The Haunted James Bay Inn, Victoria: Emily Carr's Last Home

The James Bay Inn is a friendly, modestly priced Edwardian hotel on Government Street, a few minutes’ walk from Victoria’s Inner Harbour and Beacon Hill Park. It is also one of the city’s most haunted places to stay, for one famous reason: the artist and writer Emily Carr spent her last days here, when the building was a nursing home called St. Mary’s Priory, and died here on March 2, 1945.

Guests and staff have blamed Carr for late-night phone calls, figures at the bedside and odd happenings in the pub, which is said to stand where her room once was. Other guests describe a small girl upstairs and rooms that feel heavy. The inn does not market its ghosts, so here is what has been reported, what is history, and how to plan a stay.

The ghosts of James Bay Inn Hotel, Suites and Cottage

Emily Carr

Emily Carr was born in Victoria in 1871, in the family home on what is now Government Street, a short walk from the inn. She became one of Canada’s most celebrated painters, known for her images of West Coast forests and First Nations villages, and late in life an award-winning writer. After a series of heart attacks from 1937 onward, she spent her final period at St. Mary’s Priory, the nursing home then operating in this building, and died there on March 2, 1945.

Her room is said to be part of what is now the men’s washroom in the inn’s pub, a detail that guests and local writers enjoy pointing out, and that legend says Carr does not find amusing.

Most of the activity at the inn is put down to her. Guests describe the phone in their room ringing in the middle of the night with nobody on the line, a figure watching them as they sleep, and a presence drifting through the first-floor bedrooms and the pub. One persistent story says she is hardest on guests who criticize her art. Another, passed on secondhand, says she tugs at sleeping guests’ legs.

The girl by the upstairs window

Separate from the Carr stories, several guests writing on Victoria historian Eve Lazarus’s blog have described a pale, thin girl of about eight with short dark hair, seen upstairs near a window. Nobody has identified her or linked her to an event in the building.

Guest stories from recent years

The same blog has collected a long thread of guest experiences: colored lights moving through a third-floor room night after night, a doorknob turning and a door moving in its frame with nobody in the corridor, a poke in the back during a nap on the first floor, a bathroom door shutting on its own, and the feeling of someone sitting down on the bed. One guest in the pub asked the resident spirit for a sign and watched a padlock on a nearby door swing back and forth for over a minute. She called the place haunted, but in a friendly way.

Others have simply described certain rooms as heavy or hard to sleep in. These are personal accounts, not verified events, but they show the inn’s reputation is still very much alive.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The pub: The inn’s pub is said to include the room where Emily Carr died, now the men’s washroom. The easiest haunted spot to visit, whether or not you stay.
• First-floor bedrooms: Carr is most often reported drifting through these rooms. Ask for the first floor when you book.
• Upstairs rooms near the windows: Where the small dark-haired girl has been seen.
• Third floor: Where one guest reported moving lights almost every night of a stay.

History of James Bay Inn Hotel, Suites and Cottage

The James Bay Inn was designed by architect Charles Elwood Watkins and opened in 1911, making it one of the oldest hotels in Victoria. It stands in James Bay, the city’s oldest residential neighborhood, just south of the Legislature and the Inner Harbour.

During the Second World War the building was sold to a religious order led by Mother Cecilia and run as St. Mary’s Priory, a nursing and convalescent home. It was there that Emily Carr spent her final days. She died on March 2, 1945, only a block from the house where she was born, and is buried in Ross Bay Cemetery a short distance to the east.

The building later returned to hotel use as the James Bay Inn. Today it has around 40 rooms in the main Edwardian building, plus studios and suites in a nearby heritage house and a private cottage, along with an Art Deco cafe-restaurant and a neighborhood pub.

Carr’s childhood home a few blocks away is now Emily Carr House, a museum and National Historic Site of Canada, which makes the inn a natural base for anyone following her story through Victoria.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a first-floor room, where most Carr sightings are reported.
• Have a drink in the pub; it is said to stand where Carr’s room was, and you do not need to be a guest.
• Visit Emily Carr House, her birthplace, a few blocks away, and her grave in Ross Bay Cemetery, to round out the story.
• There is no elevator and no air conditioning, so pack light and ask for a lower floor if stairs are a problem.
• Walk to the Fairmont Empress on the Inner Harbour, Victoria’s other famously haunted hotel, about ten minutes away.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Fairmont Empress, Victoria: the ivy-clad harbour hotel said to be haunted by its own architect
• Fairmont Hotel Vancouver: home of the Lady in Red, a ferry ride away
• Fairmont Banff Springs: the ghost bride and the missing Room 873
• Haunted hotels in Canada

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• James Bay Inn (official site)
• Royal BC Museum: Emily Carr chronology
• Wikipedia: Emily Carr
• Eve Lazarus: The ghosts of James Bay
• Tourism Victoria: James Bay Inn Hotel, Suites and Cottage
• Slice: haunted hotels in Canada

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