NORTH VANCOUVER, BC/GIBSONS, BC

Names have been changed to protect the identity of the individual(s) involved.

It’s not only places that can be haunted. Though not as widely documented, there are many cases of items having otherworldly attachments. 

The following two cases are examples of such phenomenon. 

The Trunk

Around 2000, Nina and her partner were browsing through an antique store near their home in North Vancouver, when they came across a large antique steamer trunk. The trunk was exactly the kind Nina’s father had been on the lookout for, complete with a steeped lid and ornate metalwork around its edges. It was in good condition for its age, featuring the painted image of a little girl in Victorian clothing on the underside of the lid.

Wasting no time, Nina lay down her money and she and her boyfriend loaded the heavy piece into the back of their car. The plan was to take it home and surprise her dad with it on his upcoming birthday a couple days later. Pleased with her find, Nina and her partner stored the heavy item in the guest bedroom, before going about the rest of their day.

Though she never felt anything off about it in the store, that night after going to bed, her feelings towards the old trunk changed.  

“I couldn’t sleep the whole night. All I could think about was that trunk in the other room.”

No matter how much she tossed and turned and tried to shut off her mind, she found her thoughts kept returning to it.

“I was just laying in bed going: that trunk, that trunk, there’s something wrong with that trunk.” 

It wasn’t so much a presence she felt about the piece, but rather a feeling that it being in her home was somehow very wrong. At one point the feeling got so strong, she considered taking it out to the garage. Her boyfriend all the while slept peacefully beside her.

“I didn’t sleep all night.” 

It was only after she gifted it to her dad and it was no longer in their home, did the feeling disappear.

Nina’s father repainted and restored the trunk, displaying it in he and her mother’s home. Unfortunately, both of Nina’s parents would pass away unexpectedly within a few years and after clearing up the estate, the family put it and several other of their parents’ items into storage.

That’s where the trunk stayed until 2005, when Nina’s teenage nephew, Robert, discovered it while cleaning out the locker of his grandparents’ effects and brought it back home with him to the Sunshine Coast. It was during this time, that both Robert and his mother, Sue, would experience strange things of their own.

The trunk was kept in the family’s garage. Also in the garage was a treadmill, which Robert and his mother regularly used. 

The first strange incident occurred shortly after the trunk came to reside in the space. Sue was using the treadmill one day when she was suddenly overcome with a very unsettling feeling

“One particular morning I was in there, I believe I was home alone. I was working out. I had my headphones on. After about five or ten minutes of working out I had this horrible feeling there was someone standing directly behind me.”

The feeling was so intense, she explained, that the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. 

Unsettled, Sue looked behind her and saw nobody there. Resuming her workout, it wasn’t 20 seconds before she felt it again, this time so strong she got off the treadmill and began to look around  

“It was so intense. I could feel it–it was physical. I was expecting to turn around and see an axe murderer standing behind me.”

Looking around the garage, she checked to see the exterior door was locked, before opening the sliding doors covering a large storage area. As expected, she found nothing. Sue knew she was home alone and that all the doors to the house were securely locked. 

Getting back on the machine yet again, Sue made it just a few paces before she felt it again instantly. Interestingly, the treadmill was tucked into a corner of the room, with nothing behind it but a wall several inches behind, hardly enough room for anybody to stand. Never before had she experienced a feeling like that while running in there.

Cutting her workout short, she went back in the house, making sure she locked the door behind her. 

“I literally didn’t go back in the garage for two weeks,” explained Sue. “I had to open the garage door to put the garbage [and recycling] in there. I would quickly open the door and whip it in and then close the door.”

She described the presence as male and, though it was unsettling, she didn’t sense anything particularly malevolent about it. Not wanting to frighten her kids, she kept the experience to herself.

So, it was a bit unsettling when, a week or so later, Robert asked his mother out of the blue if she’d felt anything strange in the garage. Asking him to elaborate, Sue listened as her son described the exact same thing she’d experienced. Robert explained that the feeling was so intense that he too would pause his workouts look around the space to see if he was alone. Sue then relayed her own experience. 

Oddly, the watched feeling would only last for a short time, fading altogether within a couple weeks. At the time neither attributed it to the trunk, which remained in the garage for another few years. 

In 2008 Robert would have another disturbing experience, this one more closely related to the antique piece of furniture.

To better understand, one has to envision the layout of the garage. The trunk sat in the far corner of the room, opposite the treadmill and directly in front of a built in workbench that ran the length of one wall. Leaning directly behind it on the bench above was a painting Robert had done in art class at school, which sat propped against a tabletop sandblaster.

On this occasion Robert was again in the garage running. As he faced the part of the room where the trunk and the painting were, all of sudden he witnessed the latter fall from its spot against the sandblaster and go behind the former. The young man watched in astonishment as the painting fell behind the trunk then came back up roughly two feet—as “a bouncy ball would.” 

Not only would it have been hard for the painting to fall as perfectly straight as it had, the fact it fell in the narrow space between the trunk and workbench, then came back up enough that he was able to see the image on the canvas again, was enough to stop the young man cold. For reference the trunk was about 2 1/2 feet high. The painting itself was quite a bit smaller.

So disturbed he was, Robert immediately got off the treadmill and destroyed the painting. 

The family sold the house a few months later and, before moving, held a yard sale where the trunk was sold. At that point the family still never attributed their strange encounters as having anything to do with the trunk.

It was only recently, during a family visit, after Nina recounted her own story, that both mother and son made the link. Besides the experiences in the garage, they never had anything else strange happen in the house.

It would be interesting to know if whoever owns the trunk now has experienced any of the strangeness those three relatives did all those years ago. 

Haunted Heirlooms 

Another case has to do with an antique piano and rocking chair, passed through many generations of one North Vancouver man’s family.

Dating from the late-19^th Century, both items were once fixtures in the captain’s cabin of a schooner belonging to family ancestors. Eventually they would find their way into the homes of various relatives. 

From the time he was young, the man, recalls hearing stories about the two pieces of furniture being haunted. The piano, by then on display in a female relative’s parlour, was known to play on its own accord. 

“Not music really, but a few random notes.”

The rocking chair eventually found its way to the man’s mother’s home in Vancouver, and it was during its tenure there that it would be seen rocking by itself. 

“People would walk into the room and the chair would be rocking, like someone just got out of it.” 

However, some years later, after his mother got the chair reupholstered, it seems that whatever was attached to it had a change of heart.

“After that, the chair no longer rocked on its own.”