If you were to meander the back roads of Alberta, you might find a bespectacled man in his mid-50s toting a camera on the roadside, aiming at what looks like a creepy haunted mansion in the middle of nowhere.
Driving his Chevy Trailblazer, Joe Chowaniec stops to investigate old dilapidated houses across the Prairies. Many are older than a century and bespeak of simpler times, but they’re slowly disappearing. For the past 10 years, Edmonton-based Chowaniec has driven 36,000 kilometres to uncover and document their mysteries before they vanish.
The mansion, in reality a big house, was built in 1915 and was once simply unique and beautiful to behold. Getting close, he noted its exterior first two floors are formed entirely of concrete blocks.
He points out how, unlike homes today, the craftsmanship of the past meant that homes were built to last.
“The house is as straight as it was when it was built,” Chowaniec told The Epoch Times. “My house is not going to be around in 100 years.”
Its first inhabitants, a family of Ukrainian immigrants named Goshko, fashioned their living quarters with great pride. But, looking inside, it’s a far cry from its former glory. With its broken floorboards, peeling paint, and caked dust, the interior is unlivable, yet otherwise surprisingly solid.
A cast furnace in the basement of the Goshkos's house. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
The Goshkos's house had an enormous attic. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
A large living room, dining room, kitchen, and bedroom (probably for a maid) occupy the first floor, while stairs in the kitchen lead to a second-floor bedroom—one of four upstairs, all with big windows. An upstairs hall upstairs to a balcony, while a small staircase at the other end ascends to a roomy attic. The basement is filled with a huge cast furnace and coal. With cubbies tucked under the stairs, there’s no wasted space.
Chowaniec, who just retired as executive director at the Environmental Services Association of Alberta, now runs the Abandoned Alberta Facebook group. He first saw the roof of this old house looming—in classic haunted house fashion—from behind an overgrown hedge near Edmonton as he drove to visit with his ailing mother. Then he put out a post to his 69,000 followers asking about it, and within minutes, a long lost friend of the home’s original inhabitants contacted him.
She told him the house was owned by the Goshkos, from the small town of Laniwtsi, Ukraine, who'd heard stories of a land called Canada where they produced grain. The family settled northeast of Edmonton, raised four sons and five daughters, and always took new immigrants in until they got settled. One winter, 14 souls lived here.
Chowaniec snapped scenes that help us imagine what lives played out here and says such stories are what keep him driving these Prairie back roads.
Another “monster” of a house caught his eye in late 2024, after it was posted on Facebook by his followers. “It’s probably the biggest one I’ve seen in Alberta,“ Chowaniec said. ”It was built in 1919.” An immigrant family arrived from Sweden, built the house, and held out for decades before being forced to abandon it.
“Mr. And Mrs. Anderson moved to a nursing home in ’73, and they died in ’78 and ’80,” he said.
Chowaniec simply had to visit it in person. Art Deco filled the interior where he found a chandelier, two TVs, and a massive hanging mirror, still miraculously unbroken. Debris and mould permeated the bedrooms, where he found decaying mattresses and ghostly torn curtains blowing in the breeze. A lone Art Deco chair in the attic overlooks a stunning view of the the Prairies through a large, round window.
The Anderson house, near Edmonton, seen from a nearby pasture. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
The exterior of the Anderson house. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
Joe Chowaniec photographs a mirror and his reflection in the Anderson house. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
The Anderson house was decorated in Art Deco, a style from the early 20th century. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
An old TV inside the Anderson house. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
Rummaging through the Andersons lost dream home, Chowaniec ruminates on the past.
“The pride the family must have felt at what they had built—and then it’s gone right?” he said, adding that he felt nostalgia and sadness because they “had to leave their pride and joy” for whatever reason.
“The kids have gone off to the big city,“ he said. ”They’re not coming back to the farm.”
Sooner or later, the children inherit and later sell the land to a larger farm, and the house stands forgotten, left only for the mice and Prairies to reclaim.
Hearing a rustle, he says sometimes the houses he enters make sounds. It’s not the paranormal. It’s a pigeon, but he says he’s been “creeped out” more times than once and had to swiftly “exit stage right.”
A chair in the attic of the Anderson house overlooks a panoramic view of the Prairies. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
Still partially furnished, the Anderson house is full of deteriorating upholstery. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
An old TV in an Art Deco style living room in the Anderson house. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
Speaking of spooks, last October Chowaniec received an invitation to a ghost town a few hours northeast of Edmonton. Briereville was formed over a century ago and was last inhabited in the late 1950s or ’60s. A family bought the land in 1969 and lived in the old post office. An old barn was used for community pig roasts, and the local indigenous people stopped by. More than one film was shot in this eerie setting.
Chowaniec says ghost towns proliferate on the Prairies, because 75 years ago there were 4,000 to 5,000 wooden grain elevators, whereas today only around 120 survive.
“They were the skyscrapers of the Prairies back in the turn of the last century,” he said.
He showed this reporter a photo of an abandoned elevator near the empty town of Sharples, near Drumheller. In its heyday in the 1940s, as many as 100,000 bushels of wheat were handled here, but the railway that made that possible was shut down in 1982. Where two elevators once stood proudly, only the one one remains today.
Pictures like this one conjure nostalgia for older generations, he said. “Times were simpler, maybe not easier, but they were simple. You got up, you worked.”
On the topic of nostalgia, he points to a photo from his coffee table book “Abandoned Alberta,” depicting a scene seemingly pulled from a Norman Rockwell painting. He calls it “Grandma’s Kitchen.”
The ghost town of Briereville located northeast of Edmonton was abandoned in the late 1950s or ’60s. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
A family lived in the old post office in Briereville, but it now sits abandoned. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
A surviving grain elevator still stands in Sharples, near Drumheller. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
The farmhouse where Grandma's Kitchen is located, near Edmonton, adjoins an old automobile parts shop, still fully stocked. (Courtesy of Joe Chowaniec)
“Every time I see that, that photo stops me and it’s almost heartbreaking,” he said, speaking of a farmhouse near Edmonton that was lived in for 100 years. “[The grandma] moved to a nursing home in the ’60s, and the family never touched the house. It still sits like it was the day she left.”
At one point, the home was adjoined by an auto parts shop that closed in the 1960s. With an antique mechanic’s shop sitting next to Grandma’s Kitchen, the Rockwell painting is complete.
“This was truly a photographer’s gold mine,” Chowaniec said. “So much to photograph.”
Michael Wing
Editor and Writer
Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.
