Ghost tours at historic Yeo House let visitors peer 'beyond the veil'
CBC
Islanders and tourists looking to learn about the creepier side of P.E.I.'s history can take in a ghost tour at historic Yeo House near Tyne Valley this summer.
The tour is a way to share some of the stories from the supposedly haunted Victorian-era house, which is run as a museum by the P.E.I. Museum and Heritage Foundation.
"A big goal of the foundation currently is finding ways to bring more visitors into the sites and to give them a more immersive experience," said Caitlyn Paxson, the site manager of the Green Park Shipbuilding Museum and historic Yeo House, which sit side-by-side at Green Park Provincial Park in Port Hill.
"So we actually bring visitors into some of the rooms of the house, whereas on the standard tours, you're walking through the hallway and sort of looking into the rooms," said Paxson.
"You get to peer beyond the veil and beyond the ropes."
Paxson said Yeo House is known for its frequent supernatural occurrences.
"Pretty much every person I've met who worked here for more than a season has some story of something strange happening to them, even the skeptics," she said.
The tour, called The Haunting of Yeo House, includes ghost stories from the house as well as history on Victorian mourning customs.
To illustrate that history, the parlour is set up to look as though someone in the home has passed away, including a cooling casket: a casket made of wicker, like a basket.
"Sometimes the Victorians weren't so great at telling when someone had died. So having a casket that left a little breathing room while you waited the few days for the wake wasn't necessarily a bad thing," said Paxson.
On display upstairs in a children's bedroom are a variety of creepy toys, including the famed dog on wheels known as Wheelie.
Legend is that Wheelie was discovered in the walls of the house, and that he has shown some unnerving behaviour over the years.
"We used to find if he was left on the floor of the children's room upstairs with the other toys, we would go away for the night, lock up the doors, turn on the alarms, come back the next day to discover that Wheelie had moved to a different spot in the room, as if by himself," said Paxson.
The ghost tours run Tuesday through Saturday at 4:15 p.m. and cost about $13 per person.