VALDEZ ISLAND, BC

Often, some of the best ghost stories are those that stand the test of time and the encounter newspaper columnist Jack Scott had on Valdez Island in the summer of 1961 is a textbook example. 

A decade later, Scott would relay the events of that night in a column in the Vancouver Sun’s August 28, 1971 edition. What follows is a recounting of Scott’s otherworldly experience. 

In August 1961, the newspaperman and his wife set out to BC’s Gulf Islands for an extended vacation on their boat. On Friday August 18, after a week of fishing and exploring the area, the couple set out for Valdez Island where they planned to meet another couple, Scott’s longtime friend, Gordon Graham, an RCMP officer on nearby Saltspring Island, and his wife, Lou. The plan was for the two couples to spend the night camping together on the beach. 

The Scott’s arrived first and set about preparing their site–an isolated spot on the southern part of the island. The sheltered waters and grassy knoll behind a beach of bleached clamshells seemed an idyllic spot to build camp. By sunset the Graham’s arrived and for the next hours the friends cooked fish over the fire and enjoyed each other’s company. 

Eventually it came time to crawl into their bed rolls go to sleep and it’s here where a seemingly ordinary camping trip would become something the columnist would remember for the rest of his life. 

It was the sound of drums that awoke him. Startled from sleep, Scott described peering out from the tent he and his wife were sharing and seeing what appeared to be a “great crowd” of indigenous dancers. The full moon overhead illuminated their moving forms. Through the firelight he could see the enigmatic dancers were dressed in ceremonial attire. 

Scott’s first inclination was that he was dreaming. The longer he watched them and reality set in though, the more the skeptical newsman realized that this couldn’t be a dream. The dancers made no sound, save for the rhythm of the drums. He described them moving “graciously and sinuously in and out of the perimeter of the beach fire.”

After watching them for several minutes, he decided to roll over and wake his wife to show her what he was seeing. Just as he was about to though, he heard Gordon Graham rise noisily from his bedroll and throw wood on the fire. In an instant the phantom dancers vanished. 

Scott kept his story to himself the next day. In the sixties especially, things like ghosts were not talked about as they are today, especially among hardheaded professionals like Scott. Still, the columnist remained so convinced of what he’d seen that he walked the beach that day looking for prints, but found nothing. 

If the story ended there it would be easy enough to pass off as a very vivid dream. But, as it turned out, there was more to the story.

A week later, Jack Scott received a call from Gordon Graham, asking him to stop by the RCMP detachment he worked out of on Saltspring. Graham had something he wanted to show him. Heeding his call, Scott was ushered by Graham into his office upon arrival. There on his friend’s desk, sat two skulls and the mummified remains of a young person. Graham explained to an intrigued Scott that the remains had been found by a pair of exploring boys at the same spot the couples had camped the week prior. After consulting a Victoria anthropologist, Graham learned that that particular beach was a Haida burial ground, interring the remains of over 1000 people. 

Unable to keep his encounter to himself any longer, Scott finally relayed what he’d seen to his friend. Graham in turn, admitted that he too had felt something strange about the place, as if there were a presence there. 

From then on Jack Scott’s attitude towards the afterlife would ultimately change, hence the title of his article in the Vancouver Sun a decade later, appropriately named: “The Night I Began to Believe in Ghosts”. 

Sources:

John Robert Columbo, True Canadian Ghost Stories, 2003, Prospero Books/Key Porter Books Limited

Ghosts: True Tales of Eerie Encounters, Robert C. Belyk, 1990, 2002, Horsdal & Schubart Publishers Ltd.