More of a Haunted Run, really

When I lived in Kingston, Ontario, I regretfully did not go on any of its "haunted walk" tours. I'm pretty certain that town has its fair share of gory lore, and I'm told that the ghost of John A. MacDonald still treads its street, pleading that the whole Constitution thing was really a joke.



So I made up for that missed opportunity tonight when I went on Vancouver's Haunted Tour of Gastown. With about twenty other people we got a tour of the section of town reputedly cursed by its ancient First Nations inhabitants when the land was unceremoniously taken away. This, I can confirm, meets the legal test for the imposition of a curse. (See Mummy v. Gravedigger et al.)



I found the tour interesting in part because I had never walked Gastown before, and that now I had a completely new reason to fear it. We learned about ghosts of every variety, from the headless to the feline. I particularly liked the trip down Blood Alley, despite an odour that would suggest it be renamed otherwise.



This is part of the reason I like Vancouver so much. There are countless areas of the city with a feel all their own. At any time you feel like you could be walking through New York, Toronto, Hong Kong, or, as it were, Whitechapel-area London/Silent Hill.