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 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 will be resuming in early April! Tickets are already on sale!

In the meantime, 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 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 look at the deranged history of the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum and its many horrors and ghosts.

Haunted Research

There are few places in Montreal as haunted as the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum. Established in 1873 by the Sisters of Providence, the mental hospital was designed to house “idiots,” “imbeciles,” and epileptics. 

With a history of social exclusion, deadly fires and debilitating treatments, the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum has been described as “one of the most evil places on the island”. 

Today, the institution is still in operation, rebranded as the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (Montreal University Institute of Mental Health). Not surprisingly, the hospital has many documented ghost stories and hauntings.

Given the large size of the hospital campus and its long and deranged history, this blog will only be able to scratch the surface of its many horrors. Indeed, many blogs could be written about the hauntings at this mental asylum!

The city’s first institution for the mentally ill was The Montreal Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1839 and occupied a whole floor of the infamous Montreal Gaol. However, the cohabitation between mental patients and other criminals was not seen as ideal.

As such, a few years later, the provincial government began to subsidize the cost of private asylums to house mental patients. These included the Beauport Asylum (1845), the Saint-Ferdinand d’Halifax Asylum (1872), the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum in Longue-Pointe (1873), and the Protestant Hospital in Verdun (1890). 

Of these institutions, the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum was the most controversial. It was also conceived as the largest mental institution in Canada at the time and was even given the status of a municipality called Gamelin.

At its opening, the asylum was a huge complex. It contained seventy-nine private rooms, twenty-seven rooms, two infirmaries, twenty-three dining rooms, fifty-one bedrooms, one hundred and fifty cells, and one kitchen with two floors and five pantries.

Approximately 400 mental patients were housed there in its early years. With locked doors and bars on the windows, it was nearly impossible to escape.

Due to the stigma and taboos of the era, the vast majority of the patients were “forgotten” by their families and thus rarely or never received visitors. This resulted in a lifetime of social isolation for patients and ultimately their deaths at the hospital. 

Furthermore, the bodies of deceased patients usually went unclaimed. The law required the Sisters of Providence to hand over the cadavers within 24 hours to the provincial Inspector of Anatomy. Indeed, the mental hospitals provided the main source of human corpses for dissection at medical schools within Quebec.

Saint-Jean-de-Dieu also suffered from serious overcrowding and struggled to meet the needs of its mental patients. Many were rarely seen by a doctor following incarceration. Just over 30% of patients released from the facility were considered cured, improved, or even stable.

By 1890, Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Hospital had grown to include 1297 patients along with sixty-seven sisters and a hundred nurses in the main building.  

Unfortunately, a devastating fire broke out in the institution on May 6, 1890. The inferno raged for most of the day and destroyed the entire hospital.

In all, a total of 86 people burned alive, mostly female inmates.

In its May 18th, 1890 edition, The Dominion Illustrated reported that “the sight that met the eyes of both sane and insane was a terrible one. There were still people in the burning central and adjoining sections of the building. Some of them could be seen as they stood clasping the iron bars of the windows in their hands and rending the air with demoniacal shouts and cries. Laughing, cursing, entreating and praying; singing coarse ribald songs, gazing vacantly at the excited multitude below them; making vain endeavours to wrest the heavy iron bars from the windows: careless and indifferent, eager and hopeful, they furnished a strange and vivid spectacle”.

It would take a full decade to rebuild the institution with an even larger design than the original. This included a train line that connected the hospital to the rail network. 

In June, 1898, the hospital acquired a passenger rail car and two cars for merchandise and the system was launched.

The new design also included a system of indoor trolleys that rolled on tracks through large hallways and connected the various pavilions of the hospital.

Unfortunately, another deadly fire broke out on Saturday, November 9, 1935, in one of the wings at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum. 

According to the November 11, 1935 issue of Reading Eagle: 

“Hospital officials said the cause of the conflagration probably would never be discovered. Firemen expressed the theory a pyromaniac inmate was responsible, but conceded that they faced an almost hopeless task in confirming this theory.”

The column continued:

“Four violently insane inmates were burned to death after the fire broke out late Saturday night when they eluded their guards and crept back to their cells in the blazing building. Another inmate died from heart disease.”

Allegedly, the nuns in that case attempted to avoid an investigation on the basis that the hospital formed a separate municipality. Indeed, Gamelin had its own police and firefighters, even though there were no permanent residents apart from the incarcerated mental patients.

As the years passed, the hospital would continue to experience more problems, many of them extremely deranged, shocking and almost unbelievable. With technological advances, electroshock therapy was invented in Italy in 1938 and quickly spread to other mental institutions. 

Saint-Jean-de-Dieu began administering electroshock therapy on its patients, in addition to other questionable techniques such as drilling holes through skulls and lobotomies. 

The period from the 1930s to the 1960s witnessed increased psychological experimentation and abuse at mental institutions across the globe. Some of the worst examples occurred in Montreal, such as the CIA-funded brainwashing experiments including MKULTRA at the Allan Memorial Institute.

Other sketchy psychological “experiments” of the era were more based on social issues and Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum was known to house many of the so-called “Duplessis Orphans”.

From 1935 to 1964, thousands of orphaned children were abandoned or entrusted to the State by a parent or other members of their family. These orphans were raised in facilities like nurseries, orphanages or psychiatric hospitals run by Catholic congregations.

They were called “Duplessis Orphans” because the Premier of Quebec at the time, Maurie Duplessis, reclassified the children as “mental patients” and sent them to psychiatric asylums solely to receive a per child subsidy from the Federal Government.

The results were horrific when perfectly healthy children were locked up and treated as though they were mentally deranged.

In the June, 2006 edition of Freedom Magazine an article appeared entitled “The Child Protection Racket”. It highlighted the experience of Joseph Martin, who was 5 1/2 years old in 1938 when his parents placed him in Montreal’s Buisonnet Institute. He was then transferred to Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, where he remained until 1956.

Upon arrival, Martin and other children were stripped of personal belongings, including “jewelry, clothing, pictures of cherished relatives, money and identification”.

Martin recalled that in 1941 he witnessed a 10-year-old boy beaten to death by two guards. In the article, he claimed that many of the guards were criminals and some allegedly sodomized the younger inmates.

Furthermore, Martin also claimed that children were being used for medical experiments and organ harvesting. The article stated: 

“For years, according to Martin, three children each week were victims of operations during which vital organs such as hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers were cut out and sold in the United States. A gray-and-black refrigerated vehicle transported the organs.”

Martin said that the mutilated remains were tossed into cardboard boxes and then either burned in a huge trash incinerator or buried in the nearby “Pigsty Cemetery”. 

Supposedly, the burial ground got its unofficial name “Pigsty” because the nuns tended to pigs and other farm animals in the area. However, other theories are more harrowing. According to The February 7, 2024 edition of Mohawk Nation News, the cemetery was called the “Pigsty” because “dead native and non-native children were allegedly fed to pigs”.

Over 2000 bodies were buried in the “Pigsty Cemetery” before it was closed in 1958 and then excavated during 1967 to rebury the remains elsewhere.

However, workers did not manage to remove them all and many more bones were found in 1975 during the construction of a SAQ warehouse to store alcoholic beverages. Even more human remains were found on site in 1999 during expansion work on the warehouse’s parking lot.

With all of the twisted scandals, authorities rebranded the hospital on two occasions. In 1975, the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum took the name of Louis-Hippolyte-Lafontaine Hospital. In 2013, it was rebranded as the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal.

In 2019, graduate student Kassandra Spooner-Lockyer presented her thesis entitled “Evanescent Lives: Archival Dissolution in a Montreal Psychiatric Hospital” as part of a Master of Arts degree in Anthropology at Concordia University. It is noteworthy that the author is an expert in Hauntology, or “a range of ideas referring to the return or persistence of elements from the social or cultural past, as in the manner of a ghost”.

Spooner-Lockyer’s haunting thesis examines the medical files of women suffering from neurosyphilis at the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu psychiatric hospital at the beginning of the 20th century. She argues that both history and the hospital functioned differently for these women, as their lives, bodies, relations of care, and narratives were left to dissolve into dust.

She also reveals some creepy stories from incarcerated patients. For example, one patient complained to doctors about seeing the dead at her door during the night. Her personal ghost story was labelled as “hallucinations” by medical staff.

Another woman who was admitted in 1920 was asked by doctors if she heard voices. She said: “Yes, since I was last enclosed behind an iron door without a lock, they changed my feet to those of a beast and lengthened my hands”. She was diagnosed with “degenerative insanity” and died two years later, aged 55 years old.

Perhaps the most well-known haunted location at the hospital is the “Tower of Monsters”.

In 2019, the health authority overseeing the hospital, the Centre intégré universitaire de santé et de services sociaux de l’Est-de-l’Île-de-Montréal, described the haunted tower on their website. 

Headlined as “We Call it the Tower of Monsters”, Marieve Paradis wrote:

“It was never named, unlike all the other buildings of the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal. This red brick tower has long stimulated the imagination of the local population. In the 1960s, the grounds of Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, an autonomous city that included the hospital, were full of fruit trees. And the children of the neighbourhood loved to exchange chestnuts.”

She continued:

“So, you had to be brave to venture near the Tower of Monsters to go and get chestnuts. When they returned outside the hospital fences, the children would tell what they had seen – shadows of deformed heads and crazy prisoners tied up or locked in cages. They had fertile imaginations!” 

In July, 2020, Radio-Canada sent journalist Vincent Maisonneuve to the tower to try and unravel its mysteries. Again, there were many cases of children reporting paranormal activity coming from the tower, such as shadowy figures and disembodied screams. As usual, these ghost sightings were dismissed as wild imaginations by the officials.

Given all of the deranged stories, perhaps it is not surprising that local journalist Kristian Gravenor described the hospital in his Coolopolis Blog as “one of the most evil places on the island”.

However, there is one silver lining that resulted from this dark and deranged story.

On August 15, 1961 Éditions du Jour published the groundbreaking book Les fous crient au secours by Jean-Charles Pagé. 

The book, translated into English as “The Insane Cry for Help”, contains the testimony of Pagé, who was admitted against his will to the psychiatric asylum. He described his quest to be released.

Pagé focussed on the deranged treatments and sub-par living conditions in the asylum at the time, which he compared to a prison. He described the poor living conditions, the use of electroshocks, straitjackets, isolation and the use of pharmacopoeia to numb rebellious thoughts and behaviour.

The book caused a public outcry upon its release and a vast media campaign was launched to modernize psychiatric care in Quebec. In response, the government commissioned the Bédard Report, which proposed the declericalization of psychiatric health care and the deinstitutionalization of patients.

The report was a major milestone in the evolution of mental health treatment in Quebec. It resulted in the vast majority of patients being released from psychiatric hospitals into the community, with treatment still available on an outpatient basis by medical professionals.

In conclusion, there is no denying that the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum (and its subsequent rebrandings) suffer from an extremely deranged and oppressive history. With its many ghosts and haunted history, it is no wonder why some people think it is an extremely evil place. 

Company News

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours will be resuming in early April! Tickets are already on sale!

Before we launch our season, we are offering the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour (in English) on Saturday, March 15!

Learn about Black ’47, the year 75,000 Irish refugees fleeing the Famine landed on Montreal’s wharves. The tour visits key sites associated with this tragedy, such as the locations of fever sheds, burial grounds and hospitals, providing in-depth history about the Irish Famine’s impact on Montreal in 1847.

Led by Donovan King, the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour also features Augmented Reality to resurrect Saint Ann’s Church, the heart of the Irish Famine community in Griffintown!

In the meantime, 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 2 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 $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! 

We are also pleased to unveil it this month! 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 also explore unsettling connections, including McGill’s involvement in the development of controversial brainwashing techniques in the ghostly halls of the Allan Memorial Hospital. 

With a detailed self-guided tour map, this book allows you to experience McGill’s spooky past from the comfort of your own home – and then head out with friends to uncover the campus’s hidden secrets for yourself.

This is a one-of-a-kind adventure you won’t find anywhere else; an invitation to explore McGill’s dark history and mysterious landmarks like never before.

Whether you’re a history lover, ghost enthusiast, or simply looking for a fun outing, this book offers a perfect mix of the paranormal and the historical. 

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 March 13: Update on St. John the Evangelist Church

Montreal’s famous Red Roof Church, or St. John the Evangelist, could be permanently shuttered. The church enjoys a prime location in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles and a reputation of being haunted by its founder, Reverend Edmund Wood. The Reverend’s ghost is known to be friendly, leaving warm feelings among those who encounter him. However, due to urgent repair work that the congregation can ill afford, in 2023 officials debated putting the historic church up for sale after relocating Saint Michael’s Mission a year earlier. There are now concerns that if the church is shuttered, the ghost of Edmund Wood might start haunting other locations in the Quartier des Spectacles.

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 will be resuming in early April! Tickets are already on sale!

In the meantime, 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 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 a updated our 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 controversial transformations happening at the Old Royal Victoria Hospital. As one of Montreal’s most haunted locations, it is being repurposed into a new McGill University campus despite Indigenous legal challenges, concerns about unmarked graves and worries about the old hospital’s plethora of ghosts.

Haunted Research

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 refurbishing the former hospital buildings. The goal is to create a 21st Century campus dedicated to uniting “researchers, students and partners to tackle global sustainability challenges.“ 

However, the process has been rocked by a major legal conflict with the Mohawk Mothers. During the 1950s and 60s unethical brainwashing experiments were carried out at the nearby Allan Memorial Institute, which resulted in unspeakable tragedy.

The Mohawk Mothers believe Indigenous and other children could be buried in the vicinity. This belief is based on the signed affidavit of Lana Ponting, a survivor of the mind control experiments.

Ponting recalled living with other children at the mental hospital, including Indigenous youth, some as young as 5. She also remembered seeing people going outside at night with shovels and hearing rumors that bodies were buried on the site.

Rumours abound that human remains may be interred beneath the foundations of the Secret Pool, located between the two institutions. 

There is also the question of what to do about all of the ghosts that remain in the old hospital. With dozens of documented ghost sightings during the Old Royal Vic’s tenure as a medical institution, it is likely the spirits are here to stay.

On Halloween, 2024, the Canadian Structures & Stories blog published an article by Domenico Di Modica entitled: “Veil Between Worlds: Montreal’s Royal Victoria Hospital, Where Science Meets the Supernatural“.

Reflecting on the institution’s haunted history, Di Modica surmised:

“Today, most of the Royal Victoria Hospital’s buildings stand quiet while construction work is slowly underway, with sections repurposed by McGill University and others left in stillness. Yet, its reputation as both a center of medical innovation and a haunted site continues.”

With the project scheduled for completion in 2029, only one thing is certain: it is almost certain that the “New Vic” will be just as haunted and ghost-ridden as the Old Royal Victoria Hospital was.

Company News

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours will be resuming in early April! Tickets are already on sale!

In the meantime, 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 2 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 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! 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 February 13: Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum

There are few places in Montreal as haunted as the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum. Established in 1873 by the Sisters of Providence, the mental hospital was designed to house “idiots,” “imbeciles,” and epileptics. With a history of social exclusion, deadly fires and debilitating treatments, the hospital has been described as “one of the most evil places on the island”. Today, the institution is still in operation, rebranded as the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (Montreal University Institute of Mental Health). Not surprisingly, the hospital has many documented ghost stories and hauntings.

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!

For this year’s Hallowe’en Season we are launching our new ghost tour – Haunted Old Montreal!

This haunted walk is available every Sunday night in October!

Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal is also currently offering our regular ghost tours in both languages:

Every Friday:

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Every Saturday (on rotation):

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

Every Sunday:

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English and on the last Sunday of the month at 4 pm in French.

For those who want to try to communicate with the Dead, we offer a real Paranormal Investigation the first weekend of every month (Fridays in French and Saturdays in English). There is also a special investigation on Hallowe’en night:

Paranormal Investigation – Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

Private tours can also be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Our Virtual Ghost Tour is also available on demand!

Want to give the gift of a haunted experience for the 2022 season?

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

This month we explore the venerable Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal hospital and its ghost stories told over the centuries!

Haunted Research

Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal is one of North America’s oldest and most haunted hospitals. Established in 1642 by colonial nurse Jeanne Mance, it has seen many incarnations over the centuries and still exists today.

The founding of this colonial hospital was allegedly rooted in a Godly message received by Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière. This devout Catholic tax-collector from La Flèche, France was part of a religious movement that dreamt of colonizing “New France” with the goal of converting Indigenous people to Catholicism.

On February 2, 1630, as he approached his 33rd birthday, Jérôme Le Royer went to the chapel of Notre-Dame du Chef du Pont in La Flèche for the Feast of the Purification. During the communion, Le Royer heard an interior Godly voice, which instructed him:

“My son, consecrate yourself, with your wife and children, to the Holy Family. You will found an order of nuns and consecrate them to my foster father, Joseph. These nuns will go to Montreal, Canada, and found the Hôtel-Dieu there.”

Jérôme Le Royer was so inspired by the otherworldly message that he decided to found “The Notre-Dame Society for the Conversion of the Savage Peoples of New France”.

This colonial organization began fund-raising and assembling supporters with the goal of establishing a French colony on the Mohawk territory of Tiohtià:ke, called “Montreal Island” by the French.

Le Royer also established the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, an order of nuns to found the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. He recruited a young woman named Jeanne Mance to be in charge of the project. He also selected a military leader named the Sieur de Miasonneuve to govern the colony.

Once the colonization team was assembled, it sailed across the Atlantic for Quebec City in 1641. After spending the winter in the colony, in May, 1642, it set sail to colonize Tiohtià:ke. The French had an advantage in that the Mohawk people were not in this part of their territory at the time.

It is important to note that the Catholic colonists were terrified of the Devil and his evil minions. They saw demons as having a special mission to harass and thwart any Christian project, especially works of charity and compassion like hospitals, orphanages and shelters.

The first thing the French colonists did when they arrived was fire their cannons to try and scare suspected demons away. Father Vimont, a Jesuit priest who was part of the group that founded the city, wrote:

“The thunder of the cannon reverberated over the whole island. The demons…were no doubt dismayed at a sound that testified to the love we have for our great lady.” The great lady was the Virgin Mary, and the religious colonists named their city “Ville-Marie” in her honour.

With the construction of the Ville-Marie colony, Jeanne Mance created a rudimentary hospital in 1642 within the palisade of the fort.

When the first stone hospital was built in 1645, Jeanne Mance officially founded the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal on October 8, as confirmed by a patent of King Louis XIV of France.

When the Mohawk First Nation realized that Tiohtià:ke had been colonized, and all out war broke out with the French. In 1649 the hospital was briefly closed and converted into military installation

The hospital grew when two surgeons arrived from France in 1653 and authorities began constructing a chapel on the site. However, disaster struck on February 22, 1695, when a mysterious fire burned the hospital to the ground. Authorities blamed the inferno on a demon.

As they rebuilt the hospital, the nursing sisters complained that the same demon had arrived to terrify them.

They claimed that he ran about the hospital at night with a big candle in his hand. The demon was seen dashing from window to window, frightening passers-by on Saint-Paul Street.

The demon also raised a horrible racket by throwing piles of building materials down the stairs into the cellar. Sometimes he could be heard working all night long with an axe and saw, as though he was a carpenter.

There were also nights when the demon galloped around on the roof like a frisky young horse or walked the length of the dormitory, clattering as if wearing wooden shoes. He finally rolled a large barrel down the stairs before moving on to terrorize other places.

In another case, a priest named Father de Fancampt claimed he was visited by a demon on his deathbed at the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. The demon taunted him and tried to bring him to purgatory, so Father de Fancampt refused to die until the demon was exorcised by another priest.

The hospital would burn to the ground again on June 19, 1721. While celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi, soldiers fired a volley into the air. A bullet struck the Hôtel Dieu, triggering a devastating fire that destroyed the hospital and burned down 138 homes.

A third hospital was soon built, but it was not to last very long.

The third version was destroyed on April 10, 1734, when a slave-woman named Marie-Josèphe Angélique was accused of arson.

It had started on the south side of Saint-Paul Street and spread very quickly. The fire was so intense that the law enforcement officers could not get close to it. Due to a strong wind blowing from the west, the fire spread and destroyed forty-six houses along with the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital in less than three hours. Half of the city was completely ruined.

Rumours began to circulate that a slave named Marie-Josèphe Angélique had set the fire in the attic of her mistress’ home, one Madame de Francheville, on St. Paul Street. Even the town crier announced that she had started the fire.

Even though there were no witnesses, Marie-Josèphe Angélique was arrested and put on trial for arson. Some twenty colonists filed before the judge. All of them were convinced that the slave of Widow Francheville was guilty, yet not one of them saw her set the fire. She was declared guilty by the Judge and was sentenced to have her hand cut off and then to be burned alive at the scene of the fire, with her ashes scattered to the wind.

However, all death penalties in New France were automatically appealed to the Governor in Quebec City. The Governor reviewed the case and he felt it was too cruel. He decided to reduce the sentence: her hand would no longer be chopped off and instead of burning her alive, she would be hanged first and then her body would be thrown on the funeral pyre.

That afternoon, Marie-Josèphe Angélique was taken one last time through the streets of Montreal on the back of a horse-drawn garbage cart. She was dressed in a long white robe with a sign made from the burnt wood of the home around her neck with the word incindieare, or “arsonist”, inscribed upon it.

She was forced to wear a noose dangling around her neck and to carry a two-pound lit wooden torch as a reminder of her alleged crime.

When they arrived at the site where Madame Franchville’s home had stood, Marie-Josèphe Angélique mounted a scaffold with piles of firewood underneath it. She was then hanged and then the large funeral pyre was lit.  Her body was cut down and then flung into the blaze. Once her body had been cremated, her ashes were scattered in the wind.

Today, the ghost of Marie-Josèphe Angélique is probably the most well-known in Old Montreal. Not only have there been numerous sightings of her limping through the streets in a long white robe with a torch in her hand, but her story has also been featured on TV programs like Creepy Canada.

The fourth Hôtel Dieu Hospital was then built. It would be the last and most enduring structure on the original site.

Religious authorities were thrilled in 1784, when a military officer named James Singer donated his slave Dianne to the Hôtel Dieu Hospital before returning to England. The nursing sisters were so grateful for his “generosity and pious charity” that they promised to forever pray for his health and longevity.

In 1836, the hospital was exposed to scandal when the book Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, or, The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed was published. It claimed to reveal systematic sexual abuse of nuns and infanticide of the resulting children by Catholic priests in her convent and the Hôtel Dieu Hospital. In it, Monk claimed that nuns of the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph, whom she called “the Black Nuns”, were forced to have sex with the priests in the nearby seminary. The priests supposedly entered the convent through a secret tunnel.

If the sexual union produced a baby, the priests baptized it – and then strangled the baby and dumped it into a lime pit in the basement. Uncooperative nuns “disappeared”. Widely regarded as an anti-Catholic hoax, the book even provided a map of the grounds with the fictional secret tunnel linking the hospital to the seminary.

In 1861, the Hôtel Dieu Hospital moved to a new location on the slopes of Mount Royal, marking its fifth incarnation. Not only did the living nuns and patients move to new hospital on the mountain – they also took all of the bodies of the deceased nuns, who were transferred to the chapel of the new hospital. A total of 178 nuns had died over the span of two centuries, however only 23 coffins were needed to carry all their remains, as many of the bones had been reduced to powder. These remains are still there, including the skeleton of Jeanne Mance.

The Mountain Campus of the Hôtel Dieu Hospital would serve Montrealers for over 150 years. It witnessed everything from epidemics of smallpox and Spanish Flu to diagnosing the first AIDS patient in Canada. The hospital was the site of medical innovations, the recovery of hundreds of thousands of patients and the deaths of many who did not survive.

It is also rumored to be haunted by ghostly nurses, smallpox victims and all sorts of other ghastly apparitions.

In 1992, the Musée des Hospitalières de l’Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal opened on the site. Created for the 350th anniversary of the City of Montreal, this museum highlights the history of Jeanne Mance and the hospital she founded.

Returning to Old Montreal, the fourth hospital was demolished after the Mount Royal campus opened. Store-Warehouses, the most common type of building in Old Montreal, were erected on the site between 1861 and 1874. They were constructed because the British began to expand the port and these buildings were used to store imports and exports on the upper floors and as shops on the ground level. The religious authorities rented out these buildings to merchants, earning record sums from the property.

When the port moved to the east in the 1970s, all of the Store-Warehouses in Old Montreal became obsolete. These were converted info Old Montreal’s first luxury condos and currently sell for over a million dollars each. Because the Catholic authorities never took a Vow of Poverty, they made a fortune from the old Hôtel Dieu site!

Today, the condos are rumoured to have ghosts. Sometimes people have seen ghostly nurses in the windows of the building. Other times people hear a disembodied female voice crying “Au secours” (or “Help me!” in English). These paranormal cries may be related to one of the many fires that consumed the old hospital.

In any case, on September 23, 2017, the Hôtel Dieu moved from its Mount Royal site into the CHUM Super-hospital along with several older facilities. Today, one of the oldest hospitals in North America is still operating in the most ultramodern of settings.

One constant question is whether any ghosts or demons have followed the Hôtel Dieu Hospital to its newest location. While hospital management has denied that the new location has any paranormal activity, Haunted Montreal was contacted by a man who was recovering from a heart attack in October, 2019 at the CHUM location.

The patient claimed that while resting one afternoon in his hospital bed, he suddenly smelled sulfurous odor, almost like rotten eggs. At first, he thought that an orderly was bringing some sort of nasty food, especially as he could hear footsteps approaching his room.

However, the footsteps stopped outside of his door and nobody opened it.

“Is anyone there?” he asked, but there was no reply.

The patient pulled himself out of bed and slowly walked to the door, holding his nose as he went due to the sulfurous stench. Once at the door, he turned the handle to try and open it. It seemed to be locked!

Puzzled, the patient continued trying to turn the handle, when all of a sudden, the lights began flickering on and off in his hospital room. He then began to hear what sounded like demonic laughter.

It started slowly with some deranged snickering and soon developed into a roaring, full-throated cackling.

The man hobbled back to his bed as quickly as he could and began pressing the buzzer to summon a nurse. The laughter and the smell of sulfur got worse and worse and the man collapsed in his bed in terror.

When he woke up, he was surrounded by nurses and the stench and laughter were no longer present. Medical staff informed him that he had had a minor heart attack.

The patient assumed he may have been dreaming or hallucinating from the cocktail of drugs he was on, so did not mention his experience to hospital staff.

Indeed, it was only a few days later that he confided to Haunted Montreal about what had happened.

Given the Hôtel Dieu Hospital’s long association with demons and other spirits, it is feasible that the CHUM location is haunted.

Whatever the case, as one of the oldest hospitals in North America still in operation, there can be no denying the tales of ghosts and apparitions who have been haunting it for almost four centuries now.

Company News

For this year’s Hallowe’en Season we are launching a new ghost tour – Haunted Old Montreal! This haunted walk is available every Sunday night in October and more dates may be added based on demand.

Tickets are now on sale!

We are also offering all of our regular tours!

Every Friday:

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Every Saturday (on rotation):

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

Every Sunday:

Our Haunted Pub Crawl happens every Sunday at 3 pm in English and on the last Sunday of the month at 4 pm in French.

For those who want to try to communicate with the Dead, we offer a real Paranormal Investigation the first weekend of every month (Fridays in French and Saturdays in English):

Paranormal Investigation – Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

Private tours for any of these experiences can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

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 7 people.

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

Our team also releases videos every Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this new 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 November 13: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in Montreal

While visiting Montreal during a lecture tour in 1922, Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned about a poltergeist in the city. He described the apparition in his 1924 book Our Second American Adventure. Doyle gave a detailed account of how it had harassed a married couple. When a priest came to cast out the poltergeist, “in the midst of his exorcism the rug sprang at him and enveloped his head and shoulders, so that he ran terrified from the house.”

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 300 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal is dedicated 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!

With the Hallowe’en season behind us, Haunted Montreal is moving into winter mode. We are pleased to announce that the Haunted Montreal Pub Crawl runs year round on Sunday afternoons. We are also looking for an indoor haunted location for our new Paranormal Investigation. Lastly, our ghost walks can still be booked for private groups, including Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Downtown.

Our December blog examines the Hôpital de la Miséricorde, an abandoned hospital that separated single mothers from their children under horrific conditions in the past. It is reported to be haunted by tortured spirits of a former era when strict and oppressive Catholic doctrine ruled the day across Quebec.

Haunted Research

The former Hôpital de la Miséricorde is just one of many now-vacant hospital complexes in Montreal, in the wake of decisions to centralize services in two “superhospitals”. During its sordid past, thousands of orphans were falsely diagnosed with mental illnesses and unmarried teenage mothers were housed in hostile conditions within the walls of the former “Hospital of Mercy”.

Today, the building is abandoned by the living – but certainly not the dead! Considered a paranormal hotspot by ghost-hunting experts, there are many stories of disembodied children’s voices crying, sounds of clanging and abuse, not to mention the spirits of angry nuns and a fearful young mother.

To put things in context, Montreal was a very Catholic city from the founding of the Ville-Marie colony is 1642 up until the Quiet Revolution of the 1950s, when its power began to wane.

This was especially true for citizens of French and Irish ancestry.

Due to patriarchal Catholic doctrine, there were very strict rules to follow in life and any serious violation could have severe consequences. Misogyny has been rampant in the church for many centuries due to the early fathers engaging in theological debates that questioned whether women had souls. In the 12th century, influential theologian Thomas Aquinas described women as “mis-shapen men”, and clearly saw them as being inferior.

During the Middle Ages, in the era of the Inquisition, many powerful female mystics were persecuted. Some were even burned at the stake, condemned as witches.

Furthermore, any woman who had a child out of wedlock was considered thoroughly “fallen” and disgraced within the Catholic society. The child was also severely stigmatized and often alienated and excluded.

In the mid-1800s, a narrow, rocky lane called Woodyard led down to the river starting at today’s René Lévesque Boulevard at the corner of St-André Street. In many cases, panicking single mothers would stumble down the rocky lane to the shoreline, child in arms. In a state of despair, some of them threw their babies, and sometimes themselves, into the dangerous and fast flowing waters.

To prevent such incidents, the Catholic Church wanted institutions where unmarried women could be sent to deliver their children under a veil of secrecy, silence and shame. It was not uncommon for unwed mothers to be shamed into surrendering their children to the church. A powerful stigma was attached to unmarried motherhood, and abortion and the sale of contraception were criminal offences.

At the instigation of Bishop Ignace Bourget, the Congregation of the Sisters of Misericorde religious community was founded in 1848 by Rosalie Jetté. Marie-Rosalie Cadron Jetté, also known as “Marie of the Nativity”, was a widow and midwife who undertook the overseeing of unwed and struggling mothers between 1840 and 1864.

The Sisters were dedicated to housing and reforming single mothers, kids born out of wedlock and abandoned children in order to ensure compliance with strict Catholic doctrine.

They opened the first Hôpital de la Miséricorde on the corner of Ste-Catherine Street and St-André. After occupying this and other premises, which had become too cramped, the Sisters of Mercy ordered the construction of the first section of their hospital on today’s René-Lévesque Boulevard East (formerly Dorchester) in 1853.

Over the next several decades, the facility was expanded several times.

The Catholic religious orders prioritized work over education. The sons of unwed mothers could not legally inherit from their biological parents and could not become priests unless they had a special exemption. For many, this meant a life of deprivation, religious indoctrination, and feelings of guilt for their characterization as “children of sin.”

The church was also poorly equipped to care for them. Orphanages had limited resources, and each nun was often responsible for watching at least ten children under the age of two.

A Quebec Ombudsman wrote in one of his reports that “the majority of children spoke only in sounds until the ages of 4 to 6, and were incapable of telling time, eating with utensils, getting around, washing themselves, etc.

In one trade school, up to 25% of the children between 9 and 16 were found to be bed-wetters.”

The typical procedure was to bring so-called “fallen” pregnant women to the hospital to keep them out of sight in a cloistered environment. When their babies were born, they were immediately confiscated and placed within the orphanage.

Their children were given away for adoption, forced to do cheap labor, or much, much worse.

Furthermore, just two weeks after giving birth, the unwed mothers were expected to work for six months in the hospital to pay a debt for the “services” of the Sisters.

According to historian Jean-François Nadeau: “They live cloistered, in shame.” He mentions that at the moment of their reception, the nuns gave them a temporary name, such as Humiliance or Fructueuse, in order to remind them of the sin they had committed.

“Imagine: you’re pregnant, you’re left alone, and you’re forced to call yourself Fertile for six months,” said Nadeau, adding: “An aide who was here as a nurse told me several years ago that she had seen one of these young women try to jump into the void from one of the floors to kill herself.” The historian concludes that the hospital was a “factory of poverty”.

There are also allegations that some of the orphans were experimented upon by demented doctors, such as Ewen Cameron and Heinz Lehmann

According to researcher and blogger Ann Diamond:

“I have a photo of Doctors Ewen Cameron and Heinz Lehmann standing with a group of other doctors outside the Misericorde Hospital in Montreal in 1959. This was a hospital for unwed mothers and also an orphanage. At the time Lehmann was directing the research institute of the Allan Memorial. What are two McGill psychiatrists doing in a group photo on the steps of this hospital? What legitimate reason would they have to be there? I am guessing the secret reason is they are setting up an agreement to get children for use in experiments. We know there were orphans living in a sealed off wing of the Allan in those years.”

Diamond continues:

“Cameron and Lehmann were key figures in what appears to have been a eugenics program operating out of McGill. Lehmann had trained in Nazi Germany at precisely the universities where the infamous T4 eugenics program was developed. He came to Quebec in 1937 and was soon placed in charge of a major psychiatric hospital known as a place where patients were zombified with drugs and ECT.”

With changing times and practices, notably the secularization of health services, the hospital finally closed in 1975. 

A total of 159,665 babies had been born and processed since its inception in 1845. In a delivery room on the third floor of an 1873 hospital extension (today’s 850 René-Lévesque East), nearly 50,000 babies were delivered, taken from their unwed mothers and transformed into orphans.

The Jacques-Viger residential and long-term-care centre (CHSLD) took over and occupied the facility for several decades until recently, when it streamlined and relocated its operations. The original structure had begun to deteriorate and fall into ruin, forcing the occupants to vacate.

Today, the hospital is abandoned by the living, but not by the dead, according to survivors and paranormal experts.

According to many survivors of the hospital, it is haunted, as discussed on various threads on Internet forums. One of them claimed:

“In the part where the unwed mothers were kept, one can hear crying and lamentations emanating from the old walls of wood and plaster. It is thought that the lives and sufferings of those unwed mothers will remain forever in these long corridors.”

Another added: “There was too much suffering in this place, to be forgotten.”

One survivor, who visited in 2003, claimed: “When we walked in this wing of the hospital where the single mothers gave birth, which has been abandoned for several years now, we can still hear this crying of the abandoned little ones. There are also the groans, the tears, the prayers of these single mothers, which are like the cries of the abandoned little ones, impregnated in the walls and woodwork of this establishment. We still hear them today in 2003.”

Yet another victim claimed: “The nuns who were at the nursery were very inhuman… Animals were treated better than the orphans,” before asking “Are there any other survivors who were whipped by some religious authority before or after giving birth to their children, or when they entered?”

Considered a paranormal hotspot by ghost-hunting experts, there are many stories of disembodied children’s voices wailing and crying throughout the hospital’s corridors, not to mention occasional sounds of abuse such as whipping, lashing and clanging noises.

On one occasion, a ghost hunter even detected what he swears were “the spirits of three angry nuns” rushing down a corridor, wielding three large wooden spoons. These kitchen utensils could easily double as weapons and were often used to beat the orphans or single mothers.

He also detected the translucent ghost of a fearful young single mother, who was spotted crouching in a corner – cowering in tears. When he asked:” Are you OK?” she looked up at him with tears in her eyes, shook her head in sorrow and then slowly de-materialized.

While there has been talk of demolishing the old Hôpital de la Miséricorde, its future is unknown at this point.

Today, its founder, Marie-Rosalie Cadron Jetté is commemorated with two museums. In 1998, the Misericordia Sisters’ Museum opened to the public in Montreal.

The purpose of the museum is to inform the public about “this relatively unknown and controversial story, even today.” On February 27, 2019, the Misericordia Sisters’ Museum closed for renovations. According to its website, it will reopen once the work is completed.

There is also La Maison Rosalie-Cadron in Lavaltrie, which is the house where she grew up.

Lastly, Marie-Rosalie Cadron Jetté may one day become a Catholic Saint, as recommended by Bishop Ignace Bourget. The Vatican is studying her cause for canonization and Pope Francis declared her “Venerable” in 2013.

In conclusion, the former Hôpital de la Miséricorde is literally a crumbling architectural reminder of the dark Catholic past that used to haunt Montreal City and Quebec. With the waning of the Church starting during the Quiet Revolution, today the abandoned hospital contains sickening paranormal reminders of the deranged past era.

Vulnerable babies were ripped from their mothers and thrown into orphanages due to patriarchal and religious doctrine and enforcement. It’s no wonder their desperate cries can still be heard today emanating from the crumbling plaster walls of the hospital’s long corridors.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is now into winter mode! For this first time ever, we will be operating year-round with our award-winning Haunted Pub Crawl, every Sunday at 3 pm in English and 4 pm in French.

Private tours are also available, weather permitting, for Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery.

The Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk is not offered in the winter due to dangerous and icy conditions on the slopes.

In other news, Haunted Montreal is disappointed that the Black Rock Famine Cemetery has been disturbed again. This time the REM has planted a pylon into the heart of the mass graveyard, removing over 15 skeletons of Irish Famine victims in the process. The Irish community is upset. At the same time, Mayor Valerie Plante is proposing to co-brand the Griff’s REM Station “Griffintown-Bernard-Landry”. The Irish community has asked her to withdraw the proposal and Haunted Montreal agrees.

If you support the Montreal Irish community, please write to the Mayor and ask her to withdraw the proposal. Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante can be reached here.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 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 January 13: Réseau Express Métropolitain’s Ghostly Gamble

Will the Réseau express métropolitain (REM) become haunted due to an Irish Famine cemetery disturbance? The REM is a new automated light rail network under construction in the greater Montreal area. At a cost of $6.3 billion, it will include 26 stations and span the greater Montreal region. In November, workers digging a hole for a pylon near the Victoria Bridge discovered the bones of over a dozen Irish Famine victims from 1847 at the site of the Black Rock. Given these Irish refugees were fleeing westward, it is entirely possible their disturbed spirits will rise up to haunt the electric train network.  

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.

With over 200 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal is dedicated to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly-researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

Our October edition examines Ravenscrag, one of the world’s most frightening house of horrors. Perched on the slopes of Mount Royal, it is the location of deranged brainwashing experiments during the Cold War and may host a secret children’s cemetery.

For the Hallowe’en Season, Haunted Montreal has added many extra tours, including our newly-revised Haunted Downtown Montreal ghost walk – in both English and French! During the month of October, please consider making Haunted Montreal part of your Hallowe’en Season. Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal also offers private tours for groups of 15 or more people, including company outings, school groups, bachelorette parties and other gatherings of all types. Please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com to organize a private tour.

HAUNTED RESEARCH

Ravenscrag is a prominent Pine Avenue mansion that is currently used as McGill’s psychiatry department. Now known as the Allan Memorial Institute, it is a very creepy estate and is also rumoured to be extremely haunted. Tortured, disembodied voices are known to echo the corridors and not only do caretakers often refuse to clean the terrifying morgues in the building, but sometimes at night a mysterious light appears in the cupola of the main tower overlooking the McGill campus.

According to a report in the McGill Tribune:

“The upper buildings of the McGill campus, above Dr. Penfield, appear to be the most ghost-ridden of them all…[especially] the Allan Memorial Institute. In the 1950s and ‘60s, the MKULTRA experiments, partially funded by the CIA, subjected patients to electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation, and lobotomies. Experiments also forced patients to listen to broadcasted messages (either from loud speakers or from under their pillows), as well as giving them experimental hallucinogenic drugs. Any ghosts trapped in this building will be forever reminded of their tortured pasts.”

There are also rumours that a secret, haunted children’s cemetery exists behind the property, just behind the stone wall. It is at the bottom of a slope that leads up to the Olmsted Road on Mount Royal. This rocky, forested area is popular with psychics and paranormal investigators, and often mysterious people can be seen there at night conducting strange rituals, often involving votive candles. Rumour has it the investigators sometimes hear disembodied children crying. Survivors of horrific brainwashing experiments claim that child victims were secretly buried at this location, out of sight from the public.

Given the creepy rumors, mental health patients are often apprehensive about being treated at the Allan Memorial Institute – and for good reason, given its deranged history!

Ravenscrag was built in 1863 by Sir Hugh Allan. An extremely affluent banker and entrepreneur of Scottish origin, Allan used his political connections to obtain favorable contracts and subsidies for his enterprises and was known to exploit workers, including children in his factories. In 1860, Sir Hugh Allan purchased fourteen acres on the slopes of Mount Royal, for $10,000, from the estate of the late Simon McTavish.

Built in the style of an Italian Renaissance villa or palazzo, Ravenscrag consisted of 72 lavish rooms spread over five floors and decorated in the opulent Victorian fashion of the era. The mansion also featured an imposing tower with an observatory in the cupola, which Sir Hugh Allan used to monitor his ships with a telescope in the old port of Montreal. When built, Ravenscrag was also fitted with gas lighting and the most advanced plumbing and heating technology available at the time. It was the most lavish address in the city and hosted decadent parties for some of the most prestigious and wealthiest of people, including members of the Royal Family.

When Sir Hugh Allan’s died in 1882 while visiting his son-in-law in Edinburgh, he was one of the richest men in the world with a fortune estimated to be between eight and twelve million pounds.

His is son, Montagu, inherited the regal Ravenscrag mansion. Following Montagu’s death in 1940, his wife donated it to McGill University. Ravenscrag was gutted of its lavish interior and  transformed into a psychiatric hospital called the Allan Memorial Institute.  With funds from the Rockefeller Foundation, Dr. Ewen Cameron, the founder of McGill’s Psychiatric Department, was appointed its director.

In the early 1950s, during the first decade of the Cold War, the CIA believed it was crucial to learn how to brainwash people after the apparent success of the Chinese during the Korean War. A handful of American POWs made inexplicable confessions while publicly praising communism and denouncing the United States.

Starting in 1950, the CIA reached out to psychologists, physicians and toxicologists and embarked on several mind-control projects, such as Project Bluebird, Project Artichoke, and Project MKULTRA. In 1957, the CIA managed to recruit Dr. Ewen Cameron, who was trying to discover whether doctors could erase a person’s mind and instill new patterns of behaviour. The purpose of his brainwashing experiment was to discover techniques that could destroy a person’s time-space continuum in order to re-program them.

Dr. Cameron and his colleague Dr. Hebb started the experiment with 22 paid student volunteers.  Each student was placed on a bed in a lighted cubicle and made to wear opaque goggles, cardboard handcuffs and lie with their head embedded into a U-shaped foam pillow that limited audio stimulation.

Most subjects quit after a few hours, complaining that being in the apparatus felt like a form of torture. Most also had experienced hallucinations similar to those had on drugs like LSD. Dr. Hebb concluded that “even short term sensory deprivation produced a devastating impact on the human psyche,” noting that “the subjects very identity began to disintegrate.”

Realizing the potential, Dr. Cameron moved the research trial to Phase 2, which would require subjects who could not leave, as the student volunteers had done. Dr. Cameron began hand-picking patients at the Allan Memorial Institute for participation in the brainwashing research, against their knowledge. For subjects, Dr. Cameron chose people suffering from minor mental and emotional problems, such as anxiety disorders or postpartum depression.

Dr. Cameron developed and tested three major psychiatric procedures on the mental patients at the Allan Memorial.

He started with the technique of “depatterning”, his theory that people’s patterns of behaviour could be erased and replaced with others. In an attempt to erase their memories and personality, Dr. Cameron subjected them to brutal electroshock sessions that were well-beyond the norm in psychiatric hospitals in terms of frequency, duration and voltage.

His second technique was called “sensory isolation” and involved putting subjects in a sealed box where they would receive the minimum sensorial stimulus possible. Their eyes and ears would be covered, their body would be padded, and their movement impeded. It induced a form of sleep deprivation and disintegration of the personality.

Dr. Cameron then used his third technique, an attempted reprogramming known as “psychic driving”. Using powerful drugs he would put patients through 15 to 30 days of drug-induced, almost uninterrupted sleep. His patients were forced to listen to pre-recorded messages on a loop for as many as sixteen hours a day, designed to implant the desired new personality in the patients’ psyche.

Dr. Cameron was largely successful in erasing the identity of his patients, but was unable to implant the desired new personalities. Many of them suffered permanent brain damage. A study commissioned by Dr. Cameron’s successor in 1967 found that many of the tested patients suffered permanent amnesia, incontinence, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and even thinking their interrogators were their parents.

The CIA was so impressed with Dr. Cameron’s work that these techniques became the core of its torture methodology and were used in Vietnam, and most recently, in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay.

Most of Dr. Cameron’s un-consenting human guinea pigs did not discover what had really been done to them until more than twenty years later, which made it very difficult to obtain compensation.  A few of Cameron’s over 300 former patients did file lawsuits, but they were originally obstructed by the Canadian government, which had also contributed to the financing of Cameron’s experiments.

The reason Dr. Cameron was able to carry out such cruel experiments for almost a decade could be explained by the prestige that he enjoyed as a doctor. He was one of North America’s most eminent psychiatrists; he had served in the medical tribunal at the Nuremberg trials, and had been the president of the Quebec, Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations. Following his cruel and deranged career, Cameron died of a heart attack while mountain climbing with his son on September 8, 1967.

Today, despite its horrid past, the Allan Memorial Institute continues to operate as a psychiatric facility and houses ambulatory (out-patient) services.

The In-Patient Services were recently amalgamated into the facilities at the Montreal General Hospital.  Essentially, the Allan Memorial Institute now only offers out-patient psychiatric and psychological services, including cognitive behavioural therapy, as well as day clinics, programs and administrative services. Thankfully, there are no longer any beds at the Allan.

One survivor of Ewen Cameron’s experiments named Ann Diamond suggests that there are unmarked graves in the forested area behind the Allan Memorial Institute.

She wrote:

“These unmarked graves are a big secret. There has been no physical proof that kids are buried there but…some would have been First Nations kids in Cameron’s experiments between 1953 and 1964. Others came from broken homes, or were orphans…Obviously, they’re not laid out to attract attention but we think 17-25 children were buried there… Officially, though, it never happened…. Many, many records were destroyed however, and McGill has been very busy hiding the evidence and making sure witnesses and survivors remain silent.”

Whether or not these are just the ramblings of an Allan Memorial Institute survivor or if there are indeed children buried down there is open to speculation.

In Brenda Norre’s article “Location of Mass Graves of Residential School Children Revealed; Independent Tribunal Established” (Atlantic Free Press, 2006), she provides a list of hidden cemeteries across Canada where First Nations children who died in Residential Schools were secretly interred.

The Residential Schools were designed to carry out cultural genocide against First Nations people.

By stripping parents of their children, Canadian government authorities and religious officials forced the children to abandon their native languages and cultures to embrace austere Christian values. The death rate of children in some institutions was as high as 60%.

Based on eyewitness accounts from survivors of these horrible institutions, the secret burial grounds are cataloged in “Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust (2nd ed., 2005) by Kevin Annett”.

Needless to say, the following information appears on the list of hidden cemeteries:

1. Montreal: Allan Memorial Institute, McGill University, still in operation since opening in 1940. MKULTRA experimental centre. Mass grave of children killed there north of building, on southern slopes of Mount Royal behind stone wall.

Over the years, there have been many conversations in hushed tones as to why the government is not investigating the situation.

There can be no doubt that the Allan Memorial Institute’s deranged experiments have also influenced fertile imaginations. The Manchurian Candidate, a novel by Richard Condon, was inspired by the experiments and first published in 1959. It is a political thriller about the son of a prominent American political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for a Communist conspiracy. The novel has been adapted twice into a feature film, in 1962 and again in 2004. The 1962 version is faithful to the book and stars crooner Frank Sinatra.

To this day, the creepy topic is still discussed on social media and recently was examined on the Haunted Talks Podcast. In Episode 36, House of Horrors, Jimmy Dean interviewed Haunted Montreal about Ravenscrag (July 27, 2018).

Whether or not there is actually a hidden cemetery on the mountain site is still unknown at this time. Only one thing is certain. Until someone goes down there with a shovel or a spade and starts digging, this is one mystery that will remain unsolved.

COMPANY NEWS

The Hallowe’en Season is now upon us and Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce we are offering all three of our ghost tours, including the newly-updated Haunted Downtown!

For the month of October, please consider making Haunted Montreal part of your Hallowe’en Season. Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal also offers private tours for groups of 15 or more people, including company outings, school groups, bachelorette parties and all types of gatherings. Please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com to organize a private tour.

We are also pleased to announce a new book called Macabre Montreal. Written by Mark Leslie and Shayna Krishnasamy, it is a “collection of ghost stories, eerie encounters, and gruesome and ghastly true stories from the second most populous city in Canada.”

The authors write:

“Montreal is a city steeped in history and culture, but just beneath the pristine surface of this world-class city lie unsettling stories. Tales shared mostly in whispered tones about eerie phenomena, dark deeds, and disturbing legends that take place in haunted buildings, forgotten graveyards, and haunted pubs. The dark of night reveals a very different city behind its beautiful European-style architecture and cobblestone streets. A city with buried secrets, alleyways that echo with the footsteps of ghostly spectres, memories of ghastly events, and unspeakable criminal acts.”

With the introduction written by Haunted Montreal, Macabre Montreal is a must-read for anyone interested in Montreal’s dark side.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk during the 2018 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 (at the top of the page, on the right).

Coming up on November 13: The John Doe Pub

The John Doe, on Bishop Street, is one of Montreal’s many haunted pubs. Currently closed due to a fire, the Victorian building is said by bar staff and the owner to be infested with ghosts. Purchased in 1990 by a man named Troy, he originally intended convert the upper floor into his apartment. However, during renovations, he could hear phantom footsteps following him, no matter where he went in the building. After several other creepy paranormal encounters, he decided not to move in after all. Troy is believes his pub is haunted by three ghosts from different eras – a woman, a man and a little girl. He is very keen to get to the bottom of the story and has invited Haunted Montreal investigators to spend the night when his bar finally re-opens. It is an opportunity the company is definitely looking forward to!

Donovan King is a 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 Abbot 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).

HAUNTED RESEARCH

On the eastern slopes of Mount Royal sits the abandoned Royal Victoria Hospital, a dark, creepy and imposing structure. Built in 1893 in the Scottish baronial style, the hospital operated for well over a century before finally being shuttered and relocated in 2015. The Royal Vic witnessed tens of thousands of deaths over its lifespan and rumours suggest that the old buildings had simply become too haunted for patients to recover peacefully any more.

Fondly nicknamed the “Royal Vic”, the hospital was established because Montreal did not have any English-language health facilities at the end of the 19^th century. The costly venture was covered by the financial contributions of two wealthy Scottish immigrants, Donald Smith and George Stephen.

Set on 18 acres of land, the hospital was designed by prominent British architect Henry Saxon Snell and built with Montreal limestone. The vast medical compound was constructed to cater to the needs of the sick “of all races and creeds” and to provide training for nurses.

Over the years, the philanthropy of many prominent members of Montreal’s English-speaking community helped make the hospital a major center of healthcare and learning. Some of the city’s most talented doctors and surgeons worked there, including John McCrae, author of “In Flanders Fields”.

In 1920, the Royal Vic became a medical research institute attached to McGill University leading to the first organ transplant in the British Commonwealth, which was performed there in 1958. The hospital has a long list of medical accomplishments.

Presently, the Royal Vic is part of the McGill University Health Care (MUHC) network, a conglomeration of hospitals and health services. In 2015, the MUHC relocated the Royal Vic and merged it into to the new Glen Superhospital in N.D.G., leaving the original limestone buildings on the slopes of Mount Royal abandoned.

Indeed, one of the reasons for the move is because the old hospital was said to be too haunted. In the past, visitors would sometimes report seeing apparitions of former patients wandering the hallways wearing antiquated hospital gowns from the late 1800s. Disembodied voices and phantom footsteps could sometimes be heard echoing down hospital corridors. Buzzers would often go off in empty rooms, summoning nurses to nonexistent patients. Strange light anomalies, such as floating orbs and flickering lights, were also known to appear on occasion. It was said that “The dead passed away here, they just did not move on.”

Some patients have had very strange and frightening experiences at the old Royal Victoria Hospital. According to various testimonials, it was not exactly the best hospital for peace of mind while trying to recover.

One particularly squeamish woman was a surgery patient in 1996. Known only as DB, she wrote of her experience at the now defunct hauntednorthamerica.net website. DB disliked hospitals and wasn’t pleased to hear rumours of hauntings at the Royal Vic. Following her surgery, DB has several bizarre experiences at the hospital. She testified:

“In bed, I woke up to a huge pool of blood, on my bed and my pajamas. Thinking my stitches had opened I rang the nurses. One nurse came, then a second, then a third. They were baffled. My bandage was intact, no blood anywhere on my skin. So they decided to remove my bandage, thinking perhaps there was a leak somewhere around it. Once they removed it everything was fine. I wasn’t bleeding from anywhere, it was so very strange. My entire body showed no sign of blood at all, yet my pajamas and bed was full. Later, after some blood work, the doctor found I had dangerously low anemia, and I needed 2 pints of transfusion.”

Despite being disturbed, DB described the uncanny experience as a good thing, stating “for some odd reason it may have saved my life.”

During her recovery period, she had another paranormal experience. DB had to visit the nurses’ station for a follow-up procedure. She wrote:

“So there I was walking the hall, just a little walk up and down the hall, minding my own business, I never chatted with anyone on that floor. Then suddenly, this old lady was standing beside one of the doorways of a room, holding that long metal thing we drag with us which holds our intravenous drip in which a salted solution of some kind keeps us hydrated.”

The old lady spoke to DB, saying: “You really want to get out of here, don’t you?”

DB was a little freaked out by what the old woman said, because she had never seen her before (or after) and there was no possible way she could have known what DB was thinking. DB wrote:

“And a strange feeling went through me, like, I just knew I shouldn’t be replying…. I just felt this…. For some strange reason I knew I shouldn’t be talking to her. The nurses’ station was close by and it was more like a feeling that the nurses shouldn’t see me ‘talking’ with her. So I just nodded my head, slightly.”

The old lady then advised DB: “Straighten your back and walk as fast as you can in front of the nurses station. It’s going to hurt, but you’ll then be out in no time”.

DB took a deep breath, pulled herself up straight, and walked the dozen steps to the nurses’ station as fast as she could.

While the procedure did “hurt real bad”, DB was pleased when that afternoon a doctor came to see her. He told her she could go home, which surprised her because she had not been due to be released for several days.

DB credited her early release to the old woman’s advice. Indeed, she began to think of the old lady as a ghost, stating: “Back at home I couldn’t understand why I never talked to her, I felt like if I had talked to her the nurses would have seen me talking to a wall.”

A few months later, DB had to go back to the Royal Victoria Hospital for a routine follow up, but her appointment was on another floor. At the time there was construction in the hospital that affected the elevators. As DB was going up to the floor where her appointment was scheduled, the elevator suddenly stopped at the floor where she had encountered the ghostly old woman. When the doors opened, DB was startled when she spotted the same intravenous pole in the exact location where she had first encountered the mysterious old lady.

“That was just weird,” wrote DB, “like some sort of reminder.”

DB’s bizarre story was but one of many that plagued patients and staff over the years at the Royal Victoria Hospital. As Hallowe’en approached in 2013, trouble started brewing when staff members decided to publish some of their own ghostly tales on the hospital’s website. On October 30, the Royal Vic announced: “In the spirit of Halloween this week, we would like to share some chilling ghost stories that were submitted by our MUHC staff.” A total of three haunted tales, all disturbing, were posted online.

The first, entitled “Haunted painting”, described a deranged artwork that used to upset people unfortunate enough to pass by it in one of the pavilions:

“Hanging upon the walls of a patients’ ward in the Ross Pavilion of the Royal Victoria Hospital, was once a unique painting. The scene was of a house and a beautiful landscape but it had been reported by patients and staff that sometimes, an old lady appeared in the window looking out. At times, patients said they saw an old lady coming out of the house, looking around, before going back in. The painting was so disturbing to the patients and staff, they decided to remove it from the wall.”

Whether or not the elderly lady in the painting was related to the old woman with the intravenous pole who DB encountered is unknown, but it raises questions about why an elderly woman might haunt the hospital.

The second story posted on the website, “Ghosts of the RVH”, described an exhausted nurse who was harassed by wispy, malevolent spirits while trying to take a nap on a couch:

“One night at the Royal Victoria Hospital, a nurse was taking a break. While lying on a couch she saw an apparition standing over her, which she described as a white smoky light. She got up to take a better look and told it to go away. When it didn’t move, she proceeded to pass her hands through the apparition several times to disperse the white “fog.” Eventually, it did go away but it came back with two other apparitions. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. The apparitions finally left but the nurse never rested on that couch again.”

The last of the three stories had an ominous title: “Locked door…”

“A patient had just passed away in M5 Cardiac of the Royal Victoria Hospital. The staff arranged him and closed the door as they waited for his family.  Later, they realized the door of the room was locked from the inside. No one was in the room, except for the dead patient. Security had to come and unlock the door.  The staff thought the patient did not want his family to see him like that.”

Following the publication the Royal Victoria Hospital’s ghost stories, some patients began to complain that the dark tales were not good for their peace of mind. Simply put, in order to recover efficiently, they felt that they should feel safe and peaceful instead of disturbed and frightened.

Officials assured the complainants not to worry because plans were afoot to move the operations of the Royal Victoria Hospital into a new super-hospital called the Glen. The old hospital, which was seen by some people as being too haunted after over a century in operation, would be abandoned once and for all. The thinking at the time was that the ghosts would most likely remain in the old buildings, meaning patients and staff would no longer have to cope with them in the shiny new facility. As for the buildings comprising the old Royal Victoria Hospital, they could be recycled into something else.

Around that time, Montreal’s former mayor, Denis Coderre, announced that he was going to meet with provincial officials in an attempt to hammer out a plan to repurpose the old hospital.

He explained: “We’re all working together because we don’t want to create kind of a ghost village there.”

As promised, in 2015, all the staff and patients were moved to the new Glen superhospital in N.D.G., a few kilometers to the west of the original. Billed as the “biggest hospital move in Canadian history”, the operation began at 7 a.m. on Sunday, April 26. A total of 154 patients were transferred from the old Royal Vic by a convoy of ambulances to the new superhospital, the first being a baby in neonatal intensive care.

Over the next several hours, an ambulance would depart roughly every three minutes.

To mark the event, the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment paid tribute in a ceremony with swirling bagpipes.

Just slightly after the twelve bells of noon, the operation was complete. After a full 122 years in operation, the old Royal Victoria Hospital was unceremoniously shuttered, leaving its ghosts behind once and for all.

An ER doctor named Greg Clark was clearly relieved following the successful move. He told reporters: “We’re very excited to have this opportunity to be in this modern hospital.”

The Royal Vic’s new home, the MUHC or Glen superhospital, is a brand new health care facility featuring state-of-the-art technology. Spanning five city blocks, the health complex has 346 adult care beds, 154 pediatric care beds, more than 8,000 staff and a research institute attached to McGill University.

Other hospitals that have since moved into the structure include the Montreal Chest Institute, the Cedars Cancer Centre, the Montreal Children’s Hospital and the Shriners Hospital for Children. The new Royal Vic has the honor of occupying the very center of the massive health care complex.

As the new superhospital began bustling with its many new arrivals, the abandoned Royal Vic began to take on a forlorn look, its empty windows staring down onto the city below. With no decision taken about repurposing the buildings, the old structures began to take on the haunted atmosphere that the former mayor was trying to avoid.

While many Montrealers began to shun the creepy old hospital, other braver souls decided to try and make some good use of it. Occasionally, it is used for a film shoot or other cultural activity.

Just a few months after the Royal Vic’s closure, playwright Alyson Grant wrote an immersive, site-specific piece of theatre called “Progress!”, which she set in the hospital’s old nurses’ lounge.

Perhaps inspired by the spooky surroundings, Grant included several ghosts in her dramatic work. In a review, Montreal Gazette theatre critic Jim Burke wrote: “It begins with a middle-aged patient waking up from a suicide attempt to find two Victorian vaudevillian ghosts putting on a show of her life. The ghosts represent the very first two patients to die in the woman’s sick room, circa 1893, which allows Grant to muse over the hospital’s 120-year history.”

In the article, Grant elaborated: “The Royal Vic loomed so large in the lives of Montrealers as it stood on the hill here. So many Montrealers know all the nooks and crannies of this hospital. They walked the corridors, or held the hands of people dying here. They were born here or gave birth here or got better here.”

With the shuttering of the hospital, Grant openly wondered about its ghosts: “What’s going to happen to all those other people who died here? Obviously not literally, but their spirit, or my sense of their spirit.”

She explained that the two ghosts in her play are upset because “they were supposed to be here forever, taking care of people who were also dying in their room. And now that’s all been changed.”

For Grant, this paranormal dynamic was an important point for Montreal: “In the city’s psyche, it’s a huge thing.”

Grant was not the only person still thinking about the ghosts in the abandoned hospital.

In August, 2017, authors Mark Leslie and Rhonda Parrish published “Haunted Hospitals: Eerie Tales About Hospitals, Sanatoriums, and Other Institutions”.

The book is introduced as such:

“Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing, places of birth, and places of hope. But with all of the varying highs and lows that are experienced in these buildings, is it any wonder when echoes linger indefinitely?”

The book covers various institutions and features “frighteningly eerie tales from Canada, the United States, and around the world.” Sure enough, the many ghosts of Montreal’s old Royal Victoria Hospital are highlighted in the book (pages 83 – 86).

Co-author Rhonda Parrish explained: “If paranormal phenomena are going to occur, what better place than in a hospital? Day after day the most extreme of human experiences play out within the walls of hospitals. The most intense emotions are experienced again and again. Birth. Death. Trauma. Suffering…Furthermore, if human spirits are trapped on this earth by trauma, disturbance or unfinished business…what better location than a hospital to forge the chains that hold them here?”

With so much buzz about the haunted hospital, more recently, Radio Canada sent an urban chronicler to investigate. Just before Hallowe’en in 2017, Hugo Lavoie was given the assignment to explore the underside of the old Royal Victoria Hospital for a French-language program called Gravel le matin.

The segment was titled “Visite du tunnel de la mort de l’ancien hôpital Royal Victoria” (translation: Visit to the Tunnel of Death at the Old Royal Victoria Hospital).

Accompanied by Dr. Jonathan Meakins, who is now in charge of heritage at the old Royal Vic, and conservator Alexandra Kirsh, Hugo Lavoie began his visit in the former emergency room of the old establishment.

Wanting to recreate the experience of a patient dying, Lavoie was then taken to the now-empty resuscitation chamber and then an old surgery room.

He mused: “When things go wrong, we die and then are brought to the autopsy room. You have to go down to the basement to go through the infamous corridor. It’s a bit disturbing.” His next stop was the infamous Tunnel of Death.

When the hospital was in operation, the Tunnel of Death was a very busy place. When a patient died, the corpse was placed in a large box and was then transported through the macabre tunnel, passing under University Street, to the autopsy room at the Institute of Pathology.

“If you don’t feel a sense of worry in this tunnel,” said Dr. Jonathan Meakins, “you have a level of courage – or imbecility – that is unavoidable.”

Now that the Royal Victoria Hospital is abandoned, the buildings, tunnels and grounds are spookier than ever. While nobody knows what is in store for the Old Royal Vic, the adjacent McGill University has its sights on it. The university is hoping to expand its campus to increase space for teaching and research. McGill hopes to create a state-of-the-art “living laboratory” for new ways of working, collaborating and tackling complex problems. The university even created a slick video of their proposal to take over and integrate the old hospital buildings and grounds into its campus.

The plan is to preserve the hospital’s heritage while opening up green spaces, improving access to Mount Royal, and reducing the height of some of the more modern buildings to allow for a better skyline. An impressive glass atrium is also on the cards.

Whether or not McGill will be successful in acquiring the old Royal Victoria Hospital is a matter of pure speculation. Only one thing is certain: whoever inherits the creepy old hospital buildings will also inherit their haunted legacy – and, of course, their ghosts!

COMPANY NEWS

Haunted Montreal is currently in winter mode, meaning there will be no more public ghost tours until May, 2018. Private tours are still available for groups of 10 or more people, subject to the availability of our actors and weather conditions.

Haunted Montreal has been contacted by an media production company, because they wish to do an episode about ghosts and hauntings in Griffintown. Based in the United Kingdom, the company has requested Haunted Montreal’s assistance in finding people to appear on the television program to share their personal ghost story from the Griff. Shooting will take place in late April or early May, 2018.

If you have a Griffintown ghost story or paranormal experience to share and are willing to appear on television, please contact Donovan King at info@hauntedmontreal.com

Furthermore, Haunted Montreal has been doing extensive research into potential winter activities, such as haunted pub crawls. After visiting Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, Haunted Montreal researchers are now distilling the information gathered in hopes of creating some winter activities in Montreal.

We may offer a prototype in early 2018 and are planning a full season of activities the following winter.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk during the 2017 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 March 13: The Black Rock

The Black Rock, also known as the Irish Stone, sits in the middle of a traffic island on Bridge Street and marks the final resting place of approximately 6000 victims of the Irish Famine. In 1847, Montreal was overwhelmed with tens of thousands of Irish refugees. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean on “coffin ships”, many of them stricken with the deadly typhus disease. Fever sheds were erected and those who died were hastily “trenched” into mass graves in the middle of the night. To commemorate the Irish dead, the Black Rock was erected on December 1, 1859 when workers building the Victoria Bridge discovered one of the communal cemeteries. For over a century, Montreal’s Irish community has continued to march to the Black Rock on the third Sunday of every May. The city is still haunted by Black ’47, one of the worst tragedies in Montreal’s history.

Donovan King is a 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 Abbot 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).

HAUNTED RESEARCH

Hundreds of elderly people live in a large, ramshackle building that sits on the corner of René Lévesque Boulevard and Saint Dominique Streets. Once Montreal’s General Hospital, the building is now called the Paul-Émile-Léger CHSLD, a government-funded home for the elderly in the north-east corner of Montreal’s Chinatown.

According to various sources, strange and possibly haunted activity is not uncommon in the establishment. Disturbing thoughts and visions seem to come out of nowhere. Some people report hallucinations. There are also sightings of a ghostly woman in an antique white dress and hat, not to mention a mysterious apparition who has been spotted sitting on the high rooftop, staring down at people on the street below.

Could these hauntings be related to the old Montreal General Hospital, which operated on the site from 1822-1953, or might they derive from an abuse scandal that rocked the establishment during the 1990s, when it was called Saint-Charles-Borromée Hospital?

A man who wishes to remain anonymous relayed to Haunted Montreal a strange experience he had in the old General Hospital during the early 1990s. He said: “Back in the early 90s, my uncle had to be placed in a long term care facility because he was beginning to lose control of his body and mind. He had just turned 81. His doctor recommended the Saint-Charles Borromé Hospital, which was basically an old folks’ home in the former Montreal General Hospital. The location was ideal. At the time I lived downtown so could visit him almost every day.”

He continued: “My uncle and I had always been very close. In fact, he helped my mother raise me after my father abandoned the family when I was just a baby. We placed him in the long term care facility reluctantly, but he didn’t seem to mind one bit. Ever the optimist, he suggested that he’d probably make a ton of new friends.”

The nephew visited his uncle every day and after a few weeks he began to notice strange behavior. It was as though his uncle was being evasive or trying to hide something. The man wasn’t sure if this was related to his mental deterioration or something else.

According to the nephew, “It was weird. Whenever I asked him if he had met anyone interesting, he would clam up. When I asked him about the other residents and the staff members, he would often shrug and not reveal any information, which was unlike him in his younger years. I attributed it to his dementia. Then one day, out of the blue, he told me about a woman who he claimed would visit him at night. He described her as wearing a small white hat of some sort and an antique white dress with puffy sleeves. It sounded really unusual, so I chalked it up to a dream.”

However, the man’s uncle seemed to be getting more and more agitated by the day. He claimed that disturbing thoughts would enter his mind for no apparent reason. He complained that he would often have terrifying nightmares where an evil apparition instructed him to act in cruel ways.

He mentioned that the woman in the antique white dress would often wake him up to help him calm him down. The nephew thought that his uncle was probably beginning to lose his grip on reality with his advanced age. Regardless, he inquired to staff members about a possible woman wearing an antique white dress. The staff claimed that there was no such person in the hospital at night and that it was just his uncle’s imagination running wild.

Then one day something inexplicable happened. The nephew, being a curious fellow, was exploring the nooks and crannies of the hospital before visiting his uncle. Finding himself in an empty room, he was suddenly overwhelmed by a sweet, distinctive, penetrating odour. A cloud of fog began appearing to him and, as he inhaled, he began to hallucinate. The linoleum floor had somehow transformed into wood! Suddenly, he saw blood inexplicably pooling around his feet.

As the smell got stronger, he tried to run away, but his foot slipped in the bloody pool and he fell to the ground. As he hit the floor in a panic, suddenly everything reverted back to normal – no blood pooling, no wooden floor and no weird odour.

Disturbed, he went to his uncle’s room for the visit. On that day, the uncle was more agitated than ever. He told his nephew that he wanted to leave the hospital. According to the nephew: “Despite being frail, he was adamant. He told me that the woman in the antique white dress had told him to move to another facility before it was too late. My uncle was almost in tears, and following the bizarre experience I had just had, I was resolved to get him the hell out of there.”

Two weeks later, in early 1993, his uncle left the hospital and moved into a private residence, where he seemed much happier and more at ease. The nephew was pleased with the move despite the additional costs because his uncle reverted back to his usual, more relaxed state of being. He had no more disturbing nightmares and the nephew had no more hallucinations. The mysterious woman in the antique white dress with the little hat was never mentioned again.

The man may have gotten his uncle out of the Saint-Charles Borromé Hospital just in the nick of time. Before examining why, it is worthwhile to look at the history of the building.

The Montreal General Hospital was probably one of the very few hospitals that was born out of bloodshed. During its planning stages in the early 1800s, there was a lot of animosity among stakeholders. Two gentlemen in particular, Dr. William Caldwell and Member of Parliament Michael O’Sullivan, were constantly at odds with each other. Dr. Caldwell was a Protestant and O’Sullivan a Catholic, two religions that were often in conflict.

At the time, there was a bug-infested hospital on Craig Street that was unable to meet the needs of Montrealers and sick immigrants. Philanthropists like brewer John Molson stepped up to help fund the building of a new hospital.

When authorities proposed staffing it with nurses instead of nuns, O’Sullivan actively opposed it in the legislature. He suggested the nurses would be too unprofessional compared with nuns and that medical students would be allowed to conduct experiments on the dead bodies of the patients.

Dr. Caldwell was outraged, so wrote an anonymous letter criticizing O’Sullivan. When O’Sullivan discovered who had written it, he challenged Dr. Caldwell to a duel in Pointe Claire, far away from prying eyes, as was the tradition during the era. The location was Windmill Point, a 0.81-hectare spit of land graced with a windmill that projects into the St. Lawrence River.

The two men met at sunrise on Saturday April 11, 1819. They stood twenty long paces apart with loaded pistols, as was the custom. When the signal was given, they fired their weapons at each other. After exchanging four shots of 28-gram lead balls and missing, O’Sullivan insisted on continuing. On the fifth round, both gentlemen were hit. Dr. Caldwell was hit in the right arm and O’Sullivan was shot in the right side of his chest, just missing his heart. The bullet lodged into his spine. Both men survived what may have been the longest duel in Montreal’s history.

A decision was finally made to build the hospital on what was then Dorchester Street, today’s René Lévesque Boulevard. On June 6, 1821, the cornerstone of the new Montreal General Hospital was laid. Designed by architect Thomas Phillips, the hospital was built two stories high with an attic and a basement. Perched atop the roof was a cupola. It opened the following year on May 3, 1822.

In the early days of its operation, the hospital had many problems like low wages, a high turnover rate and a lack of educated nurses. Medical treatments were often untested and toxic and surgery was very dangerous because of the constant threat of fatal infection. Only about 25 surgeries per year were performed at first due to the risk of death. Patients were also given a four to eight ounce bottle of whisky or brandy upon admission to help them relax, sometimes leading both patients and staff to get inebriated in the hospital. In one case, a blind man offered a hospital-mate his bottle of whiskey from his bedside, but mistakenly handed him a bottle of laudanum, a tincture of opium. After taking a deep swill, the man overdosed. He was dead within minutes.

As the years passed, conditions began to improve and the hospital was enlarged several times. New wings were added, such as the Richardson Wing in 1868 and the Moreland Wing in 1875. In 1894, a separate Pathology Building was erected. It was just behind the part of the hospital with the dome, which had been converted into a smallpox isolation tower.

Many prominent medical personnel worked in the Montreal General Hospital over the years. Sir William Osler, who pioneered studies in Pathology, conducted autopsies on the patients who had succumbed to their illnesses or injuries. Wesley Bourne became world-famous after he pioneered techniques in anesthesiology at the hospital and introduced cocaine to patients. Sir Thomas George Roddick performed numerous amputations, while John McCrae, who would go on to pen In Flanders fields during World War I, worked as a physician at the Montreal General Hospital and published manuscripts about typhoid and inflammatory disease.

Despite being enlarged several times to a height of 9 floors, in the early 1950s a decision was made to relocate the hospital to a larger site on the western slope of Mount Royal. In 1956, patients were moved to the new hospital on Cedar Avenue, where it still exists today as a sprawling medical complex.

The old Montreal General Hospital was converted into a senior’s home. In 1968 it was transformed into the Saint-Charles-Borromée Hospital for long term care and adult rehabilitation. For decades the hospital operated without any major incidents, but in 1993, rumours began swirling that some of the patients at Saint-Charles-Borromée Hospital were being mistreated. Residents complained that some of staff members were being verbally and psychologically abusive towards them.

In 1999, a class action lawsuit detailing hundreds of cases of abuse was launched against Saint-Charles Borromée hospital. At first, the story was under the radar, but in 2003 family members of a patient there began secretly recording staff. They were able to verify ongoing verbal and psychological abuse against their relative. With this new evidence, the scandal exploded and the media began paying close attention.

During 90 hours of taped recordings, evidence emerged of the staff mistreating their relative, a 51-year-old woman who was left severely disabled after a car accident when she was just 18 years old. They called her a “pig,” told her to “shut up” on a regular basis, refused to bring her water and teased the woman relentlessly by telling her a perverted man was fondling himself outside of her window.

The tapes triggered then-health minister Philippe Couillard to call a provincial inquiry into the conditions inside Quebec’s nursing homes.

On November 26, 2003, the embattled hospital director, Léon Lafleur, was found dead in a hotel room in St-Hyacinthe, 50 kilometers north-east of Montreal. He had committed suicide after writing a letter blaming the government for his situation.

Following the inquiry, conditions improved and the building was re-named Centre d’hébergement Paul-Émile-Léger, perhaps in an effort to distance it from the scandal. 13 years after the launch of the lawsuit, the victims won $8.5 million.

Returning to the uncle who had paranormal encounters in the hospital, it would appear that his nephew got him out mere weeks before the abuse started happening. Who could the ghostly woman in the white dress and hat be who warned him to leave?

One theory is that she is the ghost of Nora Gertrude Elizabeth Livingston, an educated nurse from New York City. In 1890 she agreed to accept a post at the Montreal General Hospital if two conditions were met. She demanded that nurses would no longer have to do the housekeeping and that she could hire experienced personnel to open a school for Nursing. Her requests were granted. After promptly cleaning up the wards at and rearranging staff duties, Nora Livingston welcomed her first students on April 1, 1890. She was regarded as both strict and disciplined, but she took excellent care of her charges.

While this helps shed light on who the ghostly woman might be, it does little to explain the nephew’s bizarre and bloody hallucination. One possible theory is related to the fact that the Montreal General Hospital was one of the first to embrace the field of modern pathology.

Modern pathology, a controversial new sub-specialty of medicine, came into being during the second half of the 1800s. With the invention of the microscope, doctors could study of microbiology in intimate detail. The study of pathology was controversial because it involved “morbid anatomy.”

In order to try and learn more about diseases, pathologists conducted detailed examinations of the dead patients, including the dissection of the corpse. Dr. William Osler accepted the first Pathology position at the hospital in 1876. The autopsy room was a small, dingy chamber in the basement with a wooden autopsy table. Dr. Osler worked tirelessly in the dimly-lit room, which was lit by an oil lamp. Patients on the floors above often complained about the foul stench that emanated from this terrifying chamber. Remarkably, Dr. Osler conducted a total of 780 autopsies during his first 10 years at the Montreal General Hospital.

Concerning the strange smell the nephew encountered, it may have been phenol, which was introduced as an antiseptic during the 1870s by Dr. Roddick. Previously, the first operating room was located under the hospital’s cupola. It had a wooden floor and operating table that were encrusted with dried blood that was rarely scrubbed clean. Doctors usually wore old frock coats, which would become soaked with blood during surgeries and autopsies. At first, no attempts were made to sterilize the operating room, autopsy room or instruments.

Dr. Roddick introduced phenol (carbolic acid) as a disinfectant in the operating room in the form of a cloud of gas. A gallon tank of water was heated with an alcohol flame and a bottle of phenol was attached to the system. The machine would create a cloud of antiseptic fog during surgeries.

The powerful technique saw the mortality rate from his amputations drop from 80% to less than 4%.

Concerning the hallucination, with the appearance of the otherworldly phenol fog and pool of blood, could the nephew have stumbled across some sort of paranormal autopsy or surgery?

Finally, in the autumn of 2016, the establishment was visited by a medium who immediately picked up signs that the building was haunted. Upon closer examination, she noticed the ghost of a man perched high atop the roof, staring down at the people on the street below. The medium was unable to describe him in detail. Who he is and why he sits on the roof are questions that still remain unanswered at the time of this writing.

While the uncle would pass away peacefully a decade later, his nephew would never forget the strange experiences he had in the old Montreal General Hospital, which left a lasting impression on him. Today, it is unknown if these hauntings continue at what is now the Paul-Émile-Léger CHSLD.

COMPANY NEWS

Haunted Montreal is now in winter mode, meaning there will be no more public tours until May, 2017. Private tours are still available for groups of 10 or more people, subject to the availability of our actors and weather conditions.

As we approach the ghost tour season, We are pleased to announce that we are upgrading our website and blog to make them more manageable and user-friendly.

We are also planning a Jane’s Walk called Haunted Chinatown, which will explore some of the hauntings and mysteries in Montreal’s historic Chinatown neighborhood. This walk will be offered in early May and will be free to attend for those who reserve spots.

Lastly, we are pleased to announce some good news for St. Patrick’s Day. Donovan King, founder of Haunted Montreal, has created a new company called Irish Montreal Excursions, which leads visits to Irish sites of interest in the city of Montreal and beyond.

Irish Montreal Excursions is currently offering two walking tours:

The Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour (in English) 

This walking tour explores the impact of the Irish Famine on Montreal in 1847. This excursion visits Montreal Famine sites, including forgotten cemeteries, religious institutions, the Lachine Canal, the ruins of a church and Montreal’s infamous Black Rock. To be revealed: plans by the Irish Monument Park Foundation to rescue a Famine cemetery from industrial forces.
​
When: Saturday, March 18 @ 9 a.m. (120 minutes)
​
Cost: $20 (payable in cash upon arrival). To reserve tickets please email irishmontrealexcursions@gmail.com
​
Where: This excursion starts in front of Pointe-à-Callière Museum (350 Place Royale)
and ends at the Black Rock on Bridge Street.

Irish History in Montreal Walking Tour (in English) 

This walking tour, which starts at the Old Dublin Pub, explores the history of the Irish in Montreal. This excursion visits historic Montreal Irish sites, including churches, watering holes, the ruins of a refuge and forgotten areas such as Little Dublin and Paper Hill. To be revealed: the Bloomsday connection between James Joyce’s Ulysses and Montreal!

When: Sunday, March 26 @ 1 p.m. (120 minutes)

Cost: $20 (payable in cash upon arrival).  To reserve tickets please email irishmontrealexcursions@gmail.com
​
Where: This excursion starts in front of Old Dublin Pub (636 Cathcart Street) and ends at Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours Church (400 St Paul Street E.).

Irish Montreal Excursions is planning to develop other excursions in the future, such as Irish pub crawls, sporting events, cemetery visits and bus tours to Irish sites outside of Montreal.

We will also be announcing another surprise in next month’s newsletter!

Lastly, a big thank you to all of our clients who attended a Haunted Montreal ghost walk during the 2016 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 April 13: Montreal’s Invisible Pets

Believe it or not, Montreal is rumoured to be home to at least two invisible pets, a cat and a dog. In the early 1970s, Brian and Louise Grey and their four children experienced an invisible cat in their Montreal home. Remarkably, the cat could be heard and felt, but it was never seen. In another story, a young boy in the Montreal suburb of Roxboro adopted what his parents assumed was an imaginary friend, who the boy called “Duke.” The boy would get upset if his parents tried to sit on the couch when “Duke” was there. The parents humored him at first, chalking it up to an overactive imagination. However, they got the shock of their lives when a neighbor informed them that the previous owner had died in a house fire along with her pet dog. The dead dog’s name was “Duke.” There is no dispute that invisible pets feature prominently in Montreal’s haunted folklore. The only question is why?

Donovan King is a historian, teacher 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 Abbot College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill) and MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary). He is presently studying to obtain an ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec).

***

Blogue #23 de Montréal hanté: L’ancien hôpital général de
Montréal

Bienvenue au vingt-troisième article du blogue de
Montréal hanté ! Nos articles paraissent les 13 de chaque mois. Dans l’édition
de mars 2017, nous focalisons notre recherche sur l’ancien hôpital général de
Montréal, aujourd’hui une résidence pour personnes âgées supposément hantée.
Montréal hanté offrira toujours des visites guidées en mai 2017. Nous planifions
également une Jane’s Walk sur l’activité paranormale dans le quartier chinois.

RECHERCHE DU PARANORMAL

Des centaines de personnes âgées vivent dans un grand
bâtiment délabré qui sied à l’angle des rues René-Lévesque et Saint-Dominique.
Autrefois l’hôpital général de Montréal, le bâtiment porte aujourd’hui le nom
de CHSLD Paul-Émile-Léger, une maison subventionnée par le gouvernement dans le
nord-est du quartier chinois de Montréal.

Selon des sources diverses d’étranges manifestations,
peut-être même paranormales, n’y sont pas rares. Des visions et des pensées
troublantes semblent fuser de nulle part. Certains ont rapporté des
hallucinations. Il y a aussi des visions d’une femme spectrale vêtue d’une robe
et d’un chapeau anciens, sans mentionner l’apparition mystérieuse qui a été vue
assise sur le toit élevé, regardant les gens sur la rue en bas.

Ces phénomènes pourraient-ils être liés au site de
l’hôpital général de Montréal, dont l’activité s’étendit de 1822 à 1953, ou
seraient-ils en lien avec le scandal des agressions qui secoua l’établissement
au cours des année 1990 quand c’était encore l’hôpital Saint-Charles-Borromée ?

Un homme — qui veut rester anonyme — nous confia qu’il
vécut une étrange expérience dans le vieil hôpital général au début des années
1990. Il dit : « À l’époque, mon oncle avait dû être placé dans un
établissement de soins à longue durée dû à une perte de maitrise de son corps
et de son esprit. Il venait d’avoir 81 ans. Son médecin avait recommandé
l’hôpital Saint-Charles-Borromé, qui était en somme un foyer pour l’âge d’or
dans l’ancien hôpital général de Montréal. L’endroit était idéal. Dans ce
temps-là, je vivais au centre-ville, donc je pouvais le visiter presqu’à tous
les jours. »

Il continua : « Mon oncle et moi avions toujours été
proches. En fait, il a aidé ma mère à m’élever après que mon père avait
abandonné la famille quand j’étais nourrisson. On l’a placé, à contrecoeur,
dans un établissement de soins de longue durée, sans qu’il s’en plaignît.
Toujours optimiste, il avait suggéré qu’il se ferait peut-être de nouveaux
amis. »

Le neveu visitait son oncle tous les jours, et après
quelques semaines il remarqua un comportement étrange. C’était comme si son oncle fuyait ou tentait de cacher
quelque chose. L’homme n’était pas certain si c’était relié à la détérioration
mentale ou à autre chose.

Selon le neveu : « C’était bizarre. Quand je lui
demandais s’il avait rencontré quelqu’un d’intéressant, il se taisait. Et quand
je lui demandais à propos des autres résidents et du personnel, il haussait les
épaules et n’en disait rien, ce qui n’était pas comme lui, plus jeune.
J’attribuais ça à la démence ; puis, un jour, de nulle part, il m’a sorti
qu’une femme le visitait la nuit. Il me l’a décrite comme vêtue d’un chapeau
blanc et d’une sorte de robe ancienne avec des manches bouffies. Ça m’a semblé
vraiment inhabituel, alors je l’ai marqué comme un rêve. »

Toutefois, l’oncle semblait s’agiter de plus en plus à
chaque jour. Il affirma que des pensées dérangeantes entraient dans son esprit
sans aucune raison. Il se plaignait qu’il avait souvent des cauchemars
terrifiants dans lesquels une apparition malveillante lui ordonnait d’agir de
façon cruelle.

Il mentionna que la femme dans la robe ancienne blanche
le réveillait souvent pour l’aider à se calmer. Le neveu pensa que son oncle
commençait peut-être à perdre son sens de la réalité à son âge avancée.
N’importe, il s’informa auprès du personnel à propos d’une prétendue femme
vêtue d’une robe ancienne blanche. On lui répondit qu’il n’y avait pas une
telle personne la nuit à l’hôpital et que c’était seulement la folle
imagination de son oncle.

Puis un jour quelque chose d’inexplicable se produisit.
Le neveu, étant un gars curieux, explorait les coins de l’hôpital avant d’aller
visiter son oncle. Se trouvant dans une chambre vide, il fut soudainement
envahi par une odeur délicate, pénétrante et distincte. Un nuage lui
apparut, et, pendant qu’il inspirait, il se mit à halluciner. Le plancher de
linoléum s’était transformé en quelque sorte en bois. Soudain,
inexplicablement, il vit du sang s’épancher autour de ses pieds.

Cependant que l’odeur s’intensifia, il tenta de s’enfuir,
mais il glissa dans la flaque de sang et tomba par terre. Paniqué, en frappant
le sol, il vit aussitôt tout redevenir à la normale — ni sang, ni plancher de
bois, ni odeur bizarre.

Dérangé, il visita son oncle dans sa chambre. Ce jour-là,
l’oncle, qui était plus agité que jamais, lui dit qu’il voulait quitter
l’hôpital. Et selon le neveu : « Malgré sa fragilité, il a été catégorique. Il
m’a dit que la femme dans la robe ancienne blanche l’avait prévenu de
s’installer ailleurs avant que ce ne soit trop tard. Mon oncle était presque en
larmes, et suivant l’expérience étrange que je venais d’avoir, j’étais résolu
de l’en sortir au plus sacrant ! »

Deux semaines plus tard, début 1993, son oncle quitta
l’hôpital pour un résidence privée, là où il sembla plus heureux et à l’aise.
Le neveu fut satisfait du changement malgré les coûts additionnels, car son
oncle était revenu à son état habituel plus calme : ses cauchemars avaient
cessé ; même le neveu n’avait plus d’hallucinations. La mystérieuse femme à la
robe ancienne et au chapeau blancs n’a plus jamais été mentionnée.

En sortant son oncle de l’hôpital Saint-Charles-Borromé,
l’homme a peut-être sauvé son oncle juste à temps. Avant d’en examiner le pourquoi, ça vaut la peine d’en
savoir plus sur l’histoire du bâtiment.

L’hôpital général de Montréal fut probablement l’un des
rares hôpitaux fondé dans l’effusion de sang. Durant sa phase de planification,
au début des années 1800, il y eut beaucoup d’animosité entre ses parties
prenantes.

Deux gentilshommes en particulier, le Dr. William
Caldwell et Micheal O’Sullivan, membre du Parlement, se disputaient
constamment. Le Dr. Caldwell était protestant et O’Sullivan catholique : deux
religions souvent en conflit.

À l’époque, il se trouvait un hôpital infesté d’insectes
sur la rue Craig, incapable de combler les besoins des Montréalais et des
immigrants malades. Des philanthropes, comme le brasseur John Molson, aida le
premier à subventionner le nouvel hôpital.

Quand les responsables proposèrent d’y faire oeuvrer des
infirmières à la place des soeurs, O’Sullivan opposa fermement la législature.
Il suggéra que les laïques manqueraient de professionnalisme comparées aux
soeurs, et que les étudiants en médecine auraient le droit de mener des expériments sur les patients morts.

Outragé, le Dr. Caldwell écrivit une lettre anonyme
critiquant O’Sullivan. Quand ce dernier découvrit qui l’avait écrite, il défia
le Dr. Caldwell à un duel à Pointe Claire, loin des badauds, comme le voulait
la tradition à l’époque. L’endroit choisi fut Windmill Point, un terrain de
0.81 hectare sur lequel un moulin donne sur le fleuve Saint-Laurent.

Les deux hommes s’affrontèrent à l’aube du samedi 11
avril 1819. À vingt pas l’un de l’autre avec des pistolets chargés, ils se tinrent
comme de coutume. Quand le signal fut donné, ils se tirèrent dessus. Après
s’être manqués avec un échange de quatre plombs de .28, O’Sullivan insista
qu’ils continuassent. Au cinquième coup, les deux hommes furent atteints : le
Dr. Caldwell au bras droit et O’Sullivan au côté droit du torse, manquant de
près son coeur. La balle se logea dans sa colonne. Tous deux survécurent à ce
qui a peut-être été le plus long duel de l’histoire de Montréal.

La décision fut prise enfin de bâtir l’hôpital sur ce qui
était la rue Dorchester, aujourd’hui le boulevard René-Lévesque. Le 6 juin
1821, la pierre angulaire du nouvel hôpital général de Montréal fut posée.
Conçu par l’architecte Thomas Phillips, l’hôpital fut bâti sur deux étages avec
sous-sol et grenier. Perché sur le toit était une coupole. Il ouvrit ses portes
l’année suivante, le 3 mai 1822.

Dès ses débuts, l’hôpital avait eu plusieurs problèmes
liés aux bas salaires, au manque d’infirmières et au taux élevé de rotation
d’employés. Les soins médicaux étaient peu éprouvés, voire souvent toxiques, et
la chirurgie très dangereuse à cause d’une menace constante d’injection létale.
Seulement 25 opérations se faisaient par jour dû au risque de mort. Dès
l’admission, les patients recevaient une bouteille de whisky ou de brandi,
quatre ou huit onces, pour les aider à relaxer ; parfois ils s’enivraient avec
le personnel de l’hôpital. Dans un cas, un aveugle offrit à un copain malade
une bouteille de whisky sur son chevet, mais lui donna plutôt une bouteille de laudanum,
une teinture d’opium. Après une bonne gorgée, l’homme sur-dosa et mourut peu de
temps après.

Au fil des ans, ses conditions s’étant améliorées,
l’hôpital fut élargi plusieurs fois. On ajouta d’autres ailes comme celle de
Richardson en 1868, et celle de Moreland en 1875. En 1894, un bâtiment séparé
fut créé pour la Pathologie juste derrière la partie de l’hôpital avec le dôme,
qui avait été convertie en tour d’isolement pour les variolés.

Plusieurs membres en vue du personnel médical ont oeuvré
à l’hôpital général au fil des ans. Sir William Osler, qui a fondé les études
en Pathologie, a pratiqué des autopsies sur des patients qui avaient succombé à
leur maladie ou à leurs blessures. Wesley Bourne devint mondialement connu pour
les techniques de base en anesthésiologie à l’hôpital et pour avoir initié des
patients à la cocaïne. Sir Thomas George Roddick pratiqua plusieurs
amputations, et John McCrae, qui allait devenir l’auteur de In Flanders Fields
(Sur les champs de Flanders) durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, y travailla
comme médecin, publiant des manuscrits sur les maladies inflammatoires et
typhiques.

Même s’il a été agrandi maintes fois jusqu’à 9 étages,
une décision prise au début des 1950 fit déménager l’hôpital vers un site plus
grand sur les pentes ouest du Mont Royal. En 1956, les patients furent placés
dans un nouvel hôpital sur l’avenue Cedar, où il existe à ce jour comme
complexe médical rhizomateux.

Le vieil hôpital général de Montréal, converti en maison
pour l’âge d’or, fut transformé en l’hôpital Saint Charles-Borromé, en 1968,
pour la réhabilitation des adultes et les soins de longue durée. Sur des
décennies, l’hôpital fonctionna sans incidents majeurs, mais en 1993, les
rumeurs spiralaient que certains patients de l’hôpital subissaient de mauvais
traitements. Des résidents s’étaient plaints qu’ils se faisaient verbalement et psychologiquement agressés par certains membres du
personnel.

En 1999, un procès d’action collective détaillant des
centaines de cas d’abus frappait l’hôpital Saint-Charles Borromé. En premier,
l’histoire passait sous le radar, mais en 2003 les membres de la famille d’un
patient commencèrent à enregistrer le personnel. Ils furent capables de
vérifier la réalité des agressions de leur proche. Avec cette nouvelle preuve,
le scandal explosa et les médias y prêtèrent plus d’attention.

En 90 heures d’enregistrements, la preuve accusait le
personnel de maltraitance envers leur proche, une femme de 51 ans, sérieusement
handicapée à la suite d’un accident de voiture à 18 ans. Ils l’appelaient «
truie », lui disaient « ferme-là » régulièrement, refusaient de lui apporter de
l’eau et se moquaient d’elle sans arrêt en lui disant qu’un homme pervers se
touchait à l’extérieur de sa fenêtre. Les cassettes ont pressé Philippe Couillard,
le ministre de la santé à l’époque, de susciter une enquête provinciale sur les
conditions de vie à l’intérieur des maisons de retraite du Québec.

Le 26 novembre 2003, Léon Lafleur, le directeur harcelé
de l’hôpital, fut trouvé mort dans une chambre d’hôtel à Saint-Hyacinthe, 50
kilomètres au nord-est de Montréal. Il s’était suicidé après avoir écrit une
lettre blâmant le gouvernement pour sa situation.

Suivant l’enquête, les
conditions de vie s’améliorèrent et le bâtiment fut renommé le Centre
d’hébergement Paul-Émile-Léger, peut-être pour se distancier du scandal. 13 ans après le lancement de la poursuite, les victimes ont remporté 8,5 millions de dollars.

Revenons à l’oncle qui fit une rencontre paranormale à
l’hôpital, il semblerait que son neveu l’eût sorti à peine quelques semaines
avant le début des agressions. Qui donc put être la femme dans la robe et le
chapeau blancs qui l’avertit de partir ?

Une théorie suggère le fantôme de Nora Gertrude Elizabeth
Livingston, une infirmière éduquée de New York.

En 1890, elle accepta l’emploi à l’hôpital général de
Montréal à deux conditions. Elle demanda que les infirmières n’eussent plus à
s’occuper du ménage et qu’elle pût embaucher un personnel compétant pour ouvrir
une école d’infirmières. Sa demande lui fut octroyée. Après avoir vite nettoyé
les services et réarrangé les fonctions du personnel, Nora Livingston
accueillit les premiers étudiants le 1 avril 1890. Elle fut perçue comme étant
stricte et disciplinée, mais elle prit grand soin de ses effectifs.

Bien que cela nous éclaire sur l’identité possible du
fantôme, il reste encore à expliquer l’étrange et sanglante hallucination du
neveu. Une théorie possible s’appuierait sur le fait que l’hôpital fut l’un des
premiers à explorer le champ de la pathologie moderne.

La pathologie moderne, une sous-spécialité controversée
de la médecine, vit le jour durant la seconde moitié des 1880. Avec l’invention
du microscope, les médecins pouvaient étudier la microbiologie en plus de
détails.

L’étude de la pathologie était controversée, car elle
impliquait « l’anatomie morbide ». Pour essayer alors d’en apprendre plus sur
les maladies, les pathologistes firent des observations détaillées des patients
morts, impliquant la dissection du corps.

Le Dr. William Osler accepta le
premier poste de pathologiste à l’hôpital, en 1876. La salle d’autopsie était
une petite chambre défraichie dans le sous-sol avec une table en bois. Le Dr. Osler
oeuvra sans relâche dans cette salle sombre, illuminée par une lampe à huile.
Les patients des étages supérieurs se plaignaient souvent de la pestilence qui
s’épandait de la salle terrifiante. Remarquablement, le Dr. Osler pratiqua un
total de 780 autopsies durant sa première décennie à l’hôpital.

Au sujet de l’étrange odeur que le neveu avait sentie,
ç’avait peut-être été du phénol, introduit comme antiseptique au cours des 1870 par le Dr. Roddick.
Auparavant la première salle d’opération se situait sous la coupole de
l’hôpital, avec un plancher de bois et une table d’opération, qui étaient
tachés de sang et rarement lavés. Les médecins portaient régulièrement de
vieilles redingotes, qui se trempaient de sang durant les opérations et les
autopsies. Du coup, aucune tentative n’a été faite pour stériliser la salle et
ses instruments.

Dans la salle d’opération le D. Roddick présenta le
phénol (l’acide phénique) en tant que désinfectant sous forme de nuage gazeux.
Avec une citerne d’un gallon d’eau chauffée sur un brûleur d’alcool et un
flacon de phénol attachée au système, la machine créait un nuage antiseptique
lors des opérations.

La technique puissante fit chuter le taux des amputations
mortelles de 80% à moins de 4 %.

Au sujet des hallucinations, avec l’apparence
d’outre-mort du nuage de phénol et la flaque de sang, le neveu peut-il être
tombé sur quelque chirurgie ou autopsie paranormale ?

Enfin, à l’automne 2016, l’établissement fut visité par
une médium qui capta immédiatement les signes que le bâtiment était hanté. En
examinant de plus près, elle remarqua le fantôme d’un homme perché haut sur le
toit, fixant les gens sur la rue plus bas. La médium fut incapable de le
décrire en détail. La raison de sa présence et son identité demeurent sans
réponse au moment où s’écrivent ces lignes.

Bien que son oncle trépassât en paix une décennie plus
tard, le neveu n’oubliera jamais les expériences étranges qu’il a vécues à
l’ancien hôpital général de Montréal, qui lui ont laissé une impression
durable. Aujourd’hui, c’est encore inconnu si ces phénomènes continuent au tout
récent CHSLD Paul-Émile-Léger.

BULLETIN DE NOUVELLES

Montréal hanté est en mode hivernal : il n’y aura donc plus de visites publiques avant mai 2017. Les visites privées sont toujours disponibles pour des groupes de 10 personnes et plus, selon la disponibilité des acteurs et les conditions météo.

À l’approche de la saison des visites hantées, nous sommes ravis de vous annoncer que notre site et blogue seront mis à jour afin de les rendre plus maniables et conviviaux.

Nous planifions aussi un Promenade de Jane (an anglais) nommé le Quartier chinois hanté, explorant certains des sites et les mystères paranormaux de ce quartier historique de Montréal. Cette visite, gratuite pour ceux qui réservent leurs billets, sera offerte en début mai.

Enfin, nous sommes contents d’annoncer une bonne nouvelle pour la Saint-Patrick ! Donovan King, fondateur de Montréal hanté, a créé une nouvelle compagnie nommée les Excursions du Montréal irlandais (Irish Montreal Excursions), et fera visiter des sites d’intérêt dans la ville de Montréal et plus loin.

Les Excursions du Montréal irlandais offre présentement deux visites à pieds :

Le circuit de la Grande Famine d’Irlande à Montréal (en anglais).

Cette visite explore l’impact qu’a eu sur Montréal la famille irlandaise de 1847. L’excursion a lieu sur les sites de la Famine, en passant par les cimetières oubliés, les institutions religieuses, le canal Lachine, les ruines d’une église et la tristement célèbre Roche noire. À venir : les plans de la Fondation du Parc du Monument irlandais de Montréal pour sauver des forces industrielles le cimetière de la Famine

Quand : samedi le 18 mars à 9h00 (120 minutes).

Coût : 20.00 $ payable à la porte. Pour réserver vos billets par courriel irishmontrealexcursions@gmail.com

Où : L’excursion débute devant le musée Pointe à Callière (350 Place Royale) et finit à la Roche noire sur la rue Bridge.

Le circuit de l’Histoire des Irlandais à Montréal (en anglais)

Cette visite, dont le départ se fait devant le Old Dublin Pub, explore l’histoire des Irlandais à Montréal. L’excursion explore les sites historiques irlandais de Montréal, incluant les églises, les bars, les ruines d’un refuge, et des endroits oubliés comme le Little Dublin et Paper Hill. À venir : la connexion Bloomsday entre l’Ulysse de James Joyce et Montréal !

Quand : dimanche le 26 mars à 13h00 (120 minutes).

Coût : 20.00 $ payable à la porte. Pour réserver vos billets par courriel irishmontrealexcursions@gmail.com

Où : L’excursion débute devant le Old Dublin Pub (636 Cathcart Street) et finit à l’église Notre-Dame-de-Bonsecours (400 rue Saint Paul Est).

Les Excusions du Montréal irlandais planifie de développer d’autres excursions à l’avenir, comme la tournée des bars, les événements sportifs, la visite des cimetières et les visites en autocar à de tels sites, hors de Montréal.

Également, nous annoncerons une autre surprise dans le bulletin du mois prochain !

De plus, un gros merci à tous nos clients qui ont participé aux visites de Montréal hanté au cours de la saison 2016 ! Si vous avez aimé l’expérience, nous vous invitons à écrire une critique sur notre page Tripadvisor, quelque chose qui aide Montréal hanté à vendre ses visites. En somme, si vous voulez recevoir le blogue de Montréal hanté les 13 de chaque mois, n’hésitez pas à vous inscrire sur notre liste d’envoi.

À venir le 13 avril : Les bêtes invisibles de Montréal

Croyez-le ou non, la rumeur jappe qu’à Montréal deux
animaux domestiques invisibles ont fait maison : un chien et un chat. Au début
des 1970, Brian et Louise Grey et leurs quatre enfants ont connu un chat
invisible chez eux à Montréal. Étonnamment, le chat pouvait être entendu et
touché mais jamais vu. Dans une autre histoire, un garçon de Roxboro, une
banlieue de Montréal, adopta ce que ses parents croyaient être un ami imaginaire,
que le garçon nomma « Duke ». Il se fâchait si ses parents essayaient de
s’asseoir sur le divan quand « Duke » y était. Les parents l’acceptèrent au
début, lui reconnaissant une imagination hyper-active. Toutefois, ils eurent le
choc de leur vie quand un voisin les informa que la propriétaire d’avant était
morte dans un incendie avec son chien. Le nom du chien mort était « Duke ». Il
va sans dire que les animaux domestiques invisibles sont une partie intégrante du folklore hanté de Montréal. Seulement une question nous hante : pourquoi ?

Donovan King est un historien, enseignant et acteur professionnel. En tant que fondateur de Montréal hanté, il unit ses talents pour trouver les meilleures histoires de fantômes montréalais, et les livrer par l’écriture et le jeu d’acteur. King déteint un DEC (Interprétation, Collège John Abbot), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (Histoire et Enseignement de l’anglais, McGill) et une MFA (Études théâtrales, Université de Calgary). Il étudie actuellement pour obtenir une AEC (Guide touristique de Montréal, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec).