Haunted Montreal Blog #72 – The Poltergeist of Côte-Saint-Luc

Welcome to the seventy-second installment of the Haunted Montreal Blog!

With over 450 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!

We are also thrilled to announce that with new public health measures in place, we have re-booted all of our outdoor haunted experiences:

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

We are also offering our Virtual Ghost Tour on demand!

Both public and private sessions are available!

Last but not least, we have opened an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. More details are below in our Company News section!

This month we examine a poltergeist in Côte-Saint-Luc based on a first person account by a man named Jeff. After a decade of living in his apartment, in October 2019 the poltergeist suddenly appeared and started its shenanigans.

Haunted Research

In June 2021, Jeff contacted Haunted Montreal regarding poltergeist activity in his apartment. He provided many examples of things moving on their own, turning on and off and generally behaving strangely, despite the fact that they are inanimate objects.

Jeff wrote: “I am prepared to sign a sworn statement stating that all of the events described have actually happened.”

Jeff moved into his Côte-Saint-Luc apartment in 2009, which is located near Cavendish Mall.

However, he did not experience any paranormal activity until a decade later. In 2019, it would appear that a poltergeist either moved in or woke up from a long period of inactivity.

A poltergeist, also known as a “noisy ghost”, tends to play tricks such as moving things around, turning lights on and off, adjusting the heat of stove burners and other bizarre activities.

Since the paranormal activity began, strange events have been happening in the apartment, with each event spaced about a month or two apart.

According to Jeff, it all started with a rubber band that started teleporting:

“A rubber band wrapped around the kitchen garbage pail (to hold the garbage bag) disappeared from the pail and reappeared around the corner on the dining room carpet. This happened a couple of times. On another occasion, that same rubber band disappeared from the pail and reappeared wrapped around the middle of an empty oat-milk container placed next to the pail for recycling. On another day, the same thing happened with a tissue box placed next to the pail.”

Jeff continued with more examples of paranormal activity in his kitchen:

“While I was doing the dishes after lunch, I felt something fall on my feet. I looked down and saw that it was a small towel. The thing is, this particular individually identifiable towel had been stored in a kitchen cabinet behind a closed door, a few feet away from me. It seems to have teleported from there to just above my feet, where it fell.”

Another time, Jeff was frying some cheese blintzes on a low heat. Just before he was about to take them off the stove, he noticed that they looked underdone, so he decided to turn the burner control knob to a higher setting. As he was about to do so, he noticed that the control knob had been turned to the “off” setting. It seemed to him that the poltergeist had turned off the burner because he didn’t.

It seems that the poltergeist also likes to play with the dish rack. Once, Jeff had placed a drinking glass upside-down on the dish rack to dry, but when Jeff glanced at it a few minutes later it was right-side up.

In another case, a round-tipped metal knife from the kitchen drawer appeared in the dish rack, lying flat. Also, a small pot and a dessert bowl that had been put away the night before reappeared on the dish rack by themselves the following morning.

There was also the time Jeff had finished a container of Mrs. Dash salt substitute. He unscrewed the top, rinsed out the container and lid, and put both next to the kitchen garbage pail, side by side, for recycling.

Then, Jeff went shopping.

When he came back, the lid had been screwed back onto the container.

Finally, a disposable aluminum candle holder moved fifteen feet by itself from the kitchen pantry, where it was stored, to the top of the middle stem of a candelabra in the dining room.

In the dining room, a picture fell off the wall with the hanging loop unbroken and the nail in the wall intact. The dining room radio (not a clock radio) has been known to turn itself on, and once during suppertime, the lamp in the ceiling turned on by itself.

The paranormal activity also happens in the bathroom. In one case, a toilet paper holder popped out of its receptacle by itself, untouched, while Jeff watched. Another day, Jeff bought a new plug for the bathroom sink and cut off the chain completely from the plug’s ring, since he didn’t need it. The next morning, a single loop of the chain had reappeared on the plug’s ring.

On another occasion, the bathroom medicine cabinet door slid open by itself while Jeff’s back was turned – he heard a sliding sound before turning around to see it open.

Jeff provided many more examples of paranormal activity all over his apartment, from the living room and dining room to even near his garbage chute. He continues to update Haunted Montreal as to the latest happenings.

When asked who or what Jeff thinks it haunting his home, he mentioned receiving a gum bone graft with real bone a month or so before the poltergeist activity began in the Fall of 2019. Jeff speculates that perhaps the deceased person from whom the bone was taken is haunting him.

Another theory is that it could be his deceased father, who passed away in 2013 and whose picture Jeff looks at every morning to remember him.

Jeff said: “Poltergeist activity raises fundamental questions about reality,” asking “what does it all mean?”

Jeff believes that that the Universe is not physical, but mental; that reality consists only of our consciousness, and we are having a collective dream. He feels that poltergeist activity could not occur in a physical universe, but it could occur in a mental universe where “we are dreaming the whole thing up”.

As such, Jeff has no plans for an exorcism of the poltergeist that is plaguing his home. Indeed, he finds the poltergeist experience fascinating.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is thrilled to announce that we have re-booted all of our outdoor haunted experiences:

The Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

The Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

The Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

Both public and private tours are available!

For private tours, clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $170 for small groups of up to 8 people.

Email info@hauntedmontreal.com for more information about how to book a private tour!

We are also offering our Virtual Ghost Tour on demand in both English and French.

Please spread the word to those who might be interested in a Haunted Montreal experience!

Finally, we have opened 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 would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event during the 2020 – 2021 season!

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that 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: Old Windsor Hotel

Montreal’s old Windsor Hotel was once the most palatial lodging in all of Canada and hosted numerous celebrities over the decades. It was also the site of an unusual occurrence in December, 1881, when celebrated American writer and wit Mark Twain was on a lecture tour. He had the only paranormal experience in his life while staying at the old Windsor Hotel.

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.