Ghostkeeper 1981

Jenny, [Riva Spier], Marty, [Murray Ord], and Chrissy, [Sheri McFadden], head out for a New Year’s Eve snowmobile ride through the snowy expanse of the Rocky Mountains. After a short conversation with Storekeeper, [Les Kimber], at a ski shop, they decide to push on and conquer the trail before dark. A fierce blizzard soon swallows the landscape, guiding them toward a lonely, seemingly abandoned hotel perched high on the snowbound path. They push inside to seek shelter, finding the warmth inside tangible but the lights stubbornly out, turning the place into a dim, flickering refuge.

As night deepens, they kindle a fire and try to keep spirits up by trading memories and stories, all while the building creaks with the harsh wind outside. The trio settles into the sense of isolation, the hotel’s corridors stretching into darkness, and a chill of unease settling over the rooms they’re assigned. Marty heads toward the hotel kitchen, where he encounters a brash, wary old woman who says she lives in the place with two unseen sons, one of whom is her son Danny, [Bill Grove]. Danny’s presence hints at danger even before the first act of violence.

The tension escalates when Chrissy, feeling the pull of the old building’s antiquated plumbing, goes to take a bath in the hallway and is confronted by Danny, who drags her to the basement and cruelly ends her life, storing the body in a freezer. Jenny, awakened by Chrissy’s disappearance, encounters the old woman again and learns she is not just a caretaker but a keeper of the hotel’s dark secrets. The old woman’s evasive replies deepen the mystery as she brushes off questions about Chrissy and the mounting strange events.

Morning arrives with a grim task: Marty tries to restart the snowmobiles outside, finding them deliberately tampered with, and he heads to an old shed for tools while Jenny remains inside with the old woman. After accepting tea, Jenny asks about Chrissy’s fate, only to be drugged and left unconscious. When she awakens in the basement, a dusty First Nations folklore book explains that a Wendigo is often “kept” by an old woman who passes power down from one generation to the next. As Jenny reads, she discovers the freezer holds a Wendigo in human form, the old woman’s second son. In a frantic chase, Danny descends with a chainsaw, pursuing Jenny through the hotel, up to the attic. She escapes onto a narrow balcony, plunges him to the ground below, and he is fatally impaled on an iron fence.

Outside, Jenny finds Marty wandering through the woods, apparently possessed and mumbling to himself. The storekeeper arrives at the hotel only to be stabbed by the old woman, who remains a looming, threatening presence. Jenny returns to the foyer to find Danny’s body dragged into the room and, in a tense moment, discovers a shotgun in a storage room. Confronted by the old woman, she learns she claims to be Jenny’s deceased mother, and Jenny shoots and kills her. The moment is eerie and unsettled as Jenny confronts the Wendigo in the freezer and mutters that she will “look after you now,” a line that hints at a grim bond. She finds Marty outside, unresponsive, with his body lying still as if unmoved by the surrounding chaos.

In the final, quiet beat, Jenny sits in a lounge chair by the fireplace while the old woman’s voice continues to echo through the hotel, a haunting reminder of the terrible bargain and the supernatural chill that lingers after the keys have been turned and the door is closed.