PEI Part 3 Kensington Haunted Mansion

PEI Part 3 Kensington Haunted Mansion - The Kensington Haunted Mansion, a popular walk-through tourist attraction, originated as a rural potato warehouse when the railway ran past that site. The rail station, located near-by, is a now museum since the Prince Edward Island Railroad was abandoned. A popular province-wide hiking trail is all that remains of the original road-bed. The warehouse’s conversion in the early 1990s by the Johnston family transformed the building into a medieval-themed tourist site known as the Kensington Towers and Water Gardens or the Ye Ole Manor House. We had visited this Tudor-style English-inspired building and the water gardens many years ago. The basement was a recreation of an old English city street complete with shop window displays. The well-maintained English gardens displayed fountains, flower gardens and miniature castles. The Johnstons also established Rainbow Valley in Cavendish and Woodleigh Replicas in Burlington. The Davison family, the former owners of Rainbow Valley, bought the Towers and Water Gardens in the mid 2000's, converting it into the Haunted Mansion, containing some of the rides and equipment from the original Rainbow Valley. The gardens and miniatures were expanded and the requisite gift shop and café added. The Mansion created a fictional story to enhance the lure of this attraction. Local lore created for the Mansion claims an eccentric, mysterious English surgeon named Dr. Jack arrived in Kensington in the 1890s. He purportedly built the Tudor-style manor as his home, a medical office and an inn called Whitechapel. Town rumor states that many visitors who stayed at his inn took part in his medical experiments, vanishing without a trace. The building, gardens and mounds result in the Mansion’s lasting spooky reputation, possibly hiding bodies behind locked doors, inside statues and fertilizing the beautiful flower gardens. [I made up the last part with my vivid imagination]