Rocky Mountaineer Magazine RM Magazine 2018 | Page 32

Ghostly Guests These ghosts met tragic endings in life, but they seem to find pleasure in their eternal activities By Louise PhiLLiPs + iLLustrations By erick viLLagomez The Little Girl The Lady in Red seattLe vancouver kells irish restaurant & Pub Of all the Kells ghosts, the little girl is the most poignant. about three years old, her mousy-blonde hair in ringlets, she carries a teddy bear and wears a red, short-sleeved taffeta dress. She has con- versed with a living child and run away, barefoot, from a security worker at 1 a.m. She plays around the foot of the stairs at Kells, located in the basement of the five-storey 1903 Butterworth Building, which housed Seattle’s first mortuary. according to a respected medium, she and her mother perished from flu. Several epidemics, including diphtheria and Spanish influenza, brought brisk trade to the Butterworths, and their association with shady doctor Linda Hazzard resulted in questionable income for the business. These days, holy water is kept behind the bar along with a collection of over 200 single-malt whiskies, making this the most spirited pub in america. 32 Rocky Mountaineer Magazine 2018 Fairmont hotel vancouver Probably Vancouver’s best-known ghost, Jennie Pearl Cox was a regular visitor to the Hotel Vancouver’s ballroom in the early 1940s along with her husband Harold. Wearing a red gown, she keeps appearing at the hotel since her fam- ily’s fatal car crash in 1944, when she was only 25. She has been seen passing through elevator doors on the 14th floor. One evening, a guest met the Lady in Red joining a man and child in an eleva- tor before all three disappeared simul- taneously. a concierge saw a woman in red drift through the door of an occupied room, but when he rushed in to “rescue” its guests, they had not seen her. across georgia Street at the Hudson’s Bay de- partment store, a late-night janitor saw a woman in a red dress float up between the clothing racks a foot or so above the floor. Perhaps Jennie needed a new dance frock?