The Empress Hotel has several ghosts, including a thin, mustached man with a cane (believed to be its architect, Francis Rattenbury) and a ghost maid who still cleans on the sixth floor. The ghost of an employee who hanged himself was seen near the fated chandelier from which he did the deed (now made over into luxury suites), and a young girl haunts one of the guest rooms. There was another ghost who haunted the room where she passed away, although that room was rebuilt into a series of elevators. Since then, the apparition of an elderly lady in PJs has been known to knock on guest room doors, looking lost, and lead the surprised guests toward the elevators, where she vanishes.
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Geographic Information
- Address:
- Empress Hotel
Victoria, BC
Canada
Get Directions » - GPS:
- 48.421902, -123.36856399999999
- Region:
- Capital
- Nearest Towns:
- Victoria, BC (1.2 mi.)
Esquimalt, BC (2.3 mi.)
Oak Bay, BC (2.5 mi.)
Langford Station, BC (6.3 mi.)
Goldstream, BC (7.8 mi.)
Goldstream Station, BC (7.8 mi.)
Metchosin, BC (8.5 mi.)
Rocky Point, BC (11.1 mi.)
Malahat, BC (11.3 mi.)
Saanichton, BC (11.9 mi.)
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Disclaimer: The stories posted here are user-submitted and are, in the nature of "ghost stories," largely unverifiable. HauntedPlaces.org makes no claims that any of the statements posted here are factually accurate. The vast majority of information provided on this web site is anecdotal, and as such, should be viewed in the same light as local folklore and urban legends.
In about 1983 or 1984, my ex-husband and I were visiting Victoria. We stopped in the Empress Hotel. We went up the elevator to an abandoned floor. We were walking down the hallway. At the exact same time, we both got a creepy feeling, turned around and ran back toward the elevators as quickly as we could.
I had the same experience. You wrote what happened to me and my mom I would love to talk with you to find out where you were.
Wife and I stayed in room 591 in Feb 2022. While I don’t (didn’t) believe in the supernatural, there was a tapping which sounded like a tapping/knocking on wood that only occurred at night (past bedtime).
The soft but audible tapping sound had a pattern that lasted maybe 2 min. A single tap with a period of silence of several seconds, then it would repeat, with a regularly shortening period of silence repeating over the 2 minutes or so until the periods of silence was about a second apart. Then nothing.
Until it started again at various times throughout the night. This occurred both nights my wife and I were there.
It seemed to emanate from the 6th floor and just outside the windows. The room looks over the conference center so opposite of the harbour.
I learned afterwards of the hotel’s haunted history.