Is Room 873 of the Banff Springs Hotel Haunted?

I’m staying on the 8th floor of the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel.  When I surfed the internet trying to learn about this gorgeous place, to my surprise I ended up finding gruesome ghost stories about Room 873 instead.

It’s just down the hall from us.

In fact, we have to walk past it every time we want to get to the elevator.

According to the internet legends, there was a murder suicide in room 873 in which a man killed his wife and daughter, and then himself.  Future hotel guests within the room have been awoken by screaming and blood stains on the walls which reappear after the cleaning staff removes them.  Sometimes a young child walks the halls, lost and alone.  Because of the nature of the paranormal activity, the hotel has permanently barricaded the room.

Wow.

Now I’m not a ghost story enthusiast, and this blog is most definitely not about ghosts.  But the last part of that story caught my attention and got me going on an information hunt that I’m going to share.  Of course, people have seen things that disappear, heard strange noises, and told stories that get bigger and become he-said-she-said tales who’s original facts are otherwise unverifiable to average people.  I get that.  But is room 873 really barricaded?  That’s a piece of hard, verifiable evidence and, the more I walk past it the more I find myself wanting to know what is behind that wall.

So I did some sleuthing during our stay here, and I will share with you the information I obtained from three sources:

• The concierge
• The cleaning staff
• Other evidence

But before I share that, I need to develop some context by showing you what you’ll see when you come up here.  There is no room 873 per se.  From the hallway, there is a room 871 and 875, with an unusually large gap in between them.  Where the door to room 873 seems like it should be, the wallpaper is peeling.  Apparently many people have knocked on the wall and report hearing different sounds where room 873 should be, as if it is “bricked in” or similar.

Fortunately, the Alberta Building Code requires every room to have a floor plan showing a path to the fire exit.  Here is a picture of the floor plan in our room, which clearly shows the former room 873 being combined with the adjacent room 875 to create a larger room, which keeps the number 875.

Although this is good information, I view this with skepticism because if the ghost story is true, the hotel would probably not readily advertise it, to avoid scrutiny and terrified customers.

I still need to know what is behind that wall.

The Concierge

My first stop was downstairs at the Concierge.  After buying a quick breakfast at the sandwich shop I happened to walk by and realize that they are supposed to be the contact for questions about what to do and see.  I asked about room 873.

The concierge’s answer was clear:  Ghost stories about room 873 are a “hoax” (exact word).  It was combined with room 875 during a renovation, resulting in room 875 being simply twice as big.  This has happened in many other places in the hotel, which I confirmed later by walking into some of the other wings.

There are, however, some interesting things I concluded after our 5 minute conversation:

• This was clearly a well trained response and thus can probably be assumed as the hotel’s official position.
• The concierge insisted that there are other ghost stories in the hotel, such as Sam McAuley the bellman and the Ghost Bride, and even wanted to tell me the stories.  Hence, they seemed very interested in promoting ghost stories in general, perhaps because they add to the mystique of the hotel and thus bring in paying customers.

But if the ghost story in room 873 were real, it would seriously discourage, not encourage, paying customers.  I mean, who would want to stay in a room (or even a floor!) with a reputation like that?  I am, after all, that person that has to sleep a few footsteps down the hall.

So I proceed back upstairs, but I can’t help but wonder.  There are hundreds of people that work here, most of which could open up the door and verify the contents of room 875 at any time.  Someone must be able to tell me what’s behind that wall.  This should really not be as hard as you think.

The Cleaning Staff

So I waited for one of the cleaning staff to emerge from their cleaning duties, and peppered them with questions.  They were cleaning a room not far room 873, maybe two rooms in the direction of the elevators (i.e. Room 869 or 867).  This person initially said, in broken english, that many people come to take video.  I asked if she had been in room 875:  “Of course.”  She says “there is nothing to see.”  Do cleaning staff switch between different wings and floors? “Yes, every day.”  So there are lots of different people who have been in there, or on this wing?  “Yes.”

“Can you please let me inside room 875?”

“No, sorry, we can’t do that, and there might be a guest in there right now.”

This conversation happened at about 9:30 am on a Saturday, so indeed it was not past checkout time yet.  She clearly did not know if someone was staying in room 875 even though she was cleaning only a few doors down from it.  Maybe this is normal.

Here are my conclusions from my approx. 5 minute conversation with one member of the cleaning staff:

• Although they laughed at the question about ghost stories (obviously it was not the first time), unlike the concierge they did not seem like they were providing a well rehearsed story.
• There are many different staff members that have been, and regularly go into, room 875.  There are also guests that stay there.
• She has personally never seen anything out of the ordinary, and has never seen a lonely little girl walking all by herself.  That being said, she is more often on other floors.

Other Evidence

Although it would seem, from circumstantial evidence, that room 875 is a normal room that encompasses the previous room 873, there is one other possibility that must be ruled out.  That is, maybe room 875 encompasses only a portion of the old room 873, and that there really is a “bricked in” section between rooms 871 and 875 that is not readily noticeable to cleaning staff.

I found this video on Youtube which has 26,000 views as of this writing.  In it, the user claims to have stayed in room 875 for 3 nights and shoots a video of it, including the missing room 873 and the bedroom and far closet in the area where room 873 would be.

 

The room appears to be shown in its entirety, including the front foyer, bathroom, and bedroom.  The former Room 873 would be where the bedroom is.  At first glance, the video confirms the layout of the room and official floor plan.

But what about the dimensions of the room?  Do they rule out a gap between rooms 871 and 875, or is there still a possibility of clandestine activity in this space?

• The queen size bed with two night tables, one on each size, would be 60 inches wide plus roughly 20 inches for each night table, for a total of about 100 inches, or about 8 feet.
• Although the official floor plan doesn’t show dimensions, I have been able to compare the width of the room with the width of our room down the hall, and it is roughly correct.
• Comparing the length of the wall behind the bed to other hotel dimensions confirms that it is roughly 8 feet, just like the official floor plan.

Room 873:  Hoax or Not a Hoax?

Unfortunately, and in spite of my best efforts, I was unable to look into room 875 with my own eyes, hence I write this without having produced the ultimate confirmation.  However, if the room is available to guests, and the cleaners go in there all the time, it should be easy to find someone who has.  Indeed, it was easy to find a Youtube video.  It also seems easy to find comments on threads from people who have stayed there or worked at the hotel and seen the inside of the room.

Of course, if it’s a hoax and a renovation combined two rooms and removed a door, it’s quite plausible that the wall would sound differently when knocked.

Hence, I am convinced that room 873 is not “bricked in” and thus the ghost story is probably a hoax, just like the hotel concierge says it is.  Although the lack of a bricked in room doesn’t necessarily negate the rest of the ghost story, it’s a fairly integral part of it.

The development of the story is not hard to envision.  Someone staying in this area of the hotel can easily see that there is no room 873 and spend their vacation time dreaming up elaborate stories as to why.  It happened before the internet, when all it took was a story in a community paper or newsprint that wasn’t intended as fact but gets taken as such years later, after many reproductions.

Furthermore, the stories I’ve read are highly devoid of details – When did the event occur?  Who discovered it?  How old were the victims (especially the little girl that has been spotted in the hallways lost and alone)?  One would expect more details, even ones that have changed and become incorrect over time, if it was a real event.

Furthermore, there are other ghost stories at the Fairmont Banff Springs.  It is telling that the only hard, verifiable evidence of any one of them is a hoax.  For example, if there’s no bricked-in room 873, then what can be said about the authenticity of a bride who died going down a staircase on her wedding day in the 1920’s?

Ghost story aficionados a few years ago were probably dying to see the day when every person would carry around a video camera all day, readily uploading and sharing their experiences with the entire world in seconds (or writing a highly detailed investigative blog post within a few days!).  I tweeted the contents of this article a few hours ago, but several twitter searches for “banff springs ghost” and related search terms seems like it should turn up more than it does.  If sightings of blood on a mirror, or a little girl in the hallway, 50 years ago could go this far at a time when it had to get into print to avoid being forgotten, then where are the iPhone photos and videos within the last 10 years?

Maybe I’m just a layperson who stayed in a hotel with a ghost story and wasn’t a real believer in the cause.  But this ghost story down the hall has kept me interested during my stay in Banff, and I hope that I have asked a few questions so that you don’t have to.  Or maybe I have started an investigation that you can continue.

If you have stayed in Room 875 at the Fairmont Banff Springs hotel, or have any other experiences to share, I’d love to hear your experience.  Please share them in the comments section below.

Better yet, prove me wrong!