Haunted Canada Stamps and Coins

I thought it was pretty cool the United States Postal Service finally released a Halloween stamp. However, Canada has released something even cooler: Haunted Canada Stamps.

I found out about them from the same place I found out about the U.S. Halloween stamps: Linn’s Stamp News. Specifically from Fred Baumann’s article: “One last spooky set: Which spine-tingling sites are on the final five Haunted Canada stamps?”

The title immediately appealed to my curiosity. “Haunted Canada stamps? What the heck are those?”

Three Years of Haunted Canada Stamp Releases

The five stamps released by the Canada Post in the 2016 series of Haunted Canada stamps, which happened on September 8, 2016, are the third (and final) installments in a series of Haunted Canada stamps. (Do you think I can write “Haunted Canada stamps” one more time? Yes. I just did. It’s a very exciting concept to type about!)

Anyway, the Haunted Canada 2 series, which was released in 2015, also has five stamp designs.

So does the first Haunted Canada series, which was released in 2014.

Which, let’s do the math, is 15 stamps total, all featuring Canadian ghost stories, haunted places and spooky legends.

Seriously? Canada is one of my favorite countries to jaunt to as it is, but I’m crushing on it just a little bit harder now!

But wait! It gets better. There’s more…

Haunted Canada Coins

There are three Haunted Canada coins, which are available from the Royal Canadian Mint, and also from the Canadian Post as coin and stamp sets. (The coin and stamp sets can also be procured from the Royal Canadian Mint.)

Not sure if they will ever make a coin to compliment each stamp in all three series, but there is at least one coin from each series.

The first is the Haunted Canada Ghost Bride Coin from 2014. It portrays the tale of the lovely bride who died on her wedding day at the Fairmont Banff Springs, and who is now rumored to haunt the luxury hotel.

The second is the Haunted Canada Brakeman Coin from 2015. It depicts Vancouver’s headless brakeman legend.

The third is this year’s Haunted Canada Bell Island Coin. It depicts the female spirit rumored to haunt the marshes near Dobbin’s Garden.

All the quarter coins are comprised of cupronickel. They’re all also lenticular. Meaning, if you tilt them one way they appear rather non-menacing. But tilt them in another direction? Spooky!

The Ghost Bride appears demure with her eyes down-turned and modest when held one way, but her eyes pop open and the hotel she died in plus candles floating behind her appear when held at a different angle.

The Brakeman appears silhouetted in a dark tunnel one second, but looked at differently the lantern lights the tunnel and makes the brakeman’s head disappear, leaving only two small orbs where his eyes should be.

The Bell Island coin shows a man holding a lantern looking over his shoulder at a woman in white hovering over him one second, but the same man looking terrified and the white woman turned fiendish the next.

What About Each Haunted Stamp?

Are you wondering what haunted place, legend or lore graces each of the fifteen stamps?

Well three of the stamps are the same as the three coins referred to above.

However, since this post is getting a little lengthy, I’ll explore each of the fifteen stamps in a separate post.

Question

For non-Canadian readers, does your country’s postal service have haunted stamps like these?