Halloween Special 2026

Well, its that time of year again – when children dress up as superheroes, princesses, and the undead. Its always a magical time in Camrose… even if the snow has arrived sooner than expected. To keep this week full of fun, spookiness, and community focus, we are having our FIRST EVER annual Halloween Special!

We will start it off with one of the scariest stories I have ever heard, that just happens to be local, and submitted anonymously sometime in the last few weeks.

Strange Encounters at Duhamel Church and Mirror Lake

An alleged paranormal encounter submitted by a local reader.

About three years ago, my boyfriend and I decided to try our hand at amateur ghost hunting. We had no idea what to expect, but we were curious to see what we might find.

Our first destination was the old Duhamel Church, just outside Camrose.

We started by using an app called GhostTube, which has a feature designed to detect human-like figures through your phone’s camera. While standing outside the church, we noticed something unusual. A figure appeared in one of the windows on the app.

I was also using a pendulum and a small board marked with three possible answers: yes, no, and maybe.

I decided to ask a few questions.

“Is anyone here?”

The pendulum swung toward yes.

“Are you a good spirit?”

This time, it swung toward no.

I looked over at my boyfriend.

“Are you getting this?”

Just as the pendulum began moving again, something came through his phone. It was a voice, unusually deep and unmistakably unsettling.

“Stop recording.”

That was enough for us. A little shaken by what had just happened, we packed up and left.

But the strange experiences didn’t end there.

Later that same night, we were walking around Mirror Lake in Camrose, using the app again. At one point, my own name came through the phone.

Nothing else happened that evening, but hearing my name was strange enough to stick with me.

A few weeks later, we returned to Mirror Lake.

We stopped at one of the benches near Grand Drive. I had brought my camera, and we were using a spirit box, hoping to pick up something unusual.

We began asking questions.

“Is anyone here?”

A voice came through.

“Yes.”

“Do you want us to keep walking down the path?”

“Yes.”

We started walking again.

“Are you trying to lead us somewhere?”

Another yes.

Then I asked one more question.

“Are you leading us somewhere good?”

This time, the answer was different.

In a deep, unsettling voice, remarkably similar to the one we’d heard at Duhamel Church, a single word came through.

“No.”

We stopped in our tracks and looked at each other.

Despite our hesitation, we decided to continue walking in the same direction.

We had only taken a few more steps when the spirit box came alive again.

The same creepy voice seemed to repeat a name.

“ZaZa. ZaZa.”

I stopped immediately and turned to my boyfriend.

“Did you hear that?”

He had. We both heard the same thing.

For anyone familiar with Ouija board folklore, there’s a supposed demonic entity known as ZoZo, sometimes referred to as ZaZa. Whether the name we heard had anything to do with that legend, we couldn’t say. But hearing it in that moment was deeply unsettling.

We decided to return to the bench and try asking more questions.

This time, nothing.

On our walk back toward the car, another name came through the spirit box.

“Rebecca.”

We stopped and tried asking questions again, but received no response.

Then, as soon as we started walking away, another word came through.

“Help.”

Once again, we stopped. Once again, we tried to communicate.

And once again, there was silence.

Eventually, we made our way back to the car, talking casually about everything that had happened.

It wasn’t until later that night, when I sat down to review our audio recordings, that I noticed something else.

During our walk back to the car, we’d been discussing whether the spirits we’d encountered that evening might have been friendly.

At the time, neither of us had heard anything unusual.

But on the recording, immediately following our conversation, there was a voice.

“I’m friendly.”

We had only discovered it during playback.

And somehow, that made the whole experience even stranger.

One Last Encounter

The following summer, we found ourselves back at Mirror Lake.

We were walking down toward the water when we suddenly heard someone yelling.

It sounded as though we’d walked right into the middle of a heated argument, except something about it didn’t seem right.

We could only hear one side of the conversation.

A voice was screaming.

“Get off my bed!”

“I’ll ****ing kill you!”

“I’m going to ****ing stab you!”

“Get off my bed!”

There were pauses between the outbursts, almost as if someone else was responding. But we never heard a second voice.

The yelling also had a strange, echoing quality to it.

We looked around, trying to figure out where it was coming from.

There was nobody in sight.

Of course, the possibility that someone was genuinely in trouble, or that there was an angry person nearby with a knife, was enough to make us uncomfortable. We certainly weren’t interested in sticking around to find out.

We turned around and headed back toward the car.

And just like that, the yelling stopped.

No more shouting. No more strange echoes.

Nothing.

To this day, we don’t know exactly what we heard or experienced during those visits.

But between the voices at Duhamel Church, the strange responses at Mirror Lake, and the chilling argument that seemed to come from nowhere, our amateur ghost-hunting adventures certainly gave us more than we bargained for.

Happenings Around This Halloween

Absolutely terrifying. Could there actually be evil spirits out there, ready to expose vulnerable souls to its terrors, or is this nothing more than an overactive imagination running wild into the night? That’s up to you to decide Camrose!

Thankfully we have more going on this Halloween than just terror though. If you are looking for the perfect thing to do this October 31st, Camrose has a few great options!

Here are a few local events to help you make the most of the spookiest night of the year.

We hope you have a great Halloween, and cant wait to ramp things up for Christmas shortly after. But before we call this Halloween Special a wrap, we have one more scary story, also submitted anonymously, that’s nearly just as spooky!

Something Strange After Closing

An unexplained experience shared by a local Camrose resident.

A few years ago, I was working at a shoe store here in Camrose, shortly before the business announced it would be closing permanently.

One evening, a coworker and I were finishing up a closing shift. We’d been organizing stock and tidying up shoes in the back room before making our way toward the front entrance.

As we were walking away, a large stack of shoes suddenly came crashing down behind us.

It startled us, but we didn’t think too much of it at the time. We picked everything up, finished closing, and went home.

Not long afterward, the store closed its doors for good, and we were all laid off.

Fortunately, I was hired by another retailer that eventually moved into the exact same location.

That’s when things started getting a little stranger.

One of my new coworkers was particularly sensitive to what she believed were spiritual presences. She would often tell me that something about the store didn’t feel right, especially during our evening shifts.

I didn’t think much of it initially.

But after several closing shifts, I began noticing little things that were difficult to explain.

Items seemed to move or turn up in places where I didn’t remember leaving them. I brushed it off, assuming I’d simply misplaced things or forgotten where I’d put them.

Then, one day, I had to review the store’s security footage for an unrelated reason.

As I watched the recording, something unusual caught my attention.

A strange, globe-shaped object appeared on the screen, moving quickly past the camera.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. But when I showed the footage to my coworker, her reaction was immediate.

She believed it was the very presence she’d been sensing in the building.

Curious, we started looking through more of the security recordings, particularly footage from the evenings when the store was empty or when we were working in the back room.

And there it was again.

The same strange, globe-like shape appeared in several recordings, moving through the camera’s view when nobody seemed to be nearby.

We couldn’t explain what we were seeing.

I tried looking into the building’s history, wondering whether something might have happened there before the shoe store opened. But I couldn’t find any information about a death or tragedy connected to the location.

I’ve always been open-minded about the paranormal, and I’ve spoken with mediums in the past who suggested that certain spiritual attachments might be connected to me.

That left me wondering whether whatever we’d experienced was something that had always been in the building, or perhaps something that had followed me there.

Nothing particularly frightening ever happened. There were no dramatic apparitions or terrifying encounters.

Just a few things moving when they shouldn’t have, a coworker who couldn’t shake the feeling that something was there, and a strange shape appearing repeatedly on the security cameras.

Was it something paranormal, or was there a perfectly ordinary explanation we simply hadn’t discovered?

I still don’t know.

But after working in that building through two different businesses, I can’t help wondering whether we were ever truly alone after closing.

Happy Halloween Camrose! Stay spooky!