A young man who had been recently hired at Hopkins Dining Parlour was assigned the task of taking supplies to the basement of the building that was constructed in 1905. Although the building was old, the man had no reason to believe he had anything to fear. No one had told him the stories — not yet. Perhaps that was for the best. Then again, perhaps it was not. If he had known what was hiding in the shadows he would have been able to prepare himself.
As he was stocking the shelves with cans and jars, someone confronted him. A woman. A pale woman with no face. Terrified, the man went as white as the woman before him.
The spectre turned without a word — not surprising since she didn’t have a mouth — and floated up the stairs.
He’s not the only person who has seen this ghost in the basement. Others have felt someone push them from behind on the stairs and have caught sight of the woman ducking around corners and hiding behind furniture. Some employees, like Brenda Wilson, refuse to go down to the basement unless they absolutely have to. If only the ghosts would stay down there.
Brenda is one of many people — staff and customers alike — who have had terrifying experiences in the women’s bathroom on the main floor of the restaurant. One night in 1993, Brenda was alone in the bathroom washing her hands, when all of a sudden, she felt like someone was standing directly behind her. She looked up at the mirror and saw an old woman staring at her. The woman slowly faded away and Brenda ran out of the bathroom.
On another occasion, a customer was using one of the stalls when she heard the door open and the sound of footsteps entering the bathroom. As the footsteps approached her stall, the temperature dropped incredibly fast.
“It’s cold in here,” the woman said, but there was no response. The customer exited the stall and was shocked to find the rest of the bathroom was completely empty.
It’s believed that the ghost that haunts the basement and women’s bathroom of Hopkins Dining Parlour is Minnie Hopkins, wife of Edward Nicholas Hopkins. In 1882 Edward was among the first settlers who migrated west, and after travelling by train and oxen-drawn wagon, he landed in Moose Jaw and became a pillar of the community. He was elected to Parliament in 1923, oversaw the building of schools and churches, developed new trade and agricultural practices, and was responsible for creating the Moose Jaw Wild Animal Park. Edward and Minnie married in 1889 and in 1905 built the home that would one day become Hopkins Dining Parlour and a Municipal Heritage Property. They had three children, but one of them, Earle, drowned in the Moose Jaw River just two years after the family had moved into their new home. Years later, Minnie’s funeral was held in what is now the restaurant’s downstairs dining room — another one of her present-day haunts.
A dining room at Hopkins Dining Parlour
One night, after the last customer had left the restaurant, Brenda and a couple of servers completed their closing duties and turned out the lights. But the darkness was broken by a brightly burning candle, situated on a table in the middle of the dining room, that hadn’t been lit a moment earlier. Before any of the staff members could ask who had lit it, all the lights turned back on by themselves, and one of the servers saw Minnie standing beside the candle. The server screamed as loud as she could and ran from the restaurant; the others followed close behind.
Another night, after the restaurant had closed, a server prepared tables for the following day, laying out cutlery, glasses and napkins on each table. She walked to the stairs but was stopped by an inexplicable sight. Much of the cutlery that she had just laid out moments before had been placed on the stairs in the shape of a cross. The next day, the server invited a friend who claimed to be a psychic to join her at work to see if she would be able to explain what had happened. They passed over the spot on the stairs where the cutlery had been laid out, and from there the friend saw the ghost of an old woman sitting alone at a table in the dining area. The ghost wore a white dress and had a long scar across her face. The friend was so upset that she couldn’t remain in the restaurant a moment longer.
Many staff members have seen another spirit walk through the main floor before disappearing from sight. One night a cleaning woman was at the top of the stairs when she saw the man pass by on the main floor. Believing him to be her boss, she said, “Hi, Rick. I’m up here vacuuming.” The man stopped and looked up at her, and it was at that moment that she realized he wasn’t who she had thought. He was wearing old-fashioned clothing, and before he said or did anything else, he vanished.
Even children have been spooked by the restaurant’s spectres. Brenda once found a two-year-old boy staring and pointing at a corner shouting, “Ghost, ghost,” over and over again. When Brenda asked the boy’s father what his son was talking about, the shocked father replied, “I don’t know. He doesn’t talk.” Ghost was the boy’s first word.
Owner Gladys Pierce’s four-year-old granddaughter was seated at a table alone in the dining room one afternoon when Brenda observed that the little girl was shivering as if she was sitting in a freezer. Brenda asked what was wrong.
The girl said, “A ghost just went by.”
Brenda asked, “Like Casper?”
The girl, dead serious, said, “No, a lady ghost.”
You might think that, given Hopkins Dining Parlour’s reputation as one of the most haunted locations in Moose Jaw, customers might opt to dine elsewhere, but not so. Not only is it a very busy restaurant, but curiosity seekers regularly visit in the hopes of encountering something unusual, something they can’t explain. Some come for the history, more come for the delicious food, and others come to dine with the dead.