COCHRANE— Nowadays, Halloween is associated with candy, costumes, and spooky stories, but it wasn’t always about dressing up and collecting sweet treats.
According to the History Network’s website, the origins of Halloween date back to the Celtic festival Samhain, where Celts marked the end of the summer harvest with a festival where the participants would make sacrifices of livestock and crops to appease restless spirits.
It was believed, during the transition from fall to winter, that the boundary between the spirit world and ours was eroded, and long-past spirits would return to earth to walk among the living.
The Celts would congregate around huge sacred bonfires, clad in costumes, usually animal pelts and furs, and Celtic priests or Druids would attempt to foresee the future, and what was in store for the community in the coming cold, dark moths.
When the celebration was over, the Celts would relight their hearths with fire from the sacred bonfires to bring luck and protection through the winter.
The holiday has changed throughout the intervening centuries, especially in North America, where the beliefs of the various ethnic groups of European’s meshed with the traditions of the First Nations to give birth to a distinct version of Halloween.
But the spooky foundations of the celebration remain.
There’s no better time of year to revisit some of the old stories of hauntings and spirits that persist in the Cochrane area.
According to files from The Cochrane Eagle, there are several hauntings in the area.
The Bell-Irving house is located at the top end of Pope Avenue and William Street in Cochrane and was built around 1905.
According to the Town of Cochrane Heritage Register released in 2002, the Bell-Irving’s were among the first ranchers who were “prominent in the establishment and progress of the district.”
This house, however, has become known as the “ghost house” to many residents.
The daughter of the Kerfoot family that lived in the house believed that spirits were haunting the area.
She was known to frequently borrow the cowbell from the neighbouring Maxwell milk cow and use it to chase spirits from her house.
Each night, the Kerfoot’s daughter would leave a glass of wine out on the stone pillars in front of the house for the ghosts that frequented their property.
Each morning, she would retrieve an empty glass, believing that the spirits had accepted her offering.
The Kerfoot’s neighbour was a man named Rattlesnake Pete.
He earned the moniker because he would catch garter snakes, remove their fangs and wear them as jewelry.
Bernice Klotz, a founding member of the Cochrane Historical and Archival Preservation Society, told The Cochrane Eagle in 2014, it was Rattlesnake Pete who was accepting the offering on the spirit's behalf.
Near the midway point between Cochrane and Canmore, at the Stoney-Nakoda First Nation’s border is a small turnout location called Scott Lake Hill.
Barbara Smith, in her book More Ghost Stories of Alberta, wrote that Scott Lake Hill was a service station and a small house where the owners lived.
The station closed and the house was abandoned, but the service road remained and was frequented by truckers who would use the quiet spot to stop and rest for the night.
However, even that activity stopped when truckers started reporting the disembodied voice of a woman screaming in the night.
Rumour had it, Smith wrote, that a sexual assault had taken place at the property and an angry spirit haunted the area.
In the heart of downtown Cochrane, the Rockyview Hotel is said to be home to a ghost.
In 2018, Caesar Escobar was working in the kitchen of the Hotel when he heard a woman’s voice calling his name.
He responded to the calls, thinking it must be a co-worker trying to get his attention.
After checking the area and the hallway he found himself completely alone.
That was the first time Escobar believed in the ghosts many of his coworkers have said haunt the facility.
The persistent rumours of sightings and disembodied voices drew the attention of professional medium and ghost hunter, Bonnie Milner, with Ghost Hunt Alberta.
Milner said she found "loads of strange EMF (electromotive force) readings and some phantom voices through our spirit box,” when she visited the facility in April 2018.
Two months earlier, the same paranormal team confirmed the presence of both a male and female ghost in the facility.
There are many more stories of spirits and ghosts from around the area.
Let’s just hope this Halloween, the border between the spirit world and ours remains solid.
