The Algonquin Hotel & The Haunted Bride

Article originally written May 2017 & Updated August 2022 by Melissa Dawn

Today, I have a short story about a majestic hotel in the town of Saint Andrews By The Sea in New Brunswick, a province on the east coast of Canada. Built-in 1889 by a Boston architecture firm, It has been rumored to be haunted by a long-dead bride who inhabited the hotel on the last night of her life. I was lucky enough to find someone who told me an old tale that her aunt had experienced, and this is the story I am about to relate to you here.

The story took place around 1925. The lady I interviewed had a rather refined aunt from a well-established family who loved to travel and stay in regal hotels. She was without children then and would frequent various hotels with girlfriends as they made weekend getaways about the province. The Algonquin had additions by 1908 and 1912, plus a casino in 1923. The aristocratic aunt was a girl in her mid-twenties, but as she recalled her tale, our regal aunt was a much older lady.

During her tale, it was the roaring twenties, a time of the speak-easy and economic prosperity for the province of New Brunswick and the world all over. German Expressionism and Art Deco led the way in film and design, yet the world still held on to the older, more rigid procedures. For purposes of this story, we shall call our jet-setter Aunt Viola. Viola was traveling from Saint Stephens to the big city of Saint John, and she and her friend had decided to stop at the Algonquin Hotel. There, she would have an experience that she would never forget.

Viola and her friend had checked into their rooms for the night and, tired from their journey, decided to retire early. During the evening, Viola awoke suddenly, sensing a strong presence in her room. She woke to find, curiously, a young woman standing in the hotel room, seemingly unaware that Viola was there. The figure was pacing the room, then turned and walked out the closed door. Viola raced out of bed to see what was the matter, and as she did, she could hear the woman's footsteps continue walking down the hallway. She listened to the opening and closing of another door and an ominous weeping that echoed down the hallway with the footsteps. However, when she went to investigate, she found no one.

Viola returned to her bedroom perplexed, but since she had believed in card reading and spiritualism, she was convinced she had experienced something quite paranormal. So the following day, when she went to the hotel restaurant to have breakfast, she enquired about her experience with the staff. She asked the waitress, "Is this hotel haunted by chance?" As you've probably already guessed, the waitress answered an immediate and solid yes.

The waitress declared that the hotel was haunted by a rather sad ghost of a bride that her husband murdered in room 473. However, upon research, one will immediately hear different versions of the tale, such as the Bride was left at the altar and in devastation had taken her own life in the room or had died after staying in the hotel. The tale never gives a name or a date of the Bride's death, making searching for death records in the area rather tricky. Some declare that the story and hotel inspired Stephen King's novel The Shining, amongst other locations.

Does the Bride haunt the Saint Andrew's Hotel by The Sea? Is she there re-living her tragic demise over and over only for the compassionate souls to witness? This is a tricky question to answer definitively. Viola had told her niece her experience in 1957, long before popular television shows would document Canada's "top 10 haunted" hotels and use the location as a famous tale to gain ratings. Viola's niece, who told me this tale, had been watching an episode of the TV show Creepy Canada in the 2000s and realized they were featuring the same hotel her aunt had told her a tale about all those years ago.

The tragic feature of "The Haunted Bride" is not limited to the hotel in our story but features in many local legends and folklore tales worldwide. Could such a figure be so embedded in our collective psyche that it is bound to appear in specific locations or traditions, just waiting for the right moment to manifest to a wise person? It is hard to say one way or the other. But we can rightfully say that the haunted Bride's eerie cries still echo the hallways of the Algonquin Hotel to this day. We do not doubt that this archetypal figure echoes her tale all over the world as well.