Haunted Griffintown – Haunted Montreal

Haunted Montreal Blog #127 – Update on The Phantom Calèche

hauntedmontreal — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-seventh 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!

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. Plus there is a second English Pub Crawl this Sunday at 4pm.

Our regular outdoor public tours are on pause until next month, but the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour returns on March 21st in the afternoon. Plus our second indoor Paranormal Investigation Montreal Art Center and Museum is March 21st in the evening.

More on this in our Company News section below.

This month, we revisit the story of The Phantom Calèche in Old Montreal, a part of town that no longer has actual calèches roaming its streets.

Haunted Research

In September, 2018, Haunted Montreal first reported on The Phantom Calèche, one of the city’s most dangerous and sinister hauntings. Described as a horse-drawn carriage that took unsuspecting visitors to the netherworld, it was able to blend into the urban fabric because calèche rides were a major part of the tourism industry in Old Montreal.

However, former Mayor Valerie Plante banished all horses in the City of Montreal in 2020. While some say animal rights activists prompted this decision, others believe it was to try and get rid of the phantom carriage once and for all.

The plan seems to have worked – there were no sightings or reports of The Phantom Calèche for almost five years. Indeed, almost all of Griffintown’s stables were torn down and replaced with condominium towers.

The only remnant of this centuries-old tradition is a small plot of land on Ottawa Street, the site of the former Griffintown Horse Palace.

Built in 1862 by an Irish carter named Martin Kiely, the Horse Palace originally consisted of a central courtyard surrounded by buildings. These included a brick house with an attached stable. There was also an inn for travellers along with a few wooden barns and sheds.

For well over a century, the Griffintown Horse Palace served as a stable mostly for draft horses. These strong beasts pulled loaded carts in the port, train depots and factories along the Lachine Canal. The horses were also used in agriculture, construction, and to transport milk and ice into the city.

Later, as gas-powered trucks replaced horses for industrial work, the animals at the Horse Palace shifted their work to carriage rides in Old Montreal.

In April 2012, the City of Montreal acquired part of the original Horse Palace site with the goal of creating a park with the stables preserved for tourists.

However, by 2017 the Horse Palace stable was deemed to be too dilapidated and was demolished.

The city finally established the Parc de l’Écurie-Horse Palace on the site in March 2023. Despite having no more stable or horses, the small greenspace is meant to commemorate the neighborhood’s working-class history.

Everything seemed to be going according to plan until late one night in November 2025, when the sinister Phantom Calèche briefly reappeared. A tourist staying in a hotel adjacent to the Parc de l’Écurie-Horse Palace was awoken to the sound of horses snorting, neighing and clomping their hooves outside.

She pulled back the curtains and looked out of the window only to see what appeared to be an old carriage with two draft horses hitched to it. Peering into the darkness, she noticed a tall man wearing a black coat in the front seat of the calèche, holding the reigns.

With the crack of the reigns, the horses reared up. The mysterious man turned and looked the tourist straight in the eye. He then beckoned her to approach with his finger, sending shivers up her spine. Terrified, she quickly closed the curtains. After a few seconds, she parted them ever so slightly so she could peek out to see what was happening.

The calèche was no longer there. It was as though it had vanished into thin air along with the horses and coachman.

The tourist, who had attended our Haunted Griffintown Ghost Tour, reached out to Haunted Montreal to explain her creepy experience. When informed that she had likely encountered the infamous Phantom Calèche, she was relieved that she had stayed within the safety of her hotel room.

In conclusion, while former mayor Valerie Plante may have succeeded in getting rid of all living horses in the City of Montreal, it seems she was unable to abolish the undead horses pulling the Phantom Calèche.

Company News

With St-Patrick’s Day coming up on Tuesday, March 17th, we are offering related events leading up to the parade next Sunday.

On Saturday, March 21 at 2pm, The Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour returns (in English). Join Donovan King and explore the sites connected to the thousands of Irish refugees who fled brutality and famine in 1847, arriving in Montreal on what became known as coffin ships.

There is no Haunted Pub Crawl on parade day, but we’re running two English Haunted Pub Crawls this coming Sunday, March 15. The regular 3pm tour is almost sold out, so we’ve added a second Crawl at 4pm. Following the parade, the Haunted Pub Crawl returns every Sunday at 3 pm in English throughout the winter months. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Our bilingual Paranormal Investigations at the Montreal Art Center and Museum, the former Caledonian Iron Works Factory, sold out in February and is running again March 21 at 6pm. Good for beginners and seasoned investigators alike. Paranormal equipment will be provided, but please feel free to bring your own.

You can purchase your tickets here.

Haunted Montreal Founder and Owner (and the author of this very blog) Donovan King is still a working actor. He played deranged criminal and episode title character Chyldkrüsher on the TVA series ALERTES in French. You can watch his performance here.

King, as well as the host of our Colonial Secrets tour Sophie-Claude Miller were interviewed by City-TV News, talking about the unjust and exclusionary Montreal Municipal Bylaw G-2.

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

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!

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 April 13: Ruins of Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church

Situated on Fullum Street, the crumbling ruins of Saint-Eusèbe-de-Verceil Church are causing a major headache for the Montreal Catholic archdiocese. Church services were halted in 2009 due to a dwindling flock and rumours that the building was haunted. A major fire gutted the church in 2019 and since then it has witnessed vandalism, urban explorers and TikTokers streaming within the ruins. Things have reached a boiling point and the archdiocese wants the cursed church demolished.

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 #126 – Montreal Art Center and Museum

hauntedmontreal — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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

Our outdoor public tours are on pause until the Spring, but we are launching a new indoor Paranormal Investigation in February, March, and April at the Montreal Art Center and Museum, the subject of this very blog.

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.

We are also offering the Travelling Ghost Storyteller experience. Bring our stories to your party or event.

You can still book all of our experiences, except for Haunted Mountain, as private tours. These 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.

More information on this, our schedule, Gift Certificates and other events and projects in the works in our Company News section.

This month, we head to the Montreal Art Center and Museum, housed in the former Caledonian Iron Works Factory. We speak with some of the museum staff to learn of encounters with spirits from the building, and Griffintown’s, industrial past.

Haunted Research

Nestled among the new condo towers in western Griffintown, the Montreal Art Center and Museum stands out like a rare gem. It occupies the former 1879 Caledonian Iron Works factory, a Victorian-era company that produced engine parts for ships and trains, turbines and other complex metalworks.

During the era, there were no safety codes or labour laws. The factory witnessed fatal industrial accidents, major fires and life-altering injuries during its operations. The Caledonian Iron Works was a theatre of both industry and tragedy until it wound down its operations with the changing of the times in the mid-20^th Century.

Today, the Montreal Art Center and Museum is considered as one of the most historical – and haunted – buildings in Griffintown.

In 2010, the heritage structure was acquired by painter Allan Diamond. He wanted a home for the Montreal Art Center, a not-for-profit community arts organization he had founded.

The building was run down and showing its age. The empty structure was dirty and rat infested.

Slowly, with other members, Allan began to clean the place up, renovate it and create the Montreal Art Center.

According to its website:

“The center provides working studios for artists, creating a nurturing environment where creativity flourishes. It is dedicated to fostering an inclusive and supportive art community.”

Since its opening, the arts space has hosted various community events, performing artists, concerts, lectures and movie nights.

In early 2022, the art center officially became a museum. There are now art galleries featuring the Italian Renaissance, French Baroque and New France. The center’s permanent collection of European masterpieces include works on paper by Picasso, Monet and Rembrandt.

Furthermore, member artists’ works are displayed in other galleries and many are on sale.

Museum guests also can see a 140-year-old safe, antique furniture, Douglas fir wooden structural elements, and various other interesting displays.

Artisan and painter Roxanna Kibsey joined the art center in February 2011 and was instrumental in helping Allan Diamond to realize his mission.

She recalls how run down the building was when she first set foot in it. It was dark, grungy and creepy.

One her first day there, her brother visited in the evening and noticed the gloomy atmosphere. He asked her if she had been visited by something yet. When she asked him to clarify, he told her that Griffintown was full of ghosts, including the infamous – and headless – Mary Gallagher.

When Roxanna heard this, she was concerned so asked all of the mean ghosts to leave the building the following day. She added: “Paddy, you can stay.”

“Paddy” was a common nickname for Irish people during the Victorian era and many of them worked at the Caledonian Iron Works.

Roxanna believed Irish ghosts were not malevolent, which is why she said “Paddy” could stay. Ever since, those witnessing paranormal activity in the Montreal Art Center and Museum usually put the blame on “Paddy.”

The most common occurrence is the manifestation of shadowy figures lurking in the building. Once, while Allan was showing a woman around the art center, she jumped when she noticed a shadow moving out of the corner of her eye.

In another case, a woman claimed that something had just walked in when nobody else saw it. On another occasion, a man applying to work as a cleaner claimed that there were spirits in the building.

There was also an incident when something lightly pushed Roxanna as she was descending a flight of stairs. A volunteer named Brenda said: “You look like you’ve just been pushed!” Roxanna replied that it was “Paddy.”

Just a few years later, in 2014, the City of Montreal ordered the art center to decommission or repair its ancient freight elevator. With an estimated cost of over $200,000 to restore it, administrators decided to remove it instead, keeping only the old mechanism for historical value.

When they took off some old wooden planks, they discovered something surprising written on an old wall. The name “Pat” was clearly written along with a family name that might be Leary, Leahy or something similarly Irish. The writing included a date: Feb. 2/27.

While some staff members feel that this is uncanny proof that the ghost of “Paddy” is real, research into the name and circumstances of its writing is inconclusive.

Incidentally, the Montreal Art Center and Museum is currently fundraising for a new elevator to better service its mobility-reduced visitors.

Another important note is that the venue is well-known for hosting Halloween parties and events.

The most recent Halloween party in 2025 was billed as the “Witches Night Out: A Haunted Evening of Art, Music & Magic.”

The advertisement stated: “Step into the spellbinding atmosphere of the Spooky Halloween at the Museum 2025—an unforgettable night where history, art, and enchantment collide. Set inside a 140-year-old Griffintown landmark—home to the legendary ghost of Mary Gallagher—this celebration transforms the museum into a playground for witches, vampires, and mystical beings of every kind.”

Roxanna recalled one of the first Halloween parties in 2012 or 2013. A transformer on a pole outside exploded into flames, plunging the art center into darkness right as the party was about to begin.

Staff began placing candles throughout the building and the atmosphere was soon just perfect for Halloween night! It was widely described as one of the best parties the center has ever hosted.

Returning to the headless ghost of Mary Gallagher and the art center’s connection to her, it is interesting to note that beyond the Halloween advertising, Allan has also been inspired by her spirit.

On many occasions when Allan mentioned Mary Gallagher’s name, the lights started flickering. This uncanny activity inspired him to create a painting of her ghost, which is now on display in the museum.

Another creepy story relates to the New France Gallery. This space features colonial artworks along with several historical waxworks from Montreal’s former Musée Grévin, the first international branch of the famous Paris wax museum.

Located in Montreal’s Eaton Centre, the Musée Grévin opened in April 2013. It contained over 120 waxwork figures arranged in various scenarios.

Themes featured inspiring historical figures, stars from the world of entertainment and colonists from New France.

The life-like waxworks included Albert Einstein, Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Houdini, Lady Gaga, Mahatma Gandhi and many others.

Controversial colonial figures such as Jacques Cartier, the Sieur de Maisonneuve and Queen Elizabeth II were also present.

Unfortunately, the Musée Grévin officially closed on September 16, 2021. Some say it was due to economic hardships caused by the pandemic. Others blamed its haunted reputation, which was seen to deter customers.

Indeed, since its opening, there had been many reports of tourists feeling uncomfortable within the attraction. Some clients felt like they were being followed or stalked. Others complained that the eyes of certain waxworks were glaring at them.

There was even an incident in 2018 when a tourist complained about being touched inappropriately by one of the wax figures.

As things got worse, in 2019 The Daily Hive wrote:

“Houdini’s ghost is said to haunt Grevin’s wax museum in the Eaton Centre. Staff members claim to constantly hear chatter and music from the museum’s main ballroom after the doors have been locked up. From wax figurines, don’t use the legacy of the dead to make money or Harry Houdini may make sure of it.”

Sales soon plummeted by over 50%. In 2021, the Musée Grévin had no choice but to shutter its operation and vacate the Eaton Centre. It also needed to liquidate its assets – including the waxworks.

The museum offered some of its 128 wax figures to the real-life celebrities they portrayed. Other statues were sent to the original Musée Grévin in Paris, and the rest were sold or donated to various Quebec institutions.

Allan Diamond was able to acquire some of the colonial waxworks for his New France Gallery, such as Jacques Cartier, Marie de l’Incarnation and Paul de Chomedy, Sieur de Maisonneuve.

However, soon after the waxworks were installed, paranormal activity in the New France Gallery started to manifest.

Harper Tallon, responsible for artist studio rentals, is also in charge of the New France Gallery. Part of Harper’s job is to lock the room’s gate at night to deter any potential burglaries. As a meticulous person, she always checks to make sure everything in the New France Gallery is perfect, ensuring morning visitors get the best experience possible.

However, when she arrived one morning and unlocked the gate, Harper noticed that something was amiss.

More specifically, certain things on the Marie de l’Incarnation waxwork were out of place. The nun’s habit had been re-arranged during the night. The veil was now covering her face, whereas the day before it had been pulled back. The rosary beads in her hands had moved in their position and her Bible, which had been closed, was now open.

Harper was too scared to touch the waxwork. Eventually another employee corrected the arrangement to uncover her face.

In another incident, an antique cup that was on display was discovered flung to the other side of the gallery one morning.

Furthermore, the eyes of the de Maisonneuve waxwork tend to unnerve some people. Visitors have reported feelings of being stared at by the waxwork and of having his piercing eyes follow them around the gallery.

The gallery’s security camera turns on when it detects movement. On many occasions during the night, it has turned on when nobody is present. The camera always indicates that there is movement at the de Maisonneuve waxwork.

On one particularly troubling night, the gallery’s burglar alarm went of at around 4 a.m. Roxanne, who lived only a few streets away at the time, was jolted awake by the alarm.

She rushed out to see what was going on. When she arrived at the Montreal Art Center, the police were already on the scene. The sergeant told her she could not enter the building because officers were doing a sweep.

A few minutes later, the officers had cleared the building and one of them appeared to be trembling. He was as white as a ghost and his colleagues were laughing at him. When Roxanna inquired what was going on, a sergeant chuckled and told her that a rookie cop had almost shot the waxwork of the Sieur de Maisonneuve because he was armed.

With all this seemingly paranormal activity, the New France Gallery appears to be one of the most haunted areas in the Montreal Art Center and Museum.

There are many other stories, such as the time a medium named Fernanda said she usually saw spirits in the museum but insisted they were all nice.

Given all the ghost stories and paranormal activity, Haunted Montreal dug into the historical archives to see what might be causing these disturbances.

Originally constructed by Scottish entrepreneur John McDougall, the Caledonian Iron Works was a thriving foundry that employed over 300 workers.

They produced components for ships and trains, as well as turbines, pumps, engines and other large and complex metalworks. The company played a vital role in the industrial development of Montreal during the late 19th century.

The archives revealed all sorts of fires, deadly industrial accidents and horrendous injuries that occurred while the Caledonian Iron Works was in operation.

For example, on April 5, 1895, La Presse reported that a man named John Marshall was taking legal action against the foundry.

He demanded $15,000 due to negligence that left him with a severe head injury, including permanent blindness, after an industrial accident at the Caledonian Iron Works.

On March 1, 1902, the same newspaper reported that a worker named John Enger was electrocuted while working there. He was pronounced dead upon arrival at the Montreal General Hospital.

On October 29 of the same year, Le Soleil reported that a mechanical engineer named Meredith Percy had perished after an industrial accident at the iron works. The following day, the The Daily Witness provided more details:

“The evidence showed that Mr. Percy was superintending some extra work in the Caledonian Iron Works, when the electric lights went out. They were run by a dynamo, which was temporarily installed for the occasion, and had been working badly. Mr. Percy took a workman’s torch, and went to examine the dynamo, and seems to have stepped back a little too far, and been caught in a belt, which injured him fatally.”

On July 16, 1904, according to Le Cultivateur two brothers were severely injured when a brick wall collapsed on them at the foundry. Their names were Pierre and Louis Blain.

There were many other industrial accidents at the Caledonian Iron Works, in addition to two major fires.

The first blaze occurred on August 6, 1909, starting in the stables at around 1:30 p.m. According to La Presse, the fire completely destroyed the stables, killing one horse and severely injuring another. The poor creature, which had almost burned alive, had to be put down because it was in agony.

Two adjacent houses also suffered $4000 in damages from the fire.

Just three years later, on April 9, 1912, the Caledonian Iron Works suffered a much larger fire that caused $15,000 in damages to the business. Le Canada suggested that the foundry was largely destroyed by the blaze.

The Montreal Gazette reported that the two-alarm fire had started in the moulding shop at around 9 p.m. and quickly spread. A firefighter named Lieutenant Guthrie was injured by falling shards of glass, which cut his hand. He was treated on scene by one Dr. Morrisson and sent home to recover.

As the years passed, so did the ownership of the Caledonian Iron Works. During the 1920s, the company consolidated and eventually became part of larger industrial conglomerates like Canada Iron Foundries Ltd.

Eventually, with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, almost all the factories along the Lachine Canal and in Griffintown began to shutter their operations.

By the 1980s, the foundry was largely derelict, used primarily for storing the company’s massive collection of wooden casting molds.

Returning to the paranormal activity in the Montreal Art Center and Museum, one thing that stands out is the connection between electricity and ghostly activity. When the lights flicker at the mention of Mary Gallagher or when the power fails due to exploding transformers, one wonders if there is any connection to the 1902 electrocution death of John Enger.

Whatever the case, because the Montreal Art Center and Museum has so much creepy and unexplained activity, Haunted Montreal has partnered with the establishment to launch a new paranormal investigation!

For three nights only, paranormal expert Dominique Desormeaux will host the bilingual activity:

Saturday, February 28 @ 6:00 pm
Saturday, March 21 @ 6:00 pm
Saturday, April 18 @ 6:00 pm

Brave guests will use paranormal tools to communicate with the spirits that haunt the former Caledonian Iron Works. Tickets can be purchased here.

In conclusion, entering the Montreal Art Center and Museum is like stepping into the past. Steeped in mystery and haunted activity, this rare gem in Griffintown is a must-visit site for paranormal enthusiasts, art lovers and history buffs. Just make sure to stay alert in case you meet something unexpected!

Company News

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

Our public outdoor tours resume in the spring, and tickets for all of our 2026 dates are now on sale.

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 $235 for small groups of up to 8 people. Email info@hauntedmontreal.com to book a private tour!

As mentioned above, we are offering three bilingual Paranormal Investigations at the Montreal Art Center and Museum, the former Caledonian Iron Works Factory. Good for beginners and seasoned investigators alike. Paranormal equipment will be provided, but please feel free to bring your own.

You can purchase your tickets here.

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.

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

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!

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 March 13: Update on The Phantom Calèche

The sounds of horses trotting in Old Montreal and Griffintown have mostly vanished since former Mayor Valerie Plante banished the animals in 2020. After receiving complaints from animal rights activists, she outlawed horse-drawn carriage rides, which had been a part of the city’s history for centuries. It wasn’t long before Griffintown’s stables were torn down and replaced with condominium towers. However, the Griffintown Horse Palace was converted into a small park to commemorate the past. Recently, the sinister Phantom Calèche has been spotted in the enclosure late at night by an upset condo owner.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #125 – Update on the Dow Brewery

hauntedmontreal — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 08:00:00 +0000

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

Our outdoor public tours are on pause until the Spring, but 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.

We are also offering the Travelling Ghost Storyteller experience. Bring our stories to your party or event.

More information on this, our schedule, Gift Certificates and other events and projects in the works in our Company News section.

This month, we revisit the old Dow Brewery in Griffintown. There are now development plans for the abandoned, and purportedly haunted, sections.

Haunted Research

The abandoned Dow Brewery is in the process of being repurposed into a new campus pavilion by the École Technologie Superieure. To be named the Dow Complex, the project is epic and fraught with concerns due to the haunted history of the site.

In October 2023, Haunted Montreal blogged about the haunted brewery, describing the disturbing ghost of a little girl crying who had been discovered by paranormal investigators. We also looked at rumours that that mafia had used the abandoned site to dispose of unwanted corpses by burying or otherwise concealing them.

Many of the buildings are in a state of ruin and are contaminated with asbestos. As such, Amiante National Asbestos has been hired to remove the toxic contaminants and mold before stripping away all interior industrial elements.

Once the contamination and interior machinery are removed, the plan is to demolish several buildings of the old brewery. Architectural designs suggest some buildings will be preserved and repurposed whereas others will be destroyed to make way for the new campus.

Because there have been breweries onsite since the early 1800s, many of the existing buildings have historical value – and ghost stories.

Indeed, the building marked GH on the map is the oldest building in the complex and dates from 1860. Slated for demolition, it was originally a cold storage facility used in the brewing process.

Located at 400 Montfort Street on the corner of Saint-Paul Street, the stone building is currently clad in metal fencing to prevent it from shedding materials onto the street below.

Demolition plans would see it replaced with a modern structure to serve the students and professors at the École Technologie Superieure.

Designed in a banal style, the new building is much taller, boxy in design and features various rectangular windows in a pattern.

However, heritage organizations such as the Conseil du patrimoine de Montréal and the Office de consultation publique de Montréal would prefer that the 1860 cold storage facility be preserved. They believe it would be better for the structure to be repurposed into the new complex because of its historical value.

Furthermore, Haunted Montreal has learned about a ghostly legend associated with the former cold storage building that is slated for demolition. It is visible in a 1909 map as a blue building in the lower right portion of the complex.

The legend involves the ghost of a Scottish assistant brewmaster who worked there during the Victorian era. The bizarre tale was known to many workers at the Dow Brewery, which ceased operation in 1998.

According to one retired employee, who is now in his eighties, employees called the ghostly assistant “Archibald”.

When alive, he was said to spend a lot of time at the Dow Brewery, especially in the cold storage building where he could check on the fermenting beer. To keep the temperature low enough to ferment and age the beer, ice blocks were cut from the St. Lawrence River and stored in boxes filled with sawdust to slow down the melting.

Thick masonry walls also helped keep the cold storage cool.

Archibald was also known to play the bagpipes and may have been a member of The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada. According to the legend, beer and bagpipes were the two things Archibald loved the most.

It wasn’t uncommon for him to combine his passions by playing his bagpipes while overseeing the fermentation of the beer in the cold storage area. Apparently, he believed the droning of the bagpipes would improve the flavour and quality of the beer.

In addition to brewing beer, Archibald also liked to drink it – often in copious amounts. As such, the Dow Brewery was the ideal workplace for him, and he was often drunk on the job.

Unfortunately, according to the legend, early one morning before sunrise the night watchman made a horrifying discovery while doing his rounds. Inside the cold storage area he discovered Archibald’s bagpipes lying on the ground next to one of the union casks. Union casks were large wooden vessels, typically made of oak, that held beer during cold conditioning. These were shallow, wide tuns to expose more surface area to the cold.

When the watchman leaned over to look in the cask, he was shocked to see Archibald’s lifeless body floating face down in the fermenting beer.

Since that terrible day, brewery workers sometimes reported hearing the faint drone of the bagpipes in the cold storage. On other occasions, a ghostly man, dripping from head to toe was seen wandering the area, always leaving a wet trail of beer in his wake which remained after he had disappeared into thin air.

Such is the legacy of the haunted cold room at the old Dow Brewery.

In conclusion, as the École Technologie Superieure moves forward with its plans to gut the old brewery to create a new campus, there are fears that human remains could be found and nearly-forgotten ghosts might be stirred up during the work. It does not bode well for the school’s complex.

Company News

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

Our public outdoor tours resume in the spring, and tickets for all of our May 2026 dates are now on sale. We will also be launching an indoor Paranormal Investigation (details next month).

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 $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.

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

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!

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 February 13: Montreal Art Center and Museum

Located in Griffintown, the Montreal Art Center and Museum is in the former 1879 Caledonian Iron Works factory. The company produced parts for ship engines and trains during an era when there were no safety codes or labour laws. In 2010, the structure was acquired by The Montreal Art Centre, a not-for-profit community arts hub. However, the owners soon realized that their new home was rife with paranormal activity, including a ghost named Paddy. Today, as the center carries out its vision, artists and visitors never know what strange things they might encounter in the old factory.

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):

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!

Haunted Montreal Blog #109 – Update on the Mary Gallagher Story

hauntedmontreal — Fri, 13 Sep 2024 07:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the one hundred and ninth 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!

With the Halloween Season upon us, Haunted Montreal is running a roster of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

We also offer paranormal investigations! In addition to our investigation of the old Sainte-Antoine Cholera Cemetery, Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

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 $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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 Montreal’s most haunted street corner – William and Murray Streets in Griffintown! With a radical revamp of the neighborhood unfolding, Haunted Montreal demanded that the haunted corner be preserved and commemorated.

Haunted Research

ETS planned a new school building called Pavilion F for the site, including nearly 30 classrooms, open learning areas, study rooms, offices for research centers and other amenities. At six-stories tall, the postmodern building was designed with a total surface area of over 13,000 m² and space to accommodate 2,375 students, professors and other staff members.

During the planning stages for Pavilion F in 2019, Haunted Montreal sent representatives to plead with the ETS to preserve and commemorate the infamous corner.

For well over a century, Irish storytellers have been using the spot to recount the deranged tale of Mary Gallagher’s headless ghost.

Happily, the ETS complied with Haunted Montreal’s request and ensured that Pavilion F preserves the corner intact. This is great news for the Irish-Montreal community and those hoping to spot Headless Mary when she returns next on June 27, 2026.

However, there is still no word about a fitting commemoration on the corner. Haunted Montreal had proposed a statue of Mary Gallagher’s ghost to mark the site. While ETS is mum on the subject, the local Irish community is encouraged by a mural on another school building called Pavilion A.

Entitled Lignes du temps, this mural traces the history of Griffintown, evoking stories of the First Nations, the historical presence of the Irish community and other heritage in the neighborhood.

One of the images is the home where Mary Gallagher was murdered on the corner of William and Murray Streets, an encouraging sign that a fitting commemoration might actually be installed at the Pavilion F site.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest haunted experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

Hosted by professional Ghost-hunter Dominique Desormeaux of Investigations 13, Haunted Montreal’s “Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal” takes guests on a dark adventure into the mysterious world of ghost hunting!

With the Halloween Season upon us, Haunted Montreal is running a roster of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

In the meantime, our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered 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!

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 $215 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. 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

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.

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, 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^th: McGill Arts Building

Constructed in 1843, McGill University’s Arts Building is the oldest structure standing on campus. It is also reputed to be haunted. This may be due to its deranged history as the first edifice where medical students performed experimental autopsies on unfortunate corpses, many of them stolen from local cemeteries. Today, phantom footsteps echo throughout the old building and some students have reported spotting what could be the ghost of an old Anatomy professor.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #108 – Montreal’s Forgotten Irish Famine Cemetery

hauntedmontreal — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 07:00:00 +0000

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

With the summer here, Haunted Montreal is running a whole season of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered 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!

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 explore Montreal’s Forgotten Irish Famine Cemetery at the Wellington Basin on the Lachine Canal. With plans to build a new neighbourhood on the hallowed ground, there are fears that new ghosts and paranormal activity may emerge in this already haunted area.

Haunted Research

Plans are afoot to build a whole new neighbourhood in the Bridge-Bonaventure sector of Point Saint Charles, just south of the Lachine Canal at Griffintown. Once the cradle of Canadian industrialization, the area has long since fallen into dilapidation and is now considered ripe for redevelopment.

Glossy designs depict new high-rise condominiums, trendy spaces for commerce and arts – and even an “urban beach” in the old Wellington Basin!

However, this utopian vision is partially located on the site that hosted Montreal’s first Irish Famine Cemetery in 1847.

Known as “Black ‘47”, the year of 1847 was perhaps the most tragic in Montreal’s history. It was the year when 75,000 Irish Famine refugees landed in Montreal, a city with a population of 50,000 at the time.

Many of them were suffering from starvation, typhus and other diseases. Thousands perished on Montreal’s shores and were usually buried in mass graves. Many of these crisis cemeteries have been largely forgotten.

To learn the horrific details of this episode, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #35 – The Black Rock.

Today, the Black Rock is the only Irish Famine Cemetery currently marked on the island of Montreal.

However, new research is unveiling several other forgotten Famine cemeteries, including one at the Wellington Basin site.

Local historian Sylvain Gaudet has recently unearthed documentation verifying that well over one thousand Irish Famine Dead are still buried in mass graves in the Wellington Basin vicinity.

Further desecration will almost certainly result in more ghosts in the already haunted area.

In April 2024, Canada Lands announced big plans to redevelop the Wellington Basin and surrounding area. The federal Crown corporation wants to create a mixed-use neighbourhood by building 2,800 housing units, an artisan district and even a public beach in the old basin.

Canada Lands acquired the canal-side real estate from Transport Canada in 2010. Over the past couple of years, it has been holding public consultations that ultimately resulted in their master plan.

The Lachine Canal was built in three distinct phases, each one designed to enlarge the waterway for increasing ship sizes.

The third phase, built from 1874 to 1885, saw the deepening and enlargement of canal, including the Peel Basin, and the construction of the Wellington Basin. This project resulted in the largest industrial area in all of Canada until 1959.

Historically, the Peel and Wellington Basins have played a major role in the industrial development of Montreal and Canada.

Because of its depth and size, the Peel Basin was a “reversal” basin and was the only section of the Lachine Canal that allowed ocean vessels to move through. It was nicknamed the “terminus of Montreal.”

The original Wellington Basin was roughly 13.6 hectares in size. As the largest basin in the Lachine Canal, it mostly serviced the transshipment of coal.

Overall, this maritime hub was a staging area for ocean vessels and smaller ships destined for the Canadian interior. Busy railroad tracks also bordered the area to facilitate inter-modal transportation.

However, hundreds of bodies were exhumed during the construction of the Wellington Basin, which cut into the footprint of Montreal’s first Irish Famine cemetery.

Local historian Sylvain Gaudet has been hard at work researching the Wellington Basin site and its environs. For example, he located the La Minerve edition of July 22, 1847, which estimated the number of Irish Dead who had been buried to date as the Famine crisis raged on:

“It is calculated that there are now around 1500 to 2000 corpses buried around the sheds, a foot or two deep.”

Juxtaposing the burials in 1847 with the excavation of remains in 1876, it becomes apparent that over a thousand bodies remain buried on the Wellington Basin site.

Indeed, when workers excavated the Wellington Basin in the1870s, only 200-300 coffins were exhumed according to newspaper reports from 1876 and 1877.

Articles describe how workers and politicians dealt with exhumation of all of the bodies. The Daily Witness on August 3, 1876 wrote:

“Discovery of Human Remains. Three coffins containing human bones have been dug up by the men working at the new basin, near Wellington Bridge. It is thought those are the bodies of emigrants who died of the ship fever in 1847-48. The workmen were not a little horrified to disinter the remains of men so unexpectedly.”

An article called “Disinterring Human Remains” appeared in The Daily Witness on August 7, 1876:

“The spoon dredger employed at the canal basin occasionally brings to the surface human remains, being some of those of the unfortunate immigrants, four or five thousand in number, who died of ship fever in 1847 and 1848. It is said that these remains are sometimes kept in the vicinity of the works for some length of time before being taken away, and it is a matter many more will be exhumed before the work is concluded. It has been suggested that a trench be dug nearby and the coffins be placed in it, and covered up with disinfectants as soon as discovered.”

Spoon dredgers were a type of vessel used to maintain canals and ports. By removing the accumulated sediment from the bottom of waterways, these impressive machines kept the waters navigable.

The Daily Witness of September 7, 1876 went on to describe how the bodies were being disposed of:

“Quantities of Human Remains Discovered, A Fat Graveyard. Lately, as many as 20 coffins have been unearthed in the new Wellington Basin. Barrels have been provided in which to place the skulls and bones, while the coffins are being burned. A large box of the remains have already been interred in the Roman Catholic cemetery. Up to date, about 200 coffins have been removed.”

The Famine Dead being unearthed and desecrated found an ally in Bernard Devlin, the Member of Parliament for Montreal Center and President of the Saint Patrick’s Society at the time.

Bernard Devlin was an Irish-born lawyer, Quebec-based political figure and Canadian parliamentarian. Described as a “champion of many causes” and noted for his “splendid abilities,” Devlin was regarded as “Canada’s most prominent criminal lawyer.” His personal motto was “justice and equality to all classes and creeds, undue favor to none.”

The Daily Witness of September 21, 1876 reported that Bernard Devlin was making plans for the reburial of the Famine victims. In a column titled “THE UNKNOWN DEAD”, the newspaper stated:

“At a meeting of St. Patrick’s Society, Messrs. Devlin, M.P., Me- Grath, Dennis Coughlan, T. Doran, and F. B. McNamee were chosen as a Committee to pick out a lot in the Roman Catholic Cemetery, in which to inter the remains of those disinterred in the Lachine Canal investigation. Yesterday they selected a spot near the Fireman’s lot, and in this all the remains found will in future be placed.”

As a member of the ruling Liberal party, Devlin enjoyed close ties with Alexander MacKenzie, Canada’s second prime minister.

MacKenzie, a Scotsman, had empathy with the Irish as fellow Celtic people. As such, he fully supported Devlin’s initiative and even backed it up with financing. According to the True Witness on Friday September 22 1876:

“MR. DEVLIN, M.P., had an interview on Saturday with the Premier relative to the burial of the remains of the Irish emigrants exhumed recently in the progress of the Lachine Canal enlargement. Hon. Mr. MacKenzie ordered the purchase of a lot in the Catholic Cemetery and will pay all expenses connected with their removal and re-burial.”

The location of the plot for the transferred Famine victims is presently unknown, apart from the fact that it was purchased near the Firemen’s lot.

The plot dedicated to Montreal’s firefighters was acquired in 1867. Trustees of both the Catholic and Protestant cemeteries donated plots of 500 square feet to the Montreal Firefighters’ Benevolent Association for the burial of deceased firefighters. On May 1, 1875, matching monuments designed by Robert Reed were installed in both Catholic and Protestant cemeteries.

Regarding the Famine burial plot, it is estimated that two to three hundred corpses were transferred during construction of the Wellington Basin. The True Witness and Catholic Chronicle of June 20, 1877, made this estimation in an article called “Ship Fever Victims”:

“The coffins of the ship fever victims number some two or three hundred, and lie three tiers deep in a trench in the Wellington Basin. There are those in the neighbourhood who remember the bodies being buried during the ship fever of 1847 and 1848.”

There are many more articles that describe the horrors unearthed by workers during the construction of the Wellington Basin.

Returning to the present day, the area surrounding the Wellington Basin is considered one of the most haunted parts of the Lachine Canal – and Montreal. To learn more, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #51 – Lachine Canal.

Two paranormal phenomena tend to materialize in this area, as covered by hit TV show World’s Scariest Hauntings.

Firstly, the ghost of Mayor John Easton Mills has been spotted wandering the site around the hour of midnight.

Mayor Mills was instrumental in helping the refugees and preventing attacks against them. He contracted typhus himself during his duties and died on November 12, at the young age of 54. An elaborate funeral was held and he was declared “Montreal’s Martyr Mayor” for his heroic efforts.

His ghost is known to roam the site of Montreal’s first fever sheds, at the Wellington Basin, late at night. It is as though he is still caring for his charges in a paranormal afterlife.

Secondly, there are recordings of hundreds of orbs floating about in the air around the old basin.

In World’s Scariest Hauntings, one local resident described going into a trance when the orbs appeared to him. He felt as though the dead buried throughout the site were wailing.

Lastly, the Wellington Basin is connected to Montreal’s most infamous ghost story – the deranged tale of Headless Mary.

Dockworker Michael Flanagan was one of the prime suspects in the murder and decapitation of prostitute Mary Gallagher. She had been brutally butchered in the Griffintown flat of her best friend, Suzy Kennedy, on June 27, 1879.

During the sensational trial, prosecuted by Bernard Devlin himself, Suzy Kennedy was found guilty and sentenced to hang on December 5th of the same year. However, Michael Flanagan walked scot-free because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him. Many of the citizens were shocked that a woman could commit such a violent crime, especially against a member of her own gender. Women in the Victorian era were often seen as delicate and defenseless creatures.

Even though Suzy Kennedy’s sentence was reduced to life in prison, one ironic fact about the story remains. On December 5th, 1879, the day Suzy Kennedy was originally to hang, Michael Flanagan fell through through the ice while working on the Wellington Basin and drowned.

At the time, many Griffintowners speculated that Mary Gallagher’s vengeful spirit had pushed him off the dock and that his drowning was the result of her ghost’s intervention.

Returning to the present, Canada Lands has made good on its promise to consult local stakeholders. Haunted Montreal has helped compile a team including historians, an anthropologist, archaeologists and other stakeholders to locate and document the forgotten cemetery.

The goal is to avoid any more desecration at the Wellington Basin site and to commemorate the remarkable history of the area, especially the Famine Dead still buried there.

To realize the project, there is a lot of work to do. With the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the Lachine Canal was rendered obsolete and was closed to shipping traffic. Over the years, workers filled in most of the Wellington Basin with contaminated earth, reducing its size considerably.

As such, the project will require the removal of thousands of cubic meters of toxic fill from the basin. Decontamination is estimated to cost about $77 million and the project has a 10-year timeline.

In conclusion, the Wellington Basin area is rife with tragic history and also contains what is left of Montreal’s first Irish Famine Cemetery. With over a thousand bodies still buried there, Canada Lands is wise to proceed with the utmost caution.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest haunted experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

With the summer in full swing, Haunted Montreal is running a whole season of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

In the meantime, our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered 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!

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).

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, 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^th: Update on the Mary Gallagher Ghost Story

The École de technologie supérieure (ETS) has been busy buying up real estate in Griffintown to expand its campus. One controversial purchase was the land on the south-east corner of William and Murray Streets – also known as the “Mary Gallagher Corner”. Indeed, her headless ghost returns to this spot every seven years on the anniversary of her death. During the design stage, Haunted Montreal pleaded with the ETS to preserve the infamous corner. It would seem that they complied. The new building going up on the site preserves the corner intact, good news for those hoping to spot Headless Mary when she returns next on June 27, 2026. To learn more, please read Haunted Montreal Blog #46 – The Ghost of Mary Gallagher.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #98 – Dow Brewery

hauntedmontreal — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 07:00:00 +0000

Happy Friday the 13^th and welcome to the ninety-eighth installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

With over 500 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 13th of every month!

With the Hallowe’en Season upon us, Haunted Montreal’s season of public outdoor ghost tours is in full swing! Offered every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and some Wednesdays, we have four ghost tours on rotation (Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and Mount Royal.)

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is also offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

Our Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery happens on the first Friday and Saturday of every month.

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 examine the abandoned Dow Brewery in Griffintown. Popular with urban explorers and paranormal investigators, the creepy, rambling structure is reputed to be haunted.

Haunted Research

Griffintown and alcohol have traditionally gone hand in hand, so it is not surprising that breweries, whether legal or illegal, have always been a part of the neighborhood’s fabric. The Dow Brewery opened in 1861.

The son of a brewmaster, William Dow was born in 1800 in Perthshire, Scotland. Given that his family had been brewing beer since 1652, when he emigrated to Lower Canada around 1818, he had substantial experience in the field.

He landed a job as foreman at Thomas Dunn’s Brewery in La Prairie, near Montreal. In November, 1829 William Dow became a partner in the enterprise. Following Dunn’s death in 1834, the brewery was rebranded as William Dow and Company.

The firm prospered and became the principal competitor in Montreal of Molson’s, the largest brewery in the city at the time. In 1861, William Dow ordered the construction of a massive Brewery in Griffintown. By 1863 Dow’s plant was producing approximately 700,000 gallons of beer compared to Molson’s 142,000 gallons.

William Dow was laughing his way all to the bank.

The following year, William Dow sold his brewery to an associate named Gilbert Scott for £77,877. Already very wealthy, Dow wanted to focus on other ventures such as real estate, banking, insurance and railroads. Under new ownership, the brewery kept the name Dow.

Despite being a bachelor, William Dow lived in the baronial style. His luxurious stone mansion, Strathearn House, was located at the top of Beaver Hall Hill.

Upon his death, on December 7, 1868, the house and the majority of his estate, estimated to be in excess of £300,000, were left to his brother’s widow and her four daughters.

In 1909, owners of Dow Breweries got greedy and amalgamated with another 13 companies in an attempt to monopolize the Quebec’s beer industry. Dow Breweries was purchased in the 1920s by National Breweries of Quebec, which itself was acquired by Canadian Breweries. In 1952, the expansion continued when they purchased the Boswell Brewery in Quebec City and renamed it Dow.

The enlargement plan was very successful. Furthermore, with bold advertising and the jaunty slogans “Wouldn’t a Dow go good now” and “Dit donc Dow” in French (translated as “Now for a Dow”), the brand exploded in popularity.

By the summer of 1965, Dow was the undoubtedly the preferred brand of beer for Quebeckers. Indeed, about 85% of beer drinkers were consuming it on a regular basis.

However, starting in August 1965, Dow Beer drinkers in Quebec City began to complain about the taste. Before long, a patient was brought to a local hospital with symptoms of alcoholic cardiomyopathy.

Over the next eight months, 50 more cases with similar findings appeared in the same area with 20 of these being fatal. Doctors noted that all patients were heavy drinkers with many consuming over 12 pints of Dow beer per day.

Rumours began to spread that the beer was poisoned. Although Dow denied any responsibility, the Dow Brewery in Quebec City temporarily shut down and pumped thousands of liters of tainted beer into the St. Lawrence River.

However, epidemiological studies later found that Dow had been adding cobalt sulfate to the beer to increase foaminess since July 1965. The concentration added in the Quebec City brewery was 10 times higher than the same beer brewed in Montreal where there were no reported cases.

The brand took a major hit and lost almost all of its market share in Quebec. Sadly, for Dow Breweries, the writing was on the wall.

Despite opening the Dow Planetarium in 1966 as a major project for the Canadian Centennial, the following year Dow Breweries was sold to O’Keefe.

Molson then acquired it in 1989. In 1997, Molson discontinued the Dow Beer brand, and the following year abandoned the Montreal Dow Brewery. Employees were laid off or transferred, electricity was cut off and the old Griffintown brewery was allowed to fall into ruins.

Contaminated with asbestos, it has since been used by urban explorers, ghost hunters and mediums, all of whom are convinced that the old brewery is haunted. One persistent rumour suggests that the Montreal mafia uses the old Dow Brewery to dispose of corpses, somehow burying or concealing them inside the building.

With such an infamous reputation, travel blog seeya.ca listed the Dow Brewery as one of Canada’s top 20 haunted sites: “In the downtown area of Montreal, Canada sits the Dow Brewery. This brewery has had an entire slew of apparitions frequenting its massive building and sprawling grounds.”

Psychics and mediums have also been known to visit, and in 2009 a team from Montreal Paranormal began picking up “horrifying ghost vibes” in one section of the brewery. When they returned several weeks later with two psychics – who did not know each other, both concluded the same thing; that a girl was murdered in the abandoned building by someone she knew. Both psychics’ descriptions of her clothing were the same, and they both pointed to the same spot where they claimed there is “death under the ground”.

They tried communicating with the girl using ghost-hunting equipment. One of the psychics detected the glowing outline of a little girl, standing and crying. She claimed that the girl’s tears were |happy tears” because she was watching them and knew they were trying to help her escape. Apparently, the ghost thought she was still alive and stuck or locked somewhere.

The paranormal investigators returned a few more times, but unfortunately, the case went cold.

Traditional research into the incident has not revealed any known murders at the site of the Dow Brewery. Therefore, if a little girl was murdered and buried here, it is an unsolved crime.

Urban blogger Taylor C. Noakes wrote in a post:

“…a person I once knew indicated he had come across mobsters disposing of a body in the Dow Brewery. Mob business isn’t mine, and I’m doubtful of the veracity of the story, though in a weird way I want a construction worker to come across a body, only to later reveal (because the building was abandoned for so long), that it had become a preferred location for the victims of organized crime.”

Noakes added: “I have these visions of construction workers standing in line to speak with CSST shrinks in make-shift counselling tents out behind the old loading docks, while the city’s coroner and homicide department deal with a year’s worth of unidentified (and in some cases unidentifiable) bodies, found buried here, there and everywhere in this massive old building.”

Noakes may well get his wish. In 2018, the École de technologie supérieure (ÉTS) received permission to renovate the old brewery in order to expand its Griffintown campus. Branded as the DOW Complex project, ÉTS explained:

“Located in downtown Montreal, in the former DOW brewery, this project will be added to the ÉTS campus. In addition to allowing the construction of high-level technological laboratories, this space will be a model of carbon-neutral energy resilience.”

With the eventual renovation of the old brewery, any bodies hidden inside are likely to be discovered. Until this happens, the disturbing claims made by the mediums is a matter of pure speculation.

Only one thing is certain, unless the police do a full forensic investigation before the old Dow Brewery is repurposed, this is one Griffintown mystery that will remain unsolved.

Company News

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is also offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

Our Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery happens on the first Friday and Saturday of every month.

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

You can 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.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of 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, 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: Saint Louis Square

Situated in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont Royal Borough, Saint Louis Square is a beautiful and bucolic park dating from 1876. Surrounded by stunning Victorian architecture, the leafy square is popular with locals and tourists alike. It features a central fountain, busts of famous poets and even a small stone building with a café and ice cream parlor inside. However, the square also has a turbulent history. Once the stomping ground of many disturbed artists, the Montreal Hippy Movement and an era of decline including rampant prostitution, deranged things happened in the park. Unsurprisingly, there have been several ghost sightings in Saint Louis Square.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #97 – The REM’s Ghostly Gamble Part 3

hauntedmontreal — Wed, 13 Sep 2023 14:01:25 +0000

Welcome to the ninety-seventh installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

With the Hallowe’en Season fast approaching, Haunted Montreal’s seasons of public outdoor ghost tours is in full swing! Offered every Friday and Saturday Sunday, we have four ghost tours on rotation (Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and Mount Royal.)

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is also offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

Our Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery happens on the first Friday and Saturday of every month.

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 examine one section of Montreal’s new light rail system, the REM, which is finally operational. The line, running from Central Station in Montreal to Brossard, passes over the Black Rock Irish Famine Cemetery. Given that the REM desecrated the hallowed ground by removing over a dozen bodies to insert a concrete pylon, many people speculated that the REM would become haunted. It appears to be the case – since its opening, the REM has been plagued with numerous electrical problems and was even struck by lightning!

Haunted Research

After years of planning and construction, the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) finally opened the first leg of its light train system on July 31, 2023. This section of track runs from Montreal’s Central Station to Brossard on the South Shore.

However, it has been plagued with various problems, from electrical failures and noise complaints to broken elevators and passengers being deployed to train garages.

There are also major delays on the construction of the Griffintown Station, which is very late and likely will not open in the near future. It appears that CDPQ Infra, the organization in charge of the project, has been caught totally off-guard.

While it might be tempting to say that it is bad luck causing the REM’s woes, a much more likely cause is paranormal activity triggered by angry Irish Famine ghosts.

Haunted Montreal has been following and blogging this story for several years now. Part 1 of the blog appeared in January, 2020 and examined the REM’s decision to desecrate the Irish Famine Cemetery at the Black Rock. Indeed, the REM’s workers dug up over a dozen skeletons to insert a concrete monorail pylon into the heart of the cemetery.

Generally-speaking, the Dead do not like to be disturbed, especially when their funerary marker, the ominous Black Rock, is engraved with the following words:

“To Preserve from Desecration the Remains of 6000 Immigrants Who died of Ship Fever A.D. 1847- 48.”

Part 1 speculated that the light rail system would likely become haunted due to the desecration. It also theorized which ghosts might appear to haunt the trains and surrounding infrastructure.

Part 2 of the series offered the REM an inexpensive solution to prevent the Irish Famine ghosts from infesting the system by painting the concrete pylon Haint Blue, a colour known to ward off spirits.

Haunted Montreal warned REM officials that failure to comply would almost certainly result in the new system becoming ghost-infested. However, REM administrator Isabelle Lachance dismissed these concerns, stating that there were no plans to paint the pylon Haint Blue.

Paranormal expert Dominique Desormeaux had warned about the disturbing consequences of the REM’s failure to protect its transportation system: “Ghosts will feast on the electrical side. They look for a source to be able to manifest themselves, so yes, ghosts will haunt the REM. I’m telling you, you will see people complaining about strange stuff happening at the REM and to the people working there. The ghosts will even cause trouble for the train and there will be often be power shortages and train malfunctions.”

Unfortunately for the REM, Desormeaux’s predictions turned out to be true for the most part.

On the first day of the REM’s grand opening, electrical problems started appearing throughout the rail network. In fact, the system experienced three power failures during the first three days, forcing passengers off the trains and onto busses.

Furthermore, many elevators and escalators broke down, leaving many disabled passengers stranded and upset.

Then, the evening after opening, three REM passengers were mistakenly sent to a train garage in Brossard. A man named Grégoire, his wife and a tourist from South America ended up trapped in the REM’s garage after the driverless train seemed to take on a life of its own. Instead of driving towards Montreal, it unexpectedly drove backwards from the station into the train garage where it turned itself off.

According to Grégoire: “The train shut down, the lights were dim and then we were looking around, there was no way out and we could see all the trains around us, so that was kind of spooky.”

Fearing they were going to “spend the night” on the train, Grégoire’s wife used the intercom system to tell security guards that they were trapped in the garage. Ten minutes later, an operator ordered the driverless train return to the Brossard station.

From there, REM staff picked them up and drove them home.

The next major incident was literally shocking – a lightning bolt hit the REM! On the night of August 3rd, the electric bolt zapped the light rail system, temporarily halting its operation.

CDPQ Infra’s director of communications, Jean-Vincent Lacroix, later explained that the REM “is designed” to deal with this type of event.

However, a local Irish-Montrealer named Seamus who has ancestors buried at the Black Rock stated: “It’s God himself who is striking the REM with lightning because they desecrated the Irish Famine Dead. What a disgrace! Indeed, I predict that the Dear Lord will continue sending the lightning bolts until the whole system is destroyed! When you mess with the Irish Famine Dead, you are messing with God himself!”

Furthermore, there have been reports that whenever the REM train passes over the Black Rock Irish Famine Cemetery, strange things tend to happen. For example, sometimes the train starts shaking and other times the interior lights begin flickering on and off. In another case, a rider from Brossard complained of feeling nauseous every time the REM train rolls over the hallowed burial ground.

There have also been endless noise complaints from those living in the condo towers that have sprouted up along the line in neighborhoods like Griffintown and Nun’s Island. Initial promises by REM officials to mitigate excessive noise have not born fruit.

Journalists have determined the trains generate a noise level ranging from 75 to 100 decibels, which is far higher than the 55 decibels recommended by the World Health Organization.

Nearby residents have complained this the endless noise exposure causes stress, impacts mental health, and contributes to issues such as high blood pressure and sleep deprivation.

In addition, CDPQ Infra initially stated the new Griffintown station would be finished and up-and-running in 2024.

However, after numerous delays, CDPQ Infra is no longer committing to a completion date.

“We are still studying the possibilities for the construction of this station. It is made more complex by other projects that are in the vicinity and because the train is currently in operation,” CDPQ Infra said in a statement.

To make matters worse, Mayor Valerie Plante turned a blind eye to concerns from the local and international Irish communities when she insisted on co-branding the station with Bernard Landry, a deceased politician.

Despite pleas from the Irish communities and negative local and international media reports, Plante rebranded the station “Griffintown-Bernard-Landry.”

Given the disrespect and endless delays, many in the Irish community believe the station is cursed – and will never be completed. Indeed, according to Seamus: “Griffintown was once Canada’s largest Irish neighborhood. It was where the survivors of the Irish Famine settled during the dark days of Black ’47 after crossing the Atlantic on coffin ships. Rebranding the Griff is nothing short of sacrilege and that REM station is doomed, I tell you!”

Lastly, there one of the most serious issues. Since Hydro-Québec purchased the land where the Black Rock cemetery lies in 2017 to build a new substation, there has been a lot of doubt about its promise to preserve the burial ground. Hydro-Québec had promised to build a world-class park on the site in conjunction with Montreal’s Irish community.

However, since Hydro-Québec got involved there has been one desecration after another against the Irish Famine Dead and their memory. An upcoming Part 4 of this series will delve into those issues and related hauntings.

To conclude, the REM has failed to protect its system from the paranormal. In desecrating the Irish Famine Dead at the Black Rock Cemetery with a concrete pylon, REM essentially invited their ghosts to haunt the system. The resulting disturbances, electrical and otherwise, will likely only intensify in the future.

As such, ride the REM at your own risk!

Company News

With the Hallowe’en Season fast approaching, Haunted Montreal’s seasons of public outdoor ghost tours is in full swing! Offered every Friday and Saturday night, we have four ghost tours on rotation (Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and Mount Royal.)

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is also offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

Our Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery happens on the first Friday and Saturday of every month.

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

You can 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.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of 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, 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: Dow Brewery

Built in 1861, the massive Dow Brewery in Grffintown was once the largest producer of beer in Montreal. However, after a poisoned beer scandal in the 1960s, the brewery began falling into a slow decline. In 1998, it was abandoned – electricity was cut off and the building was allowed to fall into ruins. Contaminated with asbestos, the Dow Brewery has since been used by urban explorers, ghost hunters and mediums. With a confused ghostly girl sometimes appearing inside the ruined building, many are convinced that the old brewery is haunted.

Author:

Translator (into French):

Haunted Montreal Blog #93 – St. Bridget’s Refuge Site

hauntedmontreal — Sat, 13 May 2023 16:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the ninety-third installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

With the spring finally here, Haunted Montreal’s seasons of public outdoor tours is now available! Offered every Saturday night, we have four tours on rotation (Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and Mount Royal.)

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is also offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

We are also offering a special Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour to honor over 6000 victims buried under the Black Rock in mass graves. It is on Saturday, May 27 at 1 pm (in English) – the day before the annual Walk to the Stone.

Our Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery begins on June 2 in French and June 3 in English.

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

Our Virtual Ghost Tour is also available on demand!

Want to give the gift of a haunted experience?

You can now order a Haunted Montreal Gift Certificate through our website. They are redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual experiences.

There is no expiration date.

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 examine a new campus being built on the haunted site of an old Irish Famine asylum at St. Patrick’s Basilica.

Haunted Research

The Université de Montréal is constructing a brand new campus for its business department, Hautes Études Commerciales (HEC), next to St. Patrick’s Basilica. An Irish Famine asylum called St. Bridget’s Home and Night Refuge once existed on the site, which catered to the destitute, the homeless and for many isolated women. The asylum witnessed countless tragedies over the years, allegedly resulting in many ghosts. As such, there is already talk that the shiny new campus will be haunted by Irish Famine spirits.

The Irish Famine’s impact on Montreal was probably the most devastating tragedy in the city’s history. In 1847, over Irish 75,000 refugees, many of them stricken with Typhus, landed on Montreal’s wharves in a city of only 50,000 people.

They were escaping a British colonialism, exacerbated by a potato famine that left over a million dead on Ireland’s shores. As the Irish starved, the British exported food from Ireland and absentee Anglo-Irish landlords evicted tens of thousands of starving farmers from the lands that the colonizers had stolen.

While crossing the Atlantic Ocean on “Coffin Ships”, many of the refugees contracted typhus fever and died at sea, at Grosse-Ile Quarantine Station or in Montreal.

Those who died in Montreal were buried in mass graves along the Lachine Canal and at the site of the fever sheds in Point Saint Charles where the Black Rock Monument stands today.

The colonial tragedy left over 600 Irish orphans whose parents had perished, along with countless widows and other estranged family members.

John Francis Maguire recounted the tragedy in The Irish in America (1868):

“This deplorable havoc of human life left hundreds of orphans dependent on the compassion of the public; and nobly was the unconscious appeal of this multitude of destitute little ones responded to by the French Canadians. Half naked, squalid, covered with vermin generated by hunger, fever, and the foulness of the ship’s hold, perhaps with the germs of the plague lurking in their vitiated blood, these helpless innocents of every age–from the infant taken from the bosom of its dead mother to the child that could barely tell the name of its parents–were gathered under the fostering protection of the Church.”

Officials at the newly-constructed St. Patrick’s Church, which opened in 1847, scrambled to help as best as they could, along with other religious orders.

While many of the orphans were adopted (including hundreds into French-speaking households), there was a great need to provide additional care for those who fell through the cracks.

Overwhelmed by the growing number of patients, the government authorities appealed to the Grey Nuns for help. At first, they cared for the refugees in a house located on the Saint-Gabriel farm, then in a building on Saint Laurent Boulevard.

Unfortunately, the refuge had to close its doors due to lack of resources. The nuns subsequently housed the sick in various temporary locations. The need for a permanent refuge and orphanage was obvious.

The following year, a remarkable priest named Father Patrick Dowd was deployed from Ireland to take charge of St. Patrick’s Church and the situation facing the Famine refugees.

Father Dowd was born in Dunleer, Ireland in 1813. He studied for the priesthood in Newry and was ordained in 1837 at the Seminaire de Saint-Sulpice in Paris.

He became a Sulpician in 1848.

At the time, Montreal’s Catholics worshipped only in French. In 1846, Father Joseph-Vincent Quiblier, the Sulpician superior of the Petit séminaire de Montréal, travelled to Ireland to recruit Irish priests. When Father Patrick Dowd answered the call, the Irish archbishop told Father Quiblier: “You are asking for my own heart,” but he gave permission for Father Dowd to come to Montreal.

Father Dowd arrived in June 1848 and was appointed to serve the burgeoning Irish immigrant community, which had fled to Montreal during the Great Famine. At St. Patrick’s Church, he quickly became known as “the unofficial bishop” of Montreal’s Irish community. As pastor, he was both revered and feared.

His blunt words and sometimes vindictive behavior were tempered by his extraordinary ability to charm. He possessed an extraordinary intelligence and boundless energy. Father Dowd was also well known for his unshakeable firmness, inexhaustible charity and selflessness. These qualities no doubt explain why his parishioners revered him so much.

As a man who gave his all to Montreal’s Irish, he would go on to do great things for the Irish community in Montreal.

When Father Dowd arrived, he immediately started planning for the construction of both an orphanage and a refuge for the vulnerable. At the time, the Grey Nuns were struggling to operate their refuge for widows, young girls in need of protection and victims of domestic violence. With a lack of resources and no permanent home, the task of caring for the needy was extremely challenging.

Father Dowd got to work raising funds. After just three years, in 1851, the doors opened to St. Patrick’s Orphanage. Located to the north-west of the church, the imposing 4-story structure faced Dorchester Street (today’s René-Lévesque Boulevard).

Father Dowd then purchased a sizeable burial plot in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery. Given that the death rate among Irish Famine survivors was elevated, he knew that there many would perish too young. Orphaned children who survived Typhus had weakened immune systems and there were many mental health issues facing those who had lost their loved ones. Destitution and homelessness only further worsened health outcomes. Some of the refugees turned to begging and prostitution to try and survive.

Next, Father Dowd began planning for a permanent refuge. After years of fund raising, famous architect Victor Bourgeau was chosen to design the building. The mission of this institution was to care for old men and women, to provide refuge for young girls and find places for them in suitable homes. The refuge also provided night lodging for homeless individuals and families.

In 1865, St. Bridget’s Home and Night Refuge opened its doors to some of the city’s most vulnerable people. Many of those who sought comfort there were Irish Famine survivors who never recovered from their losses. The refuge was a bustling place that always provided a free breakfast for those who had spent the night.

Unfortunately, as the years passed many of the residents perished and were buried in the cemetery plot Father Dowd had arranged on Mount Royal. Causes of death included everything from old age and diseases like typhus, cholera and smallpox to suicides and even people dying of heartbreak.

Over 200,000 people used the refuge’s services in its first 20 years of existence.

In 1883, a major problem arose. The Anatomy Act of Quebec was passed on March 30. It stipulated that all hospitals, orphanages, prisons, poorhouses and other government-funded charities were obliged to hand over corpses of those who had died there unless the body was claimed by a family member within 24 hours.

The rationale behind the new law was to put a stop to all of the body-snatching to meet the needs of Anatomy students.

Medical schools that acquired bodies from anyone but the municipal Anatomy Inspector would be fined as much as $200, as would government-funded charities that refused to hand over their unclaimed dead.

Father Dowd was very uneasy about this new Anatomy Act because the Catholic Church generally frowned upon human dissection, considering it a form of desecration. When Father Dowd objected, the government coerced the orphanage and refuge into sending the dead bodies to Anatomy under threat of punishment.

The Quebec Anatomy Act was an undeniable success. In March, 1884, the Canada Medical and Surgical Journal announced that no grave robbing had been reported in Quebec that winter, stating: “The requirements of the Medical Schools have been amply met.”

Father Dowd was not happy about the government’s coercion, especially given the fact that most orphans had no families to claim their bodies. While evidence is scant, there are rumours that Father Dowd found ways to secretly bury some of his parishioners in the cemetery plot through stealth and by cooking the record books.

As he grew older, his powerful voice began to wane during his sermons. In early December, 1891, he was admitted to the Seminary’s infirmary with pneumonia. Father Dowd passed away on December 19 at age of 78.

Given his popularity in life, over twenty thousand people filed past his remains. Father Dowd’s funeral was held in Notre-Dame Church and was attended by 4 bishops and 200 priests. Unlike many in his flock who were sent to Anatomy, Father Patrick Dowd was buried in the crypt of the Grand Séminaire among his fellow deceased Sulpician priests.

While the orphanage was demolished in 1904, the refuge continued to operate under the leadership of the Grey Nuns. In 1928, St. Bridget’s Refuge was renamed the Father Dowd Memorial Home. For decades, it would continue to provide services to some of the city’s most needy. However, as the years passed the building slowly began to show its age.

By 1977, the refuge was deemed outdated and structurally unsound. It did not meet modern safety standards and was starting to crumble. The pastor and chairman of the Board of Saint-Patrick decided to abandon the home after securing a new location in Côte-des-Neiges.

Once the residents had relocated, the forlorn building was boarded up and left to decay.

The empty shell of the old refuge looked out of place so close to the beautiful St. Patrick’s Church. Many passersby and worshippers speculated that the abandoned building had the look and feel of a “haunted house”. Others called it an “eyesore” that brought up nothing but painful memories.

After numerous complaints, the original St. Bridget’s Refuge was demolished in 1979. The Board of Saint-Patrick then converted the building’s footprint into a parking lot. The foundations of the demolished refuge were paved over with asphalt.

As the years passed, there were some new developments. On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1989, the church was promoted to the title of Minor Basilica by Pope John Paul II. The designation was requested by Paul Grégoire, the cardinal archbishop of Montreal.

On April 7, 1992, a terrible fire broke out at the new Father Dowd Memorial Home in Côte-des-Neiges.

Triggered by a lit cigarette on the top floor, five elderly people died and several others were seriously injured.

In 1997, St. Patrick’s Basilica and the City of Montreal entered a deal allowing the St. Bridget’s Refuge site to be transformed into an unofficial greenspace. The Power Corporation financed the landscaping, which highlighted the foundations of the old refuge. The City of Montreal provided benches, garbage cans and annual maintenance.

The small park was an oasis in the sea buildings that is Downtown Montreal. Local residents, parishioners, tourists and office workers on lunch break enjoyed the greenspace.

However, on April 30, 2009, City of Montreal officials informed St. Patrick’s Basilica that it was cancelling the 1997 agreement. There seemed to be a dispute of some sort between both parties.

The following May 15, the City interrupted the maintenance and surveillance of the premises and municipal employees dismantled and removed benches and garbage cans.

In his missive, the Director of Public Works noted: “We are sure that the assistance granted by the City to make this place a pleasant place will have benefited the Fabrique Saint-Patrick and its faithful.”

Soon after, the greenspace started to deteriorate. The Basilica received complaints from neighbors about uncleanliness, illegal occupation and dangerous nocturnal activity on the premises. There were also sightings of a disheveled ghostly beggar who would approach people at night with a tin cup extended before vanishing into thin air.

During our research, Haunted Montreal found one local resident who would encounter this ghost frequently while walking her dog at night. The situation was becoming untenable.

According to the Catholic Register, St. Patrick’s Basilica decided to sell the St. Bridget’s site after the City of Montreal launched a lawsuit for back taxes owed from the church’s parking lot. The basilica had operated the parking lot tax-free for decades, but the city claimed it was a business enterprise and thus should not have been exempt from taxes.

As such, St. Patrick’s Basilica decided to sell the land and set up a foundation. Warden Peter O’Brien said at the time: “The sale will secure the financial future of the historic church.”

HEC purchased the land in May 2018 and announced that it would build a $184-million pavilion on the St. Bridget’s Refuge site.

Local residents were not impressed and launched an unsuccessful campaign to save the greenspace. Phil Chu, who lived two blocks away, said neighbors wanted most of the foundations and green space to remain intact. “The ruins and the green space are not properly preserved in the HEC plan,” he said.

However, a spokesperson for the business school said the project would include a commemorative element recalling the site’s history: “We plan to retrace the foundations of St. Bridget’s Refuge on the ground both inside and outside our building and to use some of the stones from the existing foundations to partially rebuild the walls.”

At the time of this writing, workers at the new HEC campus have dug up some of the foundations of St. Bridget’s Refuge to incorporate them into the new building.

Meanwhile, the City of Montreal claims it has offered to enhance the remaining greenspace in front of the basilica.

One of the problems of reincorporating the remnants of haunted houses into a new structure is that paranormal activity can transfer and infest the newly-constructed building. Montreal’s most famous example of this phenomenon is the Duggan House, which incorporated dressed limestone from Simon McTavish’s haunted castle when it was demolished in 1861.

As such, paranormal experts speculate that the term “school spirit” will take on a very different meaning when the HEC campus opens to students.

According to Dominique Desormeaux, a paranormal investigator with Haunted Montreal and 13 Sprits Paranormal:

“The HEC is building on grounds that have been tainted with negative energy, heartbreak, death and sickness. The site is haunted by all of that activity and by building on top of the land, by digging and constructing, they will stir up that energy.”

When asked what is in store for the new HEC campus, Desormeaux replied:

“Some spirits will not be at rest, so you can expect a large variety of paranormal activity. These will likely include cold spots, full-body apparitions, the malfunctioning of electrical devices and some people being touched, pushed and scratched by invisible forces. Spirits could even put fear into people and prey on the weak of mind, which could lead some to depression and even to their own demise.”

With such tragic history and dire predictions of paranormal activity, Haunted Montreal awaits to see what happens when the new HEC campus opens to its first cohort of students.

Company News

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is also offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

Our Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery begins on June 2 in French and June 3 in English.

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Coming up on June 13: Old Montreal’s Forgotten Cemeteries

Old Montreal is a very popular tourist destination that sees millions of people visit every year. Famous for its cobblestone streets, historic architecture and European vibe, the neighborhood also hosts a dark and disturbing secret. As the site of French colonization, many cemeteries were laid out within the once fortified city. Today, those exploring Old Montreal do so blissfully unaware of the thousands of skeletons that still lie beneath the streets, public squares and historic buildings. With so many forgotten corpses, it’s no wonder that Old Montreal is considered the city’s most haunted area.

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