Writer: Andrew Hind
Marilyn Monroe was a Staring Spirit at Yesterday’s Resort
There are numerous stories across the 705 of restless dead crawling forth from their graves to haunt the living. One of the most enticing centered upon the now-closed Yesterday’s Resort on the French River.
In 1923 the CPR opened an exclusive resort called the French River Bungalow Camp. Accessible only by railcar, the resort offered guests complete privacy and as a result numerous celebrities vacationed here. Among them were King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, Clark Gable, Ray Bolger (best known for playing the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz), and most famously, Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn Monroe was said to frequent French River Bungalow Camp to escape the Hollywood spotlight and, it’s said, to recover from physical and mental collapses. Legends say that she so loved the resort – later renamed Yesterday’s Resort – that her spirit came back to it to find some measure of peace in death.
Chalet 15, the very cottage in which Marilyn habitually stayed, was notoriously haunted by spectral forces. Here, doors opened by themselves as though someone was entering, a perfume scent that could not be accounted for hung in the air, and objects would move on their own as if an unseen hand is rearranging the décor. On occasion, guests saw a beautiful, blonde woman appear and immediately disappear in the cabin.
Marilyn’s spirit was not bound to the cottage, though. She would also venture up to the main lodge. Staff members working in the dining room often saw a slender shadow following behind them, a shadow that didn’t have a source. Silverware on tables, arranged to perfection just moments before, would be found askew and some guests reported hearing a woman singing.
Fred Rysdale, the down-to-earth father of one-time owners Doug and Mike Rysdale, believes he had several encounters with the Hollywood starlet. “It was a Sunday morning, and I was in the lounge reading Terry Boyle’s book, Marilyn at French River, when I heard the sound of shuffling cards,” Fred told me in an interview 20 years ago. “It was very distinctive, and I clearly heard four sets of cards being dealt. I said to myself, ‘Who the heck is playing cards?’ But when I got up to look, no one was there. I checked the dining room behind me and even out onto the verandah, and there was no one to be seen. It was strange, but I’m certain of what I heard.”
That was Fred’s first experience, but it wouldn’t be his last. “In my second experience, I was leaning against a chair talking to some of the girls who work here. Suddenly, I saw the three rows of glasses that hung above the bar moving back and forth, tinkling together. It was around 5:30, or cocktail hour back in the day. The girls witnessed the phenomenon as well. Later, I discovered that many others have had similar experiences, always at cocktail hour”.
I stayed at Yesterday’s Resort a year or so before it closed forever, and indeed rested my head for the night in Chalet 15. I didn’t see or experience anything unnerving. But my camera refused to work within the cottage. None of the photos taken, a total of perhaps half a dozen, turned out. And yet photos taken elsewhere, developed just fine.
A strange coincidence? Probably. Or maybe Marilyn resented the use of a camera here in the one place she always turned to escape the public eye.
