Hello Probably Cursed listeners!

Today we go local and submit the haunted Mckay Avenue school for Curse-O-Meter testing.

But before that, we will also discuss

• Adele’s Haunted Mansion
• A New Jersey man’s creepy doll collection
• And the cursed tablets found in a forgotten graveyard

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello, Probably Cursed listeners. Today we go local and submit the Haunted Mckay Avenue School for Curse-O-Meter testing. But before that, we’ll also discuss Adele’s Haunted Mansion, a New Jersey Man’s Creepy Doll Collection, and the cursed tablets found in a forgotten graveyard. I’m your Probably Cursed host, Chris.

I’m Sheryl. As we do at the start of every episode, we will load in three recent news stories into the Curse-O-Meter to calibrate it for the main topic. I will feed it in the first news story. Article is titled, Adele Thwarted Sale of Haunted 6 Million Pound House Claims Owner.

This is from January 23rd by Christian Fuller for BBC News. The current owners of a 6 million pound mansion, Loch House, are accusing Adele of sabotaging their efforts to sell it. In the court submission, comments made by Adele during an interview with Anderson Cooper about the house being haunted has hindered the selling process. I mean, aren’t all houses in the UK probably haunted? Yeah, you should just assume that from the get-go. Yeah, like if the house is over a certain age, just assume that if you live in the UK, your house is haunted, the end. If there’s no ghost, something’s wrong with it.

Yep. If ghosts won’t even live there, there’s something very wrong with the whole home. Home. It’s probably black mold.

That’s right. During her interview, she discussed living in Loch House. Adele said, This bit’s all quite scary, really.

I’m not rattling around here on my own. It gives me the creeps. Adele did not use the word haunted during the interview. Adele was the first tenant and she stayed for six months and blighted the property by saying it is haunted, the court submission said. This comment negatively impacted future marketing efforts and continues to affect the property’s reputation to this day. After the singer left, it was re-listed for sale, but received no offers. According to the application, the owner has actively tried to sell the property for about 14 years. The only offer ever received was in August of 2020, but the prospective buyer withdrew after learning about the property’s supposed haunted status. Loch House is up for sale for 5,995 British pounds.

It was originally constructed in about 1909. The 32-acre estate features 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, an indoor and outdoor swimming pool, a tennis court, a helicopter pad, and a cinema room. I love how the owners are not like. No, it couldn’t be the 6 million dollar pound price tag that’s scaring buyers away. It’s gotta be that she mentioned that the house is creepy.

There’s definitely nothing going on in the economy that would prevent persons from dropping down that amount of money. I hope they go find the people who went to view the house and then have a discussion with them about why they decided not to buy the house as part of the court proceedings. That would be fun. It’s like we just went to look for a laugh.

We were hoping it was haunted, but then we saw no ghost things and we just came up and walked away. That is the first story loaded into the Curse-O-Meter. Sheryl will read it the second. The Man with the $4,000 collection of Old Creepy Dolls.

And it’s from February 19th by Sammy Carmella for vice.com. Chris Henry, 26, of Paramus, New Jersey, has always been passionate about dolls and grew up surrounded by them. He became fully obsessed in his teenage years when he purchased his very first vintage doll, Krusty Marge.

Krusty Marge. That sounds like a fantastic doll. That’s not a good doll name.

No. That’s a cryptid name. Ha, Simpson’s character. Now a decade later, he says, I have a large collection of dolls. For me, it felt like a calling. Despite his passion for dolls, Chris didn’t always receive the kindest reactions from friends or strangers. I would tell someone I was into dolls and they’d think it was creepy and they were scared of the dolls, he explained. In my mind, they were misunderstood and I grew up misunderstood, he continued. I felt it was my calling to take care of these dolls. The dolls, they call to him. To be fair, so did Tabitha, our Probably Cursed mascot from our logo.

That’s true. Call to us from that vintage store shelf. Luckily, it was just the one and not many, many dolls.

Yes. Chris’s current collection likely is worth up to $4,000, but he has no plans to sell them, as each holds their own importance. As for where he found all these dolls, Chris says, I usually buy them in person so I can feel the energy with them. He explained, I like them to be a match with my collection.

Sure. You gotta make sure they all get along. Typically, he visits thrift stores to find his perfect matches. However, he says sometimes he’ll browse eBay and Etsy looking for unique ones.

Some of Chris’s dolls are from various places across the globe, like Ghana, South Africa, India, and France. I think it’s a way to value history and to express yourself. I think they are so special and priceless. And for those of you who want to start their own doll collection, there is a community out there, Chris assured. I wonder where that community is. I mean, they can buy some on our Probably Cursed Etsy shop. We still have two of our old dolls. Yeah, those baby dolls. Those creepy, creepy baby dolls. You can start your own creepy doll collection. And these ones are good ones.

You will definitely blow the competition out of the water or at least get people’s attention. We apologize in advance if our dog is making strange noises. He’s cursed. Not the curse. I will enter in the third news story now. Cursed skeletons unearthed.

Ancient burials are found with tablets between their legs, invoking the wrath of the Roman gods. This is from February 7th by Harry Howard for DailyMail.co .uk. Another example of a UK website using the longest possible title that they can. One of these days they’re going to make a title longer than the actual article.

I hope so. A series of mysterious graves with ancient curses invoking the wrath of the gods have been discovered beneath a historic hospital. Excavations in Orleans, France have revealed dozens of male burials dating back to the Roman era. Several of which include cursed tablets known as Defixio that call upon Roman gods to punish various wrongdoers identified by name. Now, do they know if the gods are the… Or you’re wondering if the cursed tablets are to curse the bodies in the graves? Yes.

Your question will get answered in this article later on. And it’s kind of interesting in a way. 22 have been found so far, spread across 11 burials, doubling the number of Defixio found in France. Defixio were made for a very long period of time. The first ones are dated to the 6th century BC. However, discovering 22 tablets on the same archaeological site is remarkable.

So far, only two tablets have been deciphered. One asks the Roman god of war, Mars, for their bewitchment of multiple people and their accomplices who accomplished the unfortunate and unjust feat. It’s kind of a weird translation. Another asks the Roman god of financial gain in commerce, Mercury, to denounce two thieves, Seguarlius, Segarillus and Gnausius, and make them return their plunder. Those laying the curses may have written the tablets themselves, or if they couldn’t write, hired a professional to do it for them. Despite the tablets being found in graves, it’s thought that the deceased were merely intercessors, relaying the curse for somebody else. Interesting. So, you want to get your message to the afterlife and somebody is burying a body down the street. You just hammer out your own personal curse tablet and you run over it and you’d be like, I need to bury this with the body.

They got to deliver this message for me. So what you’re saying is that the Romans that were living in France just really hated everyone and they wanted to curse a whole bunch of people. Yep. And I guess I had this because I’m not quite sure if everyone was buried at the same time like a mass grave. But if it was, like there was a lot of bad blood in that neighborhood, toxic community. WonderPro was just one person trying to send multiple curses and every time somebody died, they’re like, wait, I got somebody new. Yeah.

Are all the tablets in the same hand, right? And he’s just like the local crank. And the guy who sold me a zucchini, I want him to go to Hades for all eternity because it was kind of mushy on one end. The archaeologists said the curses were always placed beneath the ground to reach Cthonian gods and goddesses. I don’t know what Cthonian is.

I mean, look it up. I know Cthulian from Cthulhu. So it’s concerning those or belonging to creatures that inhabit the underworld. Hmm. Yeah.

Okay. I guess if they’re under the world, you got to put the messages in the ground. And then the dead people just a farium from there. I wonder if Noseus got his comeuppance. Probably not. No.

Right. We have loaded our three news stories into the Curse-O-Meter. I will get it to spit out the results now. Processing Curse-O-Meter. Please stand by. And for the first news story about Adele’s Haunted Mansion, the Curse-O-Meter says… Probably nine.

Yeah. It’s a humongous six million pound, which I think is like nine million dollars in like Canadian money. Like nobody’s got that kind of money in this economy. And even if you do, you’re probably saving your money just to, you know, who knows what’s going to happen to the world right now. So it’s true.

They’re putting all that money into bunkers. Besides which Adele, it said even in the article, she never said it was haunted. She just said it was creepy, which like, who doesn’t have a creepy house?

She never felt like she was alone. Yeah. Maybe she just thought she had squatters.

Yeah. Because it’s a ten bedroom house. I mean, if it was just her living there, someone else could be living in the house and she’d never see them. Yeah.

Like it, it, plus when you’re in a house that’s that big or you’re in a place that’s that big and you’re the only one, you’re going to hear weird creaks and cracks and stuff in the house and you’re just, it’s going to feel like someone’s there. Yeah. And for our second news story about the New Jersey man and his many, many, many creepy doll collection, Curse-O-Meter says… Probably benign.

Yeah. We have creepy dolls. I mean, we also are having haunted things in our house, but there’s nothing wrong with collecting creepy dolls.

It’s true. And like, even though it seems to be putting a little bit of distance between him and friends and potential new colleagues, I mean, I think it’s just easy enough is getting rid of the collection. It’s not like the classic doll where you throw it away and it appears in your house the next day.

Yeah. Besides which you can have a room that’s dedicated just to the doll and then nobody will know that the dolls are even there. Like, not a big deal. Unless you like get real crazy about it. Stay away from the doll room. Or you make sure to show it to everyone. You’re like, oh, this is the doll room. And then you just keep going as you’re doing a tour of your house. Some people might not like that.

He could, he could find ways to compromise. And the final news story about the cursed tablets in the mass graveyard in Orleans, France. Curse-O-Meter says definitely cursed.

Yeah. I mean, they’re purposely trying to curse people, so it better be cursed. 22 cursed tablets, cursed in different people.

They’re probably all long dead. So maybe formally cursed. I don’t think you can curse someone into the afterlife. I’m sure people have tried. I mean, you might be able to. There’s nothing saying you can’t. I’ve never actually looked into that.

If you know, please email us at probablycursedpodcast.net. If you can curse someone who’s already dead. Yeah. And have them feel it.

We would like to know. I mean, especially if you believe in the afterlife and the way that the Romans did. You just live another life and the other afterlife. Like there’s not, you could be cursed in theory. Can it like, cause we grew up with like Christian mythology. Could a curse reach into heaven? Could we make somebody get warts all over their spiritual heavenly body?

Probably not, no. And they’re like, how did this happen? I’m in heaven. No, I don’t think the Catholic church or the Christian version of heaven would allow that. It’s probably true. It’s probably a no curse. Yes. Maybe hell. Uh huh. Or maybe even purgatory. Yeah. Or maybe that’s too exciting for purgatory. All right.

Well, we have our Curse-O-Meter nice and calibrated. Before we get on to Sheryl’s topic for this episode, we’re going to take a little side trip over to the Probably Cursed museum and gift shop. And releasing with today’s episode is Artifact 19, the felt artwork. This item was originally purchased from one of the habitat for humanity restores in our town. I believe Sheryl, you were the one who grabbed this for our collection. Do you remember what you drew you to it? It kind of looks like, I mean, it definitely was handmade. Step one. Yeah. Uh, step two, it looks like the type of thing that would have been like a kid’s room, maybe a circus theme room or like a clown theme room.

Which is kind of slightly eerie. It is a piece of artwork made of cut out felt, depicting what I’m pretty sure is a merry go round. Three brightly colored identical horses on poles with white, what might be a circus big top over them. It is mounted on a dinged up and scratched up wooden frame and under glass. Despite the colorful and merry scene, there is almost a drab, soulless feel to this piece. Like this artwork has been present to some dark happenings that have sapped it of any joyful feelings and has left it looking slightly ominous. If you’d like to see it yourself, you can check it out online at probablycursed.etsy.com along with numerous other items we’ve collected from thrift shops, estate sales, and antique stores all over the country. Also on our store, we have some stickers, some Probably Cursed stickers with our brand name and logo on it so you can show everyone just the good kind of podcasts to listen to. And there’s also some arts and crafts that we’ve put up there to help you with your spooky decor. If you’ve got your own haunted items that you want to get rid of and sent to us, or creepy dolls maybe like the guy who was collecting the creepy dolls, you can also contact us via our social media.

It’s true. If you’re tired of being ostracized but you want to make sure your collection goes to a good home. Yep. Get in touch with us. Yep, we will definitely take care of it. So I have the haunted update for this episode. Some haunted updates. So last week Chris took Freddie out for a walk and I was in the house by myself getting ready for bed. When it sounded like the front door or door downstairs might have opened and like somebody was moving around on our main level. It kind of even sounded like at one point like somebody was coming up the stairs.

So I kind of asked out loud, is it time for bed Freddie? But there was no sign of the dog. So I waited a little bit and was just like, well, it should be fine. And then I was like, well, I’m in the house by myself. So I called out to Chris to see if anyone was home and I got no answer.

I’m not easily spooked typically. So I just continued with my routine thinking maybe Chris hadn’t heard me or something like that. But then like five minutes later, I heard the door open and Chris and Freddie came back in. Yeah, that is definitely weird.

Yeah, it’s a little bit odd. Again, we live in an older house and on our previous episode we did mention that it sounds like somebody’s coming up the stairs sometimes, but kind of the door opening and then movement on the main floor was a little different. Yeah, to hear a whole like pathway of movement throughout the house. It is if it’s just like a coincidence of like the house creaking, that’s a heck of a series of coincidences.

Yeah. So the one thing is that for those wondering like why more of the stuff happens to me and not to Chris is because I work from home a couple days a week. So I’m at home more than he is.

So I get to deal with whatever’s going on in the house by myself a whole lot more. You know, it just occurred to me that we can’t ever let anyone know where our house is or we’ll run into the same problem as those people trying to sell Adele’s old mansion. It’s haunted. I mean, let’s be honest, people will know by the time we’re finished with this place, it’s going to look so creepy that people will see the house on the market and be like, ah, that’s where Chris and Sheryl lived. I hope so. Mm hmm.

Some people with taste. Yeah, that’s right. That rats up our side trip to the Probably Cursed museum and gift shop.

Again, if you want to take a take a look at today’s or any previous artifacts we released, you can head over to Probably Cursed dot Etsy dot com. So today, everyone, I’m going to tell you a little bit about the McKay school. As we’ve mentioned probably a couple times in previous episodes, Chris and I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And unfortunately, Edmonton doesn’t really have that many long ghost stories or paranormal stories. We have a bunch of short ones, but they don’t really amount to, I don’t know. We don’t get the big haunts. No, we don’t get the long drawn out several pages of a ghost story book type stories. So, yeah, no one getting lured out onto into the foggy woods by a disembodied voice that is just slightly out of reach all the time. And then you’re in quicksand. Yeah, nothing like that here.

No. But I did want to tell you about one of our local paranormal stories, which is the McKay Avenue School and the One Room Schoolhouse. So when Chris and I started dating, he actually lived near the bottom of the hill where the school sits. So we’ve walked past this place quite a bit. It’s located in downtown Edmonton and it kind of overlooks the North Saskatchewan River, or at least it did at one point, the city kind of built up around it. Yeah, it’s high up on a hill. But before those apartment buildings got built in, they would definitely have been able to see the river.

Yeah. So to start, I’ll just briefly talk about the One Room Schoolhouse on the property. Schoolhouse on Haunted Hill.

Uh-huh. Schoolhouse on Haunted Hill. Mostly because it’s there, people do say that they’ve seen faces in the windows, stuff like that, which it could be related to like haunted artifacts. But the fact is that schoolhouse is actually a replica of the original. The original building, I mean, they’re made out of wood and well, our winters are not exactly nice to woodhouses or things.

So the original schoolhouse is no longer there, not only because of the harsh, harsh winters, but also because it was originally built in 1881. A long time ago. Long time ago. Dean, when was it rebuilt?

Do you know? I don’t remember when they rebuilt it on the property. But I’m assuming it was probably around the time that the provincial building or the McKay School was considered a historical site. They probably then built it up there just as a… Oh yeah, just a callback. Back, yeah. That would be my guess. That building used to look like. Uh-huh.

Although I’m sure if you reached out to the McKay School and asked them, they would be happy to answer your questions. Yeah. When did that get there?

Uh-huh. I want to go into a little bit of Edmonton history, but not too much, although people can always cut it out or skip ahead if they don’t like it. So Edmonton was founded in 1795, originally as a fort, and at the time it was part of what was known as Rupert’s land.

So we weren’t candidate yet. We were named after Rupert, Prince Rupert. Probably King Rupert.

Or that bear in the red sweater Rupert. That’s right. Yeah. Something like that.

The original school house was built on land that was donated by the Hudson’s Bay Company to the settlement of Edmonton, and it was paid for using funds raised by Matthew McCauley, who was Edmonton’s first mayor, Malcolm Groat and William Rowland. All local. Oh, yes. Big shot names here. Yeah. They have roads and buildings named after them. Exactly. If you ever find yourself on any of those roads or in those communities, you’ll know. Especially with the name Groat.

Yes. You’re not going to see that anywhere else. So Chris, can you guess how much the school house would have cost, the one room school house would have cost when it was built? In like today dollars?

Either or. I’d say it’s about the size of one of the larger uber sheds you could buy at Home Depot. Yeah. $9,000. Well, it actually cost in the historical times. It actually cost $968. $900. I got the nine.

You got the nine. Which would approximately be the value of $26,000 today. Wow. Yeah. It’s too much.

This is too much. Although I guess they had to build it from scratch back then. It didn’t come in a big package.

Keep in mind they fundraised that money to build that school. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I don’t know. It didn’t say what kind of fundraisers but. Probably remember when we were little kids and during trick-or-treating they would give us those little UNICEF boxes. They were ready to go door to door.

Yeah. Put the money in there. They made the kids collect money for their own schoolhouse. Or had them go hunting for their own furs so they could sell them and get money for the school.

A lot of squirrel fanny packs were sold that summer. Again, based on the cost of the loan you can kind of guess, as Chris said, it’s a small school. And as Edmonton grew we needed a bigger building. So in 1904 construction started on a stone school which is the one known as McKay Avenue School. Construction was completed in 1905 and the school was named after William McKay or Mackay.

Who was a prominent physician for the Hudson’s Bay Company. Which I don’t know. I mean, he didn’t pay for it. He had nothing really to do with it other than the Hudson’s Bay donated the land I guess. I guess everyone really liked him. Maybe.

Maybe he was the only doctor and nobody else would come to our cold, cold, cold north. My campus that I went to college at was the Leslie Nielsen School of Communication. Leslie Nielsen had no part in organizing it, putting it together. Just the people who named it just really liked him and his work. They named the building and apparently it was quite the scandal. Once people found out that he had no part in it.

It was just a fan thing. Actually there’s a lot of that going around town. A lot of people can’t figure out why our main square downtown is called Churchill Square. Churchill was never here. No. He never funded it.

He just, I don’t know. We should call it Churchill Square after Winston Churchill on that newspaper. Yeah, Edmonton just likes naming things after people. Now for some more local history. Construction of the Legislature Building didn’t start until 1907.

That was where the government lived. Yeah. You know, and now our legislature wants to defund education.

Sure does. I think they’re jealous that the schoolhouse got built first all these years later. 150 years later. For the first little while because the McKay Avenue School was open, it was actually used for two legislature assemblies. So the first two were held at the McKay School. The first one was held on March 15th, 1906. And it was a liberal majority with our first premier in charge, Mr. Alexander Hammer and Rutherford. Rutherford is another important Edmontonian. If you ever come here. Not just the name of the engineer from the Cerritos. That’s right. He’s the main reason Edmonton is the capital of Alberta.

And actually fun fact, the decision to make Edmonton the capital would have been made within the walls of the McKay School. He’s just sitting there and thinking, you know, I’m already here. Just make it here.

That’s right. The other important decisions that would have made been likely made within the walls of the McKay School included determining the location of the University of Alberta, creating our first provincial court, the creation of our government run telephone company to compete with Calgary’s Bell telephone company, which yes, it’s the same Bell Canada for those Canadian listeners. And even setting speed limits for the province, which I’m sure those speed limits are way surpassed now. You know, it’s interesting because when we were traveling the Montana last summer, like Montana is directly south of our province. Yeah.

And they historically waited into, I think they’re the last to implement speed limits and they only did it because it became federal law. Yeah. Even in Canada, we’re like, that’s just crazy.

Yeah. Half the province is like so flat, you can go straight. Not like Montana where you can go sailing off over a cliff. Yeah. And I wish I could find information on what those speed limits would have been because like, how fast could you go back then even?

Yeah. Like how fast could the Model T Ford go or was the speed limits for horses too? It must have been horse speed. It must have been horse speed.

Horse factor four. Anyway, back to the McKay School. It was originally constructed to be a school, as mentioned, and it operated in that capacity until 1983 when it finally closed. Some people might be interested to learn that there are two notable alumni that came out of the McKay School. Wilford Wop May, who was a World One fighter pilot who helped shoot down the Red Baron and actor Leslie Nielsen. Of my college’s fame. Yes.

And some movies. By the time the last student left the building, it had already been designated as a provincial historical site. So it managed to stay preserved up until modern times. See, in Alberta, we have like a really bad habit of either A, tearing down historical buildings because I don’t know why. Or B, our buildings disappearing because they’re made of wood. Or C, a developer buys the property and then mysteriously catches fire and burns down during renovations. That’s right. And they just build something else in that spot. Mysteriously.

You have to do some digging for those listeners who want to figure out more about what Chris is talking about. Honestly, it’s just that they don’t want to stick to the historicalness of the building. Currently, the building acts as an archive for the Edmonton Public Schools, and it’s also open to the public as a museum. So there are a lot of historical artifacts from various schools in Edmonton, housed within its walls. Remember in elementary, they told us anything we did bad would be on a permanent record? Yeah.

Do you think it’s in that building? I mean, I didn’t go to public school, so it’s not. I’m at the Catholic School.

Yeah, I don’t know where that would have ended up. St. Albert? No. It’s at the Vatican.

Yeah, that’s right. The church knows all the bad things we did in school. Okay, now I promise this is when we get into the creepy stuff. When you pull up a list of haunted locations in Edmonton, McKay School is usually in the top five, which if you look at pictures of it online, you’ll see that they’ve done a great job of making the historic site look really creepy, because they’ve added some unsettling mannequins to the museum, which we should plan a day where we just go there and poke around inside. I’m sure I went to the Woodroom Schoolhouse when I was a kid, but I don’t think I’ve been to McKay. Yeah, I haven’t been to the McKay. Yeah.

Did they put mannequins in the Little Wooden Schoolhouse that’s there too? No. Okay.

Yeah. I remember peeking in the windows. I don’t remember seeing any.

No. It’s just in the actual museum itself. The ghost stories began when a man named Ron Hallady joined the school staff in 1985. Sorry, in 1984. Like the last year it was open?

Yeah, basically. He worked at the McKay Avenue School for 22 years, and at first the activity was mostly harmless occurrences, like framed pictures would sometimes switch places or locked doors would unlock themselves, and their alarm would be triggered for apparently no reason. Hallady witnessed objects moving around, and he heard strange noises at night, like the sounds of laughing children in the hallways, or the sounds of construction within the building when no one else was there. Hallady noted that the lights would turn off sometimes by themselves, the boilers would be switched off so they wouldn’t start working, there’d be no heat in the building, which is bad news for Edmonton. It’s probably somebody’s like parent, ghost parent, and it’s like just put on a sweater if you’re cold.

That’s right. And water faucets would be found running when they should have been turned off. Well, they don’t care about the water bill, I guess. I mean back when the school was built, I don’t even know if they were paying for water. That’s true. They probably made a kid carry it up from the river.

That’s right. There were reports of people hearing sounds of children running up and down the fire escape that used to be at the back of the building, or dragging it slash scraping sounds coming from the basement. And some people have even reported a face in the bathroom mirror, or some people have even reported seeing a face in one of the bathroom mirrors. Bloody Mary. 100%. I mean kids are probably playing that in the school all the time.

She just never went away. On one particular occasion, a lady and a coworker were setting up some chairs on the top floor of the building in preparation for a meeting. They had closed some of the blinds, even stapling some of them shut, which feels a little overkill, but hey.

You’re gonna wreck the trim. Yeah. And they set up an overhead projector as well, and then they locked the room and left it overnight, only to arrive in the morning to find chairs thrown about the room, and the entire place in disarray, including some of the blinds having been torn off the walls or torn in half. And the door was locked.

He actually had to unlock the door to get into the room. Yeah, so it’s kind of similar to those ghost stories you hear about when people move into a house and start renovating, and like, their tools start breaking, paint buckets get kicked over, like the house just kind of gets destroyed in between sessions when they’re working on it. Yeah, exactly.

They’re unhappy with the changes. Well, and after experiencing some of this phenomenon for a while, a lady decided it was time to start his own investigations. So he decided to bring in a Ouija board to try communicate with the ghosts of McKay School.

It’s tedious, but it works. He would come in after hours or on weekends in an attempt to make contact, and as luck would have it, the lady was able to communicate with the ghost of a man named Peter. So during one session, Peter told the lady that he wasn’t the only ghost in the building, that there were in fact multiple spirits roaming the halls, about six in total. Peter is said to be the most active spirit at the school, and he often communicated with the lady during the Ouija board sessions. So when call went out for ghosts, Peter was usually the first to answer. Do you know what makes those ghosts really cool? What? They stayed in school. Nice. Eventually, the relationship between Peter and Halei grew to the point that Peter told Halei that he had died during the construction of an addition onto the school.

Peter said that he was working on the roof of the building in the winter of 1912, and he slipped on some ice on the roof and fell to his death. This is why you need Ouija people. Yes. If you go look at the slope of the roof on McKay School, it’s actually quite a steep slope. He probably was working without a harness.

Oh yeah, 100%. Wind’s blowing in his face and you can’t see, but he’s like trying to hammer a thing together. Also because it was wintertime, it meant they couldn’t bury Peter in the ground because everything was frozen. So Peter’s coworkers apparently stored his body in the basement until the ground unfroze. Peter also went on to tell Halei that he had been married and he had three daughters, one of whom was still alive in the mid-1990s.

Oh, interesting. Did he try and reach out to this daughter? So he tried to do a little bit of his own digging to see if he could find a news article from 1912 basically saying that somebody named Peter had died during renovations or anyone had died during renovations of the McKay School. He can’t find anything. So he’s gotten a way of really knowing and Peter never really gave a last name. So a woman alive in California in the 1990s with a dad named Peter sounds like a tall order to try to find someone.

That’s fair. Now, it didn’t take long for the school to end up with a bit of a reputation and eventually a pair of psychics were called in to do an investigation and they confirmed that in fact there were multiple spirits in the building. But they were unable to make contact with Peter. One psychic said she could see children running up and down the side of a building and she was confused until Halei pointed out that the fire escape had been outside that building where she’d seen the children running. Later in another room, one of the psychics mentioned feeling pain in her jaw and teeth which Halei explained was where the old nurse’s office would have been and also noted that it was likely that visiting dentists would have examined some of the school children in need of dental care in that office. Wow, dentist making house calls.

Uh-huh. Like how annoying would that be if you went into a room and you’re like, oh my face, everything hurts. And I’m like, oh, it’s just a dentist residual pain.

That sounds miserable. Are there any children ghosts at this school? Other than the children on like the fire escape and like the giggling kids and stuff in the hall.

Yeah. There’s no specific ghosts that have been named. I’m surprised any of those children ghosts hung around after the dentist in then school. That’s right.

Imagine getting a tooth pulled and then having to do your finals. Also during the psychics visit while they were wandering around, somebody pointed out some of the filing cabinet drawers that have been closed when they went through a room a first time were now found open a few moments later when they passed through the room again. Everyone’s permanent records. I was going to say that like imagine having to just file for the rest of your afterlife. Yeah.

Opening and closing filing cabinets and alphabetizing and sounds awful. Now I feel it’s only fair in this case to mention that there is some speculation that Peter may have been evented by Haleigh. For starters, the paranormal activity didn’t start before Haleigh arrived. Peter only ever made contact with Haleigh and Haleigh was always the first one in the morning and the last one to leave at night. Hmm. However, those who believe in Peter say that he’s harmless and they don’t really mind him being around. I guess that’s true. If he’s only ever bothering the one guy.

Yeah, like he’s not really causing any issues for anyone. Plus, it’s a school. It’s normally like full of hustle and bustle. I would assume that if there was a ghost walking around everyone might just not key in that he’s there. It’s probably just part of the background. On one occasion when a lady was cleaning the third floor, he heard the sound of what sounded like dishes clattering on the second floor. Like someone was having a party.

Hmm. He knew he was the only one in the building at the time so he decided to check and see what the cause of the noise could have been. So as he’s walking down from the third floor about halfway down the stairs, the noise is just mysteriously stopped.

Party’s over. Yeah, so he’s like, well, okay, I’m gonna go back upstairs. So he goes back upstairs and he starts mopping the floor again. And sure enough, within a couple minutes the noises start up again. So again, the lady goes back down the stairs to check and about halfway down the noise stop again.

The lady’s not invited to this party. No, they do not want him there. So he sighed and he went back upstairs. And the third time the noises started again, he just didn’t even bother heading down the stairs. He figured if the ghosts wanted to be found, they wouldn’t be stopping every time he got close to their location. I bet he was hearing things like, shh, he’s coming.

Quiet. That’s right. And that’s the story of the McKay Avenue School. Ah, that’s very interesting. I hadn’t heard most of the stories.

Yeah. I had to go delving into some weird odd corners to do my research for this episode. For those of you who are Star Trek fans, if you feel so inclined to go looking for a very weird 90s TV special from Canada’s depths of… I don’t even remember what channel this is on, but there’s a show called Things That Go Bump. It was a TV special hosted by James Dewin. Scotty.

Scotty, yeah. Which was kind of fun to watch this Canadian actor telling Canadian ghost stories. There’s also a Canadian author who wrote a book, Ghost Stories in Alberta. And I own all of her ghost stories of Alberta books. Those books have been everywhere since I was a little kid.

Classic stories. So that’s the other place that I got this information. The rest of the stuff was just random articles. Every year our newspaper publishes the Haunted Places of Edmonton apparently. And so you can go read through our other haunted locations if you stumble across some of those articles online.

Yep. Or even if you visit, you can just walk there. You can go up and press your nose up against the windows. I don’t know how you get to go on a tour. I believe if you look it up there are hours that the museum is open. I didn’t look into it because well when you and I were last there it was like in the evening and this is a government building.

So the employees don’t work past 4.30 so if you’re coming here hoping to go get a tour you’re going to need to come during the day. I guess I wasn’t. Like it was just down the street from my place but I was usually away from that area. Home during those times.

Yep. And just coming in the evening after work, open my nose in the window and just keep on walking home. I think for us to be able to go we’d have to take a day off work and go in. I don’t even think they’re open on the weekends for tours.

Slackers. Yeah I think it’s literally just Monday to Friday from like 8am to 4.30 which is regular downtown hours. Like it just kind of makes it a little inaccessible. Yep. I think if we come for a tour they’re going to be surprised that somebody showed up and then we’re going to get a tour from some guy who’s in the middle of something else. Or we’re going to get shuffled in with a school group that’s doing a tour and then we can watch a whole bunch of children screaming and running around.

Yep. Well I like those legends about the McKay Avenue school. We will put it into the Curse-O-Meter here just to determine how cursed this school is. Curse-O-Meter activate.

Please stand by. And the Curse-O-Meter says the McKay Avenue school is probably benign. Yeah it’s I mean it’s supposed to be haunted but there’s nothing really that bad happening. I mean all the bad stuff happened when those ghosts were alive like falling off the roof in the winter time.

Yeah. Getting their dental surgery done. You could argue that maybe seeing the face of Bloody Mary in the mirror might be a little jarring but like who hasn’t seen that in a bathroom when they were a kid. I think that just goes on in every school. Bloody Mary is like on constantly on like 12 calls to different bathroom mirrors in schools across the world. Yep. Also at this point we’ve now said her name at least three times so we get to go look at our bathroom mirror in a little bit and see what we can find. It’s true she’s probably annoyed that you’ve said her name three times and then we’re not at taking her call.

No. Well thank you very much for your segment Sheryl. Next month we are going to switch things up a little bit. If you’ve listened to our other podcast we used to have a third host named Sidney and we’re going to bring her in as a special third ghost- guest. Ghost host. Ghost host. Ghost host.

I like that. I’m going to tell her she’s our special ghost host. She’s already suspicious so she knows. Yep.

We have told her nothing and she is at the height of paranoia about what we’re on about. And another special announcement for those people who have been looking at our Probably Cursed shop but they’ve been like you know what I wish prices were just a little bit lower. We’re having a Friday the 13th sale in June.

Yep. If you like a bargain Friday the 13th on her store in June one day only or perhaps two or three if I forget to take the sale down. You can get 13% off our Probably Cursed haunted items along with everything else in the store. I still need to set this up. I don’t know if I’ll just manually have to reduce the price by 13%.

We’ll see. Yep. But yep that one day only. Everything will be 13% off for Friday the 13th. And you better take advantage of the offer if you’re looking for a deal because we were looking at the calendar when the next one is and I don’t think there’s any Friday the 13th in 2026.

Other than the June one. Yeah. Or 2026 is next year. Oh 2026.

There’s just the one this year. Ah. So the next sale probably won’t be until 2027.

Wow. Unless we come up with a different date. Mm-hmm. So 2026 could do June 6th 2026. That’s true. 2026 will be TDB. Yeah. Until next time this is your cursed host Chris signing off. And this is Sheryl signing off.