Speaker 1: Ghost Stories of the Rocky Mountains written by Barbara Smith,
published by Mumpine Publishing Haunted Apartment to Let. This next
ghost story took place in the west central Alberta town
of Banff, Daring the nineteen nineties. Donna and John, who
have asked that they're last name not be used, live
in Edmonton with their four children. Donna runs a business
and John is engaged in a successful professional practice. They
are active, intelligent people, well aware of life's realities and
not given to flights of fancy. My family has known
John on a casual but ongoing basis for more than
twenty years. One day, he surprised me with the comment,
my wife wants you to call her. He quickly added
the writer, she has a ghost story for you. I
did call Donna, and she certainly did have a ghost
story for me, one of the most dramatic that I
have ever heard. In nineteen ninety one, when Donna decided
to expand her Edmonton business, she chose a location in
the mountain resort town of Baneff because operating the store
would mean that she'd have to spend time away from home.
Donna rented a large, two story apartment in Baneff to
give me an idea of the size of the suite.
Donna explained it was the top of a whole building.
The place slept twelve. Donna's background is in healthcare, and
is not so surprising that the first part of settling
in her home away from home involved cleaning the apartment thoroughly.
With that tour accomplice, she began to stay in the
band of apartments one day a week. Because the place
was so big and her stays there so limited, Donna
rented one of the downstairs bedrooms to a business associate
while she retained a large upstairs bedroom. The first few
months passed uneventfully, then without warning, the first and a
long list of strange and frightening events occurred. I began
to hear noises coming from the roof. She explained. It
sounded like a team of guys stomping and dragging chains
across the gravel roof. Although the noise disturbed her, Donna
ignored it as best she could until one afternoon when
her husband John accompanied her on the trip from Edmonton.
They arrived tired from their long drive and laid down
to have a nap. Before Donna could drift off to sleep,
the noises on the roof began once again. Wanting to
explain that this was a regular disruption during her stays
in Bayeff, Donna turned to John more than a little surprised.
Donna stared at her husband laying beside her. He was
fast asleep, apparently oblivious to the racket going on overhead.
As the next few months were to disclose, this incident
was the first in a series for which other people
were present, but that usually only Donna seemed to be
attuned to. Even with one full time tenant in Donna's
weekly visits, the apartment in Baneff was still very much underused,
so when Mary, her store manager, needed a place to live,
Donna arranged for the woman to take one of the
empty bedrooms. This bedroom was, like Donna's, also on the
second floor, and also right below the roof, but Mary
never complained of the noises that disturbed Donna. Strange as
it seemed, Donna was apparently the only person hearing the racket,
and even the timing of her experiences were limited. I
only heard the chains on the roof if I tried
to sleep, she acknowledged, before adding, then came the smell
foul intense odors that pervade an area for varying durations
of time are frequently associated with the haunted place. Knowing
that the place was clean, Donna was puzzled and annoyed
with the addition to her apartment worse, as with the
noises from the roof, Donna seemed to be the only
one aware of the smell. I used pupa tree to
combat it, but that didn't solve the problem. She recalled,
the foul smell was so strong and had such a
sudden onset that it seemed to her that instantly you
were in the middle of it. Finally, the store manager
also became aware of the terrible odor, which Donna described
as smelling like a combination of rotting meat and feces.
The smell seemed to be concentrated in another big bedroom,
and the two women wandered if possibly the events in
the room were bringing the hideous odor from another part
of the building. They checked out this possibility and found
that their theory was incorrect so far. Whoever or whatever
Donna was unwittingly sharing her apartment with, had tried sound
and smell to get her attention. The next sense that
the spirit appealed to was sight. Donna set up the
scenario for me by describing the design of the kitchen.
Exterior light to that room was provided by a skylight,
and the ceiling and the kitchen doors were accented with
gold colored glass. I arrived one night about eight, she recalled,
it was a very black night as seen from outside.
The windows were all aglow with gold, as if my
bedroom lights were on and shining through the gold glass.
The sight surprised and concerned Anna because she presumed that
the apartment would be empty when she arrived. Understandably nervous,
the woman entered the building, making as much noise as possible,
hoping that her entrance would scare off the intruder that
she felt was inside. The place was empty, empty of people,
that is, but filled with the foul odor. By the
time she reached the kitchen, the golden glowing light that
she had seen from outside had disappeared. On another occasion,
Donna and John invited a group of their friends for
a ski. Weakened, Donna was the first one awake in
the morning. She tidied up the place a bit and
plugged in the coffee. As she walked through the apartment.
She was mortified to realize that the now familiar stench
saturated the air. Yet again, she knew that the place
was clean. She also knew that her friends would be
astonished by such an odor and one of John and
Donna's homes. After all, these people knew Donna and John well.
They knew Donna's obsession with cleanliness. Some had even dubbed
her missus clean. But here she was offering hospitality to
friends when there was obviously filth somewhere in the place.
Nothing but filth could account for a smell this answered oddly.
This time, it was concentrated under the staircase. When the
guests rose a little while later, however, no one commented
on anything out of the ordinary. They seemed completely unaware
of any sort of smell. As puzzled as she was,
she was relieved. Donna set about enjoying her weekend. Several
months later, Dona was asleep in her home and Edmonton.
She began to dream of the place in Beni and
the horrid smell that she so often had to endure
when she stayed there. In her dream, she was determined
to track down the cause of the stench. I opened
my tenant's bedroom door. A sheet of strong odor hit me,
she described. It was so strong my eyes were watering. Then,
for the first time, I'm thinking it's a body. In
her nightmare, Donna made her way through a man's room
to the end of the bedroom leads to an open area.
The smell was even stronger there, she recalled, Continuing the
saga of her nightmare. Dona told me that she swung
open the door to the attached bathroom and watched as
a horrorfic scene unraveled before her. The door hid a
bloated body. I saw it through the mirror above the vanity.
The body burst and splattered all over the wall. I
backed out of the room and telephoned the guy who
rented the room. I asked him, did you give any
one the key? He said he hadn't. I hung up
and called the police, and Donna's dreamed. The police arrived
to find her standing frozen and mute, pointing to the
bedroom door. At last, Donna was released from her terror
by the return of consciousness. I woke up panting from terror,
she recalled. I looked at the clock radio and it
was two forty nine a m. Now, whatever inhabited Donna's
bay of home had made itself felt to her even
when she was not staying there. What she didn't know
at the time was the frightening experience had also just
occurred to marry, the store manager who was living in
the man of apartment. Mary had been fast asleep when
she had felt a hand on her face. She woke
up in terror to find herself alone in her dark bedroom.
The only light came from the luminous style of the
clock radio. It read two forty nine a m. Perhaps
the worst aspect of the two terrifying experiences was that,
despite their friendship, both women were so shaken by their
experiences that they could not bring themselves to discuss the
strange events for a long time, and many months later
that they finally were able to confide in one another
and at least find some sorts of sulence in knowing
that they had both had related experiences. Mary had circumvented
the possibility of ever being exposed to that dark terror
again by never staying another night and Donna's haunted apartment.
For Donna, moving was not an option, and so her
experiences continued. On another trip to the mountain town, Donna
was alone in the apartment. She was in bed in
her large room. In addition to the queen's size bed
where Donna lay, there was a set of bunk beds
and a single bed which was used by her daughter
when she stayed in Baynait in the room. As she
lay in the dark trying to drop off to sleep,
Donna felt a presence in the room. She turned on
the light. There was nothing there, at least nothing that
she could see. Donna moved to the middle of her bed.
Neither the light nor the move helped. I had a
feeling of impending doom. I moved to my daughter's single bed.
I shoved it up against the wall, said Donna, remembering
her attempts to protect herself from the unseen evil. Eventually,
the failing lessened and finally disappeared. During that experience, no
rancid stench was evident. Even with her long suffering nature,
Donna had coped with nearly enough by now. Unfortunately, though,
the entity wasn't through. Donna went on to explain and
shoved me on the shoulders. I was in the dressing
area of the main bedroom, walking toward the bathroom, and
someone shoved me the feeling of being shoved is an
unpleasant experience of any time, but decidedly worse when you
know for a fact, as Donna did, that you are
the only person in the room, living even part time,
in a place that is haunted by something so clearly
evil had taken its toll. Donna asked some locals about
the history of the building that housed the strange suite.
It was a bad story. There been a little house
on the land before, an old alcoholic lived there with
the sun. The older man died in the house. I
think it burned down, she recalled. The information triggered Donna's
memory of her horrible nightmare about finding the body. I
think the body and the dream had its hands tied
behind its back. Someone's got to investigate, she concluded. Would
Donna herself take on the research. No, I became so
afraid that I got rid of the apartment. And so
somewhere in the town of Banuf, is there still an unavenged,
murdered victim trying to draw attention to his unnatural end?
Or has the force exhausted itself by now in the
man's spirit gone to its internal rest. Perhaps someone reading
this account will be able to answer that vigary question,