Editor’s Note: Happy Halloween. We’re launching a great new occasional feature here on OBE and what better way to dig into the stories and places that make up the history of the Comox Valley than with a tale of our own local haunted house. Valley newcomer and seasoned writer Matthew Wright kicks our history feature off. Enjoy!

“Inever believed in ghosts until I moved into this house,” said Phaedon Tingley standing in the living room of what’s locally known as Bickle House. Cumberland’s rich history, it seems, is alive and well in the once grand residence of late businessman Edward William Bickle.

Built in 1921, the two-story Victorian style home of approximately 8,000 square feet was the home of the Bickle family; Edward – the owner of the local newspaper – his wife, two sons and two daughters with a nanny in tow.

According to Tingley, unusual happenings about the house have been reported for years. Long after the departure of the Bickle family, the home was at one time a bed and breakfast. There are stories that several first time guests were awoken in the middle of the night to find a man standing above them while they slept and vowed never to return.

In the six years that Tingley has lived in the home she has had her own share of experiences within Bickle House’s walls. On one occasion, she heard the sound of footsteps running in the hallway on the second floor landing going from west to east.

Then there was the woman that she and her daughter saw one evening that appeared to be walking up stairs beside the kitchen by the laundry room, only to disappear under the worn wooden floor boards. Afterwards, she met other locals who talked about how they had seen the same woman in the house. Tingley described her as having a peculiar hairstyle that rolled up on the sides wearing a huge fur collared coat. She later found out that before the addition of the laundry room in the 1960’s, there was a staircase leading from the backyard up to the kitchen as evidenced by the stair marks left behind on the home’s exterior wall.

One day some years back, Bickle’s grandson Philip visited the house and told a curious story. That woman she saw, said Bickle, described his grandmother to a tee including the favourite fur collared coat she always wore. He also told her that the running she heard on the second floor landing, from west to east, went from the youngest Bickle boy’s room to the nanny’s room.

Accustomed to often having inquiring minds stop in over the years, one day Tingley welcomed a woman who knew a lot about the old family and recalled how Edward was known to have been a heavy drinker and how on some nights his wife would barricade him in a room in the cellar. Subsequently another life-long Cumberland resident who entered the house told her how the cellar of the house was “very unhappy”.

Up until recently the house was full of life on Halloween as the owner and many local volunteers would stage a fright night on all hallows eve for local children. Sometimes up to 300 kids would pass through its front doors for some screaming fun.

These days, unlike the history of the Bickle family and the many stories it evokes, insurance requirements have put an end to the event. There can be no doubt, though, that if ever there were a place to hold authentic Halloween festivities, Bickle House would be the spot.