The stately Quamichan Inn near Duncan today looks much as it did when it was built in 1911. And it's no wonder, with a ghost floating around who doesn't like change.
Someone tried to move a chair once in the lounge, but "Mrs. Adams" put it back where it was.
Adams is a former owner of the place and died decades ago, but a ghostly presence that resembles the old Scot let's it be known to inhabitants that everything should stay put.
No one at the inn, which now is a restaurant and B&B, knows Adams's first name, but she wasn't the kind of woman you would dare address in such a familiar way. Is it any wonder that no one has the mettle to take on a major renovation?
Executive chef Steve Mugridge has seen Adams' ghost a couple times and now won't venture out of the kitchen when he's the only one in the building.
Adams still manages to find him: Mugridge was working in the kitchen one afternoon when he saw someone reflected in the clean tiles. He turned around and no one was there.
"Sometimes you get that eerie feeling like you're being watched," he said.
Adams isn't an angry ghost and Mugridge said he's "pretty comfortable" with her.
"Still, she just gives you the willies, sometimes," he said.
An employee setting a table for 12 realized she only had 11 napkins laid out, so she went to get another. When she returned, the 12th napkin had been put on the table.
Such stories are totally believable to the inn's owner, Robin Duke. She's had the inn for a year and, up until a few weeks ago, Duke hadn't had a personal encounter with the ghost.
"I used to come here with my parents when I was little," said Duke. "I love old houses. It's a neat old place."
All the previous owners "have really left it the way it is," Duke said.
One reason may be that the resident ghost has made it clear she doesn't care for change.
Adams is a mysterious figure who owned the place in the 1940s or 1950s and was stricken with cancer and died in the house.
"She was in her 50s when she died," said Duke. "We actually had someone come to the inn who'd played with Mrs. Adams's kids. It was like meeting a celebrity, because no one really even knows anything about her.
"She was a little Scottish lady and was apparently very stern, took no nonsense from children."
The only photo Duke has of Adams shows a remote image of a white-haired woman reclining in a lawn chair. "That's the only picture we have of her. Isn't that weird?"
Quamichan Inn Haunted
Quamichan Inn Haunted
