GIBSONS, B.C.

In July 2024, Carrie Campbell and her sons, Mark and Chris, went to view a home listed for sale. Located on Reed Road in Gibsons, the house was large, in budget, and on a big lot in a good area. From the outside, it seemed to be a perfect fit for their needs.

However, the old adage of how appearances can be deceiving would soon play out for the three.   

“From the outside it looked like just a regular bungalow in our neighbourhood. It was cute and charming and blue and shingled. I thought ‘oh it’s cute, [it’s on a] a nice property.” 

The first indication something about the place wasn’t right though, was when Carrie and her sons met the realtor in the home’s driveway. The agent showing them the house, whom she’s known for years, seemed strangely quiet as she greeted them. 

“She wasn’t of the same demeanor that she normally is. She seemed a little bit cold and brisk, [as if she] just didn’t want to be there. I thought maybe she was having a bad day or something.”

Not paying it much mind, the three followed the agent to go inside. Upon reaching the front door however, Carrie was suddenly struck with a very unsettling feeling.

“As soon as I came up to the front door—when I looked at [it]—I felt almost nauseous. It was this old wooden door with carvings in it. It gave off an energy of some bizarre history that wasn’t nice . . . that’s the only way I can describe it. I looked at the door and I felt a bit ill and I didn’t know why. I just didn’t like it. It made me feel a bit icky and sick.”

Carrie described the sensation as being immediate, felt more at an intuitive level than a mental one.

“It was a weird thing that took like a quarter of a second, a weird idea in my head.” 

Upon entering, her uneasiness quickly grew. The house, though still inhabited, was badly run down on the inside, clearly needing a lot more work than a cursory glance from the exterior would indicate. However, it wasn’t so much its condition but rather some of the home’s unique features that made it so unsettling. The living room, directly to the right of the front door, was dim, painted dark red, and featured large, full-length mirrors with curtains on them. 

“I thought ‘this is weird,” said Campbell, who was immediately put off from it all, particularly the curtained mirrors.  

Poking her head into the unoccupied first bedroom off the living area, her unease intensified. 

“I went into [the] bedroom, right off that room. I only took a step in there. Chris was right behind me and I bumped into him and said, ‘this place is giving me really bad vibes.’” 

They quickly toured the rest of the house. Of its five bedrooms, only two appeared to be occupied, the other three either empty or full of decrepit furniture and junk, only solidifying the home’s unsettling energy.

“All I wanted to do was get out of there,” said Carrie, who estimated their tour lasted all of two minutes.

After telling the agent that they’d seen enough, as if on cue, the four watched from the entry as the home’s front door swung open by itself. Mark, Carrie’s younger son, was the last to come inside and was certain he shut the door securely in its frame. Needless to say, they were happy to oblige and quickly went back outside.

They were just steps down the front walk, headed towards the car, when Chris stopped and pointed to something on the ground.

“There was dead black bird at the door that wasn’t there when we walked in,” said Campbell. 

Speaking briefly with the agent in the driveway before leaving, Carrie felt her phone ring in her pocket. Not recognizing the number on the screen–a local one from nearby Sechelt–she ignored the call and promptly finished her conversation, eager to get away from the unsettling blue house. So unnerved were the three of them, that they stopped at the drugstore on the way home, even though they didn’t need anything. Chris had mentioned an old superstition about never going directly home after visiting a haunted place for fear of the things there following you back and none of them felt like taking any chances.

It was later that day when Carrie remembered the missed call from earlier and decided to phone it back. Instead of getting an answer or voicemail though, all she got was an automated voice telling her the number she’d reached was not in service.

Stranger still, a few days later, while looking for a contact in his call history, her son Chris also noticed a missed call from that day, from the same time as his mother’s.

“When he tried to call it back it also said it wasn’t in service. It happened at the exact same time I got my call.”

The number on Chris’s phone, though a different one, was also from Sechelt. 

Were all these things just coincidences? Carrie doesn’t think so. Months later, she still feels uneasy when she passes the little blue house on Reed.

“I feel like bad things happened there—like on a regular basis. To me it was like somebody’s practicing something evil there. My first thought was witches. Something goes on there that’s not right or good.

“You couldn’t pay me a million dollars to spend a night in that place by myself.”