Ghosts haunt the Caribou. Fabled figures came to Yukon Territory with the rush to the Klondike gold fields. They created the famous Caribou Hotel that centered life in tiny Carcross. Apparently even death couldn’t make some of them leave its history behind. The story weaves its way through John Firth’s book, The Caribou Hotel.
In 1942 Carcross Knew There Was a War On
Gold seekers, in 1898, came by ship to Skagway and Dyea Alaska. From there they climbed one of two infamous, brutally dangerous, passes up to Lake Bennett, high in the mountains. From Lake Bennett the Yukon River flowed north down the other side of the mountains to the Klondike gold fields.
Looking to profit from a better route to the Yukon River, the railroad builders of the narrow-gauge WP&YR, gouging a path up into the towering mountains and on to Whitehorse, based a maintenance camp at Caribou Crossing—Carcross. Big Bill Anderson had built a hotel at Bennett, now he dragged it across the ice-covered lake to Carcross.
Dawson Charlie, famous member of the party who originally discovered Gold in the Klondike, bought the building and renamed it the Caribou Hotel. Charlie had more interest in hanging out with his equally famous partner Skookum Jim Mason in the bar at the Caribou than he did in running the place. But their regular presence there attracted tourists and Charlie’s hotel prospered.
When Charlie died, his ex-wife Annie inherited the Caribou and promptly sold it to Edwin and Bessie Gideon. And when the hotel burned to the ground in 1909, Edwin and Bessie hired carpenter William Simpson to rebuild it.
Edwin died. Bessie died. Simpson died. But Bessie and Simpson refused to abandon the Caribou.
In 1969 Archie Lang bought the old hotel. Late one night Agnes, his housekeeper mysteriously entered his room, stayed for a few moments then left without a word. Baffled, he searched the hotel but found no sign of her. In the morning he mentioned the incident to Agnes’ son who informed him mom had gone visiting two weeks ago!
Carcross’s most famous citizen, hunting guide Johnnie Johns, remembered Bessie Gideon; recognized her immediately from Lang’s description. Johnnie knew exactly who had visited Lang’s room.
In 2006 Jamie Toole and Anne Morgan bought the old hotel and went to work renovating it. As they worked, they heard mysterious banging sounds, like someone hammering. They couldn’t find the source of the noise, but they heard it again and again.
When they got around to tearing up part of the floor in the bar, they looked down through the hole and found long dead carpenter William Simpson looking up at them.
Apparently, he felt the need to supervise their reconstruction.
