The Galt Museum was built as a hospital in 1910 by Sir Alexander Galt, founder of the City of Lethbridge. A man named George Bailey died tragically in the hospital in 1933 while being wheeled to the operating room for a routine appendectomy. Half asleep from the anesthesia, George was pushed halfway onto the elevator when something went wrong. With the doors still open and George only half on, the elevator started to rise. The front legs of the gurney got caught on the elevator, dangling George above the elevator shaft and then dropping him head first onto the basement floor. Unbelievably, George did not die immediately, but was up and shuffling around in the basement when people got to him. He died of head injuries the next day. Since then, reports of a presence being felt, accompanied by the sound of shuffling feet and blasts of cold air with no known source, have been felt throughout the hospital.

Another report involves the upper level of the museum, which once housed the nursery and children sections of the hospital, but now is home to administrative offices. In this area people claim to have heard the quiet chattering and laughter of children. One man in particular was studying late and as he exited the museum, he felt an irresistible urge to turn around. As he did, he looked up and spotted a young girl waving good-bye to him in the window of the room he had just left.

Another report comes from a Native elder  who was working late at the museum. He reported seeing some Native children waving to him out of a window. He assumed the children belonged to a Native cleaning lady and forgot about it for a while, but later discussions revealed that the museum never employed a Native cleaning lady and that children should not have been in the museum after hours.

Lethbridge is the place of my youth. I lived there from the time I was three years old until I left the city when I was sixteen. It is a city of ghosts, to be sure: before the 19th century, it was populated by several First Nations peoples, until 1874, when the North-West Mounted Police arrived at Fort Whoop-Up to stop the whiskey trade and enforce order.  In that same year, drift mines (a means of accessing the coal by cutting into the side of the earth rather than tunneling straight down) were opened; by the turn of the century, the mines employed about 150 men, and were producing about 300 tonnes of coal a day. Between 1907 and 1913, a development boom took place, and aside from an economic slump between the first and second World Wars, and a major drought  which caused many farmers to abandon their farms, Lethbridge has been on the grow ever since.

During my youth, I visited the Galt Museum often - but I never went inside.  I would stand outside and look at the front of the building, afraid without knowing why to actually step inside its doors.  This weekend, I hope to change that...