A series of disturbing recent events, such as an attempted animal sacrifice in a cemetery and body dumping in a local nature park has triggered Haunted Montreal to investigate Sault-au-Récollet. Located on the eastern edge of the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville, Sault-au-Récollet is one of Montreal’s many haunted neighborhoods. Situated on the Back River (La Rivière des Prairies in French), it is one of the city’s oldest colonial settlements.
Situated in Montreal’s Plateau-Mont Royal Borough, Saint Louis Square is a beautiful and bucolic park dating from 1876. Surrounded by stunning Victorian architecture, the leafy square is popular with locals and tourists alike. It features a central fountain, busts of famous poets and even a small stone building with a café and ice cream parlor inside. However, the square also has a turbulent history. Once the stomping ground of many disturbed artists, the Montreal Hippy Movement and an era of decline including rampant prostitution, deranged things have happened in the park and its environs. Unsurprisingly, there have been ghost sightings in Saint Louis Square.
New residents sometimes claim to hear solemn church bells tolling, even though the church no longer stands here. In another strange incident, on one foggy, October night in 2011, a prospective condo buyer was visiting the neighborhood and claims to have witnessed a ghostly funeral procession on the site of the ruins. He was impressed by a unit in Carré de la montagne condo building and was walking down De La Montagne Street back to his car when he suddenly noticed movement through the fog behind some trees in the park.
Firstly, after dark, the atmosphere of the cemetery changes and a lot of people have reported feeling nervous and uncomfortable after sun down. For those daring enough to stay in the burial ground, there have been reports of strange shapes moving about, mysterious mists and floating orbs in the treetops. On occasion, ghostly apparitions have been spotted wandering the cemetery and, in what is almost certainly cases of residual hauntings, the disembodied voices of muffled prayer and moaning can still be heard, not to mention sudden screams of agony that sometimes pierce the cemetery. The disturbing screams tend to occur in the south-west corner of the Dorchester Square portion of the old cemetery.
At around 9 pm, Marie-Josée was putting her daughter to bed when she heard what sounded like laughter coming from outside. She opened the window to see if there were rowdy teenagers in the neighborhood, but could not see anyone on the street or in the park across the street. While she could not place the laughter, she recognized the voice as male. The laughter got louder, and soon transformed into a mixture of snickering, giggling and cackling. Unimpressed, Marie-Josée closed the window and secured its latch. Unfortunately, she could still hear the deranged laughter, albeit more muffled.
There are also rumours that Murray Hill Park is haunted by ghosts from the an earlier era. More specifically, a host of phantom children in antique underthings has been spotted singing while traipsing through the large, open greenspace. Who might these musical ghosts be and why do they haunt Murray Hill Park?
There are many theories about who the ghostly soldier might be. While some online rumours suggest the military apparition is of French stock, others believe he is British. One feasible theory takes us back to 1885, when Montreal was in the midst of a smallpox epidemic. During the era, smallpox was seen as the worst possible disease. Not only was it extremely infectious, but it could disfigure and even destroy people within a week or two. Infection was caused by breathing contaminated air or touching something that had been in contact with the variola virus.