In 2008, I became involved with the Vancouver Haunted Trolley Tours—a three-way partnership between the Vancouver Police Museum, the Museum of Vancouver, and the Vancouver Trolley Company that transformed a vintage trolley route into a nighttime tour of the city’s darker history.

The format was simple: passengers started at the Museum of Vancouver, boarded period trolley buses with costumed guides, and stopped at locations throughout the city for ghost stories, murder tales, and local crime history. The tone was deliberately campy—theatrical fun with a historical spine. Until they reached us.

At the Police Museum, we’d walk groups back to the nearly-intact 1930s morgue and autopsy suite, where the tone shifted entirely. Every victim from those stories—every murder, every accident, every unexplained death—came through this room. I’d walk them through a standard autopsy procedure using the original tools, a mannequin under a sheet, and the room itself to do most of the work. No theatrics needed. The setting and the reality were enough.

It was effective precisely because we didn’t try to make it entertainment. The tour gave people permission to enjoy the spooky stories, then reminded them those stories had real weight. The partnership ran for several years and became a reliable Halloween program, pulling in revenue for all three institutions while demonstrating how collaboration can create something none of us could have done alone.