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.

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 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.

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 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:

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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:

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.

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

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

With the winter weather already here, our public tour schedule has moved indoors. Our Haunted Pub Crawl runs every Sunday at 3 pm in English. Tours in French happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

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.

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 our shop in the Company News section.

This month we take a look at purportedly haunted clocks along one street in Old Montreal and ask if it may have something to do with the desecration of French colonial cemeteries.

Haunted Research

Montreal, like most cities, has outdoor clocks gracing banks, train stations, City Hall and many other prominent locations. Some of these timepieces are freestanding whereas others are built into the facades of buildings.

However, while noted for their historical charm and timekeeping abilities, some of Montreal’s clocks are reputed to be haunted.

It is worth noting that, while rare, stories and legends about haunted clocks can be found all over the world. The most famous example is perhaps the Prague astronomical clock, officially called the Prague Orloj.

According to the legend, after clockmaker Master Hanuš built the Prague Orloj in 1410, city officials cut his eyes out to stop him from creating another masterpiece. In revenge, he supposedly cursed the clock, ensuring it would bring misfortune to the city if ever neglected, with his ghost personally guarding it.

The legend claims if the Prague Orloj stops, the city will suffer. Supposedly, the curse will be confirmed by the skeleton figure on the clock nodding its head.

Other infamous haunted clocks include The Sussex Grandfather Clock (Sussex, England) and The Warren Occult Museum’s Organ Clock (Monroe, Connecticut, USA).

So intriguing is the topic, that Brian Balmages wrote a musical score titled “Haunted Clocks” in 2014. The piece “tells the story of a haunted clock factory and its mischievous inhabitants,” and is wildly popular with school orchestras to this day.

Most of Montreal’s haunted clocks are located on St. James Street, an area associated with the extreme desecration of French colonial cemeteries by various financial corporations.

Rue Saint Jacques was first recorded on a map by François Dollier de Casson in 1672, thirty years after the founding of the French colony of Ville Marie.

For almost a hundred years, the area surrounding the street was associated with French colonial cemeteries, which stretched from the Place d’Armes all the way to today’s McGill Street.  

When the city capitulated to the British Army in 1760, the new governors made plans to stop all burials within the then walled city for health and sanitary reasons. New Protestant and Catholic cemeteries were opened to the north-west and burials ceased to continue in the old colony.

Indeed, the older cemeteries were quickly forgotten, and Saint Jacques Street was anglicized into St. James Street.

Under British rule, Montreal soon expanded into being the largest city and economic hub of British North America. By the 1800’s financial entities of all sorts were setting up shop, spurred by the banking, trade and insurance sectors.

With the Industrial Revolution in full swing, rapid growth of the street was assured.

It began in 1818, when the first Bank of Montreal built its headquarters on St. James Street. Other financial companies soon followed, such as the Royal Bank of Canada, Banque canadienne nationale, Banque provinciale du Canada, Molsons Bank, Merchants Bank, Montreal City and District Savings Bank, Royal Trust Company, Crown Trust Company, and Nesbitt Thomson.

Numerous British insurance companies also installed their head offices on St. James Street, including the Life Association of Scotland, Liverpool & London & Globe Insurance, Yorkshire Insurance, Standard Life, Colonial Life, Guardian Fire and Life, and London and Lancashire Insurance.

With so much building and financial investment, it wasn’t long before St. James Street became known as the “Wall Street of Canada”.

However, it is hard to ignore that these opulent buildings were constructed on the footprint of the French, Indigenous and Black colonial cemeteries, meaning thousands of skeletons were unearthed and disposed of during construction.

Records are scarce about what happened to all these human remains, but during the era financial progress was seen as far more important than respecting the Dead. It is likely that in many cases the human bones were considered merely part of the soil to be excavated and disposed of.

According to the late historian E.A. Collard:

“The principal cemeteries were just inside the northern wall marked by Fortification Lane today. They occupied the area beginning close to the wall and extending down to about the middle of what is now St. James Street…This means that the buildings on the north side of St. James Street today are standing in these old cemeteries. When the custom of burying “within the walls” was abandoned, most of the old bones were left lying where they had been interred.”

Collard continued: “Later, when foundations and cellars for the buildings on St. James Street’s upper side were being dug the bones were unearthed. Even then, in some cellars, the bones were not all removed. They were left lying above ground. A story of a cellar full of bones is told about a building at or near the corner of St. James Street and Victoria Square.”

Indeed, a reporter at the Montreal Gazette wrote in 1872: “The writer has frequently been told by a gentleman who in his boyhood resided in St. James Street… that a wine cellar of more than ordinary depth was almost paved with bones and skulls, and that for this reason none of the servants could be induced to go into the place alone, save an old butler who had the cellar in charge, and who cared so much for his wines that all the ghosts in a dozen grave yards would not have frightened him from them.”

The fact that the cemeteries being desecrated by British financial interests contained mostly French, Black and Indigenous corpses likely did not sit well with these colonized communities. Indeed, two of these cemeteries contained interred slaves from the New France era, many of them children.

To make matters worse, British commercial interests began to install clocks on banks and a skyscraper along St. James Street.

It is worth noting that clocks are almost never found in cemeteries. The reasoning is that the Dead do not like to be reminded of the passage of time. The Dead usually wish to lie undisturbed in their final resting places for eternity.

The installation of the clocks disturbed the Dead even further with their constant ticking sounds, regulating the bustling commercial district built upon their burial grounds.

Today, four clocks overlook the street and three of them are said to have serious paranormal issues.

The clocks include, from the east on the corner of St. Laurent Boulevard to the west on the corner of St. Pierre Street:

• An antique clock on the La Presse Building (north-west corner of St. Laurent Boulevard).

• An astronomical clock on the New York Life Insurance Building clocktower (overlooking Place d’Armes, near the cornerof Côte de la Place-d’Armes).
  
  
• A Modernist standing clock outside the Bank of Montreal Main Office Building (north-east corner of St. Francois-Xavier Street).
  
  
• A classical standing clock outside the Molsons Bank (south-east corner of St. Pierre Street).

Starting with the antique clock on the La Presse Newspaper Building, this charming clock was likely installed upon completion of the edifice in 1900.

Situated on the north-west corner of St. Laurent Boulevard and St. James Street, the clock hangs off a pillar of the building overlooking the corner.

Shaped like a black box with tapered pyramids on the top and bottom, it features two round clocks on each corner with the words “La Presse” inscribed above the time mechanism.

Despite being situated a stone’s throw from the New France era jail, where prisoners were chained to the wall and tortured, the La Presse antique clock is not said to be haunted. This is probably because it was not built atop a cemetery, unlike the other three clocks on St. James Street.

Moving westward, the next clock soars high above the Place d’Armes on the tower of the New York Life Insurance Building.

The New York Life Insurance Building was erected from 1887–1889 and was the first skyscraper in Montreal at 152-feet tall. The first eight floors were designed for retail office space and hosted some of best lawyers and financiers in the city.

When the clock tower was completed in 1889, the owner created the largest legal library in the country on the ninth and tenth floors. Impressively, the red sandstone building also featured electric lighting, water tanks and the city’s first elevator. Designed by architects Babb, Cook and Willard and contractor Peter Lyall, the final cost was $750,000.

The clock tower features two whimsical astronomical clocks, one overlooking St. James Street on the west and the other the south.

The 1899 tower clocks feature a sun and a moon on its hands, which are typical elements of astronomical clocks. The symbolism represents balance and harmony between opposing forces, especially the perpetual cycle of day and night. 

However, the New York Life Insurance Building was built on part of a cemetery on the Place d’Armes. The tower clocks have been anything but harmonious.

Notably, these giant towering clocks overlooking the square have been reported to cause paranormal disturbances during the Devil’s Hour.

While the area is usually devoid of human activity in the dead of night, there is a harrowing tale about a man who experienced paranormal activity beneath the clocktower while out late.

A client named Laurent Desjardins contacted Haunted Montreal in 2015, telling us that he had witnessed something unexplainable while crossing the Place d’Armes in the middle of the night during a blustery October evening.

He said: “I had finished my shift at a fancy restaurant on Saint Paul Street and was walking home to my apartment on the Plateau when I arrived at the Place d’Armes. All the shops were shuttered for the night, and a cold wind was howling and scattering leaves throughout the square. It was pretty miserable.”

He added: “Suddenly, the air grew heavy. Shadows began to move in an unnatural way, like ink spilling across a page. It was really creepy to watch. I then heard what sounded like thunder above me. I looked up and saw that the giant clock on the skyscraper, with its sun and moon hands. It seemed to be glowing red.”  He noted that it was exactly 3:33 a.m.

A chill ran up his spine – and then the whispers began. They rose from the ground. It sounded like a layered murmur of voices, whispering in a muffled French. The faint voices, male and female, sounded as though they were pleading, warning and mourning.

He explained that the temperature felt like it plunged about 15 degrees Celsius. Laurent then saw about a dozen translucent figures slowly begin to emerge, headfirst, from the ground. Peering through the gloom, he saw the outlines of men and women wearing in tattered clothing from the colonial era. The apparitions rose to just above the pavement, where they hovered a few inches in the air.

Their eyeless faces turned toward Laurent, as though drawn to the living warmth he carried.

Trembling in the freezing air, Laurent felt extremely unwelcome and frightened as the ghostly, eyeless figures seemed to stare at him directly. He felt as though they wanted something from him.

“I began to run as fast as I could to the other side of the square,” he said, “and once I was safely past it, I turned around to look back in case they were following me. I was very relieved to see that here was nothing there. The temperature was normal again and the Place d’Armes was empty.”

When Haunted Montreal explained to Laurent that the Place d’Armes was built on top of a colonial cemetery and suffered all sorts of paranormal activity, he vowed never to take that route home ever again.

The second haunted clock is located outside the Bank of Montreal Main Office Building on the north-east corner of St. Francois-Xavier Street and St. James Street. Box-like and silver in colour, it has been described as a Modernist standing clock. Likely installed in 1960, this is the newest clock on the street.

The Bank of Montreal Main Branch was constructed in 1960 after the adjacent 1847 neoclassical bank was deemed too small to meet demand.

At 17-stories, the Modernist skyscraper overshadows the original bank.

The Bank of Montreal clock is reputed to be haunted by many visitors. Indeed, it is the meeting location for the Haunted Old Montreal Ghost Tour.

Guests have reported feelings that the clock is watching them and some have even heard tapping noises from within the clock face. It almost sounds like someone is inside the clock, as though wanting to be let out.

One client swears that he actually saw a distorted skull appear in the clock’s glass for a few seconds before vanishing.

In other cases, people have claimed to feel someone or something tapping them on the shoulder, grabbing their feet and even tripping them on occasion.

Lastly, electronics tend to malfunction in the vicinity of the clock, such as smartphones losing all battery power, video cameras having footage deleted and laptops turning themselves on and off.

Overall, most people who have experienced these phenomena described a feeling of being unwanted in the immediate vicinity of the Bank of Montreal clock.

The final clock stands outside the Molsons Bank on the south-east corner of St. James and St. Pierre streets.

The Molsons Bank was founded in 1837 by brothers William and John Molson, Jr., the sons of brewery magnate John Molson. As the bank grew, the brothers soon decided buy land on the prestigious St. James Street for their headquarters.

Designed by architect George Browne, the Molsons Bank was the first edifice in Montreal to be built in the Second Empire style, from 1864-1866. The building features an ornate stone facade, mansard roof, copper detailing, paired columns, and intricate carvings.

The street clock has a classical appearance and complements the handsome building.

However, there have been many instances when the clock has simply stopped ticking dead in its tracks. Historians note that this may be because the bank was partially built on the colony’s Black slave cemetery, along with the Royal Bank Building just to the west across St. Pierre Street.

People who witness the clock stopping often cross themselves if they know the legend of this haunted timepiece. According to the urban legend, when the time stops on the Molsons Bank clock, it signifies a bad omen. It usually foreshadows an inevitable tragedy in the vicinity.

This may be tied to an old European tradition of stopping the clocks when someone dies.

After getting over the initial shock of the death, mourners had to cover all the windows with thick curtains and let passers-by know of the death by putting black ribbons or a wreath on the door.

Precautions were needed to safeguard the spirit of the deceased. Clocks had to be stopped to respectfully mark the time of death and to ward off bad luck. This was said to prevent the spirit from wandering aimlessly through time and space, unsure where to go.

The clocks would be started again for the funeral so that the spirit could leave and not haunt the house or vicinity.

Returning to the Molsons Bank clock, it has stopped on many occasions in the past just moments before tragic events such as streetcar accidents, explosions and deadly fires.

The most infamous case occurred in the morning of June 13, 1910. Some bankers standing by the clock noticed that it suddenly stopped ticking and froze at exactly 10:29 a.m.

About 30 seconds later, they heard a loud crashing noise about three blocks west on St. James Street, followed by ear-piercing screams and falling glass and masonry. What they had heard was the devastating collapse of the nearby Montreal Herald Newspaper building. At five storeys tall, the building was full of workers putting together the evening edition of the paper.

The collapse was triggered when the 30,000-gallon water tank atop the structure, designed to assist in case of a fire, suddenly gave way and went crashing through the building. As the giant cistern plummeted through the floors of the building, it burst and swept press machinery, office furniture and shocked workers with it into the void of a quickly-flooding basement. The back portion of the building was completely destroyed. Ironically, a deadly fire then broke out in the front part the structure that was still standing.

With around 300 workers in the building, there was sheer panic as people tried to rescue their injured colleagues and evacuate the burning, wrecked building.

Once the survivors were rescued and blaze was extinguished, it took nearly a week for police, firemen, and volunteers to extract the remains of thirty-three unfortunate employees.

Nineteen men and fourteen women were killed in the tragedy. Many were young girls working in the bindery department near the back of the edifice, which was located directly under the water tank. Most of the corpses were found bloated in the flooded basement or charred beyond recognition. The disfigured bodies were taken to the city morgue to try and identify them.

It was perhaps the deadliest building collapse in Montreal’s history.

As for the haunted clock at the Molsons Bank, it had to be restarted by technicians, as it had many times before.

Today, St. James Street is a shadow of its former glory as the financial center of Canada. During the 1970s, Toronto overtook Montreal as the wealthiest Canadian city.

A mass exodus of corporate head offices was triggered by political uncertainty and new laws that made French the only official language in the province.

Since then, the old banks on St. James Street have mostly been repurposed into fancy hotels, high-end condominiums, events spaces, etc.

However, the clocks on the street are still there, bearing witness to the former financial era – and terrifying people at times with their paranormal activity.

In conclusion, haunted clocks fascinate and frighten people all over the world. According to superstition and folklore, installing a clock in a cemetery could have several potential consequences for the dead, primarily related to disturbing their eternal rest and disrupting the timeless, spiritual atmosphere of the graveyard.

The fact that St. James Street hosts three haunted clocks is remarkable. It is also understandable given that the former “Wall Street of Canada” was erected upon the vast colonial cemeteries from the old French colony of Ville-Marie.

Given the deranged history and paranormal activity, walk this historic street at your own risk!

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.

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.

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).

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

We have Haunted Montreal t-shirts, mugs, and even toques, and other assorted items. Visit shop.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 January 13: Update on the Dow Brewery

The abandoned and haunted Dow Brewery is in the process of being repurposed into a new campus pavilion by the École Technologie Superieure. Amiante National Asbestos has been hired to deconstruct the old Brewery, including asbestos removal, decontamination, removal of toxic products and mold and stripping away all interior finishes. With plans to then demolish several buildings before new constructions begin, there are fears that human remains may be found and ghosts may be stirred up during the work.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haunted Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The protest was effective.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Company News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

Haunted Montreal 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 every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

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

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

Author:

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.

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!

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:

1. Support the commemoration project technically (e.g. permissions, zoning issues, Public Art Bureau policies, etc.) and financially, if possible.
2. 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:

1. Create better opportunities for Indigenous representation, business and tourism in Montreal.
2. Cancel by-law G-2.
3. Study problematic statues and plaques in the City of Montreal with the goal of removing them or addressing them in a satisfactory manner.
4. Rebrand streets named after genocidal figures, such as Christophe-Columb Avenue.
5. 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:

1. Protect the Wellington Basin Famine Cemetery from desecration.
2. Create a world-class Irish Famine Park on the footprint of the burial ground.
3. Support the creation of a Mohawk Famine Solidarity Monument to be created by MC Snow.
4. Add plaques along the Lachine Canal and other important sites commemorating the Irish Famine in Montreal.
5. 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:

1. 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:

1. 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.

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.

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.

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

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 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 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:

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.

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 13th 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 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

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

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

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

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

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

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 7 people.

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

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

Haunted Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Company News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author:

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.

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 13th 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 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haunted Research

Place Royale is an unassuming and overlooked historic square in Old Montreal that hides many dark, colonial secrets. Known as the Place du Marché during the French regime, the marketplace was essentially the town square for well over a century. Hosting markets on Tuesdays and Fridays, it was also known as a site of horrific public torture, punishment and execution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was first recorded mention of homosexuality among Europeans.

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

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

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

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

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

After that, the paper trail runs cold.

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

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

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

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

Company News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author:

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.

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 13th 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 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

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

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

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

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 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 St. Joseph’s Oratory and its disturbing refurbishment.

Haunted Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visit at your own risk!

Company News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Up on August 13: Place Royale

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

Author:

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.

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 13th 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 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

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

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

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

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 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 explore a legend about the most cursed structure in Montreal – McGill University’s MacDonald Physics Building!

Haunted Research

McGill is a research-intensive university credited with many scientific discoveries and other inventions. The university boasts that its professors have discovered everything from DNA as the building blocks of genetics to neuro-scientific breakthroughs and have invented all sorts of wonders. 

These include the world’s first artificial blood cells, gas masks, plexiglass, pre-cooked fish sticks, the Canadian national anthem and even the game of basketball itself.  McGill calls these discoveries “Eureka moments that changed the world”.

However, there are certain research projects that went horribly wrong and the university tends to downplay them. One of the most devastating discoveries ever made occurred in McGill University’s MacDonald Physics Building, which is now said to be cursed.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, an American B-52 bomber dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

The bomb was called “Little Boy” and when it exploded in a fiery holocaust, an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 people were killed instantly.

The heat from the nuclear explosion was so intense that many people were vaporized and the blast destroyed 10 square kilometers of the city and contaminated the rest with nuclear radiation. The victims included the residents of Hiroshima, Korean prisoners-of-war, and even some American POWs who were imprisoned there. 

The discovery that led to the nuclear bomb happened in the MacDonald Physics Building.  

The building was constructed in 1893 as a “gift” provided by Sir William Christopher MacDonald, the founder, owner and head of the MacDonald Tobacco Company. 

Even though he abhorred smoking himself, he was happy to make millions of dollars by hawking the dangerous product to other people. 

Over half of his workforce was comprised of women and children, who were paid much less than men. They did much of the hard work such as stripping, sorting, and drying the tobacco plants.

The motto for MacDonald’s company was “the tobacco with a heart.” 

MacDonald also fancied himself a man of science so created chairs in Physics, Engineering and Chemistry at McGill University and funded the construction of various buildings.

Architect Sir Andrew Taylor, along with his partners Morley Hogle and Huntley Davis, designed the Macdonald Physics Building with particular care.

They constructed the edifice in the Richardsonian Romanesque style using only wood, masonry, copper, bronze and brass for the nails and fixtures.

No iron or steel was used anywhere in the building to minimize magnetic interferences that could compromise experiments. The interior was made with heavy bricks and laboratories were stocked with state-of-the-art equipment for the era. 

The portico has two columns, one symbolizing “Power” and the other “Knowledge”. Additionally, the entrance hall fireplace hosts a mantelpiece engraved with “Prove All Things”.

In 1898, McGill University recruited Ernest Rutherford, a young New Zealander with penetrating eyes and an awkward manner, as the new MacDonald Chair and Professor of Physics. 

In 1903, Professor Rutherford had his “Eureka moment”, when he theorized that radioactive energy could be emitted from within an atom under the right conditions.

His theories about radioactivity revolutionized scientific understanding of the atom and ushered in the Atomic Age – and the nuclear bomb.

During Rutherford’s nine-year tenure at McGill, he conducted many groundbreaking experiments and remarkably published 69 papers. Described as “the father of nuclear physics”, Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

Furthermore, his colleague at McGill, Frederick Soddy, received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in radioactive decay.

However, despite these accolades that glorified McGill University for its quality research, things were about to take a very dark turn.

On the evening of the Hiroshima bombing, the Montreal Gazette sent a reporter to the MacDonald Physics Building, hoping to get an interview with Dr. John Stuart Foster, the successor of Professor Rutherford. 

Entering the dark and deserted building, the reporter wandered the shadowy corridors until he came upon Dr. Foster, hunched over a table in one of the lecture amphitheatres.

A light shone over his table with the rest of the place darkened. 

Professor Foster was rapping his knuckles on the table nervously and had a wild look in his eyes. He began talking to himself, like a madman. “It all began right here, in this building,” he muttered, “right here in this building!” 

The reporter, sensing it wasn’t a good time to interview the trembling professor, snuck out, leaving Dr. Foster alone to his thoughts in the big, silent amphitheatre. As such, he had difficulty filing his article.

Professor Foster was never the same again after that evening. Rumours spread about his mental health and soon he developed the reputation of a “mad scientist”.

Since that fateful day when McGill research bore its awful fruit, it is rumoured that many other students and teachers have gone crazy working in the McDonald Physics Building.

According to legend, Mother Nature was very upset with the unnatural violation of her sacred work.  As such, She cursed the McDonald Physics Building to fall into ruin. 

Soon thereafter, all sorts of problems began to happen within the edifice. 

Doors jammed and windows cracked. Water dripped through the ceiling when it rained. Rats, mice and insects of all sorts began infesting the building. As a result, important experiments sometimes went awry, despite the meticulous architecture designed to protect them. 

Outside, the masonry began to crumble, tiles fell from the roof and various birds nested in the architectural nooks and crannies. As vines began growing up its walls, the MacDonald Physics Building began to take on a forlorn appearance.

There were also complaints among students, professors and staff working inside the cursed building. These included frequent headaches, nausea, feelings of depression and even the development of dementophobia – or the fear of going crazy. 

Individuals with this phobia experience anxieties related to losing their grip on reality, such as concerns about hallucinations or the display of other psychotic symptoms.

These numerous problems did not lend themselves well to the precise scientific conditions required by the McGill Physics Department. Ironically, the hope for new “Eureka Moments” and Nobel Prizes were being thwarted by the very MacDonald Physics Building itself. 

As the complaints mounted and the building continued to fall into ruin, in 1948, the McGill Physics Department created a new Radiation Lab and Cyclotron under the direction of Dr. Foster. Following his death from a heart attack in 1964, the facility was named in honor. 

However, despite this new laboratory, the old MacDonald Physics Building continued to fall into ruin.

In response, McGill University erected the new Ernest Rutherford Physics Building in 1977. It was meant to provide more modern facilities and laboratories as a complement to the crumbling MacDonald Physics Building. 

Built in the Brutalist style, the five-story structure was made of prefabricated concrete slabs that were individually fastened to a massive steel frame. 

Precautions were made to keep the new building as stable as possible. The sensitive nature of the experiments being carried out inside its laboratories required precise conditions. 

Indeed, this new and remarkable concrete structure would foreshadow the demise of the original building.

In 1982, McGill University admitted that the MacDonald Physics Building was no longer deemed fit for purpose. Officials stated: “It no longer met the needs of the modern Physics department.” 

As such, the cursed, old building was shuttered, fully renovated and then repurposed into the “Macdonald-Stewart Library Building of Physical Sciences and Engineering”. 

McGill University claimed: “Its sturdy structure has been well adapted to house many thousands of volumes and remains regularly filled with physicists doing research.” 

However, despite its refurbishment and conversion into a library, the MacDonald Physics Building continued to slowly disintegrate.

By 2019, the edifice was in dire condition. To try and prevent the building from falling apart, McGill invested $31.8-million to do a “full renovation”, which was completed in 2023.

According to the McGill Reporter:

“The core of the project consisted of repairing and upgrading the building envelope, including the deteriorating façades. Sections of the façades had in fact been covered up for many years to prevent stones from falling.” 

Project Manager Johanne Guertin explained:

“We had to add structural reinforcements to the building to improve its seismic resistance, solidify the building, and secure the façade.” 

However, despite the comprehensive renovations, serious concerns remain. The root problem – Mother Nature’s Curse on the MacDonald Physics Building – was never properly addressed. 

Some claimed that the renovations were a “band-aid solution” to a building that was doomed to eventually collapse into ruin.

Haunted Montreal approached a McGill Philosophy Professor to elaborate on this remarkable and unique dilemma. The Professor agreed to be interviewed, based on the condition of total anonymity.

Firstly, the Professor explained that the idea that Mother Nature had cursed the building to fall into ruin was debatable. “Some people claim that it is a mere Urban Legend and nothing more,” explained the Professor.

However, for the sake of philosophical interrogation, the educator agreed to examine the “Curse” hypothesis as though it were true.

The Professor began with the following quotation:

“People need to be cautious because anything built by man can be destroyed by Mother Nature.” 

He attributed the quote to American Lieutenant-General Russel Honoré, who led rescue efforts during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

The Professor explained that Mother Nature is known to strike back against destructive human activity, stating: “It could be in the form of planetary warming, natural disasters, global epidemics and other powerful forces.”

When questioned specifically about the MacDonald Physics Building, the Philosophy Professor said: “If the curse is indeed true, they should just probably just allow it to fall into ruin.” 

“Indeed”, added the Professor, “in doing so, McGill University could achieve another Eureka moment – and learn the valuable lesson to stop interfering with Mother Nature! Plus, crumbling ruins in the middle of the campus could provide compelling pedagogical opportunities for study and reflection. Maybe they could even partner with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial – or Genbaku Dome – in Japan!”

As such, all eyes are on the newly renovated MacDonald Physics Building to see if and when it will begin slowly falling into ruin again.

Company News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

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

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

McGill University isn’t just known for its academic prestige – it’s also home to some of Montreal’s most fascinating ghost stories.

Our upcoming publication, Haunted McGill, digs into the campus’s eerie legends and real-life hauntings, taking you to key landmarks like the Arts Building, Faculty Club, Duggan House and the Allan Memorial Institute, all rumored to house lingering spirits.

We’re crowdfunding through The Stygian Society’s Scriptorium, with the first 25 backers receiving an exclusive 1st edition copy, beautiful art prints, and other spooky treasures. Help us reach our goal by July and secure your piece of Montreal’s haunted history. To support the project please click on this link!

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

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

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

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

Coming Up on July 13: Update on St. Joseph’s Oratory

Montreal’s iconic St. Joseph’s Oratory has been undergoing a major $150-million renovation since 2018. The goal is increase accessibility and create a new welcome centre, museum and observatory in the gigantic dome. However, in August of 2019, workers unearthed four pre-colonial Indigenous skeletons under the Oratory’s parking lot. In the Spring of 2023, three more sets of remains were discovered, leading to many questions and concerns about the disturbance of seven deceased Mohawk ancestors deemed to be over 1000 years old.

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.