Across the harbour from the Empress Hotel is another tail.
Within the confines of the Pendray family’s Queen Anne-style residence, a spectral tale unfolds, where the ethereal presence of a father and son lingers.
William J. Pendray’s legacy bore the imprint of a soap factory erected upon hallowed Songhees burial grounds, a decision that cast a pall of otherworldly events upon the dwelling.
On the day of the factory’s slated inauguration, inferno consumed its walls, a blaze that seemed an ominous prelude.
Undeterred by this eerie turn, Pendray embarked upon a second endeavor, erecting a fresh edifice atop the very same site, now adorned with ceiling-mounted conduits designed for sprinklers.
Fate, however, wove an unrelenting thread of tragedy. A malevolent twist of fate saw a conduit break loose, a deadly trajectory colliding with Pendray’s cranium, extinguishing his life in a heartbeat.
An impenetrable shadow of sorrow loomed as another son was consigned to a tragic demise, hurled from his equine companion.
A certain room, designated as number 15—the opulent Gatsby Mansion’s honeymoon enclave—becomes a theater for spectral interludes.
Within its confines, guests oft recount a hair-raising chronicle—the apparition of a disembodied head, an enigmatic specter that disturbs their slumber.
As midnight tendrils enshroud the room, the borderlands of dreams and reality blur, whispering of a father and son whose presence, borne by the winds of fate, endures in spectral reverie.