Haunted Saskatchewan: Little Church in the Valley

Welcome to my new blog series – Haunted Saskatchewan!

On the weekends, I have started driving around looking for potentially haunted locations as a photography location. Currently, these photos must be during daylight hours, at least for now, since my kids and husband tend to come with me. They aren’t overly spooky, but I will provide information about the history of the location (whatever I can find through research on the internet). I am doing this for a few different reasons:

1. I enjoy visiting potentially haunted locations.
2. It’s interesting to learn about the history of Saskatchewan locations where we live and where I have grown up.
3. We want to explore more of Saskatchewan (and after COVID restrictions lift, Canada), so my husband is willing to let me include some haunted spots in our travels.

I hope you enjoy this little bi-weekly series that I will post every other Monday. If you have any locations you think I should try to visit, drop them in the comments and I will see if we can fit it somewhere in our list! Next summer, we hope to do a tour in Alberta to visit some of the locations there as well. For now, though, we are limited to Saskatchewan, but drop in any location you think would be interesting to learn more about and hopefully I’ll get there someday!

Now to my first location that we visited. This one isn’t necessarily haunted, but it was a nice spot to get our feet wet. It is the Little Church in the Valley. My husband even “modelled” for me in a few pictures, acting as my spooky shadow figure. Ha!

This church has a few names, including the Kennell Anglican Church and the St. Nicholas Anglican Church. It was originally built in 1900, but then was moved to its current location in 1910-1911. It is in the Qu’Appelle Valley near Craven, Saskatchewan. The architecture reflects Gothic Revival influences. You can notice these influences when you look at the points of the windows, steep pitched roof, etc. (Source: Canada’s Historic Places – https://www.historicplaces.ca/en/rep-reg/place-lieu.aspx?id=5827&pid=0).

This little location was fun to visit, especially for the boys. It was located on the edge of the valley, with very few buildings or signs of civilization anywhere in sight. Given that we were there during the late fall made the trees all the sharper and creepier looking, which made for good photos. The small graveyard behind the church is very well kept, with many of the tombstones quite old, making it easy to take some shadow photos. The church is also very well kept, and it looked like it was recently painted. 

After visiting the church, we decided to take a little walk along the dirt roads in the vicinity. While we walked, there was a light breeze, giving the background noise of the dry wheat and grass fields around us rustling while we walked. The boys enjoyed finding caterpillars and bugs while we went. The bare trees in the middle of the fields looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic world. 

This was especially true once we came upon the bridge that had been closed at the end of the road. It was bent and decaying, adding to the deserted and barren feeling. We even noticed a metal door in the small creek that went under the bridge, making us all trying to come up with reasons as to why just a door would be laying in the water with no other sign of what the door came from.

All in all, we were lucky to have a beautiful fall day to venture out into the Qu’Appelle Valley. If we had the right equipment with us, we could have easily made a meditation track. It likely would have been scarier at night to go, but during the day it was calm and peaceful. This would be a great location to visit if you want some quiet contemplation. No ghosts that we could find, so maybe next time.

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