Ghost Stories: Jail Spirits at Victoria's Old Courthouse

This happened just about a year ago, but my girlfriend and I were in Victoria, BC for a short getaway and to visit her cousin and their family.

We spent the first day in downtown Victoria doing a little sightseeing, and it brought us over towards the Bastion Square part of the city. As we were walking around, I see the Maritime Museum, and with me having a bit of an interest in BC history, I asked my girlfriend if we could go and she agrees.

As we walk in, we see this amazing bird cage elevator and we learn a little about the museum’s history. When British Columbia was in its early days, the building used to be the old courthouse, and on one of the floors, you can see what the courtroom used to look like.

There wasn’t a lot of people and we found ourselves on the first floor of the museum by ourselves. We were able to spread out a little bit and we took our time looking at the artifacts.

As I’m looking in one case, I hear a loud crash from across the room. There’s nobody else in this section except for my girlfriend. I turn to her and ask, “What did you hit?” She replies back with, “Nothing. I didn’t touch anything.”

We look around and can’t find anything that appears to be out of place, so we continue on with our walk about of the museum.

Later on that day, we went to go to visit my girlfriend’s cousin. As we were sitting at the dinner table, we tell them about our visit to the museum and mentioned to them about this loud crash.

That’s when we learned a little bit more about the museum. Being an old courthouse, apparently several prisoners died in and around the grounds either from being executed for their crimes, or they were beaten to death in the jail that was contained in the building.

Rumour is that their ghosts as well as the ghost of Judge Mathew Begbie still roam the grounds. It had us thinking afterwards. Perhaps that crashing noise were heard were one of those ghosts.

Submitted by Chris Cordova.

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Image: Wayne Hsieh