The Macabre Walkway

There was more than one ghost haunting the small apartment building in the Vancouver suburb of Coquitlam. Most were quite gentle presences that would do no more than occasionally let the tenants know they were around, but there was one entity that was not benign like the others: it was truly a terror.

It all started in the summer of 1985, after the owner of the apartment obtained a load of granite slabs for a walkway. One day after they were in place, a tenant, Mrs. Lucille Schneider, turned one of the stones over to discover that they were grave markers. Apparently the walkway was constructed from headstones that had been removed from graves when the Woodlands School for the mentally disabled turned its small cemetery into a park.

After that, "things" suddenly started to happen at the apartment building. The dials on the television sets in various units would constantly be changed while no one was in the room, bedroom lights would turn on and off without human intervention, and mysterious footsteps would be heard to echo over the floors of empty rooms.

The ghosts did not seem to feel restricted to any one unit, but haunted the building as a whole. One particularly active presence was dubbed "Harry." "One day," reported one tenant, "I told a visitor that he would have proof soon enough [that Harry was real]. Then the toaster came on by itself and melted a plastic bread holder." On another occasion when the lights were "acting strange," she suggested that Harry should be invited for tea. "Just then, the heating element under the teapot came on."

Early on in the hauntings, a well-known Abbotsford psychic, Ralph Hurst, investigated Harry’s activities in the apartment of Mrs. Schneider. Harry, Hurst concluded, was really a twice-married Scots logger named Albert Johnstone who had been killed some years earlier in a work-related accident. The late Mr. Johnstone was a fun-loving sort of fellow who, according to the psychic, was a little on the lazy side. He certainly wasn’t an evil individual, and he was the one responsible for the flicking of the lights and other tricks. Mrs. Schneider felt that there were other presences in the house. At times she would catch the image of a child out of the corner of her eye, but when she turned to face it, it was gone.

However, it was not Mrs. Schneider who was the centre of the most unpleasant manifestations, but another family, the Huttons. It started with the four Hutton children. At various times, they complained about seeing faces pressed against the window of the apartment. On other occasions, in the middle of the night, their beds would suddenly being to shake. Mrs. Hutton could find no reason for these occurrences.

As far as the tenants of the building were concerned, the 130 little tombstones, which formed the walkway to the road, were the cause of the psychic manifestations. For children living in the building, the stones seemed to hold a macabre fascination. One of the tenants shuddered as she recalled that the local children would turn the stones over to reveal the names of the children whose grave they had marked. Finally the tombstones were taken away, but the ghostly activity didn’t stop.

It was not until December of 1986 that incidents seemed to reach a peak. Then Mrs. Hutton encountered a particularly frightening apparition outside her bathroom. "I was coming out of the kitchen and there was this figure standing there – he had a robe with red scribbling on it, but no face." The incident was very upsetting to Mrs. Hutton. "I never believed in this kind of thing – I’m not crazy," she said.

The presence of the monk-like figure was the last straw. "There is no way in God’s earth I am staying in this house," Mrs. Hutton affirmed. Then she quickly packed up her family and moved out. Another tenant indicated her family had endured about enough, and threatened also to move out. By then, however, the worst of the psychic phenomena were over and the number of occurrences decreased markedly over the next several months.

Today the ghosts still inhabit the Coquitlam apartment building, long-time resident Mrs. Schneider believes, but they are not nearly as active as they once were.