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!

Just in time for the holidays, Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce that we have completely revamped and updated our haunted online shop!

Give the gift of a Haunted Montreal t-shirt or mug with our logo, or Headless Mary, or Simon McTavish on his coffin toboggan, or our spooky Haunted Mountain imagery. Maybe you’d like to stay warm in these cold winter months with a Haunted Montreal hoodie, and a tuque with our logo on it. We’ll be adding other products, such as posters, in the days to come.

To enter the shop, please visit shop.hauntedmontreal.com or click on the image below

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is 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 4 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 $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

This month we explore the historical neighborhood of Sault-au-Récollet, one of the most haunted areas on Montreal’s northern shores.

Haunted Research

A series of disturbing recent events, such as an attempted animal sacrifice in a cemetery and body dumping in a local nature park has triggered Haunted Montreal to investigate Sault-au-Récollet. 

Located on the eastern edge of the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Sault-au-Récollet is one of Montreal’s many haunted neighborhoods. Situated on the Back River (La Rivière des Prairies in French), it is one of the city’s oldest colonial settlements. 

Historically, Sault-au-Récollet is the site of one of Montreal’s oldest churches, several creepy cemeteries and a colonial fort used to try to evangelize Indigenous Peoples. Today, the area reeks of paranormal activity and also has twisted legends dating back to the New France era.

The area where Sault-au-Récollet exists today was once a place bustling with Indigenous activity. A portage trail snaked along the shore to bypass the rapids and the land was also used for hunting, fishing, encampments and trade. 

For thousands of years before the arrival of European colonists it was a place of significance to the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) First Nation, on whose traditional territory the land exists.

Other Indigenous Peoples also used the area while travelling around the island of Tiohtià:ke or trading in furs and other goods in the vicinity.   

Consequently, this important site was visited very early in the colonial period by zealous French explorers and Catholic missionaries. Both Recollet and Jesuit priests had the goal of penetrating deep into the Indigenous territories to try and convert everyone to Catholicism.

In 1615, Recollet priests Denys Jamet and Joseph Le Caron held the first Catholic mass on the island of Tiohtià:ke in modern-day Sault-au-Récollet.

Samuel de Champlain, also known as “The Father of New France” because he established Quebec City in 1608, was present for the ceremony. 

This preliminary mass would foreshadow future horrors carried out by the Catholic Church against Indigenous Peoples at the site and well-beyond.

Another notable event occurred at the site on June 25, 1625. After returning from an evangelization mission in Huron territory,  Recollet missionary Nicolas Viel and his companion Ahuntsic attempted to shoot the dangerous waterway. However, due to the churning waters on the last set of rapids, their canoe capsized and they both drowned in the river. 

Following this incident, officials from the Catholic Church named the area Sault-au-Récollet (Recollet Rapids in English). Distorting all facts, Catholic authorities declared Nicolas Viel to be a martyr who had been deliberately murdered by Huron people opposed to his evangelical mission.

They also claimed that Ahuntsic was a Huron who had converted to Catholicism under Father Viel’s guidance. 

This false information would lead to statues, memorials and paintings being created to glorify devotees Father Viel and Ahuntsic – at the expense of Indigenous Peoples.

However, hundreds of years later the lies would be debunked by respected historians and denounced by various organizations. There is speculation that Ahuntsic was actually a Frenchman and the historical evidence demonstrates that their deaths on the river were an accident and not a deliberate attack by Indigenous Peoples.

The fake story also led to a racist legend from the New France era known as La légende du sauvage mouillé (“The Legend of the wet savage” in English).

In a nutshell, the legend tells of an Indigenous sorcerer who, on moonless nights, appears by the river, drenched from head to toe. He sits motionless by a campfire that gives off no warmth or smoke. His clothes are soaked, but the water mysteriously vanishes before dripping on the ground. This eerie figure is said to be the spirit of the sorcerer who murdered Father Viel and Ahuntsic in 1625. 

The tale claims that the sorcerer and his henchmen attacked Father Viel and Ahuntsic in their canoe, before dismembering them and throwing their body parts into the rapids. In the process, the sorcerer lost his footing and drowned. As punishment for his heinous crime, the sorcerer’s soul was cursed, doomed to wander the riverbanks, eternally soaked and shivering.

The legend claims that, on certain nights, the “wet savage” can still be seen, his spectral form appearing near the rapids, always shivering in the mist. Supposedly, he remains harmless to those who encounter him. 

Some versions of this deranged legend can be found in Les Soirées Canadiennes (1863) and Créatures fantastiques du Québec (2007).

The “murderers” of Father Viel and Ahuntsic are described as Huron sometimes and other times as “Iroquois” (a French term for the Haudenosaunee confederation, which includes the Mohawk First Nation).

In 1696, Sulpician authorities ordered the construction of Fort Lorette on the Sault-au-Récollet site. 

The purpose of the structure was to serve as a new residential school to indoctrinate Indigenous Peoples. The older institution, Fort de la Montagne, was seen as being too close to the colony of Ville-Marie. It was located on the slopes of the mountain

The Sulpicians claimed that the move was due to the location’s easy access to alcohol. In reality, there was a lot of resistance to the first fortified school due to its indoctrination efforts against Indigenous Peoples.

Fort Lorette was quadrilateral with stone bastions at the corners. It was approximately 160 x 500 feet in size.

The chapel was located at the east corner and served as a bastion. There was also a residence for the missionaries, a convent, housing for Indigenous Peoples and a building to store gunpowder, munitions and weapons. Approximately 400 people lived on site, mostly Indigenous Peoples being indoctrinated. 

In a cruel twist, the trail that led from Ville-Marie to Fort Lorette was named the Chemin des sauvages (“Trail of the Savages” in English”) to denote the transfer of Indigenous Peoples from the Fort de la Montagne.

To make matters worse, a cemetery was created outside the walls of Fort Lorette for all of the Indigenous Peoples who would die while attending the institution.

In 1721, Fort Lorette was discontinued as a residential school when the mission was relocated to present-day Kanesatake.

This was the second time that Indigenous Peoples were displaced by the Sulpician Order in an effort to drive them farther away from the colony of Ville-Marie.

The Sulpicians decided to build a church to the east of Fort Lorette. Called the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the house of worship was the brainchild of a priest named Father Guillaume Chambon. Construction occurred from 1749-51. Monseigneur de Pontbriand, the Bishop of Quebec, consecrated the church in 1752.

The construction of the Church of the Visitation would soon trigger another weird New France legend. Entitled “The White Horse of Sault-au-Récollet”, the tale is one of the great classics of Quebec folklore. 

The legend describes a sacrilegious man who refused to go to church and scoffed daily at the Catholic religion. Seeing him blaspheme constantly, his neighbors in Sault-au-Récollet expected that God would punish him with some sort of misfortune. Indeed, one day the man suddenly disappeared, as did his large white horse. It is worth noting that the animal was his most prized possession.

The white horse eventually reappeared in the neighborhood, but it was very wild, violent and fear-inducing. It ripped up fields, knocked over fence-posts and chased terrified residents through the streets and fields.

Some neighbors suspected that the man and his beast had been merged into one body as punishment for his sins.

At the time, the parish priest of Sault-au-Récollet was desperately trying to build a new church. Unbeknownst to anyone, he had a bridle made with a cross-shaped bit and managed to put it on the beast. Suddenly, the horse became as gentle as a sheep. It was possible to harness the animal and make it pull the heavy stones needed to build the church.

The priest had warned the workers not to remove the animal’s bridle and not to give it any water. However, one of them took pity on the thirsty and weakened beast when there was only one stone left to install above the church door. The sympathetic worker removed the bridle to allow it to drink from a nearby creek. 

Suddenly, the animal became ferocious again, broke its harness and ran away in terror westwards along the Rivière des Prairies. The white horse ran nearly four leagues before throwing itself into the tumultuous waters. Since then the whirlpools off the coast of Roxboro have been called the White Horse Rapids.

According to the legend, the last stone above the church door was never installed properly and could trigger the collapse of the structure one day.

Today, the legend is marked with a park and even a statue of the horse within a roundabout at the northern end of Sources Boulevard, where the White Horse Rapid are located.

Furthermore, after the British Conquest of 1760, authorities soon realized that Fort Lorette was of little strategic advantage. As such, in 1812 the fort was demolished.

Concerning the cemeteries in the area, originally there was one Indigenous cemetery at Fort Lorette followed by a Catholic cemetery at the Church of the Visitation.

The Indigenous cemetery was closed after the residential school at Fort Lorette was relocated, whereas the Catholic parish cemetery at the church shut down in 1873 because it was too small to accommodate the increasing population as the area urbanized.

As such, Sault-au-Récollet Cemetery was established in 1873. The new graveyard is located a few blocks south of the Church of the Visitation. The burial ground is bordered by Henri-Bourassa Boulevard, Rue Taché, Avenue Camille-Paquet and the Sentier des Sauvages. The racist walking trail, a remnant of the original path, connects Rue Garnier with Henri-Bourassa Boulevard.

Recently, there has been some disturbing activity in the Sault-au-Récollet Cemetery. In November, 2024, a rooster that had been blinded in his left eye was found wandering among the crypts and tombstones. Rescued by the SPCA, the bird was named Freddy.

Workers also discovered a cage as well as candles and other ritualistic items in the graveyard, prompting speculation that Freddy had survived an attempted animal sacrifice.

A local resident believes that someone tried to sacrifice Freddy in a Voodoo ritual. He cited the fact that he had discovered decapitated rooster carcasses about 20 years ago in the nearby Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park. 

Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park has also seen some deranged activity lately. On October 30, 2024, a decomposing body with its hands and feet bound was discovered in the park, near the intersection of Gouin Boulevard East and Lille Street.

Police confirmed that it was the corpse of Kevin Mirshahi, a cryptocurrency influencer who had been abducted from a luxury condo in Old Montreal on June 21, 2024.

Why the criminals chose to dump his body in the Île-de-la-Visitation Nature Park is unknown at this time.

Given its long history, Sault-au-Récollet received status as a heritage site by the City of Montreal in 1992. The Quebec government followed suit in 2018 by designating the neighborhood as a Historic Site after archaeological work at the remnants of Fort Lorette in 2017.  

Since the historical designation, there has been one notable change to the area. The offensive Chemin des sauvages was renamed in 2020 after consultation with the Mohawk community in Kanesatake.

The racist trail was renamed the Tetewaianón:ni Iakoiánaka’weh Trail, or “Messengers’ Trail” in Kanien’keha (the Mohawk language). 

The Tetewaianón:ni Iakoiánaka’weh Trail refers to the ancient pathways traveled by the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) Nation on Tiohtià:ke, also known as Montreal. These trails, used for thousands of years, were carved by Onkwehón:we (First Nations) messengers. They ran these paths and used them for hunting, trading, and communication between towns, villages and more remote sites.

Sault-au-Récollet is without a doubt one of the most haunted neighborhoods on Montreal’s northern shores. While this blog only scratched the surface of the area’s deranged history and ongoing problems, it opens up new avenues of research. Where is the forgotten Indigenous cemetery located on the Fort Lorette Site? What other paranormal activity is associated with the church and local graveyards? How widespread is Voodoo in the neighborhood? Etc. Only time and more research will unveil the full mysteries and horrors underlying Sault-au-Récollet.

Company News

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is 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 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page!

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $215 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

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

Hear some of the spookiest tales from our tours and our blog told by a professional actor and storyteller. You provide the venue, we provide the stories and storyteller. Find out more and then contact info@hauntedmontreal.com

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 is also pleased to announce the publication of the book “Montréal hanté. La mémoire macabre d’une cité victorienne”, written by Pierre-Luc Baril. Directly inspired by the Haunted Montreal Blog, the book tells several ghost stories, including those of Simon McTavish, the mysterious Trafalgar Tower and the murder of Mary Gallagher.

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link.

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 updated our online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, hoodies (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! New stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will now be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

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

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page 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 January 13^th: Update on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital

In February 2018, Haunted Montreal reported on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital and its many ghosts. Built in 1893 in the Scottish baronial style, the haunted hospital operated for well over a century before finally being shuttered and relocated in 2015. Today, McGill University is attempting to repurpose it. Dubbed the “New Vic”, the project proposes a new campus dedicated to inter-disciplinary work. However, the process has been rocked by a conflict with the Mohawk Mothers, who believe Indigenous children could be buried in the vicinity. There is also the question of what to do about all of the ghosts that remain in the old hospital.

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 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!

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!

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

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

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

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!

Want to give the gift of a haunted experience?

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

Lastly, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. More details are below in our Company News section!

This month we examine the numerous forgotten burial grounds that litter the historic district of Old Montreal – and the paranormal activity associated with them!

Haunted Research

The City of Montreal welcomes millions of tourists every year. Around 85% of them visit the historic district of Old Montreal. What these visitors likely do not realize is that they are literally walking over the Dead. Numerous forgotten cemeteries, which still lie beneath the streets and buildings, haunt Old Montreal.

Indeed, there are at least a dozen graveyards in the district. A handful of them are commemorated but most are totally forgotten. Almost all of these colonial burial grounds are reputed to be haunted.

Quebec City, which has mapped out its colonial burial grounds, is light years ahead of understanding where their colonial Dead are buried.

In Montreal, one must dig deep into historical accounts and old maps to try to piece together cemetery locations and statistics of the Deceased. There are some conflicting reports, but it is possible to obtain a good idea where these colonial graveyards were located. A tally of the graves listed in the registers of the Parish of Notre-Dame, between 1642 and 1800, reveals that Old Montreal served as the final resting place for more than 21,000 people.

Montreal’s first colonial cemetery sat right beside Fort Ville-Marie, as the original colony was called.

Founded on May 17, 1642, by the “Notre-Dame Society of Montreal for the Conversion of the Savage Peoples of New France”, the colony was built without permission on the Mohawk territory of Tiohtià:ke.

At the time of colonization, the Mohawk Nation was not in this part of their vast territory. When scouts discovered that the French were attempting to colonize Tiohtià:ke, a brutal war erupted between the French and the Haudenosaunee (an alliance of Five First Nations at the time, including the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca.)

Needless to say, when there is warfare cemeteries tend to fill up quickly.

The first colonial burial site in Montreal was at Pointe-à-Callière, on the piece of land jutting out where the St. Pierre and St. Lawrence Rivers met. The first interment took place on June 9, 1643. The deceased was Guillaume Boissier, a carpenter from Limousin in France.

Over the next 11 years, 37 more people would be buried there. Many settlers and their allies died in warfare with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, who were defending Mohawk territory from the French colonization efforts.

This was one of the few cemeteries ever to have both Europeans and Indigenous people buried together. Twelve bodies are Indigenous from the Anishinaabe and Wendat First Nations, which were allied with the French colonists. As for the French colonists who perished, the archives include well-known names such as Archambault, Bonenfant, David, Hébert, Tessier and Thibault.

In The First Catholic Cemeteries of Montreal, this burial ground was described as “a large meadow enlivened with the warblings of beautifully feathered birds, and adorned with a variety of the most exquisite flowers.”

However, due to its location between two rivers, the Pointe-à-Callière cemetery frequently flooded. Such was the case on January 15, 1654, for the burial of a colonist named Frangois Dhaidin. It is noted in the burial register that the floodwaters prevented access. As such, he was buried elsewhere in a location that is unknown today.

Furthermore, bodies were only buried 30 to 50 centimeters below the ground. With the cycle of freezing and thawing, the bones sometimes rose to the surface.

Due to these ongoing and macabre problems, the cemetery closed in 1654, paving the way for a second burial ground in the gardens of the Hotel-Dieu Hospital. It was located at the corner of Saint-Paul and Saint-Sulpice streets near the hospital chapel.

Today, the remarkable first cemetery is located within the Pointe-à-Callière Archaeology Museum. Officials decided to excavate seven tombs, which are on display in the museum’s basement. The remaining bodies still lie beneath the floorboards.

In 1654, a new cemetery was laid out in the in the garden of the Hôtel-Dieu, at the corner of Saint-Paul and Saint-Sulpice Streets. The site may have been chosen because of the presence of the hospital chapel.

The first burial was a colonist named François d’Haidin. As the years passed and the war with the Haudenosaunee Confederacy continued, the cemetery began to fill up with those killed in battle and others who had died of diseases, accidents, or natural causes.

The cemetery had two annexes, one for the poor and one for Indigenous people, whom the French referred to by the racist term “savages”.

Several years after its establishment, cattle started wandering through the burial ground, grazing and defecating on the hallowed ground. After numerous complaints, religious authorities held a meeting on November 30, 1674, in one of the rooms of the seminary. They resolved to build a wooden fence around the cemetery to keep the beasts from disturbing the dead.

The city’s third cemetery was opened in 1673 when authorities realized that the hospital cemetery would soon be full.

The new graveyard was situated in the commons between today’s St. Paul, St. Sacrement, St. Eloi and St. Pierre streets.

Unfortunately, this third cemetery also suffered from flooding, both in the spring an autumn. Colonists also allowed cattle to graze there.

Approximately 400 people were buried in these commons between 1673 and 1682.

Then, in 1683, the Notre-Dame Parish sold the land at auction. With a church under construction, they needed the money. A colonist named Charles de Couagne purchased the burial ground for the sum of 955 livres. He then subdivided it into plots of land and sold them to other colonists.

A map from 1695 shows that just three years after it closed, several homes had been built over the Dead.

Today, the area is dense with historic buildings but there is no indication that they sit on this old cemetery. There are numerous reports of paranormal activity in this area of Old Montreal, such as floating orbs, disembodied voices and undead spirits roaming the streets at night.

In 1680, the construction of the first Notre-Dame Church included a fourth and more permanent graveyard to welcome the dead on its south-east side. Catholics strived to be buried as close as possible to their place of worship and so it was a popular location to spend eternity.

The parish purchased neighboring lots over the years on several occasions when the cemetery needed to be expanded.

It is also noteworthy that people were buried inside the newly-constructed Notre-Dame Church.

A documentary video called In the Shadow of Notre-Dame highlights excavation work at the site of the old Notre Dame Church. In 2001, the ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine and the City of Montréal assigned archaeologists to examine and then move these graves. They discovered over 100 skeletons in the old crypt and its environs. After recording and analyzing every single bone, the remains were reburied in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges cemetery on Mount Royal.

Another cemetery was opened in the Place d’Armes in 1685, but was again only used for a few years. It was on a lot at the northwest corner of St. Jacques and St. Francois-Xavier Streets. This graveyard remained in use for only a few years until the bodies were apparently moved to another site a short distance to the west.

In this cemetery, a chapel had been built in the place where the Bank of Montreal is today to deposit the bodies awaiting burial.

With all of the warfare, death and burials, the French authorities decided to fortify the colony. From 1687 to 1689, workers constructed a wooden palisade around the city.

Later, between 1717 and 1744, these were upgraded into stone walls. The fortifications were built by Chaussegros de Lery, a military engineer during the reign of King Louis XV. 

The Place d’Armes cemetery would continue expanding westwards, with corpses usually buried beside the stone fortifications.

In 1718, a new cemetery was created, outside the wall. It was beside the new Charon Brothers General Hospital and was opened while the stone walls were being completed.

Located outside the city walls, the General Hospital opened in 1694. As a charitable foundation, its main objective was to care for the poor, orphans, the elderly, those vulnerable and single women.

In 1747, management of the hospital was transferred to Sainte-Marie-Marguerite d’Youville and the Order of the Grey Nuns. In addition to its main cemetery, the hospital also included a cemetery for the poor.

When work was done refurbishing St. Pierre Street in 1991, archaeologists discovered a mass grave under the road. They removed the skeletons of several children. Granite markers were then placed on the road to highlight the cemetery’s footprint and an interpretive sign was installed next to the old General Hospital.

In 1749, a new cemetery was created near the Powder Magazine, allegedly for the poor. This was slightly west of the Place d’Armes Cemetery.

Indeed, it would seem that burial grounds continued to expand westwards along the northern city wall, and then beyond some.

This is where is becomes difficult to ascertain how to separate all these burial grounds, which are now both forgotten and desecrated.

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. And they ran from about St. Francois-Xavier Street (rue Saint- Francois-Xavier) to the present beginnings of Victoria Square.  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.”

Indeed, when Montreal capitulated to the British in 1760, the new colonial masters also created Protestant cemeteries in the same vicinity along the walls.

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.”

Given all of the luxurious buildings constructed over the cemeteries along St. James Street, many question if they are haunted due to being built over the Dead.

For example, the French Catholics created separate cemeteries for the poor, Black people and Indigenous people.

The February, 1885 edition of La Patrie noted in a column called “Le Bon Vieux Temps: “Speaking of slaves, I must say that the Negro cemetery in Montreal in 1800 was a plot of land located at the corner of St Jacques and St Pierre streets, precisely on the spot where the Mechanics Institute was built.”

Indeed, in 1855 the Mechanics Institute was built on the former cemetery for Black people. The mandate of this organization was to “educate workers for the emerging industries of the growing city.“ Apparently, that “education” did not include any Black History or the fact that a Black burial ground was desecrated to allow the construction of the Institute.

Today, the former Royal Bank of Canada occupies the site and hosts the popular Crew Collective & Café.

This high-end café and co-working space is reputed to experience paranormal activity such as malfunctioning coffee machines, flickering lights and doors opening and closing by themselves.

Another example can be found on a colonial map where the cartographer noted a “Cimetière des sauvages” (a racist expression for an Indigenous cemetery) just outside the city walls to the north of the Sulpician Seminary.

There is very little historical knowledge about who was buried there or why.

Was the cemetery for the Indigenous people killed or executed by French authorities? Was it for those who converted to Catholicism and then passed away? Or was the cemetery already present when the French started colonizing the island? It is certainly a mystery.

Today, there is a luxury condominium on the site called Les Étoiles and there is not even a historical plaque to mark the now-destroyed Indigenous cemetery. Rumours swirl that the underground parking in this building is haunted, although the details are thin and more research is required.

Another example is the St. James Theatre, which exists in the former Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. This magnificent building was constructed in 1907 on the site a former Methodist Church.

The Great St. James Street Church, built in 1845, was considered Montreal’s most comfortable and welcoming house of worship.

With its magnificent interior and beautiful stained-glass windows, parishioners absolutely loved attending services here. Indeed, the Methodist Church made many converts because of the Great St. James Street Church’s positive reputation.

Some people called the church “Heaven on Earth.” It was said that when parishioners passed away their souls drifted up into the rafters of the church because they wanted to spend eternity there.

When the church was demolished to make way for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, a decision was made to incorporate the stained glass windows into the wall behind the banking counter.

During construction, workers uncovered two skeletons when digging the foundations of the bank. Given that forgotten cemeteries exist all over Old Montreal, the find was creepy but no surprising.

As the bank neared completion, there were rumors that it might become cursed or haunted. Replacing a house of worship with a house of Capitalism was likely to displease God, after all.

Sure enough, strange paranormal activity started happening once the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce opened its doors.

From the first day of operation, bank tellers encountered disturbing feelings of unease. The most common description was as though someone – or something – was staring at them from behind.

As the days and weeks passed, the feelings of discomfort intensified. The bank began to take on the atmosphere of a funeral home.

There were problems with the employees such as a high turnover and frequent absences.

Then something truly bizarre began to happen. The beautiful stained-glass windows behind the tellers’ desk began to slowly change. Some parts of vibrant red, green, yellow and blue glass began fading to the color of human bone. Within a month, the image of two large human skulls had appeared within the stained-glass windows, staring down at clients and the backs of the bank clerks.

The building also housed the Montreal offices of the White Star Line. It is where the tickets for the RMS Titanic were sold. On April 15th, 1912, when the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank, the bank to became even more disturbing and ostracized.

As the years passed, the problems persisted. Employees hated working there and clients complained that the skulls staring down at them from the stained-glass windows were ruining their banking experience. They claimed that the skulls intimidated them and brought on bad luck. Some clients started moving investments and accounts to other banks because of the morose employees and terrifying skulls in the windows.

Because the situation was becoming unbearable. In the early 1960s, officials made a decision to build a new, modern 45-story CIBC bank tower. The head office vacated the St. James location in 1962 for the new downtown location.

In 2012, the old bank was finally repurposed. The owners of The Rialto Theatre purchased the former Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and re-branded it as The St. James Theatre. After a full renovation, today it is a high-end venue that hosts weddings, parties and private corporate events.

While it’s unknown if whatever spirits that haunted the bank continue to disturb the theatre, the bizarre skulls continue to stare down from the stained-glass windows at the fancy events that unfold within the venue.

There are also other crypts full of bodies in Old Montreal, such as those of the Notre-Dame Basilica and Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours Church. Other since-demolished churches, chapels and the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Notre-Dame may also contain forgotten remains under the ground.

In 1799, the Attorney General of Lower Canada abruptly halted all burials “within the walls”.

One consequence of the British take-over was the influx of Protestant settlers, which put a lot more pressure on the small cemeteries within the walls. The population had quadrupled within 40 years, reaching up to 5000 city-dwellers. Space was running out to bury the Dead within the City Walls.

As such, the cemeteries were busting at the seams and could no longer accommodate the endless corpses being sent there.

There were fears that with so many dead bodies in the vicinity, contagious diseases like Cholera and Smallpox might spread from beyond the graves of those affected by these ailments.

As such, the churchwardens of the Notre Dame Parish submitted their petition to close the burial grounds once and for all. The Attorney General of Lower Canada approved the petition and demanded the closure of all the cemeteries “within the walls”.

In response, authorities opened up two large new cemeteries in 1799. Well away from the city proper, officials established both the Protestant Burying Ground and the Catholic Saint-Antoine Cemetery to welcome the over-flow of the Dead. Once these were full in the mid-1800s, new cemeteries were opened atop Mount Royal.

Today, those roaming the cobblestone streets of Old Montreal are literally walking over the Dead. Hopefully, with more research, Montreal will one day be able to publish its own authentic map of all the forgotten cemeteries littering the historic district.

Company News

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

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

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

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!

You can 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 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!

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 July 13: Hôtel Place d’Armes

In 2009, the concierge at the luxurious Hôtel Place d’Armes in Old Montreal revealed that the building is haunted. Suite 1703 is said to host a mysterious woman who sometimes asks Room Service for a glass of water. However, when they bring it to her, she vanishes into thin air. Described as “a thin, beautiful woman with long dark hair and wearing a long, black dress,” the ghost has an American accent and is known to disturb staff members with her paranormal antics.