Haunted Montreal Blog #91 – Hurley’s Irish Pub

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

With over 500 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

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As spring approaches, Haunted Montreal is slowly beginning to offer our public outdoor ghost tours again!

For the St. Patrick’s Day Season, our first outdoor tour will be the special Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour on Saturday, March 18 at 1 pm (in English).

This experience visits key sites associated with Black ’47, the year 75,000 Irish refugees fleeing the Famine landed on Montreal’s wharves. The tour visits the Grey Nuns Motherhouse, Griffintown and two mass graves in Point St. Charles, including the infamous Black Rock.

Our public season of other ghost tours opens on Saturday, April 22^nd with Haunted Downtown.

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

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 $190 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

Our Virtual Ghost Tour is also available on demand!

We’ve just launched our newest haunted experience: Travelling Ghost Storyteller. Find out more in the Company News section.

Want to give the gift of a haunted experience?

You can now order a Haunted Montreal Gift Certificate through our website. They are redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual experiences. There is no expiration date.

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

More details are below in our Company News section!

This month, just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, we examine the very haunted Hurley’s Irish Pub and the ghost of the Burning Lady.

Haunted Research

Hurley’s is one of Montreal’s most happening Irish pubs.

The establishment offers live traditional music every night, 19 beers on tap, a selection of more than 50 single malts and 16 whiskeys and hearty Irish fare.

Established in 1993 by Mr. Bill Hurley, the Irish pub’s laid-back atmosphere makes it a long-time favorite with locals and a destination for tourists and celebrities.

Everyone from Steve Nash to Ewan McGregor have enjoyed libations at Hurley’s Irish Pub. Hurley’s sells the most Guinness in North America and always guarantees a perfect pint.

However, the pub also has a dark, horrifying history, resulting in an agonizing and mysterious ghost who haunts the second floor.

The building housing Hurley’s Pub was constructed in 1885 as a tenement, back in the day when the area was considered a working-class slum. At the time, a furrier operated a shop on the ground floor and the upper levels and basement were run-down lodgings that housed destitute families. Many of them were of Scottish and Irish stock.

Eventually, a series of bars opened up on the site. Before Hurley’s, for example, there was another bar called My Apartment.

Rod, the manager, has worked at Hurley’s Pub since 1993 and has seen it all. One time an elderly Scottish man of about 80 entered the pub in the basement, sat at the bar, didn’t order a drink, and started looking wistfully about with misty eyes.

When Rod checked to see if he was OK, the man reported that he had once lived in the very same basement, when it was a tenement home, with his parents and four siblings. He recalled growing up in filthy and squalid conditions, with rats and cockroaches infesting the building, not to mention frequent fires that would require them to evacuate on more than one occasion. Eventually the family saved enough money to leave the squalid flat and move to Ontario.

Rod has seen his fair share of sights as the bar manager over the years, but one of the strangest experiences to be had in the pub is a run-in with a ghost known only as the Burning Lady.

She can be found at the top of the stairs, in the ladies’ washroom or at the upstairs bar.

During renovations in 1999, contractors discovered many burned and scorched wooden beams on the upper floors, leftover infrastructure from the many fires that had engulfed the building over the years.

One of charred non-structural beams was preserved just above the door opposite the ladies’ washroom at the top of the stairs.

One evening, during the renovations, a woman went to the upstairs washroom at around 3:15 am when the managers wanted to empty the bar. She spotted a mysterious lady wearing old-fashioned clothes sitting alone at the upstairs bar, which was closed for the evening.

When she reported this to the manager, he and another employee rushed upstairs from opposite sides of the pub to get the woman out. However, when they arrived at the bar all they found was one of the stools pushed back, as though someone had been sitting on it.

On other occasions, the strong smell of perfume wafts through the air, usually when doors mysteriously open and close themselves. Sometimes the soft sound of phantom footsteps are heard going up or down the stairs.

Over the years, two clairvoyants and one Indigenous woman have all reported the same thing: that they smelled the paranormal perfume and saw the spirit of a woman at the top of the stairs.

During a staff meeting one night in January, 2009, workers suddenly heard a panicked woman’s voice upstairs screaming “Help! Help!” The manager and another employee ran up the stairs and did a full search, including every nook and cranny, but again, there was nobody there.

The screaming got fainter and seemed to be coming from the ladies’ washroom, however that too was found to be unoccupied.

Thoroughly disturbed, they decided to finish the meeting early to get out of the bar because the disembodied screaming and calls for help would not stop.

After much discussion, the staff at the pub theorized that the ghost is probably that of a woman who burned alive during one of the many previous fires, and they speculate that she can be heard screaming on the anniversary of the fire every year. As such, they have decided not to schedule any more staff meetings on the January date when they first heard the screaming. They prefer to keep the date secret to avoid attracting too many ghost-hunters to the pub on one given night.

Indeed, the owner, Bill Hurley, once met a person who recalled hearing a story about a person living on the other side of the street during the late 1950s who had witnessed the deadly fire.

According to the eye-witness, a lady was banging on one of the windows while screaming: “Help! Let me out!” as the flames engulfed her. He also recalled a Christmas tree brightly burning behind her.

With such creepy tales, Haunted Montreal selected Hurley’s as the final destination on its Haunted Pub Crawl. It indeed seems to be one of the most haunted pubs in Montreal.

According to Haunted Pub Crawl host Jason C. McLean:

“Walking into Hurley’s with a tour group always feels like a warm, welcoming experience, like entering a friendly local bar. When we get upstairs, though, you can tell that there’s another presence in the room besides myself and the guests. This intimate, thought not alone, vibe lends itself perfectly to the remainder of our stories and subsequent paranormal discussion.”

Often, when the ghost storytelling is over, clients have a discussion about their own paranormal experiences as they finish their drinks.

Additionally, the story of the Burning Lady has become so popular that it was featured on CBC’s Our Montreal (segment starts at 7:01).

Held every Sunday in English at 3 pm and on the last Sunday of the month at 3 pm in French, it is a great way to enjoy some spirits with a spirit!

As for the Burning Lady, more research is needed to try to identify who she might be. Only one thing is certain – anyone going up the stairs at Hurley’s or using the ladies’ washroom is advised to be extra careful – especially on January nights. 

Company News

As spring approaches, Haunted Montreal is slowly beginning to offer our public outdoor ghost tours again!

Our first outdoor tour will be the special Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour on Saturday, March 18 at 1 pm (in English). This experience visits key sites associated with Black ’47, the year 75,000 Irish refugees fleeing the Famine landed on Montreal’s wharves. The tour visits the Grey Nuns Motherhouse, Griffintown and two mass graves in Point St. Charles.

Our public season of other ghost tours opens on April 22^nd, with Haunted Downtown.

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

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 $190 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

We’re also launching our newest haunted experience:

You can bring the Haunted Montreal experience to your office Christmas party, house party 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 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.

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 2022 season!

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

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

Coming up on April 13: Mussen Building & Environs

Located in the heart of Old Montreal, the Mussen Building stands out in an awkward way. Located on the corner of Notre-Dame Street and St. Laurent Boulevard, the edifice hosts a gaudy fast food joint in an otherwise historic neighborhood. The Mussen Building and its environs are reputed to be haunted because they are located on the site of the former prisons dating from the “New France” era. It was here that prisoners were brutally tortured by a masked executioner in a deranged and medieval “justice system”.