one.” Charlie plays any number of tricks. And he travels through the hotel, sometimes allowing himself to be seen.

 

Alea Newport is another owner of the Rodmay. In the newly-renovated McKinney’s Pub she sat down for a moment to talk about her encounters with the hotel’s favourite ghost.

 

“Oh yes,” she said. “I’ve actually seen him.” Newport was working in a shop on the lower floor of the hotel. “My husband was working in one room. He was up on a ladder fixing an electrical fixture in the ceiling. I was in the little hallway between rooms cutting some wood on the floor. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a short man walk right through and into one of the front rooms.” It was so real, Newport wasn’t even startled. She simply thought someone had walked through and she’d better go see who it was.

“My husband said no one came in. I went into the front room, expecting to find someone there. The room was empty.” Newport smiled. “It was Charlie. It had to be. I know I saw someone.” Newport knows about Charlie’s fondness for giving marbles to children. “I’ve found them around when I’ve been working on renovations,” said Newport. “He’s here.”

 

There’s another ghostly presence on the main floor. This one is described as being like a barmaid. “In the early days on the coast,” said Campbell, “there weren’t many women around. It was mostly men building the settlements and working the mills. Sometimes women of ill repute visited the hotel. Shortly after the recent restoration work began a workman was heard talking to someone. He was alone in the room. “I asked him who he was talking to,” said Campbell. “He told me he was chatting with a woman who came up on the boat a long time ago. The way he described her she was like a barmaid.” Campbell says this ghost has a cheeky attitude. “She knocks glasses off the shelf once in a while. And she unscrews lightbulbs.” Newport agreed. “I’ve felt a push on my shoulder and turned around. But there was no one there. Then I felt another push,” she explained. “So I just decided to work in another area for a while.” Both agree this spirit isn’t frightening. “She just has an attitude,” said Campbell. “But we also believe she’s very protective of the staff in the pub, and is hanging around to make sure they’re safe.”

 

Descending to the basement of the Rodmay is entering another world. A world with more mysteries and secrets.

 

In the early days of the Rodmay the Chinese cooks and staff, including Charlie, lived below. “It wasn’t very nice for them down there,” said Campbell. “We know they loved to gamble, playing poker and mah-jong. And we understand there was opium.”

The story is that Charlie was killed in a poker fight. “It’s easy to imagine, really,” said Campbell.

 

The basement has its own network of rooms and corridors. An old, grimy door to a worker’s room still has the number 9 attached. “This is just one of the workers’ rooms. Might even have been Charlie’s. It was a hard life here,” said Campbell.

 

Rooms are abandoned, filled with decades of accumulated bits and debris. Things that made sense at the time. Things that are only mysteries now. “This was a dark room,” said Campbell. “The sign is still on the door, and there were chemicals in here for developing pictures. We still don’t know what that was all about.” She walked through to an area with old bits of lumber and metal. Cement is heaped against one wall. “There were tunnels here,” she explained. “It’s my understanding that in the early days of the Townsite the mill pumped steam through pipes here. And there were tunnels connecting the hotel to the mill, and up to the Patricia Theatre. You could walk through them.” Campbell says there are rumors rum-runners used the tunnels. “It’s all cemented up now, but…” Campbell gave a questioning shrug. Then she set off again into another room. “I’ve saved the best for last,” she said. “Do you want to see the ‘secret room?’”

 

In a far corner of the basement, a cabinet with doors is pushed up against a wall. Campbell explained her discovery. “I was down here clearing things and seeing what was what,” she said. “I found this cabinet and I wanted to move it. I struggled and struggled but I just couldn’t move it.” Then she noticed a wire that went from through a small hole in the wall just beside the cabinet. “I pulled on it, and heard a loud click,” she explained. Just as she did the first time, Campbell pulled on the piece of wire. There was a loud click. The cabinet easily swung away from the wall, revealing an opening into a room beyond. “The first time I did this I could hardly believe it,” she said. “It’s a hideaway.” The secret room is small, and lit with daylight from a frosted window. “We have no idea what this is all about,” said Campbell. “Who was hiding in here? And why? But take a look at this. This is the final mystery.” She pointed to a small bathroom off the secret room. There’s a tiled area with a toilet and bathtub. Campbell smiled. “I know it sounds dramatic, but we call it the tub of blood.” The tub has a few inches of bright red, murky water in it. “The water is there all the time,” she said. “And it’s always red.” Again she shrugged. “Amazing, eh?”

 

Back on the main floor, in the grand lobby, Campbell looked around, taking in the details of construction and décor that have traveled through the decades. The place has a solid, satisfied feeling and a true sense of its history.

 

“The hotel was completely shut down when we bought it,” said Campbell. “There were tangled blackberry vines everywhere. The basement was flooded. It had broken windows. It was sad and neglected and abused.” Campbell thought for a moment, looking into the lounge where she first saw the tall lady in silhouette. “I think the ghosts are here because they want to be,” she said. “I feel they’ve been supportive and happy that we’re taking care of the place. I hope they’ll stay with us.”