For Keeps

The Legend of Keeping Road

Okay, so I was going to stray away from this one as long as possible, maybe for fear I may be calling out friends and myself from the early 90s, who flat-out lied about our true whereabouts while being young and invincible. However, as we are on the road, what is more appropriate to talk about than an actual road.

Keeping Road, Abbotsford, This is an interesting one, it's like one of those local stories people keep quiet. Why? I don’t know!

Driving down HW1, you take a normal offramp to Sumas Mountain, which in itself, is surreal as you instantly go from a bustling hwy to almost country-style roads, open fields, and houses nestled back from the road, nowadays there is even a brew house and a few corner stores.

Keep going, and up and to the left you will come to the infamous Keeping Road.

I will tell ya this little tucked away, now fully paved, tree-enclosed road was a hot place to head to as a teen!It was isolated, but not too far out. Quiet. At the time there was maybe one house down at the very end. There was nothing. It was like time stopped.

The Dare goes like this: There are 4 Tasks. Task 1: you would stop at the end of the very dark road, turn off your headlights, and drive exactly 30 kms an hour towards the unknown. Do not stop your car. No matter what you see, Do not stop. Do not turn. Do not turn on your lights. Task #2 Turn around at the cul d sac, undo your windows, and If you tuned just past the 610 on the AM dial, continue back down the road in darkness at 20 kms an hour, listening to the static on the car radio which it was said you could pick up voices and calls for help. Task #3 Was to make a 3rd pass toward the end, Windows down, Static on, slower this time under 10 kms an hour. Calling out into the darkness for the hanging Man, Task #4: The final task in the now dare, which is to drive back to where the road forks, turn off your car, and place your keys on the hood. As they say, you won't be able to start it again, and a ghostly apparition can be seen hanging from a tree. ** Careful if you do try and this is also a dead zone for cell service, and tow trucks honestly just refuse to come out there at night.

This was a harmless, albeit stupid, teenage rumor right? A little I know what you did Last Summer, Fun

No, Keeping Road has a dark past. Some feel that bodies found there, went there to have a means to an end, to join the legends, some feel that it was an undisclosed dumping ground for a possible serial interest. There wasn't just one body either, Abby PD had almost monthly blotters of various cases of bodies found in the area of 37000 block. This is in the darkest part of the road right before a turn off to what was a dead-end road.

The Reports of bodies of Backpackers, women, numerous teens, A transient man with his deceased dog, a middle-aged couple found deceased on the side of the road clad in formal wear from an NYE party. All are found in that 1 km area of Keeping road. (The first report was by New West Record Dec 1971-archives)

More interesting is that somehow, records from prior to 2020 (February to be exact) are pretty much obsolete. I have spent days searching the digitized archives, and there is nothing.

Even now in 2023, I've heard stories of the Ghosts in the woods, the hanging man, the ghostly sounds of wild dogs, and the woman in white who would walk in front of your car as you drove. Do these stories live on? Or are they still being experienced?

What gets me? It's just some of us. We were there, I mean literally, I have polaroids from the bush parties, My friends and I all have the same stories. We know what we saw. We all heard the weird groans and unearthly distance shrieks between the crickets and wind in the trees.

We all heard what sounded like a pack of wild dogs surrounding you in the night. However, anytime we are together, no one ever speaks of what we saw. What we know.

Is the “Road” any more than an Urban Legend? Or is one of the real scary parts of Keeping Road is that you will forever just live with what you know.

Keeping it to yourself