Who’s haunting Anna Duryba? A 1950s Chilliwack ghost story

Photo by: 📸 Chilliwack Museum and Archives / Chilliwack Progress

To see the Chilliwack Progress articles mentioned in this story, click the links. The Chilliwack Museum and Archives has an extensive searchable record of newspapers dating back to before 1900. The Vancouver Sun article is available through the Fraser Valley Regional Library’s database of historical newspapers.

Reverend William Clarke’s diagnosis was simple: a poltergeist was at large on Brooks Avenue. It was November of 1951.

For weeks, a series of strange noises and broken windows had driven 38-year-old Anna Duryba and her niece Kathryn, 14, to distraction and distress. Loud bangings that moved “rapidly about the outer walls of the house” were taking place regularly, sometimes dozens of times each week, according to newspaper accounts from the time. The episodes were bad enough to cause Kathryn to temporarily relocate to Vancouver while her aunt tried to figure out what was going on and how to stop it.

Over the coming months, she would repeatedly tell reporters she didn’t believe in ghosts. But that didn’t stop the rest of Chilliwack from gossiping about what would become one of the biggest stories in town. At one point, so many people were coming to gawk at Anna’s house that it was creating parking problems for neighbours.

No wonder Anna was exhausted.