Haunting on Leon Avenue: Kelowna historian offers up ghostly tale

'The spirit appears to have been somewhat timid and has lurked about outbuildings and courts in preference to coming into the lighted stores and dwellings.'

In 1918, Kelowna was in a position not too different from the one it’s in today.

It, like cities across the globe, was coping with the restrictions that come with a pandemic, and just when it seemed like it was over, the second wave rolled in.

While the vast majority of the population was spared, local historian Bob Hayes said that the city’s Chinese population wasn’t so lucky. Before the neighbourhood was gripped by disease, though, they were visited by a ghostly figure.

“It’s not a typical story about moaning and groaning ghosts,” he said. “There’s something peaceful about it, and because of the pandemic, so timely.”

Hayes dug up a copy of the Kelowna Record story that ran Nov. 21, 1918, where the ghost story was offered to the larger community.

“(Chinese men) in Kelowna have discovered the cause of the outbreak of Spanish ‘flu’ among them and the consequent deaths,” reads the news story from the time.

The childlike figure never appears again in Kelowna history, let alone newsprint, and Hayes said he’d prefer to think that the figure was warning the men of what was to come, rather than cursing them.

Though, a gesture of that kind would have been out of place in the time.