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.
Welcome to the one hundred and twenty-third installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!
With over 600 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 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!
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 10th 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 19th 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.
Related Posts
Comments (0)