Embracing the fog...

Here is one of my favorite places, any season...

Pass through these cast iron gates into the past...

Here you'll find an enchanting place...

Full of history and mystery...

This is Hatley Castle. 

Once home to coal baron James Dunsmuir.

When it was being built, he was quoted as saying "money doesn't matter, just build what I want."

And so it was.

He lived here until his death in 1920 and his wife, until her death in 1937 and their daughter lived there until her death 6 months later.

For 3 years it was home to the caretaker.

Imagine rattling around in this huge place all on your own.

It's situated on the water and I'm sure there was many a 'dark and stormy night'.

I was hoping for a sunny day to show off the fall colours but the fog really did lend atmosphere to the place and so I crept around the walls in the quietness that only fog can bring...

No details were left out...

Including these 2 lovely stone lions near the front entrance...

One calm and sleepy...

The other, ready, on guard...

Around the side of the castle is the entrance to the Italian gardens...

Grandiose columns uphold the 100 year old wisteria vines...

Secret doorways beckon those brave enough to peek in...

Although very pretty with it's lovely bones, the Italian garden is much more picturesque in summer with all of its roses in bloom.

I came to see this...

The Japanese Garden in all of it's splendid colour...

At one point during it's glory days, there was a small Chinatown which housed the 120 gardeners it took to maintain all of this.

Yes, money was certainly no object to James Dunsmuir.

For the 40 years following the sale of the Castle to the government, it housed a military college.

In 1994 it was sold and is now an extended campus of the University of Victoria, called Royal Roads.

Now for the unexplained...(cue spooky music)

A mysterious woman tugging on blankets at night,

a white figure floating through the air and pots banging in a vacant kitchen.

"Cadets used to sleep on the top floor which had been the ballroom," said RRU spokeswoman Stephanie Slater.

"Sometimes they had been wakened by a woman tugging down their blankets at night."

It's thought that Laura Dunsmuir was drawn to the young cadets after she lost a son overseas in the First World War.

There's an unconfirmed story of a maid of Laura Dunsmuir who was jilted by her lover and killed herself by leaping from a third-floor window.

It's believed that maid is still floating around the castle, and her presence was picked up by the ghost-hunters.

 So these are the stories that are whispered through the hallways of this grand house...

Who knows?.....