General – Haunted Montreal

Haunted Montreal Blog #128 – Ruins of Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church

hauntedmontreal — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-eighth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

With over 600 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13^th of every month!

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13^th! The blog is published in both English and French!

With the weather getting nicer, we have resumed public outdoor Haunted Old Montreal tours, with the rest of our outdoor public tour schedule, including Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal resuming throughout May.

Our Haunted Pub Crawl still runs every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

More on this in the Company News section.

This month, we take a look at an abandoned, crumbling church, that has become a destination for urban explorers, and is also purportedly haunted.

Haunted Research

Towering above Fullum Street in eastern Montreal stands the crumbling ruins of Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church.

Religious services were relocated in 2016 due to safety concerns about the deteriorating church, a dwindling flock of worshippers and rumours that the building was haunted.

The dilapidated building is causing a major headache for the Montreal Catholic Archdiocese.

Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Parish was established in 1896 to cater to a growing Catholic population in the eastern part of Montreal. Church officials erected a temporary chapel for worshippers until a more permanent structure could be built.

In 1913, construction of the Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church finally began, based on plans by architect Aristide Beaugrand-Champagne.

Designed in the Romanesque Revival style, it was meant to be an imposing visual landmark at 2151 Fullum Street.

However, due to the First World War, work was suspended from 1914 to 1919. Resources were scare and men were conscripted to go fight in Europe.

After the war, work resumed on the church under the direction of Joseph-Henri Caron. The magnificent Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church opened its doors in 1923. At the time, it was one of the largest churches in Montreal.

The church functioned well with good attendance until the 1960s, when rumours spread that The Devil himself had somehow managed to enter Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church and take up residence in the holy building.

Stories circulated of the church bells ringing in the middle of the night during the Devil’s Hour, which starts at 3 a.m.

Local residents who went to investigate claimed they could also hear someone playing disjointed notes on the church organ late at night when the building was closed.

The priests denied the allegations and blamed Quebec’s Quiet Revolution for the falling attendance.

It was a time when church attendance fell across the province due to secularization and anger at the strict policies of the Catholic Church, not to mention allegations of abuse.

As the decades passed and attendance continued to dwindle, in 2003 the Diocese of Montreal merged the neighboring parishes of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul and Saint-Anselme into Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil.

Starting in 2009, worshippers moved into the church basement due to economic and security concerns.

In a nutshell, the diocese could not afford to fix structural defects in Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church, which were estimated at several million dollars. Furthermore, it cost tens of thousands of dollars annually to heat the immense building.

As such, services were held daily in a small chapel set up in a hallway between the deteriorating church and the rectory. At the time, parish secretary Laurianne Mailloux said: “For the few people who come, it’s more than enough.”

However, in March 2016 serious damage caused by leaking water triggered the few remaining worshippers to be relocated elsewhere.

At the time, parish priest Father Thomas explained: “When it came time to renew the building’s insurance, it was no longer possible. So, I made the decision to move the services.”

After Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church was abandoned, it began to take on a forlorn appearance. Despite being fenced off, vandals painted graffiti on its walls and urban explorers started breaking in to film the vast, crumbling interior.

Sadly, in 2019 a major fire broke out in the church, which required the intervention of dozens of firefighters.

The church floor was destroyed and the artworks inside were severely damaged. Investigators could not identify how the fire started but suspected it was caused by squatters or intruders.

Since then, the church has been vacant and is collapsing into ruin. The diocese has proposed several redevelopment projects over the years, such as a housing cooperative or private residential project. However, these ideas never came to fruition.

It soon became evident that Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church would have to be demolished due to its advanced deterioration, weakened structural conditions and the resulting safety issues.

Indeed, according to a CBC News report from February 2026 entitled Montreal parish fights to demolish derelict church that’s become a TikTok destination:

“Inside the church, the floor of the cavernous sanctuary is covered with debris, bird droppings, beer cans and the mangled remnants of the church’s organ… The sound of cooing pigeons and the flapping of wings echoes through the space, which once accommodated some 1,000 worshippers.”

Furthermore, Priest Roger Dufresne, who oversees the site, was scandalized when vandals graffitied the church’s interior. They spray-painted blasphemous messages such as “The Devil was here,” and “Kill God 666.”

Father Dufresne noted that intruders ripped out pipes from the Casavant Organ and tossed them on the floor, broke heads off statues and repeatedly climbed to the roof, trying to ring the church bell.

The priest said: “They use all kinds of tools to break the windows, break the doors, get inside. For young people, it’s mostly to make videos, TikTok challenges.”

Furthermore, the church has spent more than $100,000 trying to secure the site since 2017, including erecting a fence around the building and by hiring security guards. Despite those efforts, the City of Montreal has fined the church $219,000 related to the structural integrity of the building.

In 2012, the City’s Division de l’expertise en patrimoine et de la toponymie listed Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church a building of “exceptional heritage value”.

Such designations make demolition much more difficult.

Fully repairing the church would cost more than $50 million according to engineering firm CIMA+, but the parish does not have the funds nor the worshippers to fill such a large space.

With unfathomable challenges like these, Father Dufresne and the Montreal Catholic Archdiocese want Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church demolished as soon as possible.

On January 7, 2026, the parish asked a judge at the Superior Court of Quebec to grant a demolition permit, citing health and security concerns as well as financial difficulties.

As the parish waits for a decision, Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church continues to decay and fall into ruin as urban explorers, vandals and TikTokers continue to break in.

Haunted Montreal reached out to a TikToker to ask what conditions are like in the church’s interior. The influencer, who wanted to remain anonymous for legal reasons, described many of the same things from the CBC article: flocks of pigeons nesting in the rafters, crumpled beer cans, obscene graffiti and bent Casavant organ pipes littering the floor.

When we inquired if the TikToker had experienced any paranormal activity, they said:

“It’s funny you should mention that. One of the TikTok challenges is to go into the building alone and film during the Devils’ Hour because the church is haunted. It’s a big dare.”

When pressed for more information, the TikToker explained:

“The inside of the church is scary late at night. It is very dark. I used my flashlight to walk through all the beer cans, broken pews and organ pipes. I wanted to stream my TikTok video at the altar. As I approached, I swear I could hear a faint noise, like an echo. I froze and listened carefully. It sounded like some sort of laughter, quiet at first. But then it started getting louder and scarier. It started cackling and sounding full-on demonic!”

Haunted Montreal asked what the TikToker did next. They replied:

“I decided to get the hell out of there! I ran to the exit, trying not to trip over all the junk on the ground. As I bolted, I accidentally kicked a pile of broken organ pipes scattering them across the floor. As I was reaching the exit, I heard a noise that I have never heard before. It sounded like the organ playing, but in a wheezing and sputtering way, like something half-alive. I turned around for one last look and shone my flashlight. I swear I could see those broken organ pipes slithering around the floor while making that horrible groaning noise. Then I left, glad that I was still alive. I won’t be trying that TikTok challenge ever again.”

When Haunted Montreal asked them if they would swear to the truth about the story, the TikToker admitted that they had been on magic mushrooms, but added: “Dude, it’s totally true. I’d swear with my hand on the Bible.”

All of these deranged stories have led many people to ask: is Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church haunted by The Devil? These rumours have been circulating for decades, after all.

Whatever the case, until this church is demolished, it will undoubtably continue to witness all sorts of problems. From anti-social behaviour and vandalism to the possibility it might be haunted by The Devil himself, it would not be surprising if the historic Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church is demolished in the near future.

Company News

Our outdoor public tours are resuming with Haunted Old Montreal in April and the rest of our slate throughout May. Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal will also resume in May, but is currently available in English and French as a private tour.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours, except for Haunted Mountain) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $250 for small groups of up to 8 people. Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

Our bilingual indoor Paranormal Investigation at the Montreal Art Center and Museum in April is already Sold Out. We are working on adding another one in May. Stay tuned!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Hear some of the spookiest tales from our tours and our blog told by a professional actor and storyteller. You provide the venue, we provide the stories and storyteller. Find out more and then contact info@hauntedmontreal.com

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Our online shop is offline for the next few months. If you would like to purchase any Haunted Montreal-branded t-shirts or mugs in the meantime, please contact us at info@hauntedmontreal.com

Holly and Dr. Mab are back! Now part of Stygian Media, they will continue releasing Haunted Montreal videos based on our blogs in English and French among other horror-themed content.

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

Haunted Montreal also has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! Until further notice, we will be offering updates on old stories every second month and the regular blog service alternating.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of each month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming Up on May 13: Update on The Black Rock

In March 2018, Haunted Montreal first wrote about The Black Rock, a 30-ton granite boulder that marks the site of the city’s second mass grave for Irish Famine victims. Located in an industrial area on Bridge Street, efforts have been made to create a world-class park on the desecrated burial ground. However, the project has been sabotaged and the plans presented are raising eyebrows among the stakeholders who were excluded from participating.

Author:

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Translator (into French):

Claude Chevalot holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from McGill University. She is a writer, editor and translator. For more than 15 years, she has devoted herself almost exclusively to literary translation and to the translation of texts on current and contemporary art.

Haunted Montreal Blog #123 – Update on the Hôpital de la Miséricorde

hauntedmontreal — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-third installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

Despite the Hallowe’en Season ending, Haunted Montreal is still offering outdoor tours of Haunted Old Montreal until the end of November!

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Private tours for all our experiences can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

This month we provide an update on the Hôpital de la Miséricorde and analyze controversial plans by Hydro-Québec to integrate an electricity substation into the haunted site.

Haunted Research

The ghost-ridden Hôpital de la Miséricorde has been empty for years and is starting to crumble. Located on prime real estate in Downtown Montreal, citizens have long demanded social housing and other community services on the site.

In May 2025, Santé Québec sold the site of the former hospital to developer Alta Canada for $8.5 million.

Alta Canada announced plans to redevelop the site into housing, starting with a 90-metre tall, multifamily tower to be built in the hospital’s old parking lot.

However, before Alta Canada could break ground, Hydro-Québec suddenly purchased the hospital in August 2025 for $15 million.

The electricity giant had been involved in a controversy when they announced plans to replace the Berri 1 transformer station, a brutalist structure that was ageing fast.

Hydro-Québec proposed building the new 315,000-volt transformer substation on the garden and adjacent plot of the Grande Bibliothèque, Quebec’s national library.

Outrage ensued and on May 10^th over 100 people turned up to protest the plan. Opponents, including librarians, residents, community leaders, and academics, argued against the project due to its destruction of a green space and its perceived threat to future library expansion.

The protest was effective.

Acknowledging the lack of social acceptance, Hydro-Québec cancelled the proposal and went on to purchase the haunted hospital with plans to build the electricity substation there.

However, there are three major problems with the new plan.

Firstly, the Hôpital de la Miséricorde includes greystone heritage buildings dating back to the 19^th century.

Hydro-Québec has pledged to launch an architectural competition to ensure the new construction is integrated into the urban fabric. However, critics are unclear about how a modern substation can be integrated into a heritage site.

Secondly, there are major concerns that deceased children may be buried or hidden on the site. The Mohawk Mothers demanded to search the hospital complex for dead infants before its sale.

They cited the fact that the death rate of babies born at the hospital was 37.7 per cent, including Indigenous children, with many burials unaccounted for. Their demand was refused.

This means that Hydro-Québec could possibly uncover the remains of dead babies while constructing their electricity project.

The hospital already has a lot of ghostly manifestations, such as the disembodied sounds of wailing and the appearances of many spirits and apparitions. Any new macabre discoveries could lead to even more paranormal activity on the haunted hospital site.

Lastly, paranormal experts strongly advise against combining electricity with ghosts. According to Dominique Desormeaux, ghosts “feast on electricity”. He had warned the REM light rail system that by inserting a concreted pylon into the heart of the Black Rock Irish Famine Cemetery, their system would be disrupted by angry ghosts.

He was proven right, as witnessed by the many malfunctions, failures and strange activity associated with the light rail system.

Given that transformer substations handle a lot of electricity, perhaps it is just as likely that the new installation will face similar problems

In conclusion, given all the serious problems with the plan to convert a haunted hospital into an electricity transformer station, this project could be doomed from the start!

Company News

Despite the Hallowe’en Season ending, Haunted Montreal is still offering outdoor tours of Haunted Old Montreal until the end of November!

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog.

Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

For those hoping to do some holiday shopping, our online store is open until the end of December!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on December 13: The Haunted Clocks of St. James Street

It is worth noting that clocks are almost never found in cemeteries. The reasoning is that the Dead do not like to be reminded of the passage of time. The Dead usually wish to lie undisturbed in their final resting places for eternity. Unfortunately, Montreal’s Saint James Street, once known as the “Wall Street of Canada”, is largely built on colonial cemeteries. With the construction of banks and skyscrapers, the colonial cemeteries were desecrated. The installation of clocks further disturbed the Dead. The constant ticking sounds regulating the commercial district built upon their burial grounds did not sit well. Today, four clocks overlook the street and three of them are said to have serious paranormal issues.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #122 – Haunted Issues in the Montreal Election

hauntedmontreal — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-second installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

Hallowe’en is just around the corner and Haunted Montreal has a plethora of experiences on offer!

These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

We are also pleased to announce a new tour as part of our upcoming Hidden Histories series! The Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal Walking Tour is in its final testing phase and $5 tickets are available on weekends in October and early November in both English and French.

This tours will be under the umbrella of Hidden Montreal, our new division of daytime walking tours.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Private tours for all of our experiences can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

This month we look at haunted issues in the upcoming Montreal municipal election on November 2. With five candidates running for Mayor, Haunted Montreal is pressing all of them to do more to placate the city’s Dead.

Haunted Research

Montrealers are heading to the polls on November 2 to elect a new mayor. While the citizens have the democratic privilege of voting, the Dead certainly do not.

As such, Haunted Montreal will be representing them and making demands to the mayoral candidates on their behalf. Generally-speaking, the Dead want two things: to be remembered and to be respected.

Sadly, Montreal is littered with forgotten cemeteries, burial grounds are often desecrated in the name of progress and important historical figures and sites have never been commemorated.

This election has five candidates from five different parties vying for the reigns at City Hall:

Luc Rabouin (Projet Montréal)
Soraya Martinez Ferrada (Ensemble Montréal)
Jean-François Kacou (Futur Montréal)
Craig Sauvé (Transition Montréal)
Gilbert Thibodeau (Action Montréal)

It is worth noting that Projet Montreal has been in power for eight years under the helm of Mayor Valerie Plante and Ensemble Montreal was in charge before that. All the other parties have never been elected.

Montreal’s municipal politicians have a long history of neglecting the Dead. For example, during Valerie Plante’s tenure the Black Rock Irish Famine Cemetery was desecrated by the REM, which hammered a large metal caisson through layers of skeletons.

Indigenous remains were also disturbed during construction on Peel Street and at St. Joseph’s Oratory. There are now plans to disturb another mass grave at the Wellington Basin with the coming of a new neighborhood.

Furthermore, Montreal is falling behind on its commitment to Truth and Reconciliation. The city refuses to rename Christophe-Colomb Avenue despite its offensive and genocidal connotations.

Montreal also won’t repeal by-law G-2, which makes it illegal for the vast majority of Indigenous people to lead guided tours on their unceded territory.

Lastly, notable historical figures, sites and events have not been commemorated or marked in any way. Mayor John Easton Mills died of Typhus in 1847 after coming to the aid of Irish Famine refugees – and yet there is no statue of him. Indeed, the city has dozens of historical plaques marking the industrial revolution but only one marking the Irish Famine. Even Montreal’s most infamous ghost story, that of Headless Mary, has almost been erased.

Other historic sites are rendered invisible. For example, historic prison cells exist beneath Place Vauquelin in the heart of Old Montreal but are not open to the public. Furthermore, the holy site of Jeanne Le Ber’s death in the recluse of her church is now a parking lot. These places could be refurbished and become Old Montreal historic sites that respect the deceased associated with them.

Haunted Montreal follows all these issues very closely and has produced a list of 5 concerns and proposals for the mayoral candidates.

***

Election Issue #1: Commemorating Montreal’s Most Infamous Ghost Story

Our first election issue has to do with Montreal’s most infamous ghost, Headless Mary, who returns to the corner of William and Murray Streets in Griffintown every 7 years on the anniversary of her murder. Her next appearance is scheduled for June 27^th, 2026.

However, when Mary Gallagher’s ghost last appeared in 2019 the neighbourhood looked very different.

Back then, the famous corner was derelict and creepy, just as it always had been since the 1800s when the Griff was Canada’s most notorious Irish shantytown.

With rapid gentrification, the corner is now bursting with shiny new buildings constructed by the ETS (École de technologie supérieure). After an intervention by Haunted Montreal, ETS agreed to preserve the famous corner by making it a gathering space outside the new Pavilion F building. However, there is no commemoration yet for the city’s most infamous ghost story despite our request for one.

As such, Haunted Montreal has created a plan with local artists to start the ball rolling. Not wanting to frighten the students and professors at the ETS, we are not requesting a statue of Headless Mary. Instead, we wish to commemorate the site in a more subtle manner that reflects a fascinating part of Griffintown’s history.

When the Griff was Canada’s most notorious shantytown, the corner was very much feared due to rampant reports that Mary Gallagher’s ghost would return every 7 years on the anniversary of her murder. In 1999, the late renowned Griffintown storyteller Denis Delaney told CBC’s Anna Asimakopulous that “children used to take her candy and little bags of treats, and things like that, and we’d leave them for her and then run away so she wouldn’t harm us.”

Parents would use the ghost story as a way of keeping their children obedient, warning that “Headless Mary” would get them if they didn’t eat their cabbage, do their homework, or return home on time. The children believed that by leaving gifts for the ghost they would be spared from her wrath.

Keeping this idea in mind, Haunted Montreal is proposing a statue on one of the four corners of a small group of fearful children placing candies and treats on the corner to placate Headless Mary.

It is important to remember that Griffintown has enormous importance for the Irish community and most of the Irish heritage has been erased from the neighbourhood. The proposed statue would go a long way in helping to commemorate this heritage and offer something interesting and meaningful for locals and tourists to visit.

Haunted Montreal’s demands:

Support the commemoration project technically (e.g. permissions, zoning issues, Public Art Bureau policies, etc.) and financially, if possible.
Offer more support in the future for Irish heritage projects in the city.

Election Issue #2: Better Indigenous Representation

Our second election issue is about improving Indigenous representation in the city.

We would like the City to consult experts from the Mohawk First Nation to find ways to include more Indigenous representation and perspectives, especially in Old Montreal. There are many colonial statues, monuments, and plaques in the City of Montreal that should be re-evaluated and potentially removed due to their genocidal depictions and colonialist narratives.

There are also streets and other topographical features that are very problematic, such as Christophe-Colomb Avenue. Glorifying genocidal colonists should become a thing of the past, as we saw with the rebranding of Amherst into Atateken Street. The City of Montreal must listen to the Mohawk activists making the demand to retire the Christopher Columbus name from the cityscape.

It is also embarrassing that even “Mount Royal” is not yet acknowledged with its original Mohawk name – Tekanontak – on maps, websites and guided tours. According to Mohawk Elders, Tekanontak is one of the largest Indigenous burial grounds in North America. It deserves to be properly named and marked.

Lastly, by-law G-2 makes extremely difficult for Indigenous people to legally host guided tours of unceded territory. This “Tour Guide” by-law has resulted in a cartel of guides, the APGT, which is estimated to be 98% white.

Furthermore, to get a license students must attend a lengthy and expensive course at the ITHQ that barely covers any Indigenous history, language or contemporary issues.

Haunted Montreal’s demands:

Create better opportunities for Indigenous representation, business and tourism in Montreal.
Cancel by-law G-2.
Study problematic statues and plaques in the City of Montreal with the goal of removing them or addressing them in a satisfactory manner.
Rebrand streets named after genocidal figures, such as Christophe-Columb Avenue.
Restore the original Mohawk name Tekanontak for “Mount Royal” on maps, websites, tourism brochures, etc.

Election Issue #3: Protection and Commemoration of the Wellington Basin Famine Cemetery

The City of Montreal is moving full steam ahead with the creation of large new neighborhood in Point St. Charles called Bridge-Bonaventure. Working in tandem with Canada Lands, the project envisions a mixed-use neighbourhood with 2,800 housing units, an artisan district and even a public beach in the old Wellington Basin.

However, the chosen site also hosts the Wellington Basin Irish Famine Cemetery.

Today, an estimated 1200 – 1700 bodies repose in a mass grave beside the basin. There is nothing to indicate the presence of this Famine cemetery and the construction project risks disturbing the Dead.

As such Haunted Montreal is asking mayoral candidates to prevent anything from being built on the Wellington Basin Famine Cemetery. In fact, we are demanding a world-class Irish Famine Park on the burial site in collaboration with Canada Lands.

We also would like to see the creation of a commemorative monument dedicated to Mohawk First Nation’s solidarity with the Famine Irish. In 1847, they donated $150 and brought food to aid the Irish refugees. Mohawk artist MC Snow has committed to creating the monument and Canada Lands has also agreed that it should be installed.

There is also the problem that the Irish Famine is not commemorated along the Lachine Canal, where much of the tragedy played out. We are demanding plaques to be installed to tell this tragic story.

Lastly, we would like Montreal’s Martyr Mayor John Easton Mills to be properly commemorated in the new development with a statue and a street, square or park named after in his honour.

Mayor Mills was extremely compassionate and died caring for the Irish refugees in 1847 after succumbing to Typhus.

Haunted Montreal’s demands:

Protect the Wellington Basin Famine Cemetery from desecration.
Create a world-class Irish Famine Park on the footprint of the burial ground.
Support the creation of a Mohawk Famine Solidarity Monument to be created by MC Snow.
Add plaques along the Lachine Canal and other important sites commemorating the Irish Famine in Montreal.
Commemorate Martyr Mayor John Easton Mills with a statue and by naming a street or square after him in the vicinity.

Election Issue #4: Study opening the Old Prison Cells under Place Vauquelin

Over 80% of tourists visit Old Montreal and yet extremely important historic sites are rendered invisible and not used in an adequate manner.

For example, the Old Courthouse and the dungeons of the original Montreal Prison are located right beside City Hall in the heart of Old Montreal. The Courthouse has been rebranded the Lucien-Saulnier Building and is used by the city’s Department of Finance. Meanwhile, the old prison cells are located beneath the Place Vauquelin.

Many cities highlight their old prisons and courthouses as museums about the history of crime and punishment. In Canada, such museums exist in places like the Kingston Penitentiary, Ottawa Jail Hostel and St. Andrew’s prison and courthouse. These are popular educational and tourist attractions that enhance the heritage fabric of aforementioned cities.

Indeed, this type of attraction can be found all over the world. Perhaps the best example is the City of Las Vegas repurposing its old courthouse into the world-famous Mob Museum.

In a city with hundreds of attractions, the Mob Museum remains among Las Vegas’ most popular.

Haunted Montreal’s demands:

Study the possibility of converting the old prison cells and some of the original courthouse into a museum exploring crime and punishment in the city.

Election Issue #5: Study the creation of Parc de la Recluse in Old Montreal

Like Mayor John Easton Mills, Jeanne Le Ber was once considered a Montreal city hero.

Known as the “Angel of Montreal”, she spent much of her life as a recluse, cooped up in a small room behind the altar of a church which she funded. There, she prayed for the city while living in full reclusion, poverty and submission.

However, the site where she prayed and died in her church was demolished decades ago. It is now an unsightly parking lot in Old Montreal on the corner of Cours Le Royer and Saint-Laurent Boulevard.

Haunted Montreal is proposing that the City expropriate the parking lot to make way for a new greenspace called Parc de la Recluse. This park would commemorate her life and death on the site while removing an eyesore and improving the attractions in Old Montreal

Haunted Montreal’s demands:

Study the possibility of expropriating the parking lot to make way for a new greenspace, Parc de la Recluse, dedicated to commemorating Jeanne Le Ber’s remarkable story.

***

If you agree with any or all of Haunted Montreal’s electoral demands, please contact the candidates and make sure your views are known.

Contact details for all mayoral candidates:

Luc Rabouin : luc.rabouin@projetmontreal.org

Soraya Martinez Ferrada : soraya.martinez@ensemblemtl.org

Jean-François Kacou : info@futurmontreal.com

Craig Sauvé : https ://www.transitionmtl.org/nous-joindre

Gilbert Thibodeau: info@actionmontreal.ca

Are you registered to vote?

Visit this link to check your registration status. Your name must be registered no later than 6 pm on October 16, 2025.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank our readers for considering supporting our demands by contacting mayoral candidates – and by voting if eligible.

Company News

Hallowe’en is just around the corner and Haunted Montreal has a plethora of experiences on offer!

These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

We are also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

This tours will be under the umbrella of Hidden Montreal, our new division of daytime walking tours.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Lastly, we have reopened our online store from October to December!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on November 13: Update on the Hôpital de la Miséricorde

The ghost-ridden Hôpital de la Miséricorde has been empty for years and is starting to crumble. Located on prime real estate in Downtown Montreal, plans were announced to build social housing on the derelict site. However, it was suddenly purchased by Hydro-Quebec who want to build a transformer station on the old hospital. Paranormal experts advise against combining electricity with ghosts, meaning that this project could be doomed from the start.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #121 – Update on Montreal’s Mysterious River Monsters

hauntedmontreal — Sat, 13 Sep 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-first installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

We are pleased to announce a new tour as part of our upcoming Hidden Histories series! The Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal Walking Tour is in its final testing phase! $5 tickets are available on weekends in September and October in both English and French.

These tours will be under the umbrella of Hidden Montreal, our new division of day time walking tours.

Haunted Montreal’s season of public outdoor ghost tours is now in full swing and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

This month we provide an update on Montreal’s Mysterious River Monsters and their latest antics.

Haunted Research

In May 2020, Haunted Montreal published a blog about Montreal’s Mysterious River Monsters. Since then, the waters surrounding the city have witnessed more bizarre sightings and situations involving unknown and dangerous marine creatures.

The most notable case occurred in June 2024, when an eight-year-old boy was attacked by something predatory in the enclosed waters of Jean Doré Beach.

He sustained several deep gashes in his leg that required stitches.

Ironically, he was bitten while playing in the water at an inflatable structure called Aquazilla. The 30-by-35 meter aquatic playground is comprised of “obstacles, slides and platforms for jumping into the water.”

Some scientists speculated that the predator was a muskie, a large fish with sharp teeth. Others felt it was more likely a river monster that had somehow entered the waters of the enclosed beach in search of its next meal.

Whatever the case, the question remains as to how an aquatic creature could enter an enclosed beach with no direct access to the St. Lawrence River. The answer may be found in a Mohawk legend.

Brant McGregor recounted a story dating July 1995 when he and his grandfather decided to go fishing off the shores of Kahnawà:ke, a Mohawk First Nations territory across the river from Montreal.

They set anchor near the mouth of the Chateauguay River near an area known as “Big Fence” and cast their lines. After about 15 minutes a snake-like creature surfaced nearby.

McGregor described its head and neck as being as thick as a telephone pole and rising 8-10 feet out of the water. The creature was the colour of a rotting log, had huge black eyes and horns protruding from its head.

It also had sharp teeth and a 5-foot-long purple forked tongue. MacGregor estimated that it was 50-65 feet long.

The creature began swimming towards them as they pulled up anchor to escape. MacGregor believed the monster could swallow him whole in one gulp, which prompted them to speed their boat to the safety of the shore.

The story is recounted in “Monster in the St. Lawrence River? | NEW 2025 Cryptozoology Documentary”. Haunted Montreal has verified that this is a true story.

The same episode features “The Kahnawake Mohawk Legend” about the infamous river monsters. According to Mohawk lore, the river monsters can slither great distances across land. They lay their eggs in forests and swampy areas and travel at night to avoid suspicion. The newly-hatched creatures are said to be metallic blue in colour.

The river monsters can also create powerful storms and turbulent waters when upset.

They also have been known to appear in the dreams of people who have encountered them.

Brant McGregor was haunted in his dreams by the river monster he had encountered, so he asked a medicine man for assistance. He was told that it appeared in his dreams because the monster wanted him to enter its watery domain.

It is worth recalling that these snake-like monsters can slither across the land. As such, it is entirely possible that one of these creatures slinked over the enclosure protecting Jean Doré Beach before attacking the boy.

Whatever the case, if ever swimming in the waters swirling around the Island of Montreal, do so at your own risk!

Company News

We are pleased to announce a new tour as part of our upcoming Hidden Histories series! The Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal Walking Tour is in its final testing phase and $5 tickets are available on weekends in September and October in both English and French.

These tours will all be under the umbrella of Hidden Montreal, our new division of day time walking tours.

Our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now in full swing and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

We are also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog.

Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Lastly, we have decided to close our online store due to low sales and high maintenance costs. It will only be open from October to December in the future.

Haunted Montreal also has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! The book is titled Haunted McGill, and is authored by yours truly, Donovan King! Our publisher is The Stygian Society.

Until publication in 2026, new stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on October 13: Haunted Issues in the Montreal Election

Montrealers are heading to the polls on November 2 to elect a new mayor. While the citizens have the democratic privilege of voting, the Dead certainly do not. As such, Haunted Montreal will be representing them and making demands to the mayoral candidates on their behalf. Most importantly, we will ask that a commemorative statue be installed on the corner of William and Murray streets in Griffintown – before Headless Mary returns on June 27, 2026!

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #120 – Place Royale

hauntedmontreal — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 18:27:40 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twentieth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

We are pleased to announce a new tour as part of our upcoming Hidden Histories series!

The Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal Walking Tour is in its final testing phase and free tickets are available this upcoming Friday and Saturday at 1 pm! The test phase is in English and tours in French will follow soon.

After testing is finished, this tour and others such as the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour will be offered on various afternoons for only $20! Stay tuned to this website or our Facebook page for upcoming tours!

These tours will all be under the umbrella of Hidden Montreal, our soon-to-be-born sister company.

We are also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

This month we examine Place Royale, one of the most deranged and haunted public squares in Old Montreal and its ghosts.

Haunted Research

While today the site looks banal and excludes its own history in public commemoration, Place Royale is considered one of the most haunted sites in Old Montreal.

The most common ghost sighting on the square is that of a miserable drummer boy who appears to be tearing up or crying. A look at the history of the Place Royale may help reveal the identity of this forlorn apparition.

For thousands of years before the French began colonizing the island in 1642, the site where Place Royale exists today was a well-frequented area because it was at the mouth of a creek. With the canoe as the main form of transportation, creeks provided access to the inner parts of the island and could be used to avoid dangerous rapids in the river.

Before colonial expansion, the island had a vast network of inland streams, marshes and lakes.

These waterways were used by various First Nations as internal transportation routes. Coupled with portages and other trails, it was possible to move efficiently around the island.

The mouths of these waterways were also popular areas to encamp, conduct trade, and meet others. These creeks were all very well-known landmarks.

When French explorer Jacques Cartier claimed all indigenous territories in 1534 by planting a cross into the ground in modern-day Gaspé, the King considered all the lands to be his. French authorities began making plans to colonize what they considered to be “New France”.

Interest in the modern-day Place Royale began in 1611, when French colonist Samuel de Champlain visited Montreal Island to create a colonization plan. He selected the site because it was located before the impassible rapids to the west and had a good harbour. It also featured a large meadow which could be strategically fortified in a triangular section which was contained within natural defenses of the river, creek and marshlands.

Champlain named the spot the Place Royale and settled there from May 28 to June 13, 1611. He ordered some trees be cut down and planted two gardens. He was was pleased when the seeds thrived in the fertile soil. He also had an earthen wall built, intending to see how it would last through the winter. He saw the area as an ideal place for a trading post and future French colony.

The French would not return to the meadow until May 17, 1642, when three colonial ships arrived under the command of Paul de Chomedey, the Sieur de Maisonneuve. Sponsored by “The Notre-Dame Society of Montreal for the Conversion of the Savage Peoples of New France”, de Maisonneuve chose the site for his Ville-Marie colony. His mission was to build a fort and a hospital. Allegedly, God had demanded this to the brainchild of the operation, Jérôme le Royer de la Dauversière.

After claiming the island as their own and holding a Catholic Mass, the colonists began constructing Fort Ville-Marie on the site of today’s Pointe-à-Callière Archaeology Museum. Across the creek, which the colonists named the St. Pierre River, the Hotel-Dieu Hospital would be constructed.

Today’s Place Royale was initially part of the Ville-Marie commune, a strip of land granted to residents for grazing animals.

In 1676, a marketplace was established on the eastern bank of the creek. The French called it the Place d’Armes and began using it for military drills and hosting public markets every Tuesday and Friday from dawn to 11 a.m.

Here colonists could buy and sell foodstuffs and wares of various types.

There were also occasional slave auctions on the site, where French colonists could sell or purchase Black and Indigenous peoples forced into slavery.

Additionally, the marketplace was a centre of communications between colonial authorities and settlers. A royal drummer would draw a crowd by hammering on their drum before making important public announcements and sharing official news. Those in attendance could then spread the information to other colonists.

News might include royal edicts and religious proclamations, colonial developments, information about warfare and the schedule for public humiliation, torture and executions.

In “New France”, crime was seen as a dangerous threat to the existence of the colonial project. Public punishment and live executions were used as a deterrence to warn others to obey the law. Under the French Regime, there were four major types of crime:

Crimes against the State: treason, sedition, smuggling, embezzlement, counterfeiting, and resisting a legal officer.

Crimes against Property: theft, arson, concealment of stolen goods, and desertion of servants – or slaves.

Crimes against the Person: murder, manslaughter, abortion, infanticide, dueling, defamation, poisoning, rape and suicide.

There were also Crimes against the Church, or moral crimes, that were the most serious of all: adultery, bigamy, prostitution, homosexuality, sorcery, and blasphemy.

Anyone accused of any of these crimes was arrested and brought to the jail before a man known as Le Bourreau, the torturer. His job was to obtain confessions.

He produced a device known as Le Brodequin, the Spanish Boot: two planks of wood attached to either side of the lower leg and tied around tightly with rope. He always began with what was known as la question ordinaire, the ordinary question: four questions designed to get the accused to admit to their guilt.

Armed with four thick wedges, he would insert the first between the boards. If the prisoner refused to confess to the alleged crime, he would hammer it in!

Most prisoners confessed after the first or second wedge. Once the boot was removed, marrow often oozed from the crushed bone through the split wounds.

For those who endured all four wedges, they were returned to their prison cell where usually they expired during the night. If they were still alive the next morning, the torturer would ask la question extraordinaire, but instead of using four wedges, he always used eight.

Once a confession was obtained, a punishment was established by the judge. This could include everything from fines, public flogging and branding with a red-hot fleur-de-lis symbol to banishment, being sent to row the King’s galleys and public execution.

The criminal was dressed in a long, white robe known as a chemise. A sign was placed dangling around the neck with the word of the crime. The criminal was then hoisted onto the back of a horse-drawn garbage cart – and was wheeled throughout the city for all to see the condemned.

The first place they would take the criminal was to the front doors of the church. There they had to get down on their broken knees for their amende honorable – to beg forgiveness from the King of France – and God himself.

The criminal was then placed back onto the garbage cart and was wheeled away to face punishment. For those being executed, they were taken to the scene of the crime, or by default, the Place d’Armes (later renamed the Place du Marché).

It was there that criminals were either hanged by the neck until dead, burnt alive at the stake or broken alive on a torture wheel. A torture wheel is a horizontal wheel with a pole going into a scaffold in the ground.

The torturer spun the wheel and then used a large hammer to smash in the limbs, one by one, through the gaps in the wheel. This process was repeated several times per limb, and once the criminal’s bones were smashed apart, they were left to die with their “face turned up to the sky”.

For the most serious crimes of all, they always would always draw and quarter the criminal. They lay the criminal in the center of the square and tied ropes to the arms and legs. These ropes were fed to the four corners of the square where they were attached to horses.

When the torturer gave the signal, the horses began pulling the criminal apart. The torturer would then use his sword to slice open their belly, scattering the intestines across the square for the enjoyment of all the colonists.

On June 19, 1721, during a military drill on the Place d’Armes, soldiers fired a volley into the air to celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi. A misfired bullet hit the Hotel-Dieu Hospital and triggered a devastating fire. The inferno destroyed half of Ville-Marie. The Place d’Armes, hospital and 171 homes were all reduced to ashes.

Shortly thereafter, an ordinance was issued that all new houses were to be built exclusively with stone instead of wood.

The military drills were also relocated to the square north of the parish church, which was baptized the new Place d’Armes. The original square established in 1676 was rebuilt and given the name Place du Marché.

In 1701, the square was instrumental as a major gathering of dozens of First Nations who came to negotiate a peace treaty with the French colonists. Known as The Great Peace of Montreal, the treaty ended hostilities and opened up the market to large-scale fur trading.

In 1760, the city capitulated to the British after being surrounded by thousands of redcoats under the command of General Jeffery Amherst, effectively putting and end to the “New France” colonial project.

In 1786, the British justices of the peace decided that the market would be laid out as a double row of 38 stalls in a U-shape. That same year, the Place du Marché became the first area to be paved after Montreal residents raised funds through a public subscription.

As the British expanded the city and port, it soon became evident that the market square was too small for the increase in commerce.

In 1808, the New Market (Place Jacques-Cartier) was established further to the east. The “Old Market” (Place du Vieux Marché) was reorganized and reduced to a single row of 14 stalls.

In 1836, the government of Lower Canada expropriated the old market square and built the Customs House in the center. The southern part of the square was redesigned with trees, wrought iron fences, and a fountain. The British renamed it “Customs Square” (square de la Douane).

While no longer a marketplace, the square was still busy with merchants paying various tariffs and fees to the British government’s customs officers.

In 1892, the square was renamed yet again for the 250th anniversary of the founding of Montreal. “Customs Square” was rebranded as “Place Royale” (even though the original Place Royale was located across the street where the Archaeology Museum now exists).

In 1940, municipal authorities removed the fountain and moved a tall granite obelisk to Place Royale which commemorates the first French colonists to settle Ville-Marie. Known as The Pioneer’s Obelisk, it was originally unveiled on the Place d’Youville in 1893 after being commissioned for the 250^th anniversary the year earlier.

The obelisk was returned to its original location in 1982 to facilitate a major archaeological dig under the Place Royale and surrounding areas.

The purpose of the dig, which ended in 1991, was to preserve archaeological remains from the original colony and to highlight them underneath Montreal’s new Pointe-à-Callière Archaeology Museum.

As part of the construction of the museum, Place Royale was rebuilt as an “archaeological crypt”. The ground-level of the square was raised by several feet and encased in granite with a series of steps leading to the platform.

This was done to allow tourists below to navigate the ruins below. Small models of the original Place du Marché over the years were installed within the crypt for visitors to enjoy.

The Pointe-à-Callière Archaeology Museum opened in 1992 for the 350^th anniversary of the city, with Place Royale and its crypt included in its complex.

Since then, there has been a lot of criticism about the banal look and feel of the redeveloped Place Royale. For example, in 2010 Jessa Alston-O’Connor wrote “What Lies Beneath: Erasure and Oppression at Place Royale, Montreal”. The author states:

“The museum presents this square as a site of collective history and pride. However, research into the site reveals accounts of torture, public executions, and a history of slavery in Montreal and New France all relating to Place Royale. These events occurred at the square during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but have been erased from the visual and historical narratives of this site.”

O’Connor goes on to argue that the museum “has rendered controversial histories largely invisible,” thus creating a whitewashed narrative for the “tourist gaze.”

Discussed in John Urry’s 1990 book The Tourist Gaze, the idea is that those who design touristic spaces can choose which narratives to focus on and which ones to erase.

This concept applies to the architecture, commemorations, museum displays and performative elements.

For example, the museum hosts the “Pointe-à-Callière’s 18th Century Public Market” every August. Their website claims:

“The Museum brings back to life Montréal’s very first marketplace under the French Regime. One of Pointe-à-Callière’s main events, put on every year in August in the area around the Museum, the Public Market is a magnificent historical re-enactment. There are stalls, musicians, artisans and historical figures reproducing period scenes with stunning authenticity: There’s no doubt you’ll feel like you’ve been instantly transported back to the days of our ancestors.”

However, tourists visiting the 18^th Century market re-creation will never see any signs of slavery, torture, execution or other erased history. Instead, they will be treated to colonial military drills, merchants dressed in period costume and other similar re-enactments. In short, all colonial horrors have been rendered invisible on the Place Royale.

When a contested space has been so compromised by the “tourist gaze”, often the only way people can learn the truth of a site is through its ghost stories. As a place of colonial atrocities, Place Royale has been associated with dozens of ghost stories over the centuries. Many of these tales are related to the execution of innocents, deranged soldiers and tortured slaves.

For example, an episode of Creepy Canada mentions the ghosts of a man named Vallière who was wrongfully imprisoned and tortured. He committed suicide with the chains that bound him to the prison wall.

His spirit has been seen wandering St. Paul Street and the Place Royale on many occasions.

The most common sighting is the spirit of a desolate drummer boy dressed in a French colonial unform. The encounter usually begins with the sound of a rolling drum, which is usually out of rhythm.

Then, the ghost of the drummer boy materializes. He appears to be very upset and has been described as teary-eyed and sometimes weeping. He usually stops playing his drum before falling to his knees in despair. When approached, he always vanishes into thin air.

He is not to be mistaken for the actors dressed in make up and spooky costumes who carry out ghost tours on the site most evenings in the warmer seasons.

While most people have no idea who this ghostly apparition might be, Haunted Montreal has done some deep research and found a probable answer.

Just six years into the colony’s existence, in 1648 Ville-Marie’s military drummer and public announcer was arrested after being accused of “crimes of the worst kind,” namely a homosexual relationship.

This was first recorded mention of homosexuality among Europeans.

According to the Journal of the Jesuit Fathers of September 1648:

“About this time, there was brought from Montreal a drummer, Convictus crimine pessimo (convicted of a crime of the worst kind), whose death our Fathers who were at Montreal opposed, sed occute; he was then sent hither and put in the prison. It was proposed to him, so that he might at least escape the galleys, to accept the office of executioner of Justice; he accepted it, but his trial was first disposed of, and then his sentence was commuted.”

In other words, Jesuit authorities reduced his sentence from execution to being enslaved to rowing on the King’s galleys. He was then offered the role of public executioner to avoid enslavement, which he accepted, probably reluctantly.

While historians debate about the name of the unfortunate drummer boy and his male lover, details are sketchy. The lover may have escaped because he was never arrested. While some historians say the drummer boy’s name has been lost to history, others such as Pierre Hurteau and Patrice Corriveau called him “René Huguet dit Tambour.”

While little is known about him, historians do know that his first execution was of a girl of 15 or 16 who was convicted of theft.

After that, the paper trail runs cold.

It is also known that in 1653, the colony was looking for a new executioner. The fate of the drummer boy is unknown, although there is speculation he may have committed suicide or escaped the colony.

The psychological torture endured by the drummer boy may have very well resulted in his suicide. Due to his forbidden sexuality, he was transformed from a well-respected military drummer and public announcer into a torturer and executioner, the most despised position in the colony.

After having to torture and execute a teenaged girl for an alleged theft, he may have suffered from suicidal thoughts.

Whether he escaped the colony or died by suicide, only one thing is known: his miserable ghost returns to haunt the Place Royale. His ghostly appearance sheds a glimmer of the horrific colonial history that unfolded in an otherwise whitewashed public square.

Company News

We are pleased to announce a new tour as part of our upcoming Hidden Histories series! The Colonial Secrets of Old Montreal Walking Tour is in its final testing phase and free tickets are available this upcoming Friday and Saturday at 1 pm!

These tours will all be under the umbrella of Hidden Montreal, our soon-to-be-born sister company.

We are also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog.

Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can! We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Lastly, we have decided to close our online shop due to low sales and high maintenance costs. It will only be open from October to December in the near future.

Until publication in 2026, new stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story.

As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming Up on September 13: Update on Montreal’s Mysterious River Monsters

In May, 2020, Haunted Montreal published a blog about Montreal’s Mysterious River Monsters. Since then, the waters surrounding the city have witnessed more bizarre sightings and situations involving unknown and dangerous marine creatures. The most notable case occurred in June 2024, when an eight-year-old boy was attacked by something predatory in the enclosed waters of Jean Doré Beach. He sustained several deep gashes in his leg that required stitches. While some scientists think the predator was a muskie (a large fish with sharp teeth), others believe it was it was a river monster who had somehow entered the waters of the enclosed beach in search of its next meal.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #119 – Update on St. Joseph’s Oratory

hauntedmontreal — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 17:19:46 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and nineteenth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now in full swing and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

Lastly, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. More details are below in our Company News section! This month we provide an update on St. Joseph’s Oratory and its disturbing refurbishment.

Haunted Research

Montreal’s iconic St. Joseph’s Oratory has been undergoing a major $150-million renovation since 2018. The goal is to increase accessibility and create a new welcome center, museum and observatory in the gigantic dome.

With a reputation of being haunted, there were concerns that the refurbishment could stir up even more paranormal activity within the Oratory and on its vast grounds.

Ominously, in August of 2019, workers accidentally unearthed four pre-colonial Indigenous skeletons under the Oratory’s parking lot. Work immediately stopped and officials decided that no more excavation would be done in the area to prevent the desecration of more Indigenous graves.

After finding the remains, Oratory officials decided to reach out to the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. Ross Montour, a Ratsénhaienhs or chief with the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, stated to CBC News that the Oratory had done the “right thing” by engaging with his community and respecting its wishes.

In September 2020, a ceremony was held to transport the remains to their final resting place in Kahnawake. Following long-held traditions of keeping deceased ancestors close to the community, the transfer required Rotiskaré:wake, or “the ones that carry the bones on their backs,” in Kanien’kéha (the Mohawk language). The name refers to the ancient Kanienʼkehá꞉ka practice of bundling and bringing along ancestors when a village site moved.

Montour explained that, as part of the ceremony, traditional knowledge keepers went to the site “to pick the remains up, to speak to the ancestors, let them know what is going on and why they are being moved, why they are being disturbed and have the ceremony here to put them back to rest.”

Once the remains arrived in Kahnawake, they were interred in the oldest known cemetery in the Mohawk community. Montour conceded that while it’s ideal not to relocate burial grounds, the council wanted to ensure that the graves wouldn’t be disturbed again.

Unfortunately, as construction continued at the Oratory, three more sets of Indigenous remains were discovered in the spring of 2023. Workers unearthed the bones of two adults and one child while removing an old asphalt road leading up the slopes of the site.

Katsitsahente Cross-Delisle, the archeologist for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, was present as a monitor when the remains were uncovered. She said: “Most of these ancestral remains that were found are over 1,000 years old,” adding that they were found just a few metres away from the first site of the 2019 unearthing.

As reported in the Eastern Door, in April, the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake made a new arrangement with the Oratory to rebury the remains at a discrete location near where they were unearthed.

“We can’t be a catch-all for all the remains that are found – that’s not the way we look at it,” Montour said. “The idea of bringing remains to Kahnawake, or any other Indigenous territory, is a last resort.”

Cross-Delisle said it comes down to a question of respect for those that were unearthed: “When you have a reburial, you want them to be in the same place that they lived and died, because that’s what they’re familiar with and that’s where they lived their life out.”

The ancestral remains will be re-interred without any markings to indicate the presence of the Indigenous burial ground. A plaque commemorating the presence of Kanien’kehá:ka who lived and were buried on the mountain prior to European colonization will be installed on the Oratory’s lookout.

However, despite the best efforts to mitigate the disturbance of the long-deceased Indigenous ancestors, there are still lingering concerns. Some people believe that the Oratory may have cursed itself and become even more haunted than before.

Visit at your own risk!

Company News

We are also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog.

Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, magnets, sweatshirts (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery.

Purchases can be ordered through our online store: shop.hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project!

The book is titled Haunted McGill, and is authored by yours truly, Donovan King! Our publisher is The Stygian Society.

McGill University isn’t just known for its academic prestige – it’s also home to some of Montreal’s most fascinating ghost stories. Our upcoming publication, Haunted McGill, digs into the campus’s eerie legends and real-life hauntings, taking you to key landmarks like the Roddick Gates, and the Arts Building, rumored to house lingering spirits.

We’re crowdfunding through The Stygian Society’s Scriptorium, with the first 25 backers receiving an exclusive 1st edition copy, beautiful art prints, and other spooky treasures. Help us reach our goal by July and secure your piece of Montreal’s haunted history. Don’t miss out – back us today and make history a little spookier!

Until publication, new stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming Up on August 13: Place Royale

Place Royale is an unassuming and overlooked historic square in Old Montreal that hides many dark, colonial secrets. Known as the Place du Marché during the French regime, the marketplace was essentially the town square for well over a century. Hosting markets on Tuesdays and Fridays, it was also known as a site of horrific public torture, punishment and execution. While today the site looks banal and excludes its own history in public commemoration, Place Royale is considered one of the most haunted sites in Old Montreal!

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #116 – The Ghostly Soldiers of Pointe à Quenet

hauntedmontreal — Sun, 13 Apr 2025 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and sixteenth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now running and tickets are on sale!

These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

Lastly, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise.

More details are below in our Company News section!

There is a little-known old ghost story set in Beaurepaire Village, Beaconsfield, called “The Ghostly Soldiers of Pointe à Quenet”. Recorded by famous folklorist E.-Z. Massicotte, the tale involves the oldest house on the peninsula. Connected to the remnants of a colonial fort, people in the home have spotted ghostly soldiers in the cellar and marching about the property in formation. This strange ghost story has been passed from generation to generation in the ancient home known today as Maison Beaurepaire.

Haunted Research

Beaurepaire Village in the West Island suburb of Beaconsfield is a quaint area where locals can do their shopping and enjoy a meal at a local pub. Known for its slower pace of life, the village has a nearly-forgotten ghost story that dates back centuries.

Titled “The Ghostly Soldiers of Point-a-Quenet”, the haunted tale was published in French by Édouard-Zotique Massicotte. The tale appeared in the August, 1927 edition of LE BULLETIN DES Recherches Historiques, VOL. XXXIII, No. 8.

Massicotte, an author and folklorist, collected some 5000 versions of songs and stories from French Canada. He also published many articles and works on the traditions, customs and anecdotal history of Quebec.

“The Ghostly Soldiers of Point-a-Quenet” is set in one of Beaurepaire Village’s oldest homes.

Known variously as Maison de Beaurepaire, Dornal Hall and Maison Amable-Curot, the stately home was originally constructed around 1765 by craftsman Basil Proulx.

Located on the riverfront at 13 Thompson Point Road, Maison de Beaurepaire has fieldstone walls and is topped with a symmetrical, low-pitched roof that includes five dormer windows.

Maison de Beaurepaire is a rare historical and architectural gem in the municipality of Beaconsfield. Indeed, so important is the home that it even boasts a historical plaque on its front lawn.

The point of land where the house is located has a long history that dates back thousands of years. Situated on Tiohtià:ke, the Mohawk name for today’s Montreal Island, the area was likely used by various First Nations for navigation, fishing, trade and shelter from choppy waters and inclement weather.

However, when the French began to colonize Tiohtià:ke in 1642, Sulpician priests “inherited” the entire island in 1663 after it was “ceded” by “The Notre Dame Society of Montreal for the Conversion of the Savage Peoples of New France”. Prior to that, Jacques Cartier had claimed all Indigenous lands for the King of France in July 1534 – by erecting a cross at Gaspé Bay.

However, neither the Mohawk First Nation nor any other Indigenous Peoples in present-day Quebec ever ceded their territories to the French or anyone else. Indeed, they are still demanding their land back to this very day.

These arguments did not stop the Sulpicians from granting the first concession of land at “Pointe de Beaurepaire”, as they called it, in 1678. It was also known as “Pointe Ana8y. Ana8y, (pronounced “Anaouy”) was evidently an Algonquin name for the point that means “river and current”.

The Sulpicians granted the land to a colonist named Jean Quenet who was involved in the fur trade. Quenet wanted to build a fortified trading post on the land, which the Sulpicians demanded to offer protection to the settlers.

However, a war between the French colonizers and the defending Haudenosaunee Confederation thwarted Quenet’s plans.

He had to wait until 1698 to build his fortification when military tensions had lessened before a major peace treaty in 1701.

According to documents provided by the Beaurepaire Historical Society, Jean Guenet built his house ‘pièces sur pièces’ (with logs) which was designed as a fortified trading post. The fort included bevelled loopholes (gunports) in its stone foundations for defense. A map from 1744 shows Fort de la Pointe à Quenet on the site.

Following the British Conquest of 1760, forts from the French regime largely became obsolete and many were left abandoned or demolished.

When Maison de Beaurepaire was constructed around 1765, the foundations of the old fort were evidently incorporated into the new house as a part of its cellar.

Over the decades, the house would exchange hands on many occasions. The second tenant, Amable Curot, bought it in 1769 following Quenet’s death. By the time Massicotte published his ghost story in 1929, the house had been owned by around 15 different families since its original construction.

Indeed, a whole suburban neighbourhood had developed around the house at the time of publication.

The owner in 1929 was lawyer John Augustine Mann, C.R. and the house was known as Dornal Hall.

Massicotte begins “The Ghostly Soldiers of Point-a-Quenet” with the following preface:

“A legend is attached to this location, which was told to us last year by Miss Louise Swindlehurst, then a journalist and now the wife of Mr. Cooper, a member of the editorial staff of The Gazette.”

Masicotte then jumps into the story:

ꙮ ꙮ ꙮ

On a hot and oppressive afternoon, fifteen years ago, the cook of Dornal Hall rested in her “rocking chair,” quietly digesting a hearty meal.

The kitchen, the domain of the servant, is adjacent to the remains of an old fort, which serves as a vault or storage area. A door connects the two rooms. A deep silence reigns in the house when the servant sees the door to the vault open, and a young soldier enters the kitchen. He wears a tricorne hat and has white or powdered hair, with certain details of his uniform indicating that he is an officer.

Without acknowledging the servant, whom he seems to ignore, the newcomer stops a few steps from the vault, and with his left hand resting on the hilt of his sword, he waits.

Through the door that remains slightly open, four soldiers appear, each carrying a rifle over their right shoulder. The terrified cook sees (without hearing any sound) the officer silently giving orders to his subordinates. After this, the five men cross the kitchen, exit through the door that leads to the lawn at the back of the house, and then vanish in the direction of Lake Saint-Louis, whose shore marks the location.

ꙮ ꙮ ꙮ

Massicotte then discusses the speculation about who these ghostly soldiers might be.

Please be aware that Haunted Montreal has quoted Massicotte directly for historical accuracy and that we do not approve of his racist language.

He wrote:

ꙮ ꙮ ꙮ

The story of this vision or dream has been repeated many times. Every owner of the Quenet house has passed it down, and it has sparked many conjectures.

First, people tried to guess the nationality of the soldiers. Some thought they might be soldiers of the Hessian regiment who had sought refuge at Beaurepaire after fighting alongside the English in Washington’s Army.

Others suggested that they were the ghosts of French guardsmen who might have been in the service of Jean Quenet, the beaver inspector who lived at this site.

It is plausible that Jean Quenet did have a guard, for after the massacre at Lachine, it is likely that this official, when building a fortified house, maintained a small garrison to protect the furs of the Company of the Indies that he represented. A post so far from Montreal would have been vulnerable to incursions, both from marauding redskins and from pale-faced thieves.

There were also efforts to determine if any battles had occurred where soldiers might have been killed and buried at this spot, but excavations in the soil and searches through records have been unsuccessful so far.

ꙮ ꙮ ꙮ

When questioned by Haunted Montreal, Pauline Faguy-Girard, current President of the Beaurepaire-Beaconsfield Historical Society, wrote:

“I knew of the ghost story from Barbara, the owner of the old house of 1770, from 1997 until her death in 2023. Barbara was the President of the Société historique Beaurepaire-Beaconsfield for many years…As far as the ghost soldiers, the owner (Barbara) described them as being Fenian soldiers but, as you can read in the text that you mentioned, we are not sure what type of soldiers it was.”

Faguy-Girard also found the following text, “Ghosts of Thompson Point”:

“Mr. Robert Reford (born in 1867) father’s cook was the one who saw the ghosts. Eric Reford, his son, told me the story as related to him. The cook asked Mr. Reford if she could sit with him. He asked her if anything was wrong. She told him that the door opened from the cellar, a man came out, a soldier with sergeant stripe; he ordered 6 or 7 soldiers marched out outside started drilling. Description fitted the British Regiment. When Mr. Reford stood up to watch, they had disappeared.”

When speculating about the origins of these military ghosts, analyzing the history and uniforms of French, British, Hessian and Fenian soldiers is a useful exercise.

French soldiers were included with the settlers that began colonizing Tiohtià:ke in 1642. French soldiers typically wore white or light-colored coats with red or blue facings, along with red breeches and a tricorn hat. There were also different minor variations depending on the regiment and rank.

The British Army marched on Montreal in 1760, which capitulated without a single shot being fired. The new colonizers effectively put an end to the New France era.

British soldiers wore the traditional red coat, a white shirt, grey trousers and a cocked hat. Facings and lace could vary depending on the specific regiment.

Hessian soldiers were German troops hired by the British to fight during the American Revolution.

They typically wore blue coats with lace and colorful trim, and some regiments had yellow cloth, braids, and tassels.

Lastly, the Fenians were Irish rebels who attempted to invade Canada from the United States on several occasions. Their goal was to throw off the yoke of British colonial power in Ireland by taking their North American holdings as a bargaining chip.

Fenian soldiers wore a green jacket, based on the US Army’s shell jacket, with gold edging on the collar and along the edges. The jackets included six brass buttons inscribed with ‘IRA’ (‘Irish Republican Army’) and surrounded by shamrocks. For headgear, they wore a blue cloth cap.

Given that the description of the young ghostly soldier includes a tricorne hat and white, powdered hair, both the Fenians and Hessians can be ruled out. Neither of these forces wore powdered wigs, which were first popularized by King Louis XIV of France.

Known for his extravagant lifestyle and fashion sense, the King wore a powdered wig to combat hair loss and to project an image of power and authority.

Powdered wigs were essentially a symbol of power and aristocracy, and were usually reserved for higher ranking officials in colonial armies.

As for the weapons described, both a sword and rifles, these were common among French and British soldiers.

Perhaps the best clue is that the ghostly soldiers emerged from the remains of Fort de la Pointe à Quenet, which suggests a connection to the New France era.

Also, given that the soldiers were given an order to conduct a drill hints at the desire to display military dominance.

The only time this point of land was under military threat was during the New France Era. From the beginning of the island’s colonization efforts, warriors of the Haudenosaunee Confederation strived to evict the colonists from their traditional territories. There were hundreds of bloody conflicts between these two forces until the Great Peace of Montreal was signed in 1701.

As such, the most likely origin of these ghostly soldiers appears to be French. Of course, it is also possible that the story was fabricated from fertile imaginations hundreds of years ago.

Indeed, Massicotte concludes his story with this:

“It is understandable to question the truthfulness of the legend of the ghost soldiers. It is likely based on a dream, and the elements of the story must have come from conversations about the past of Fort Quenet that the servant overheard. But should we apologize for discussing it? Many legends, even if proven false, do not fade away. When they are charming, they are stronger than history. Moreover, legends are sometimes delicate adornments that embellish the garment of true – or nearly true – history, and there is no reason to abolish them if we are willing to take them for what they are.”

Company News

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now running and tickets are on sale!

These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Purchases can be ordered through our online store: shop.hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project!

The book is titled Haunted McGill, and is authored by yours truly, Donovan King! Our publisher is The Stygian Society.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming Up On May 13: Update on the Haunted Nightclub at 1234 de La Montagne

Montreal’s most infamous haunted nightclub at 1234 de La Montagne has been reborn as a Japanese steakhouse. Rebranded as Yoko Luna, the high-end restaurant is Canada’s largest fine dining supper club set within the 20,000 square foot space. Set in “a dream-like environment”, the establishment boasts a whiskey den, cocktail lounge, dining room and terraces. However, with a dark history as a creepy and ghost-ridden funeral home, one must wonder if and how the old hauntings are affecting the new supper club.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #114 – Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum

hauntedmontreal — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and fourteenth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours will be resuming in early April! Tickets are already on sale!

In the meantime, Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

Lastly, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. More details are below in our Company News section!

This month we look at the deranged history of the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum and its many horrors and ghosts.

Haunted Research

There are few places in Montreal as haunted as the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum. Established in 1873 by the Sisters of Providence, the mental hospital was designed to house “idiots,” “imbeciles,” and epileptics.

With a history of social exclusion, deadly fires and debilitating treatments, the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum has been described as “one of the most evil places on the island”.

Today, the institution is still in operation, rebranded as the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (Montreal University Institute of Mental Health). Not surprisingly, the hospital has many documented ghost stories and hauntings.

Given the large size of the hospital campus and its long and deranged history, this blog will only be able to scratch the surface of its many horrors. Indeed, many blogs could be written about the hauntings at this mental asylum!

The city’s first institution for the mentally ill was The Montreal Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1839 and occupied a whole floor of the infamous Montreal Gaol. However, the cohabitation between mental patients and other criminals was not seen as ideal.

As such, a few years later, the provincial government began to subsidize the cost of private asylums to house mental patients. These included the Beauport Asylum (1845), the Saint-Ferdinand d’Halifax Asylum (1872), the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum in Longue-Pointe (1873), and the Protestant Hospital in Verdun (1890).

Of these institutions, the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum was the most controversial. It was also conceived as the largest mental institution in Canada at the time and was even given the status of a municipality called Gamelin.

At its opening, the asylum was a huge complex. It contained seventy-nine private rooms, twenty-seven rooms, two infirmaries, twenty-three dining rooms, fifty-one bedrooms, one hundred and fifty cells, and one kitchen with two floors and five pantries.

Approximately 400 mental patients were housed there in its early years. With locked doors and bars on the windows, it was nearly impossible to escape.

Due to the stigma and taboos of the era, the vast majority of the patients were “forgotten” by their families and thus rarely or never received visitors. This resulted in a lifetime of social isolation for patients and ultimately their deaths at the hospital.

Furthermore, the bodies of deceased patients usually went unclaimed. The law required the Sisters of Providence to hand over the cadavers within 24 hours to the provincial Inspector of Anatomy. Indeed, the mental hospitals provided the main source of human corpses for dissection at medical schools within Quebec.

Saint-Jean-de-Dieu also suffered from serious overcrowding and struggled to meet the needs of its mental patients. Many were rarely seen by a doctor following incarceration. Just over 30% of patients released from the facility were considered cured, improved, or even stable.

By 1890, Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Hospital had grown to include 1297 patients along with sixty-seven sisters and a hundred nurses in the main building.

Unfortunately, a devastating fire broke out in the institution on May 6, 1890. The inferno raged for most of the day and destroyed the entire hospital.

In all, a total of 86 people burned alive, mostly female inmates.

In its May 18th, 1890 edition, The Dominion Illustrated reported that “the sight that met the eyes of both sane and insane was a terrible one. There were still people in the burning central and adjoining sections of the building. Some of them could be seen as they stood clasping the iron bars of the windows in their hands and rending the air with demoniacal shouts and cries. Laughing, cursing, entreating and praying; singing coarse ribald songs, gazing vacantly at the excited multitude below them; making vain endeavours to wrest the heavy iron bars from the windows: careless and indifferent, eager and hopeful, they furnished a strange and vivid spectacle”.

It would take a full decade to rebuild the institution with an even larger design than the original. This included a train line that connected the hospital to the rail network.

In June, 1898, the hospital acquired a passenger rail car and two cars for merchandise and the system was launched.

The new design also included a system of indoor trolleys that rolled on tracks through large hallways and connected the various pavilions of the hospital.

Unfortunately, another deadly fire broke out on Saturday, November 9, 1935, in one of the wings at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum.

According to the November 11, 1935 issue of Reading Eagle:

“Hospital officials said the cause of the conflagration probably would never be discovered. Firemen expressed the theory a pyromaniac inmate was responsible, but conceded that they faced an almost hopeless task in confirming this theory.”

The column continued:

“Four violently insane inmates were burned to death after the fire broke out late Saturday night when they eluded their guards and crept back to their cells in the blazing building. Another inmate died from heart disease.”

Allegedly, the nuns in that case attempted to avoid an investigation on the basis that the hospital formed a separate municipality. Indeed, Gamelin had its own police and firefighters, even though there were no permanent residents apart from the incarcerated mental patients.

As the years passed, the hospital would continue to experience more problems, many of them extremely deranged, shocking and almost unbelievable. With technological advances, electroshock therapy was invented in Italy in 1938 and quickly spread to other mental institutions.

Saint-Jean-de-Dieu began administering electroshock therapy on its patients, in addition to other questionable techniques such as drilling holes through skulls and lobotomies.

The period from the 1930s to the 1960s witnessed increased psychological experimentation and abuse at mental institutions across the globe. Some of the worst examples occurred in Montreal, such as the CIA-funded brainwashing experiments including MKULTRA at the Allan Memorial Institute.

Other sketchy psychological “experiments” of the era were more based on social issues and Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum was known to house many of the so-called “Duplessis Orphans”.

From 1935 to 1964, thousands of orphaned children were abandoned or entrusted to the State by a parent or other members of their family. These orphans were raised in facilities like nurseries, orphanages or psychiatric hospitals run by Catholic congregations.

They were called “Duplessis Orphans” because the Premier of Quebec at the time, Maurie Duplessis, reclassified the children as “mental patients” and sent them to psychiatric asylums solely to receive a per child subsidy from the Federal Government.

The results were horrific when perfectly healthy children were locked up and treated as though they were mentally deranged.

In the June, 2006 edition of Freedom Magazine an article appeared entitled “The Child Protection Racket”. It highlighted the experience of Joseph Martin, who was 5 1/2 years old in 1938 when his parents placed him in Montreal’s Buisonnet Institute. He was then transferred to Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, where he remained until 1956.

Upon arrival, Martin and other children were stripped of personal belongings, including “jewelry, clothing, pictures of cherished relatives, money and identification”.

Martin recalled that in 1941 he witnessed a 10-year-old boy beaten to death by two guards. In the article, he claimed that many of the guards were criminals and some allegedly sodomized the younger inmates.

Furthermore, Martin also claimed that children were being used for medical experiments and organ harvesting. The article stated:

“For years, according to Martin, three children each week were victims of operations during which vital organs such as hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers were cut out and sold in the United States. A gray-and-black refrigerated vehicle transported the organs.”

Martin said that the mutilated remains were tossed into cardboard boxes and then either burned in a huge trash incinerator or buried in the nearby “Pigsty Cemetery”.

Supposedly, the burial ground got its unofficial name “Pigsty” because the nuns tended to pigs and other farm animals in the area. However, other theories are more harrowing. According to The February 7, 2024 edition of Mohawk Nation News, the cemetery was called the “Pigsty” because “dead native and non-native children were allegedly fed to pigs”.

Over 2000 bodies were buried in the “Pigsty Cemetery” before it was closed in 1958 and then excavated during 1967 to rebury the remains elsewhere.

However, workers did not manage to remove them all and many more bones were found in 1975 during the construction of a SAQ warehouse to store alcoholic beverages. Even more human remains were found on site in 1999 during expansion work on the warehouse’s parking lot.

With all of the twisted scandals, authorities rebranded the hospital on two occasions. In 1975, the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum took the name of Louis-Hippolyte-Lafontaine Hospital. In 2013, it was rebranded as the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal.

In 2019, graduate student Kassandra Spooner-Lockyer presented her thesis entitled “Evanescent Lives: Archival Dissolution in a Montreal Psychiatric Hospital” as part of a Master of Arts degree in Anthropology at Concordia University. It is noteworthy that the author is an expert in Hauntology, or “a range of ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost”.

Spooner-Lockyer’s haunting thesis examines the medical files of women suffering from neurosyphilis at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric hospital at the beginning of the 20th century. She argues that both history and the hospital functioned differently for these women, as their lives, bodies, relations of care, and narratives were left to dissolve into dust.

She also reveals some creepy stories from incarcerated patients. For example, one patient complained to doctors about seeing the dead at her door during the night. Her personal ghost story was labelled as “hallucinations” by medical staff.

Another woman who was admitted in 1920 was asked by doctors if she heard voices. She said: “Yes, since I was last enclosed behind an iron door without a lock, they changed my feet to those of a beast and lengthened my hands”. She was diagnosed with “degenerative insanity” and died two years later, aged 55 years old.

Perhaps the most well-known haunted location at the hospital is the “Tower of Monsters”.

In 2019, the health authority overseeing the hospital, the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, described the haunted tower on their website.

Headlined as “We Call it the Tower of Monsters”, Marieve Paradis wrote:

“It was never named, unlike all the other buildings of the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal. This red brick tower has long stimulated the imagination of the local population. In the 1960s, the grounds of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, an autonomous city that included the hospital, were full of fruit trees. And the children of the neighbourhood loved to exchange chestnuts.”

She continued:

“So, you had to be brave to venture near the Tower of Monsters to go and get chestnuts. When they returned outside the hospital fences, the children would tell what they had seen – shadows of deformed heads and crazy prisoners tied up or locked in cages. They had fertile imaginations!”

In July, 2020, Radio-Canada sent journalist Vincent Maisonneuve to the tower to try and unravel its mysteries. Again, there were many cases of children reporting paranormal activity coming from the tower, such as shadowy figures and disembodied screams. As usual, these ghost sightings were dismissed as wild imaginations by the officials.

Given all of the deranged stories, perhaps it is not surprising that local journalist Kristian Gravenor described the hospital in his Coolopolis Blog as “one of the most evil places on the island”.

However, there is one silver lining that resulted from this dark and deranged story.

On August 15, 1961 Éditions du Jour published the groundbreaking book Les fous crient au secours by Jean-Charles Pagé.

The book, translated into English as “The Insane Cry for Help”, contains the testimony of Pagé, who was admitted against his will to the psychiatric asylum. He described his quest to be released.

Pagé focussed on the deranged treatments and sub-par living conditions in the asylum at the time, which he compared to a prison. He described the poor living conditions, the use of electroshocks, straitjackets, isolation and the use of pharmacopoeia to numb rebellious thoughts and behaviour.

The book caused a public outcry upon its release and a vast media campaign was launched to modernize psychiatric care in Quebec. In response, the government commissioned the Bédard Report, which proposed the declericalization of psychiatric health care and the deinstitutionalization of patients.

The report was a major milestone in the evolution of mental health treatment in Quebec. It resulted in the vast majority of patients being released from psychiatric hospitals into the community, with treatment still available on an outpatient basis by medical professionals.

In conclusion, there is no denying that the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum (and its subsequent rebrandings) suffer from an extremely deranged and oppressive history. With its many ghosts and haunted history, it is no wonder why some people think it is an extremely evil place.

Company News

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours will be resuming in early April! Tickets are already on sale!

Before we launch our season, we are offering the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour (in English) on Saturday, March 15!

Learn about Black ’47, the year 75,000 Irish refugees fleeing the Famine landed on Montreal’s wharves. The tour visits key sites associated with this tragedy, such as the locations of fever sheds, burial grounds and hospitals, providing in-depth history about the Irish Famine’s impact on Montreal in 1847.

Led by Donovan King, the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour also features Augmented Reality to resurrect Saint Ann’s Church, the heart of the Irish Famine community in Griffintown!

In the meantime, Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 7 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Purchases can be ordered through our online store: shop.hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project!

We are also pleased to unveil it this month! The book is titled Haunted McGill, and is authored by yours truly, Donovan King! Our publisher is The Stygian Society.

We also explore unsettling connections, including McGill’s involvement in the development of controversial brainwashing techniques in the ghostly halls of the Allan Memorial Hospital.

With a detailed self-guided tour map, this book allows you to experience McGill’s spooky past from the comfort of your own home – and then head out with friends to uncover the campus’s hidden secrets for yourself.

This is a one-of-a-kind adventure you won’t find anywhere else; an invitation to explore McGill’s dark history and mysterious landmarks like never before.

Whether you’re a history lover, ghost enthusiast, or simply looking for a fun outing, this book offers a perfect mix of the paranormal and the historical.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming Up On March 13: Update on St. John the Evangelist Church

Montreal’s famous Red Roof Church, or St. John the Evangelist, could be permanently shuttered. The church enjoys a prime location in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles and a reputation of being haunted by its founder, Reverend Edmund Wood. The Reverend’s ghost is known to be friendly, leaving warm feelings among those who encounter him. However, due to urgent repair work that the congregation can ill afford, in 2023 officials debated putting the historic church up for sale after relocating Saint Michael’s Mission a year earlier. There are now concerns that if the church is shuttered, the ghost of Edmund Wood might start haunting other locations in the Quartier des Spectacles.

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Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #112 – Sault-au-Récollet

hauntedmontreal — Fri, 13 Dec 2024 08:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twelfth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

Just in time for the holidays, Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce that we have completely revamped and updated our haunted online shop!

Give the gift of a Haunted Montreal t-shirt or mug with our logo, or Headless Mary, or Simon McTavish on his coffin toboggan, or our spooky Haunted Mountain imagery. Maybe you’d like to stay warm in these cold winter months with a Haunted Montreal hoodie, and a tuque with our logo on it. We’ll be adding other products, such as posters, in the days to come.

To enter the shop, please visit shop.hauntedmontreal.com or click on the image below

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

This month we explore the historical neighborhood of Sault-au-Récollet, one of the most haunted areas on Montreal’s northern shores.

Haunted Research

A series of disturbing recent events, such as an attempted animal sacrifice in a cemetery and body dumping in a local nature park has triggered Haunted Montreal to investigate Sault-au-Récollet.

Located on the eastern edge of the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Sault-au-Récollet is one of Montreal’s many haunted neighborhoods. Situated on the Back River (La Rivière des Prairies in French), it is one of the city’s oldest colonial settlements.

Historically, Sault-au-Récollet is the site of one of Montreal’s oldest churches, several creepy cemeteries and a colonial fort used to try to evangelize Indigenous Peoples. Today, the area reeks of paranormal activity and also has twisted legends dating back to the New France era.

The area where Sault-au-Récollet exists today was once a place bustling with Indigenous activity. A portage trail snaked along the shore to bypass the rapids and the land was also used for hunting, fishing, encampments and trade.

For thousands of years before the arrival of European colonists it was a place of significance to the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) First Nation, on whose traditional territory the land exists.

Other Indigenous Peoples also used the area while travelling around the island of Tiohtià:ke or trading in furs and other goods in the vicinity.

Consequently, this important site was visited very early in the colonial period by zealous French explorers and Catholic missionaries. Both Recollet and Jesuit priests had the goal of penetrating deep into the Indigenous territories to try and convert everyone to Catholicism.

In 1615, Recollet priests Denys Jamet and Joseph Le Caron held the first Catholic mass on the island of Tiohtià:ke in modern-day Sault-au-Récollet.

Samuel de Champlain, also known as “The Father of New France” because he established Quebec City in 1608, was present for the ceremony.

This preliminary mass would foreshadow future horrors carried out by the Catholic Church against Indigenous Peoples at the site and well-beyond.

Another notable event occurred at the site on June 25, 1625. After returning from an evangelization mission in Huron territory, Recollet missionary Nicolas Viel and his companion Ahuntsic attempted to shoot the dangerous waterway. However, due to the churning waters on the last set of rapids, their canoe capsized and they both drowned in the river.

Following this incident, officials from the Catholic Church named the area Sault-au-Récollet (Recollet Rapids in English). Distorting all facts, Catholic authorities declared Nicolas Viel to be a martyr who had been deliberately murdered by Huron people opposed to his evangelical mission.

They also claimed that Ahuntsic was a Huron who had converted to Catholicism under Father Viel’s guidance.

This false information would lead to statues, memorials and paintings being created to glorify devotees Father Viel and Ahuntsic – at the expense of Indigenous Peoples.

However, hundreds of years later the lies would be debunked by respected historians and denounced by various organizations. There is speculation that Ahuntsic was actually a Frenchman and the historical evidence demonstrates that their deaths on the river were an accident and not a deliberate attack by Indigenous Peoples.

The fake story also led to a racist legend from the New France era known as La légende du sauvage mouillé (“The Legend of the wet savage” in English).

In a nutshell, the legend tells of an Indigenous sorcerer who, on moonless nights, appears by the river, drenched from head to toe. He sits motionless by a campfire that gives off no warmth or smoke. His clothes are soaked, but the water mysteriously vanishes before dripping on the ground. This eerie figure is said to be the spirit of the sorcerer who murdered Father Viel and Ahuntsic in 1625.

The tale claims that the sorcerer and his henchmen attacked Father Viel and Ahuntsic in their canoe, before dismembering them and throwing their body parts into the rapids. In the process, the sorcerer lost his footing and drowned. As punishment for his heinous crime, the sorcerer’s soul was cursed, doomed to wander the riverbanks, eternally soaked and shivering.

The legend claims that, on certain nights, the “wet savage” can still be seen, his spectral form appearing near the rapids, always shivering in the mist. Supposedly, he remains harmless to those who encounter him.

Some versions of this deranged legend can be found in Les Soirées Canadiennes (1863) and Créatures fantastiques du Québec (2007).

The “murderers” of Father Viel and Ahuntsic are described as Huron sometimes and other times as “Iroquois” (a French term for the Haudenosaunee confederation, which includes the Mohawk First Nation).

In 1696, Sulpician authorities ordered the construction of Fort Lorette on the Sault-au-Récollet site.

The purpose of the structure was to serve as a new residential school to indoctrinate Indigenous Peoples. The older institution, Fort de la Montagne, was seen as being too close to the colony of Ville-Marie. It was located on the slopes of the mountain

The Sulpicians claimed that the move was due to the location’s easy access to alcohol. In reality, there was a lot of resistance to the first fortified school due to its indoctrination efforts against Indigenous Peoples.

Fort Lorette was quadrilateral with stone bastions at the corners. It was approximately 160 x 500 feet in size.

The chapel was located at the east corner and served as a bastion. There was also a residence for the missionaries, a convent, housing for Indigenous Peoples and a building to store gunpowder, munitions and weapons. Approximately 400 people lived on site, mostly Indigenous Peoples being indoctrinated.

In a cruel twist, the trail that led from Ville-Marie to Fort Lorette was named the Chemin des sauvages (“Trail of the Savages” in English”) to denote the transfer of Indigenous Peoples from the Fort de la Montagne.

To make matters worse, a cemetery was created outside the walls of Fort Lorette for all of the Indigenous Peoples who would die while attending the institution.

In 1721, Fort Lorette was discontinued as a residential school when the mission was relocated to present-day Kanesatake.

This was the second time that Indigenous Peoples were displaced by the Sulpician Order in an effort to drive them farther away from the colony of Ville-Marie.

The Sulpicians decided to build a church to the east of Fort Lorette. Called the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the house of worship was the brainchild of a priest named Father Guillaume Chambon. Construction occurred from 1749-51. Monseigneur de Pontbriand, the Bishop of Quebec, consecrated the church in 1752.

The construction of the Church of the Visitation would soon trigger another weird New France legend. Entitled “The White Horse of Sault-au-Récollet”, the tale is one of the great classics of Quebec folklore.

The legend describes a sacrilegious man who refused to go to church and scoffed daily at the Catholic religion. Seeing him blaspheme constantly, his neighbors in Sault-au-Récollet expected that God would punish him with some sort of misfortune. Indeed, one day the man suddenly disappeared, as did his large white horse. It is worth noting that the animal was his most prized possession.

The white horse eventually reappeared in the neighborhood, but it was very wild, violent and fear-inducing. It ripped up fields, knocked over fence-posts and chased terrified residents through the streets and fields.

Some neighbors suspected that the man and his beast had been merged into one body as punishment for his sins.

At the time, the parish priest of Sault-au-Récollet was desperately trying to build a new church. Unbeknownst to anyone, he had a bridle made with a cross-shaped bit and managed to put it on the beast. Suddenly, the horse became as gentle as a sheep. It was possible to harness the animal and make it pull the heavy stones needed to build the church.

The priest had warned the workers not to remove the animal’s bridle and not to give it any water. However, one of them took pity on the thirsty and weakened beast when there was only one stone left to install above the church door. The sympathetic worker removed the bridle to allow it to drink from a nearby creek.

Suddenly, the animal became ferocious again, broke its harness and ran away in terror westwards along the Rivière des Prairies. The white horse ran nearly four leagues before throwing itself into the tumultuous waters. Since then the whirlpools off the coast of Roxboro have been called the White Horse Rapids.

According to the legend, the last stone above the church door was never installed properly and could trigger the collapse of the structure one day.

Today, the legend is marked with a park and even a statue of the horse within a roundabout at the northern end of Sources Boulevard, where the White Horse Rapid are located.

Furthermore, after the British Conquest of 1760, authorities soon realized that Fort Lorette was of little strategic advantage. As such, in 1812 the fort was demolished.

Concerning the cemeteries in the area, originally there was one Indigenous cemetery at Fort Lorette followed by a Catholic cemetery at the Church of the Visitation.

The Indigenous cemetery was closed after the residential school at Fort Lorette was relocated, whereas the Catholic parish cemetery at the church shut down in 1873 because it was too small to accommodate the increasing population as the area urbanized.

As such, Sault-au-Récollet Cemetery was established in 1873. The new graveyard is located a few blocks south of the Church of the Visitation. The burial ground is bordered by Henri-Bourassa Boulevard, Rue Taché, Avenue Camille-Paquet and the Sentier des Sauvages. The racist walking trail, a remnant of the original path, connects Rue Garnier with Henri-Bourassa Boulevard.

Recently, there has been some disturbing activity in the Sault-au-Récollet Cemetery. In November, 2024, a rooster that had been blinded in his left eye was found wandering among the crypts and tombstones. Rescued by the SPCA, the bird was named Freddy.

Workers also discovered a cage as well as candles and other ritualistic items in the graveyard, prompting speculation that Freddy had survived an attempted animal sacrifice.

A local resident believes that someone tried to sacrifice Freddy in a Voodoo ritual. He cited the fact that he had discovered decapitated rooster carcasses about 20 years ago in the nearby Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park.

Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park has also seen some deranged activity lately. On October 30, 2024, a decomposing body with its hands and feet bound was discovered in the park, near the intersection of Gouin Boulevard East and Lille Street.

Police confirmed that it was the corpse of Kevin Mirshahi, a cryptocurrency influencer who had been abducted from a luxury condo in Old Montreal on June 21, 2024.

Why the criminals chose to dump his body in the Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park is unknown at this time.

Given its long history, Sault-au-Récollet received status as a heritage site by the City of Montreal in 1992. The Quebec government followed suit in 2018 by designating the neighborhood as a Historic Site after archaeological work at the remnants of Fort Lorette in 2017.

Since the historical designation, there has been one notable change to the area. The offensive Chemin des sauvages was renamed in 2020 after consultation with the Mohawk community in Kanesatake.

The racist trail was renamed the Tetewaianón:ni Iakoiánaka’weh Trail, or “Messengers’ Trail” in Kanien’keha (the Mohawk language).

The Tetewaianón:ni Iakoiánaka’weh Trail refers to the ancient pathways traveled by the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation on Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montreal. These trails, used for thousands of years, were carved by Onkwehón:we (First Nations) messengers. They ran these paths and used them for hunting, trading, and communication between towns, villages and more remote sites.

Sault-au-Récollet is without a doubt one of the most haunted neighborhoods on Montreal’s northern shores. While this blog only scratched the surface of the area’s deranged history and ongoing problems, it opens up new avenues of research. Where is the forgotten Indigenous cemetery located on the Fort Lorette Site? What other paranormal activity is associated with the church and local graveyards? How widespread is Voodoo in the neighborhood? Etc. Only time and more research will unveil the full mysteries and horrors underlying Sault-au-Récollet.

Company News

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

You can also bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office party, house, school or event by booking one of our Travelling Ghost Storytellers today.

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

Haunted Montreal is also pleased to announce the publication of the book “Montréal hanté. La mémoire macabre d’une cité victorienne”, written by Pierre-Luc Baril. Directly inspired by the Haunted Montreal Blog, the book tells several ghost stories, including those of Simon McTavish, the mysterious Trafalgar Tower and the murder of Mary Gallagher.

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link.

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have updated our online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, hoodies (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery.

Purchases can be ordered through our online store: shop.hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! New stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will now be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or on Google Reviews – something that really helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours.

Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on January 13^th: Update on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital

In February 2018, Haunted Montreal reported on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital and its many ghosts. Built in 1893 in the Scottish baronial style, the haunted hospital operated for well over a century before finally being shuttered and relocated in 2015. Today, McGill University is attempting to repurpose it. Dubbed the “New Vic”, the project proposes a new campus dedicated to inter-disciplinary work. However, the process has been rocked by a conflict with the Mohawk Mothers, who believe Indigenous children could be buried in the vicinity. There is also the question of what to do about all of the ghosts that remain in the old hospital.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Halloween 2024 in Montreal

hauntedmontreal — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 00:25:09 +0000

We’re entering the spooky season, and Haunted Montreal is offering our full slate of ghost walks, paranormal investigations and pub crawls for your 2024 Halloween in Montreal. They’re available as both public and private events. Plus, we can also come to your office, school, or party with our Travelling Ghost Storyteller experience.

Here is what we are offering this Halloween Season:

Halloween Ghost Walks

Haunted Old Montreal: Step back in time into Montreal’s most historic and most haunted neighbourhood. Guided by a professional actor and storyteller, you will learn the dark history behind some of the city’s most popular tourist spots. Join a Haunted Old Montreal walk for Halloween 2024

Haunted Griffintown: A professional actor and storyteller takes you through mysterious ruins, a polluted canal, former burial grounds and creepy old buildings that are said to be haunted. Also, Griffintown’s most famous ghost, Headless Mary. Join a Haunted Griffintown walk for Halloween 2024

Haunted Mountain: A theatrical guide will regale guests with ghost stories, mysteries and legends about Mount Royal, including haunted hospitals, abandoned castles, cemeteries teeming with undead spirits, and all sorts of paranormal activities on the mountain. Join a Haunted Mountain walk for Halloween 2024

Haunted Downtown: Follow a professional actor and storyteller through Downtown Montreal’s haunted bars, a forgotten graveyard, hotels rife with paranormal activity, and other locations where ghosts have been spotted! Join a Haunted Downtown walk for Halloween 2024

Halloween Paranormal Investigations

Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery: Learn strategies and techniques to locate and communicate with spirits while walking on top of Downtown Montreal’s largest forgotten cemetery, with approximately 70,000 buried beneath! Hosted by paranormal expert Dominique Desormeaux. Investigate the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery for Halloween 2024

Colonial Old Montreal: Hosted by professional Ghost-hunter Dominique Desormeaux, our newest haunted experience takes guests on a dark adventure into the mysterious world of ghost hunting in Canada’s most haunted neighbourhood. Investigate Colonial Old Montreal for Halloween 2024

Halloween Haunted Pub Crawls

Led by a professional ghost storyteller, the Haunted Montreal Pub Crawl visits three haunted pubs. Guests will not only learn about many of the haunted drinking establishments in the city, but will also hear Montreal’s most infamous ghost stories. Raise a glass at the Haunted Pub Crawl for Halloween 2024

Private Tours

Haunted Montreal offers private tours for all of our ghost walks and other experiences based on the availability of our actors. These are ideal for tour groups, corporate groups, school groups, bachelorette parties, and gatherings of all types. Book a Private Tour for Halloween 2024

Travelling Ghost Storyteller

A professional actor and storyteller brings some of the most popular Montreal ghost stories from our tours to your office Halloween party, school event, house party, or other event. Book a Travelling Ghost Storyteller for your Halloween 2024 event

Any questions? Please contact tours@hauntedmontreal.com

See you this Halloween!