With over 600 documented ghost stories, Montreal is easily the most haunted city in Canada, if not all of North America. Haunted Montreal dedicates itself to researching these paranormal tales, and the Haunted Montreal Blog unveils a newly researched Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month!

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

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

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

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

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

To learn more, see the schedule at the bottom of our home page and see more details in the Company News section below!

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

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

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

Haunted Research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Company News

With colder weather setting in, our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now over for the 2024 season. Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 4 pm.

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

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

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

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

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

Our team also releases videos every second Saturday, in both languages, of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog. Hosted by Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French), this initiative is sure to please ghost story fans!

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link.

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can!

We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have updated our online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise. We are selling t-shirts, hoodies (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery.

Purchases can be ordered through our online store: shop.hauntedmontreal.com

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project! New stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will now be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

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

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

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

Coming up on January 13^th: Update on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital

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

Author:

Donovan King is a postcolonial historian, teacher, tour guide and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbott College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill), MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary) and ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec). He is also a certified Montreal Destination Specialist.

Translator (into French):

Claude Chevalot holds a master’s degree in applied linguistics from McGill University. She is a writer, editor and translator. For more than 15 years, she has devoted herself almost exclusively to literary translation and to the translation of texts on current and contemporary art.

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

This service is free and you can sign up to our mailing list (top, right-hand corner for desktops and at the bottom for mobile devices) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th! The blog is published in both English and French!

With Hallowe’en behind us, Haunted Montreal is entering its winter mode, also known as the Dead Season!

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

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

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

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

This month we examine Saint Louis Square, a beautiful park associated with Quebec’s literary history. However, when the sun goes down, it allegedly attracts ghostly spirits.

Haunted Research

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.

Indeed, some artists claim to have been tormented by enraged specters, ghostly animals, sinister demons and other horrors in the square’s vicinity. Whether this is the work or fevered imaginations or something paranormal, there can be no denying that Saint Louis Square has left its indelible mark on the psyche of so many people over the years.

The most common ghost sighting is that of a tormented man who seems lost and despairing. He paces around the park aimlessly, sometimes pausing to wring his hands or grab his face, as though in a state of anguish. When approached, he vanishes into thin air.

One local resident contacted Haunted Montreal to say: “Sometimes I sit on my balcony at night and wait for him to appear. When he does, which if often, he scares the crap out of those wandering the park after dark.”

This ghost has been spotted again and again and there are many accounts of him. Who he is and why he roams the square is the subject of much speculation.

Saint Louis Square has a long and fascinating history. In 1849, the City of Montreal constructed its first water reservoir on the site. Known as Réservoir de la Côte-à-Baron or Réservoir Jean-Baptiste, it had a capacity of three million gallons. It was 20 feet deep and was flanked to the east and west by parkland.

However, when a major fire broke out in Montreal in 1852, the reservoir was drained and closed for repairs. Known as the “Great Fire of Montreal”, it burned down half of the city and left as many as 10,000 people homeless.

As a result, a new and larger reservoir was ordered. Located above the McGill campus, the McTavish Reservoir was constructed between 1852 and 1856 with a capacity of 37 million gallons of water. Named after Simon McTavish, Montreal’s most infamous 18^th Century ghost, the gigantic pool was intended to serve the needs of local citizens.

With the first reservoir declared obsolete, Saint Louis Square was created in 1876. Named after two famous industrialists, brothers Emmanuel and Jean-Baptiste Saint-Louis, the park proved a popular location with the city’s French-speaking bourgeoisie. In 1880, the reservoir was converted into a swimming area and ice rink in the winter.

Construction of the sumptuous Victorian dwellings that surround the park began in 1885. Architectural styles included Second Empire, neo-Queen Ann and Chateau de Glace.

The French-Canadian elite quickly began moving into the now-posh area. In 1894, a three-pronged fountain was added to the old reservoir

To increase the prestige of Saint Louis Square, a bust of famous Quebec poet Octave Crémazie was unveiled on June 24, 1906. Designed by Louis-Philippe Hébert, the monument of the literary hero was a welcome addition. Called “the father of French Canadian poetry”, Crémazie is recognized for his patriotic verse and his important role in the cultural development of Quebec.

In 1931, the magnificent cast iron fountain was installed in the center of the square. It had stood in the eastern portion of Viger Square since 1850, but was relocated when Berri Street was extended.

However, in the 1940s and 50s, many of the wealthier residents decided to move to Outremont. This tony neighborhood to the north was growing rapidly and featured more luxurious homes with large gardens. There were also many grandiose parks that dwarfed Saint Louis Square.

By the 1960s, Saint Louis Square had begun falling into decline, despite the addition of an old stone vespasienne (former public toilet). The building was moved from Viger Square during construction of the metro and converted into a café.

Many of the old homes were starting to fall into dilapidation. Most were converted into cheap rooming houses, which attracted all sorts of bohemians and artists. These included French-speaking poets, sculptors, painters, musicians, authors and other creative-types.

For them, Saint Louis Square became an unofficial extension of many artist salons and workshops and the park was often full of creative projects. Artists painted on easels and wrote on benches. Poets recited their latest works and photographers snapped pictures of the remarkable yet neglected square. Paolo Noël’s musical hit Carré Saint Louis put the square on the map of Quebec’s public imaginary.

According to local resident and author, Jean-Jules Richard, in his 1971 book Carré Saint Louis:

“This old, wealthy neighborhood was now invaded by the poor, artists, old-school bohemians and, more recently, beatnicks and hippies.”

By the early 1970’s, Saint Louis Square had become infamously known as “Village Carré Saint-Louis”. It was Montreal’s pot-smoking central, with hippies, artists and riff-raff filling up the park in the warmer months.

It was an endless party of guitar-strumming, chilling out, and weed-smoking. The joke at the time was that there was a permanent cloud of marijuana floating over “Village Carré Saint-Louis”.

Some of the local residents objected to what they saw as the deterioration of a once respectable, bourgeoise neighborhood. They worried, for example, that the hippies would vandalize the magnificent bust of Octave Crémazie.

Because the monument was considered sacred by an elite of Quebec nationalists, in 1972 an executive committee authorized its move to Place Crémazie. This derelict patch of grass was located right beside the elevated Met or Highway 40 (at the corner of Crémazie and Saint-Laurent boulevards), far away from the hippie invasion of Saint Louis Square.

By the early 1980s, the area had deteriorated again. It was now full of violent drug dealers, pimps and underage prostitutes. Due to the design of the roads surrounding the square, clients could drive endlessly around Saint Louis Square until they could find whatever vice they were looking for.

When the city changed the road direction to make it impossible for drivers to do this, things began to slowly change as pushers and pimps moved to more easily accessible locations.

Gentrification began to set in during the late 1980s as the rooming homes were purchased and re-converted into their original Victorian design.

With the increasing gentrification, in 2002 city officials ruled that the bust of Crémazie could return to Saint-Louis Square.

Just three years later, officials installed a second literary bust, this time of Émile Nelligan, Quebec’s most well-known poet today. It was unveiled in the south-west corner of the square on June 7, 2005, not far from his former home on Laval Street.

In December of the same year, the Project for Public Spaces described Saint Louis Square as “the closest thing to a European neighbourhood square you’ll find this side of the Atlantic.”

Today, the square is known as “the poetic soul of Montreal” on account of the many famous artists who lived and worked there. These include, but are not limited to, Michel Tremblay, Gilles Carle, Claude Jutra, Jean-Jules Richard, Jean-Roch Boivin, Gaston Miron, André Gagnon, Gérald Godin, Pauline Julien, Mary Travers Bolduc, Dany Laferrière, Louis Royer, Robert Prénovault and Émile Nelligan.

Many of these artists wrote poems, novels, plays and songs in the park. Others painted, took photographs and translated literature and other documents. The deranged spirits allegedly roaming the vicinity have clearly influenced many of their works – and thoughts.

The evidence of the paranormal thoughts of the artists are included in their many songs, poems and novels. Fantastical creatures such as ghosts, cherubs and demons appear in many of their works.

The lives and deaths of many of these artists is explored in the video Carré St-Louis : une histoire populaire (in French).

Two of the most tormented artists to live near the square were poet Émile Nelligan and filmmaker Claude Jutra. There is speculation that the deranged ghost roaming the square is likely the sprit of one of these men.

Born in 1879, Émile Nelligan is considered one of the greatest Quebec poets. His father was Irish and his mother a French Canadian.

They lived at 3686 Laval Street from1886-1892, then at 3958 on the same street afterwards.

Émile Nelligan was first published at age 16. Writing exclusively in French, he produced an enormous amount of work in four years, including some 170 poems, sonnets, rondels and songs. His literature is characterized by a lyricism overflowing with sadness, nostalgia, extreme sensitivity, inner sorrow and symbols. Unlike the poets who preceded him, Nelligan did not draw his inspiration from his native soil, but rather from his “inner self”.

Unfortunately, on August 9, 1899, Nelligan had a psychotic breakdown. His friend Louis Dantin recalled:

“…Nelligan would lock himself away for whole days, alone with his delirious thoughts, and, in the absence of external excitement, endeavoring to torture the most acute fibers within himself, or else to sing to the surrounding beings, to the walls, to the furniture, to the trinkets that surrounded him, the always sad song of his memories.”

He added: “At night, he had visions, either radiant or horrible: young girls who were at the same time seraphim, muses and lovers, or else enraged specters, ghost cats, sinister demons who breathed despair into him. Each of the dreams took shape the next day in verses penciled with a feverish hand, and where already, among the sparkling features, Madness showed its hideous claws.”

As he became more and more delirious, Nelligan suddenly climbed a tree in Saint Louis Square and refused to come down. His father interned him at the Catholic Saint-Benoît Retreat. In 1925, Nelligan was transferred to the Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum. Rumours circulated that he had been given a lobotomy.

Whatever the case, he remained institutionalized until his death on November 18, 1941. Sadly, following his mental health crisis, he never wrote another word of poetry.

Another tormented artist, Claude Jutra was born on March 11, 1930.  A director, writer, actor, editor and cinematographer, he was a central figure in the development of cinema in Québec. He directed two films of tremendous significance to the Quiet Revolution, including the autobiographical À tout prendre (1963) and Mon oncle Antoine (1970). The latter was widely regarded as one of the greatest Canadian films ever made.

Jutra won several prestigious prizes for his work and was widely celebrated as an icon of Quebec’s francophone culture. He was also honored in queer circles because he was openly gay.

However, on November 5, 1986, Jutra mysteriously disappeared from his home. Given that he had been living for several years with Alzheimer’s disease, there was speculation that he had wandered off. Repeated searches failed to turn up any evidence of his whereabouts.

On April 19, 1987, a bloated body washed up on the banks of the St. Lawrence River at Cap-Santé, near Québec City. The corpse had a note in its pocket reading “Je m’appelle Claude Jutra” (“My name is Claude Jutra”). An autopsy later confirmed drowning as the cause of his death. He had jumped off the infamous Jacques Cartier Suicide Bridge and his body spent the winter frozen in the St. Lawrence River.

L’Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (English: Québec Union of Writers), which was established on March 21, 1977, took up residence in Jutra’s former home. Its stated mission is to promote Québec literature and defend the social and economic rights of people in the literary profession. The location at 3492 Laval Street was seen as ideal given the square’s artistic history.

However, in 2016, Québec society was shocked by allegations that Jutra was a pedophile. Film historian Yves Lever’s biography of Jutra claims that he regularly had sex with boys as young as 14 and 15, and in one case under 14. Those molested included some children of his associates and underage male prostitutes working in Saint Louis Square at night.

When journalists confirmed the story, the reaction was swift. In 2018, the name “Jutra” was scrubbed from street names across Quebec, a Montreal cinema, a park on Prince Arthur Street and Quebec’s most prestigious filmmaking award – the Prix Jutra – the equivalent of the Oscars in French Canada.

Both Nelligan and Jutra symbolized the tormented artists who lived around Saint Louis Square, which is why many suspect that either of them embody the square’s ghost. However, they are definitely not alone.

Sculptor Robert Prénovault, from St. Boniface, Manitoba, is one example. While he was living in a room near Saint Louis Square, he began installing sculptures of human figures in an abandoned field to the south of the square. Today the area is called Place Gille-Carles and is made up of numerous condos and a heat island.

At the time of Prénovault’s tenure, it was a weed-choked field full of junkies and other undesirables. To combat the scourge, he created deranged sculptures of humanoid creatures to ward off the unwanted. On at least three occasions, the police intervened because concerned citizens thought that dead bodies were lying in the field when in fact they were just sculptures.

To add insult to injury, Jean-Jules Richard, author of Carré Saint Louis, died in obscurity in Saint Louis Square in 1975.

Since the gentrification of the square, artists have continued to draw inspiration from the park, its creative legacy and ghostly spirits.

For example, arts professors often bring their students to the square for drawing and photography lessons. Also, the Montreal infringement festival frequently used Saint Louis Square for artistic parades and its infamous 2015 “Poetry in the Parc” series.

Kirouac & Kodakludo’s wrote a rap song Carré Saint Louis that features ghosts haunting the singers at night.

Even Just for Laughs Gags has used the square as one of it favorite settings for playing pranks on unsuspecting passersby.

Death also continues to stalk artists associated with the square. In March 2023, literary critic Jean-Roch Boivin, who had been living in his studio apartment on Saint Louis Square for 30 years, died of a heart attack. He had been renovicted from his home on the square, the speculated trigger for his death.

On November 11, a ceremony was held for deceased infringement festival artists at the bust of Nelligan. The celebration of life was held for Rebecca Anne Banks, Oscar Elliot, Roman Fee, David Fennario, Marie-Hélène Henry, E Lloyd MacHardy, Ange-Aimee Woods, Louis Royer, Tim Sentman and others.

During the ceremony, the ashes of poet Rebecca Anne Banks were spread in the garden behind the bust.

It was her favorite place to recite poetry, after all.

There can be no denying that Saint Louis Square continues to hold a dear place in Quebec’s artistic community and heritage, despite its ghostly spirits. If visiting the square at night, do so at your own risk!

Company News

With Hallowe’en over and the cold winter approaching, Haunted Montreal is entering its Dead Season. Public outdoor tours will return in the spring.

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

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours 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!

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.

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

If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page and/or 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: Nips Daimon

In 1862, author C.E. Bockus penned a ghost story set in Montreal called “Nips Daimon”. Published in London in the May edition of Once a Week, the creepy tale features a Mount Royal tobogganer named Eugene Roy and his misadventures with an undead spirit. Based on the true ghost story of Simon McTavish and his haunted castle, “Nips Daimon” adds another dimension to the deranged legacy of the forgotten fur baron. Known to toboggan down the mountain slopes in his coffin at night, McTavish’s ghost allegedly terrorized city residents in the 1800s. The McTavish tale is widely considered “Canada’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and C.E. Bockus’ fictionalized version adds to its mystery and intrigue.

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 350 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!

Haunted Montreal is happy to report that Public Health officials have allowed us to resume tours, on the condition that social distancing is practiced.

As such, we will be offering tours in both English and French on Saturday nights starting in July. There will be a maximum of 15 clients per ghost tour. Private tours are also available for groups up to 15 people.

Tickets are on sale now!

Our June blog explores one of the city’s most haunted green spaces. Nestled in booming Griffintown is a beautiful park that doubles as an old reminder when the condo-choked neighborhood was once Canada’s most infamous Irish shantytown.

Haunted Research

St. Ann’s Park contains the ruins of a church that bore the same name. Once the bustling hub of the Griffintown community, the beloved church was unceremoniously demolished in 1970 as part of an “urban renewal” project. Since then, the grounds have witnessed numerous paranormal activities and many new condo-owners are convinced the park is haunted.

According to some of the Griff’s new residents, these mysterious ruins sometimes produce paranormal activity. It was originally the site of St. Ann’s Church, the social hub of the Griffintown community for over 120 years.

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.

Peering through the gloom, he could make out six ghostly mourners surrounding a coffin in the area where the church’s altar used to be. A phantom priest appeared to bless the coffin, at which point several altar boys materialized. Even though the visitor could not hear anything, it appeared as though the boys were singing. When the song was over, the coffin was picked up by the mourners and the priest led the procession towards the exit. Just as they were about to reach the street, the entire entourage disappeared into the fog. Needless to say, he decided not to buy the condo after that.

St. Ann’s Church has an interesting history. Built in 1854 on the site of an old shrine, the much-beloved church soon became the center of the community.

The old church was bustling and witnessed countless baptisms, communions, marriages, funerals, and masses, not to mention the confessions of many of the sins that occurred in the Griff. Some nights, when all was quiet, a silent figure would slip up to the Presbytery, seeking a priest to administer Last Rites for a family member.

Funerals were very important affairs in the Griff, and when someone died, their corpse was collected by Feron’s Funeral Home for embalming, before being returned to the home in a coffin for the traditional Irish Wake.

The cramped quarters were decorated with black crepe paper and often the coffin would have to be hauled up a flight of narrow stairs or through a window of the home. The Wake was a three-day affair and involved a party of sorts between the living and the dead. With the corpse propped up in an open coffin surrounded by six candles, mourners paid their respects by drinking copious amounts of alcohol, playing music and singing, and partying as they paid their last respects. It wasn’t uncommon to take the corpse out of the coffin for a last dance around the room.

Oftentimes, guests drank too much alcohol and passed out at the Wake. A favourite prank in the Griff was to take the corpse out of the coffin and to replace it with a slumbering guest, whose face was painted with black boot polish. When the person awoke in the coffin, they often felt a state of terror, thinking they had contracted typhus and died.

In one such incident, a man who awoke in the coffin was so frightened that he had to be taken away in an ambulance.  Unfortunately, the good times were not to last.

In 1963, Mayor Jean Drapeau re-zoned Griffintown as industrial and announced a project to build the Bonaventure Expressway right through the neighborhood.

Many homes were demolished by the city or abandoned and the area soon became a blend of industries, parking lots and abandoned homes. Thousands of Griffintowners left the neighborhood to find work and lodging elsewhere.

By 1970, the population of Griffintown had mostly disappeared. St. Ann’s Church had virtually no more parishioners, so it was demolished and made into a park.

The foundations of the church were preserved and benches were placed where the pews used to be.

Today, the ruins of the church are a ghostly reminder of the Griff’s old days as an impoverished community. Whether it is the tolling of bells that no longer exist or ghostly funeral processions from days long gone, the wealthier new residents must contend with paranormal activities here. As for the former citizens who were displaced when the old ‘hood was demolished in the 1960s, they claim the Griff is “the ghost of a neighborhood that just drifted away”.

The old parishioners still come to the ruins once a year, on St Ann’s Feast Day (July 26), to celebrate mass in the open air.

Like the crumbling ruins, the parishioners are ageing and one day this important religious event may come to a halt unless others join in to keep the tradition alive. It is organized by the Ancient Order of Hibernians.

While the 2020 edition was cancelled due to the pandemic, there are hopes it will return in 2021.

Unfortunately, many of the new residents of the Griff are oblivious to all of the important history that unfolded on the site, and the City of Montreal even replaced a plaque depicting the church in 2018 with one depicting the entire neighborhood instead.

To ensure those visiting the park can visualize the magnificent Saint Ann’s Church, Haunted Montreal has asked City of Montreal Councillors Craig Sauvé and Sterling Downey to return the original plaque or to add its historic image to the new version.

After all, the ruins of St. Ann’s Church are perhaps the best reminder of the old days when the Griff was a bustling Irish shantytown.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce that our tours are slowly beginning to re-start after the Public Health Office gave us clearance. Clients must stay 2 meters (6 feet) apart, so we have reduced the number of clients to only 15 per tour.

Public tours will be offered in both English and French on Saturday nights only for the months of June and July. Please note that bathroom facilities may not be available.

Here is the schedule:

JUNE:

Saturday, June 27^th at 8 pm: Centre-ville hanté (FRENCH)          

Saturday, June 27^th at 8:30 pm: Haunted Downtown (ENGLISH)

JULY:

Saturday, July 4^th at 8 pm: Mont Royal hanté (FRENCH)  

Saturday, July 4^th at 8:30 pm: Haunted Mountain     (ENGLISH)               

Saturday, 11^th at 8 pm: Griffintown hanté (FRENCH)         

Saturday, 11^th at 8:30 pm: Haunted Griffintown (ENGLISH)         

Saturday, July 18^th at 8 pm: Centre-ville hanté (FRENCH)

Saturday, July 18^th at 8:30 pm: Haunted Downtown (ENGLISH)             

Saturday July, 25^th at 8 pm: Paranormal Investigation (ENGLISH)         

Saturday, July 25^th at 8 pm: Enquête paranormale (FRENCH)    

Tickets are on sale now!

New tours will be added if there is enough demand.

Private tours are also available for groups up to 15 people. Please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com for a quote.

We will be updating our schedule soon for August through the Hallowe’en Season, depending on directives from the Public Health Department.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 – 2020 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 July 13: The Haunted Award

In April, 2019, Haunted Montreal was bestowed with a Travel and Hospitality Award for “Quebec’s Most Unique Experience” of the year. Haunted Montreal paid the associated delivery fees to receive the beautiful crystal trophy. Unfortunately, this prestigious award is now missing. The administrator who handled the paperwork to claim the award quit the company, and then announced: “I deserve this award”, even though it was bestowed upon Haunted Montreal. Despite our best efforts to recover the award, the former administrator has not returned it. Because Haunted Montreal employs people working in the ancient realms of magic and the paranormal, a spell has since been cast on the glassy award, making it very haunted indeed. According to the spell-caster, it was made haunted to ensure anyone who keeps the award away from the company for more than 7 days will suffer from constant bad luck until it is returned.

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 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!

We are also pleased to announce that all of our ghost tours are now operating and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown and the new Haunted Pub Crawl!

Our September blog examines the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery in the heart of Downtown Montreal. Known to be rife with paranormal activity, it is the location of our new Paranormal Investigation activity. Based on ghost-hunting TV shows and starting on Friday the 13^th of September, it is an experience not to be missed for ghost hunters, paranormal researchers and fans of the otherworldly. Details below!

Haunted Research

Dorchester Square and Place du Canada, popular parks in the heart of Downtown Montreal, harbor a very dark secret. Lurking just below the soil are the skeletons of an estimated 70,000 Montrealers, many of them victims of cholera who were buried in mass graves during epidemics in the mid-1800s. Once known as Saint-Antoine Cemetery, the Catholic burial ground operated from 1799 until the 1855 when it ran out of space. Rife with paranormal activity, the Old Saint-Antoine Cemetery is a largely-forgotten and yet haunted stain on the city’s urban fabric.

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.

To understand why these voices of the dead are still making a commotion, it is important to understand the horrible history of the Old Saint-Antoine Cemetery.

Early in the city’s history, bodies were buried inside the fortifications in what is now Old Montreal. However, when the British took over the city in 1760, public officials claimed that more burials would endanger public health.

As such, new locations were sought for both the Catholic and Protestant cemeteries. A large plot of land was bought for 1500 pounds in what was then a rural area. 

Named Saint-Antoine Cemetery, it catered to the Catholic residents. It was also known as the “Cholera Cemetery”, owing to five epidemics that struck, starting in 1832.

The first time the disease struck the city, Montreal was thoroughly devastated.

On June 9, 1832, an immigrant ship called the Voyageur arrived in the Montreal Harbour. As the passengers disembarked and moved into the city, it soon became clear that one man had been left behind.

He was found lying on his back on the ship’s deck, twitching in a state of pain and agony. He was attended by Dr. Nelson, Montreal’s Health Commissioner. The diagnosis was clear: the man’s blood had turned black, meaning Cholera had descended on Montreal, an extremely deadly and contagious disease.

The disease spread like wildfire and as the Cholera spread throughout the city, its victims began to multiply dramatically.

Dr. Nelson oversaw the efforts to quell the disease. He ordered barrels of tar to be lit on fire throughout the city to try and purify the air and he put all medical personnel on alert.  

Death-carts began rolling through the streets with yellow flags fluttering to warn of the dangers of contagion. Gravediggers called out “Have you any dead? Have you anyone to send to the burial ground?” 

The bodies were collected, put into rough coffins, 2 – 4 per cart, and then carted to Saint-Antoine Cemetery, where they were piled into stacks. There was no attempt to separate the men and women and no records were kept, largely because the gravediggers were all illiterate. With the rapid spread of the disease, it was soon impossible to bury the dead quickly enough.

Only 3 days after the first case, more than 150 coffins were stacked in Saint-Antoine Cemetery and the gravediggers could no longer cope with Dr. Nelson’s orders to bury each body within 6 hours.

When Dr. Nelson threatened to burn the grim pile of corpses to ward off the disease, the Sulpician priests ordered their parishioners to bring their shovels and spades to the cemetery to help with the gruesome task. Trenches were dug 8 feet deep, 10 feet wide, and over 100 feet long. Crude coffins were stacked in the trenches and quickly covered with soil to try and stop the spread of the disease.

The mood in the city was very depressing, and one recent immigrant named Mrs. Susana Moodle wrote: “The sullen toll of the death-bell, the exposure to ready-made coffins in the undertakers’ windows, and the oft-recurring notice placarded on the walls, of funerals furnished at such and such a place, at cheapest rate and shortest notice, painfully reminded us, at every turning of the street, that death was everywhere – perhaps lurking in our path…”

Doctors were taken off-guard by Cholera because they had never seen anything like it. Medical science was still in its infancy and most doctors subscribed to or invented theories about how best to treat diseases. There was no consensus on how to treat Cholera, but the use of opium, bleeding and bedrest were seen as “infallible” by Dr. Nelson. 

Performing autopsies was considered the best way to learn about diseases, and medical students often resorted to grave-robbing to obtain corpses for their anatomy classrooms because it was very difficult to meet supply otherwise.

With the Cholera epidemic in full swing, there was no shortage of bodies to cut open to study. To take advantage of the situation, the doctors set up sheds directly in the cemetery, in the south-west corner of today’s Dorchester Square, to conduct autopsies and perform other operations. People began to describe the doctors as overzealous and deranged, and it wasn’t long before indignant newspaper editors began to describe the sheds as “slaughterhouses.”

Montreal’s Catholic citizens asked their priests to intervene make the autopsies stop, but instead, the priests joined the doctors in the cemetery sheds to help perform a very rare and unusual operation. 

Pregnant women who were nearing death would often beg the doctors to perform an operation known as an “infant baptism”. Because the Catholic faith insisted on baptism to enter Heaven, these women hoped that their fetuses could receive salvation to join them in Paradise.

However, the only way to do this was to perform a Cesarean operation in order to expose the unborn baby, at which point a priest could baptize it. The devoted women would scream in pain and agony as the doctors cut open their bellies, revealing the fetus. Priests would then sprinkle holy water into the open womb, before both mother and unborn child perished. 

Overall, the doctors, with the help of a midwife named Madam Tavernier, carried out around 30 of the these so-called “infant baptisms” in the cemetery. 

There is speculation whenever someone hears the disembodied voices moaning in pain or screaming in agony, it is the spirits of these faithful women who insisted on being ripped open before death to try and obtain salvation for their unborn children.

On the other side of René Lévesque Boulevard, which bisects the cemetery, allowing daily traffic to roll over the dead, Place du Canada has many similar paranormal activities. These include the strange orbs floating through the treetops, mumbling prayer noises and the occasional wandering apparition.

Place du Canada is also interesting because there are an above average number of medical emergencies in the park, especially near the Statue of John A. MacDonald. It is one of the city’s busiest places for ambulances to tend to victims of panic attacks, shortness of breath, heart attacks, strokes and these sorts of things. Many people believe that the statue is haunted, its eyes following people as an additional macabre element in a cemetery rife with paranormal activity.

One especially haunted part is the road to the east, Rue de la Cathédrale, which used to be called Cemetery Street. In 1832, it was a corpse lane that led from the cemetery to Saint Antoine Street down the hill.

One warm summer night in July at around 2 a.m., a police officer patrolling on Saint Antoine Street saw what appeared to be a corpse stumbling towards him. It was wrapped only in a “winding sheet”, as the burial garments were called in the era.

The corpse had turned off Cemetery Street and was rambling along eastwards, towards the city. Terrified, the officer ran back to the station, in a state of absolute panic, gasping to his superior officer that: “The dead are coming out of their graves!”

In another macabre case, workmen were digging a ditch alongside Cemetery Street several decades after the 1832 cholera epidemic and they came across a coffin that appeared to have sustained some damage.

The circumstances behind the macabre tale begin on June 26, 1832. A certain adolescent girl named Mademoiselle Hervieux decided to visit her best friend, Mademoiselle de Beaujeu, at her home at 320 Notre Dame Street in what is now Old Montreal.

The master of the house, Seigneur Saveuse de Beaujeu, had died of Cholera on June 15^th, and most of the family were at his seigneury to try and escape the disease. His daughter, Mademoiselle de Beaujeu, and two old servants remained at the house.

Mademoiselle de Beaujeu had been feeling depressed and Mademoiselle Hervieux was hoping to cheer her up with a cup of tea and some conversation.

However, after just two hours in the Beaujeu household, at 10 p.m., Mademoiselle Hervieux began to feel rather unwell. Perhaps the servants didn’t air out the house well enough!

Mademoiselle Hervieux began to feel hot flashes followed by cold, shivering chills. Then, she began to cough, heave, purge and vomit. Finally, Mademoiselle began to feel the pain and her body began to prostrate and twitch – the classic symptoms of Cholera.

Because Mademoiselle came from a wealthy family, they decided to hire a doctor to see if there was anything that could be done for poor Mademoiselle.

She was attended to by Dr. Daniel Arnoldi, the first president of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Lower Canada, and by two or three gentlemen, “nightwatchers”.

The first thing Dr. Arnoldi did was prescribe a large, blue opium pill.

If the patient could hold down the opium, the heaving often stopped, allowing the doctor to operate. Mademoiselle Hervieux held down the opium and soon her mind drifted far, far away.

The doctor then began probing her, looking for bad blood, the black stuff. He bled her by making small incisions into her veins with his scalpel. He then reached into his Leech Jar and affixed the small bloodsucking creatures to Mademoiselle’s puncture wounds to extract the blood.

After removing 30 ounces of polluted blood, the doctor noted how cool and clammy Mademoiselle was to the touch. That’s why he heated up two hot laundry irons, which he “promenaded down each side of the spine and back,” in order to re-heat her body, in order to re-animate her.

Unfortunately, it appeared as though the operation was unsuccessful – Mademoiselle Hervieux was declared dead at daylight the following morning, June 27th.

Mademoiselle’s family were very upset and the idea of burying her dignified body anonymously in a mass grave was all a bit too much. They decided to bribe the gravedigger a substantial amount to place her body into a crude wooden coffin, bearing her name, and to deposit it into the side of Saint-Antoine Cemetery with a wooden cross to mark the spot. A death-cart was ordered for Mademoiselle and she was buried in haste, still in her dress and jewellery.

The next part of the story has been described as being a bit “disturbing”. One of the problems that sometimes arrived was gruesome: not everyone who ended up in Saint-Antoine Cemetery was actually dead. Some of them were merely incapacitated from the large doses of opium. For the luckier ones, when they woke up inside a coffin piled in a stack, waiting to be buried, and could be saved by banging on the side to alert the gravediggers.

However, not everyone was so lucky. Some of the victims woke up in crude coffins, already buried underneath the Earth itself. Such was the case of Mademoiselle Hervieux. The workers noted that the coffin had sustained some damages. Indeed, Mademoiselle had used her left elbow to smash a hole in the side of the coffin. Her left arm was extended out into the soil. By now it was in a skeletal state.

Inside the coffin, Mademoiselle’s right arm was no longer in the standard funeral position. For some reason, during her final hours, Mademoiselle’s right arm had snaked its way up towards her face, and she spent her final hours gnawing away on her wrist! The ditch diggers speculated that perhaps she got hungry, waiting all alone, under the ground.

Returning to earlier in the story, the stumbling “corpse” that had so terrified the policeman on was actually a fellow named Bill Collins who had been mispronounced as dead because the opium had induced a coma. Mr. Collins was fortunate enough to wake up before being buried because a new trench was to be dug in the morning. His coffin was on the top of the stack and he had pulled himself out and ran back towards the city, dressed only in his burial shroud. While he may have given the officer the fright of his life that warm night in 1832, Mr. Collins went on to live to a ripe, healthy old age of 92 years.

In that truly horrible summer, Cholera killed off almost 15% of the city’s residents. 1,900 Montreal citizens perished, out of a city with just 27,000 people at the time. To make matters worse, Cholera epidemics would nail the city five more times in the coming decades, keeping the gravediggers very busy and causing the cemetery to fill up very quickly.

By the 1850s, the cemetery was almost full. It had expanded across both today’s Peel and Metcalfe Streets and contained an estimate of more than 70,000 bodies. On July 31^st, 1853, history repeated itself as a committee formed to choose a location for a new cemetery. In 1854, land was purchased near the toll-gate on Cote-des-Neiges Road on the western slope of Mount Royal, and in 1853 the Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery was opened.

Saint-Antoine Cemetery received its last body for burial in 1855, then began to fall into a state of dilapidation.

Wooden crosses began to rot as weeds started choking the old burial ground. The abandoned corpse-house, with its creepy inscription on the folding door: “Aujourd’hui pour moi, demain pour vous,” was soon defaced with lewd graffiti.

Eventually, the City decided that the land was too valuable not to be re-purposed. The remaining crosses, tombstones, and the corpse-house were removed and the land was divided into plots for sale. To prepare the land being sold, corpses were dug up in the crudest of manners, as workers smashed apart the coffins and shoveled the remains and coffin-boards into jumbled piles on carts.

There were some indignant protests at the way the dead were being treated. Others feared unearthing the dead could lead to disaster. In 1866, Dr. Nelson published his thoughts and gruesome observations about the deadly epidemics in a book called Asiatic cholera, its origin and spread in Asia, Africa, and Europe, introduction into America through Canada: remote and proximate causes, symptoms and pathology, and the various modes of treatment analyzed.

This may have influenced Dr. Philip Pearsall Carpenter, head of the Sanitary Association of Canada, to lead a campaign to stop the exhumations, claiming it could trigger another Cholera epidemic, as it had done in London and Bristol. Work was halted in the summer of 1867, but resumed after only a few months. By 1869, Dr. Carpenter had persuaded the city to expropriate the cemetery for use as a public park. Victory was only achieved after a petition was filed, signed by many of the city’s most prominent residents. The land was sodded, trees were planted, pathways laid out, and the cemetery was re-christiened “Dominion Square”. Every effort was made to forget about the tens of thousands of corpses lying just below the ground.

Dominion Square was cut in half in 1969, when the southern square was renamed Place du Canada. After the death of René-Levesque in 1976, Dorchester Street was renamed after the famous politician. Hundreds of corpses lie beneath the teeming boulevard. Dominion Square was renamed “Dorchester Square”, doing away with an unpopular colonial name.

More recently, the parks were refurbished. In 2009, the city budgeted millions of dollars to start sprucing up the two squares. After finishing Dorchester Square at a cost of $9 million, the Place du Canada renovation was put on hold for a time in 2012 after officials suspected mafia involvement in the work.

The work involved refurbishing old monuments, improving lighting and landscaping, and laying granite pathways. The city has a policy when skeletons are unearthed during work: human remains are reburied at the Catholic cemetery on Mount Royal.

The city also decided to inscribe something special into the granite pathways to mark the dead. Forgetting the old cemetery had proven very difficult, if not impossible.

Today, those passing through the parks who look at the ground will see Latin crosses inscribed into the granite pathways. These crosses discretely commemorate the tens of thousands of skeletons lying just below the ground, many of them still stacked in the numerous burial trenches.

The fact that so many people died tragically here, either before or after their burials, is one of the main reasons the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery is said to be so haunted.

Company News

Firstly, Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce our new Paranormal Investigation of the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery. The activity is designed for those interested in the paranormal and ghost hunting, as seen on ghost hunting programs like Rencontres Paranormales, Most Haunted, TAPS’ Ghost Hunters, Haunted Collector and others.

Hosted by an expert in the paranormal, clients will be provided with ghost-hunting tools such as dowsing rods, EMF Readers, Temperatures Guns and other devices to communicate with the many deranged spirits that haunt the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery.

The first Paranormal Investigation of the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery is scheduled tonight, on Friday the 13^th of September at 8 pm. It will run every Friday night at this time until early November.

Additional Investigations may be added for the Hallowe’en Season. Tickets are now on sale!

For those wishing to learn more about paranormal investigations, Haunted Montreal recommends So You Want to Be a Paranormal Investigator? by Russell Phillip Masters. According to the publishers:

“This book will guide the new investigator to begin investigating safely and give the experienced investigator another area of paranormal investigation used by the investigators of the past. Maybe you just have the interest in the paranormal; I am sure this book will not disappoint. In this very educational book, you will learn the safe way to carry out an investigation and look at how our ancestors protected themselves when doing the same. Furthermore, this book will also teach you to investigate on a budget and not get ripped off by the many companies out there that offer paranormal investigation equipment.”

According to author Russell Phillip Masters: 

“Every town, village, city and country have their own myths, legends and ghost stories. In my experience there is no smoke without fire. Years go by and stories are added to by the Chinese whisper method, these stories are still worth checking out as they had to start somewhere.”

In his book, Russell Phillip Masters provides a detailed description of different types of hauntings, including various examples from the United Kingdom, and also explains how you can obtain ghost hunting tools – or make them yourself on the cheap!

Haunted Montreal’s public season of ghost tours is also in full operation as we approach the Hallowe’en Season! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown and the new Haunted Pub Crawl! Tickets are on sale!

Our Haunted Pub Crawl is led by a professional ghost storyteller and visits three haunted bars. Starting at McKibbin’s Irish Pub in Downtown Montreal on Bishop Street, guests not only learn about many of the haunted drinking establishments in the city, but also hear Montreal’s most infamous ghost stories.

While sipping suds, guests enjoy haunted pubs, spine-tingling Montreal ghost stories and learn about the historical forces that transformed the ancient Indigenous island of Tiotà:ke into Ville-Marie, an austere French colony founded by Catholic evangelists.

After the British invaded, the city became a booming financial center and crime hub, a site of violent rebellion and subversive revolution and finally into Canada’s most haunted city.

Clients hear the paranormal tales behind mysterious McKibbin’s Irish Pub, the famous Sir Winston Churchill, funeral-home-cum-discotheque Club Le Cinq and, of course, Hurley’s Irish pub, where a ghost known only as the Burning Lady haunts the establishment.

The ghost storyteller regales guests with Montreal’s most deranged and infamous ghost stories, including Simon McTavish, a Scottish fur baron known to toboggan down the slopes of Mount Royal in his own coffin, the ghost of John Easton Mills, Montreal’s Martyr Mayor who perished while tending to typhus-stricken Irish refugees during the Famine of 1847, and Headless Mary, the ghost of a Griffintown prostitute who was decapitated by her best friend in the shantytown in 1879. She returns every 7 years to the corner of William and Murray Streets, still looking for her head!

Join Haunted Montreal on this unforgettable pub crawl, where you can drink some spirits with a spirit, all the while learning about the city’s deranged history and hearing spine-tingling local ghost stories!

For full details, including a description, the starting location and schedule, please visit our new web page! Join us at 3 pm any Sunday of the year for a haunted pub crawl in English or at 4 pm in French! Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal also offers private tours and pub crawls for 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 promote a 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 also like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk or haunted pub crawl recently!

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.

If you have any feedback, please email us at info@hauntedmontreal.com so we can improve our visitor experience.

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 October 13: Montreal’s Body Snatchers

In the mid-1800s, Montreal had a problem with bodies going missing from various cemeteries, including those on Mount Royal. With medical science starting to grow, there was an increasing demand for corpses in Anatomy departments, such as the one at McGill University’s Medical School. Despite the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1843, which made the bodies of those who died in provincially funded hospitals and “poorhouses” available to medical schools, there was a shortage of corpses for students to dissect and autopsy. This prompted a wave of body-snatching, whereby McGill students – and professors – would dig up bodies in the pauper’s graveyard late at night. Known as “the Resurrectionists”, these deranged corpse thieves would go on to inspire Montreal’s most infamous ghost story of the 1800s – that of Simon McTavish’s tobogganing ghost. 

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).

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) if you wish to receive it every month on the 13th!

We are also pleased to announce that all of our ghost tours are now operating and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown and the new Haunted Pub Crawl!

Our July blog examines the Haunted Statue of Jacques Cartier in Saint-Henri, a colonial relic of the past that is said to sometimes disturb people with its paranormal antics.

HAUNTED RESEARCH

Towering over Saint-Henri Park is a statue of Jacques Cartier perched atop a fountain that is rumoured to be haunted. Striking a victorious pose over a fountain adorned with four decapitated Indigenous heads, the monument has been described by community activists as colonial and racist. While some local citizens want the statue removed because it celebrates genocide, others want it gone because it is allegedly haunted. Reports exists of the statue’s eyes following people. Others have heard it cackling maniacally at night and a group of tourists was shocked when the beheaded Indigenous decorations began spewing out what appeared to be blood.

In Montreal, statues are the responsibility of the Public Art Bureau. Established in 1989, the tax-payer funded organization is responsible for managing the municipal collection of public art and this includes acquisitions, maintenance, restoration and promotion. Today, the collection includes more than 320 artworks integrated into public spaces and municipal buildings, such as statues, monuments, murals, fountains and sculptures.

Concerning the statue of Jacques Cartier in Saint-Henri Park, the Public Art Bureau’s website describes it in a way that seems uncritical and casually racist:

“The focal point of Parc Saint-Henri, the monument-fountain is situated in the centre of a pool and stands on an octagonal base decorated with bulrushes. On the base sit four large basins alternating with four small columns topped with cups with fountain jets. In the centre, four beavers hug the base of the pedestal. The top part of the monument has three sections. The bottom one is adorned with foliage branches knotted together with a ribbon and heads of Aboriginals. The middle one bears inscriptions relating episodes in Cartier’s career. The top one is pierced with an opening for the mouth of a large fountain jet. On top of the monument is the sculpture of Cartier, portrayed as a valiant explorer, wearing a cap and the cape and baggy knickers that were in style during the reign of Francis I. His right hand rests on his sword belt and his raised left arm points west. At his feet is a tree stump, the symbol of a country to be cleared.“

Saint-Henri Park was originally called Jacques Cartier Square when it was created in 1890. Town of Saint-Henri mayor, Eugène Guay, purchased the land to create a public square for the enjoyment of the sector’s business elite. Inspired by 16th-century Italian gardens, the original square was landscaped with grass and trees and fitted with a dozen benches to promote relaxation.

For a focal point, the mayor took up a collection to hire Joseph-Arthur Vincent to create a Second Empire-style cast iron fountain surmounted by a statue of Jacques Cartier. Vincent carved the statue out of wood and surrounded it with copper plating, a less expensive way to create impressive-looking monuments. The work was intended to celebrate French-Canadian history by demonstrating the dominance of explorer and colonizer Jacques Cartier. When it was first unveiled in 1893, ten thousand residents attended the ceremony, attesting to the popularity of the “Monument to Jacques Cartier” at the time.

At the turn of the 20th century, upper middle-class homes were built around the square in stone, including one for Mayor Guay himself.

When the Georges Etienne Cartier Park was created in 1910, Jacques Cartier Square was renamed Saint Henri Park to avoid confusion.

In 1957, the City of Montreal announced its intention to move the statue to Mount Royal, prompting a citizen backlash.

While the locals managed to save the monument, in the 1960s, the upper middle class citizens gradually began moving away from the area.

Time was taking its toll on the park. By 1963, water had infiltrated the interior of the fragile monument and it began to crumble. In 1979, it was replaced by a copy made of epoxy resin.

In 1990, local residents founded Comité Statue-ta-Fête, a committee to enhance and improve the monument. The original statue was restored and placed in Saint Henri metro station in 2001, whereas a new version, cast in bronze, was prepared to stand atop the fountain in the park.

In 2012, the new statue was unveiled in the park by the Public Art Bureau for 477th anniversary of Jacque Cartier’s visit to the island at a cost of $83,000. Comité Statue-ta-Fête was awarded an Orange Prize in heritage preservation for its lobbying.

Some Montrealers were surprised that so much money and effort went into restoring a statue that celebrates colonialism, domination and even genocide, whereas others whispered that the City should have removed it for good due to persistent rumours that it was haunted.

While rare, haunted statues are known to exist and disturb people throughout the world, as described on the Youtube video “10 HAUNTED STATUES Caught On Tape“. Like the others, Montreal’s statue of Jacques Cartier is also known to upset people through its paranormal antics.

In the 1970s, Marie-Josée (not her real name as she prefers to remain anonymous) was a single mother. She met a local man who had a steady job and soon married him to provide her daughter with a more stable upbringing. After the wedding, the family moved into one of the stately homes bordering Saint-Henri Park on Rue Agnès. She reported that after she had moved in with her husband and young daughter, she began experiencing problems with the statue of Jacques Cartier in Saint-Henri Park.

The first night in their new home was like a dream come true. Marie-Josée and her new husband were thrilled to be in such a beautiful old house overlooking a Victorian park, with plenty of space to raise her daughter.

That first night the family ordered in Chinese take-out as they began the arduous task of unpacking all of their belongings from numerous boxes scattered throughout the house.

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.

“Maman, why is someone laughing outside?” asked Marie-Josée’s daughter, stating “I’m scared”.

Marie-Josée had to sleep with her daughter that night, and the evil laughter continued on an off throughout the night.

The next morning she went outside and crossed the street into Saint Henri Square to see if she could find any clues as to what had happened the previous night. She saw people feeding pigeons from benches and squirrels darting through the trees. In the center of the park she noticed a big fountain with water pouring down. On the top of it was a triumphant man with a sword standing on a tree stump.

She read the writing on the base and soon realized that this was none other than Jacques Cartier, a man she had learned about in high school when studying History. She recalled that in the 1500s he had discovered Canada and claimed the land for the King of France.

She looked up at the statue and was studying it when something caught her eye. It was the eyes of the statue. It appeared as though they were staring directly at her. She began moving, keeping her gaze locked, and began to feel troubled when it appeared as though his eyes were following hers. It was almost as though he was giving her a cork-eye or a dirty look.

Marie-Josée was even more shocked when it appeared that the statue was smirking at her. Was she imagining all of this? She slowly backed away, but was pretty certain the statue’s eyes were following her. She broke eye-contact with the ominous statue and turned around to return home. That’s when she heard the snickering sound again, which seemed to be coming from the statue itself.

That evening, when her husband came home from work, Marie-Josée informed him about the disturbing, seemingly paranormal statue and its irritating antics.

“So what?”, asked the husband, explaining “He’s the founder of Canada and has every right to do what he wants.”

“Yes,” said Marie-Josée, “But he’s a statue.”

Her husband shrugged, let out a sigh and asked her to bring him a cold beer, before turning on the television to watch sports.

Over the next several days, Marie-Josée and her daughter continued to be unnerved by the malicious cackling and laughter seemingly coming from the haunted statue. It was becoming more and more unbearable.

Marie-Josée invited a friend over, who was a medium, and told her about her problems with the statue. The medium investigated and informed her that the statue was indeed haunted. She explained that the colonial explorer did a lot of bad things and was essentially a very arrogant man. The laughter coming from the statue was a reflection of his misdeeds.

Marie-Josée informed her husband of the news and again he shrugged and turned on the television. Marie-Josée was becoming more and exasperated and told her husband that she and her daughter could not continue to live under such unbearable conditions. She wanted to move somewhere else.

“But chérie,” said the husband, “We just moved in to this wonderful house! We signed a lease for a year. Now let me watch my sports in peace.”

“Yes,” said Marie-Josée, “But that cursed statue is driving us crazy! We want to live somewhere else where it is more peaceful.”

A heated argument evolved and before long there was screaming and shouting echoing throughout the house. Marie-Josée’s daughter started bawling.

Realizing that she was in an impossible situation and angry with her new, insensitive husband, Marie-Josée decided to leave him that very night, with her weeping daughter in tow.

Even though they tried to patch things up over the next several months, the relationship ultimately ended in divorce.

More recently, in 2014, a group of Korean tourists was visiting Montreal, and Saint-Henri Park was on their tour bus agenda because of its colonial statue.

The guide, licensed by the City of Montreal and a member of the tour guiding monopoly, wanted to teach the tourists about Jacques Cartier, the “Father of Modern Canada”. He had been taught about the importance of Jacques Cartier in his high school History course and at the mandatory tour guiding program at the ITHQ, which markets itself as Canada’s best tourism school.

When they arrived in the square, the guide proudly pointed out the sculpture-fountain and all its distinct features. He gushed as he pointed out that Jacques Cartier had claimed all this land for the King of France, and that the statue symbolized European domination over the aboriginals, animals and plants in the New World. The guide was about to explain how Jacques Cartier’s discovery led to a modern Canada, when suddenly one of the female Korean tourists pointed at the statue, shrieked and then fainted on the spot!

The guide rushed to her assistance, and began splashing water from the fountain on her face to try and revive her. When she came to, she began screaming in Korean, before picking herself up and running off.

The guide was shocked and he asked the Korean tourists what the problem was.

“She saw blood,” said one of the tourists, “Coming out from the mouths of the decapitated aboriginal heads.”

The guide scoffed at the time, but has been haunted by the experience ever since. When he is drunk, sometimes he tells the story, still in utter disbelief.

One burning question about racist statues is what to do with them in the 21st Century Age of Truth and Reconciliation. Recognizing that Montreal has some of the most racist statues and commemorations in Canada, Nakuset, executive director of the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal is critical of the colonial monuments, stating: “I don’t think in any other culture you can kill, you can do a genocide and then celebrate it…It’s very disturbing.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a report with 94 Calls to Action, and Call to Action 79 ii deals with heritage and commemoration:

“We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal organizations, and the arts community, to develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration. This would include, but not be limited to:

Revising the policies, criteria, and practices of the National Program of Historical Commemoration to integrate Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices into Canada’s national heritage and history.”

The problem is that the wheels of change are very slow, and Montreal’s citizens are becoming impatient with all the racist monuments littering the city and driving away progressive tourists.

Racist statues, such as Sir John A. MacDonald and Queen Victoria, have been repeatedly painted by anti-colonial activists, who are demanding that they be retired to a museum or archive as “relics of the past”. However, instead of removing the racist monuments, the Public Art Bureau spends thousands of dollars each time re-editing them back to their racist versions by removing the paint and re-waxing them.

Montrealers are beginning to question this waste of taxpayer dollars and ask why the City isn’t doing anything about the postcolonial scandal.

Anishinaabeg visual artist Scott Benesiinaabandan believes: “If a group of Indigenous Canadians decided to go and protest in front of statues, then they would become controversial and people would start talking about it. But for the moment, nothing is happening.”

Perhaps the City of Montreal simply doesn’t know what to do with so many racist statues, plaques and monuments scattered all over the metropolis.

It would be wise for municipal authorities to study progressive artistic solutions that have been tried in other lands that are also in the process of decolonizing. This artistic idea of Reflectionism is appealing: it seems both creative and reasonable. Cities such as Asunción, Hamburg, Budapest and Odessa have all invited artists to rework and recontextualise statues with troubling legacies, with interesting and even powerful results.

Solution 1: Leave the paint on them

This is certainly the easiest solution in the short term, as it requires no expense and causes onlookers to question why the statue has been “vandalized”. This creates a fun sort of game where people will Google what is so bad about the statue, improving education and critical thinking in the general population.

Solution 2:  Interpretive Panels

Another solution, albeit not a very strong one, is to surround each racist statue or monument with interpretive panels explaining why it is racist and why it is still on display in a City of Reconciliation. The only problem with this approach is that there is no guarantee it will stop activists from painting the statues – and maybe even the panels!

Solution 3: Put them in a museum or archive

In order to preserve and reinterpret racist statues and monuments, museums and archives are ideal places for them. Not only are they protected from paint editing, but they can be put behind glass or stored as colonial relics of the past. This is the preferred solution for a group called the “Delhi-Dublin Anti-Colonial Solidarity Brigade”, who have claimed responsibility for editing racist statues with paint on many occasions, such as before the Mass Demonstration Against Racism and Xenophobia on March 24, 2019. Furthermore, museums can also digitally preserve the racist statues in their present locations with the use of virtual reality. That way, die-hards and anti-racism researchers can still experience the racist statues in their original locations, albeit via a VR interface.

Solution 4: Create an open-air museum by putting them all in one park

Memento Park displays more than 40 Communist-era statues in Budapest, Hungary. With the fall of Communism in 1989, Budapest was left with many undesirable public works of art that celebrated the oppressive era. Four years later, the city government decided to save the statues and the idea for the Memento Park was born. Today, the park is visited by 40,000 people annually, making it a popular tourist attraction for the city.

Solution 5: Responding by installing an In situ anti-racist statue or work of public art

It is possible to subvert a racist statue by placing another statue or work of public art in the same vicinity to trigger reflection on it. For example, in 1701 an exceptional Indigenous diplomat named Kondiaronk was able to persuade old enemies to sign The Great Peace of Montreal, effectively ending warfare in the region. Kondiaronk died during these negotiations, and was buried under Place d’Armes. Sadly, the genocidal Maisonneuve Monument was erected in 1895 in the center of the square with no dedication to Kondiaronk. To correct the problem, the City could erect a giant statue of peace-maker Kondiaronk, In situ, that towers over the racist Maisonneuve Monument in Place d’Armes.

It would signify that peace and inclusion is more important in Montreal than racism and genocide, and would restore Kondiaronk to his rightful place in the city’s history.

Solution 6: Physically alter the statue to subvert its original meaning.

Modern technology makes it easy to edit old statues by adding new elements that subvert their authority. For example, there are creatures from Kanien’kehá:ka and Haudenosaunee lore known as Kanontsistonties, or Flying Heads. These horrifying undead creatures are described as giant, disembodied heads the size of a human with bat-like wings, and a mouth packed full of fangs. Flying Heads were renowned to have an insatiable hunger for flesh and blood, which could never be satisfied because the creatures have no body. By adding hungry Kanontsistonties to racist statues, whereby the Flying Heads are presented as devouring the colonial figureheads such as Sir John A. MacDonald, Sieur de Maisonneuve, James McGill, Queen Victoria and Jacques Cartier, a playful new interpretation would be possible for delighted tourists.

Indeed, a whole tourist circuit could be created to visit all of the hungry Kanontsistonties additions to racist statues.

Solution 7: Deconstruct them

Deconstruction involves breaking the statues apart in order to rebuild them in ways that subvert their authority. Following dictator General Alfredo Stroessner’s ouster from power in 1989, Paraguayans found themselves debating the fate of his massive steel likeness situated at the highest point of Asunción, the capital of Paraguay.

Some wanted it removed, while others argued for its place in history. In 1991, the racist statue of the former Paraguayan dictator was shattered, prompting artist Carlos Colombino to reconstruct some of its remains within two slabs of concrete.

Solution 8: Sink them into the river to create a scuba park

Underwater statue parks are becoming more and more common as scuba divers demand increasingly interesting destinations. Given that Montreal is an island and therefore surrounded by water, this is an interesting option, especially given the lack of underwater attractions.

Solution 9: Beheading

Off with their heads! Postcolonial activist Andre Blaise Essama likes to behead colonial statues in Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon. A hero to many, but a notorious criminal to the local government, his goal is to replace all the colonial statues in the city with those of national heroes who fought for the bilingual country’s independence. He gained national attention in 2015 after he beheaded the statue of a French colonial hero named General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque.

With so many options, the City would be wise to do a Public Consultation with all stakeholders, including in affected Indigenous communities, to determine the fate of the racist public art currently polluting Montreal.

Being a true City of Reconciliation takes a lot of courage, dialogue and progressive action. Whichever postcolonial solution the City of Montreal ultimately chooses, if any, will be a direct reflection on how serious Quebec’s only metropolis is about its commitment to Truth and Reconciliation.

Recent Media on the topic:

CJAD Radio 800 with Anne Lagacé Dowson. Interview with Donovan King about Haunted Montreal and Griffin Tours. July 9, 2019.

APTN National News. Local guide calls for revisions to Montreal’s colonialist monuments. Lindsay Richardson. July 3, 2019.

COMPANY NEWS

Firstly, a special announcement. We will be launching Griffin Tours in early August as an umbrella company for Haunted Montreal, Irish Montreal Excursions and our new Hidden Histories of Montreal walking tour. Griffin Tours aims to bring new, 21st Century experiences to next-generation visitors and tourists. Details coming soon!

Secondly, we are in the planning stages for a Ghost Hunt in the old Sainte Antoine Cemetery as one of our new experiences. Led by a real psychic and medium, guests will use tools such as dowsing rods, temperature guns and EMF readers to communicate with the spirits who haunt the old cholera cemetery.

Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce that our public season of ghost tours is in full operation! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown and the new Haunted Pub Crawl! Tickets are on sale!

Our new Haunted Pub Crawl is led by a professional ghost storyteller and visits three haunted bars. Starting at McKibbin’s Irish Pub in Downtown Montreal on Bishop Street, guests not only learn about many of the haunted drinking establishments in the city, but also hear Montreal’s most infamous ghost stories.

While sipping suds, guests enjoy haunted pubs, spine-tingling Montreal ghost stories and learn about the historical forces that transformed the ancient Indigenous island of Tiotà:ke into Ville-Marie, an austere French colony founded by Catholic evangelists.

After the British invaded, the city became a booming financial center and crime hub, a site of violent rebellion and subversive revolution and finally into Canada’s most haunted city.

Clients hear the paranormal tales behind mysterious McKibbin’s Irish Pub, the famous Sir Winston Churchill, funeral-home-cum-discotheque Club Le Cinq and, of course, Hurley’s Irish Pub, where a ghost known only as the Burning Lady haunts the establishment.

The ghost storyteller regales guests with Montreal’s most deranged and infamous ghost stories, including Simon McTavish, a Scottish fur baron known to toboggan down the slopes of Mount Royal in his own coffin, the ghost of John Easton Mills, Montreal’s Martyr Mayor who perished while tending to typhus-stricken Irish refugees during the Famine of 1847, and Headless Mary, the ghost of a Griffintown prostitute who was decapitated by her best friend in the shantytown in 1879. She returns every 7 years to the corner of William and Murray Streets, still looking for her head!

Join Haunted Montreal on this unforgettable pub crawl, where you can drink some spirits with a spirit, all the while learning about the city’s deranged history and hearing spine-tingling local ghost stories!

For full details, including a description, the starting location and schedule, please visit our new web page! Join us at 3 pm any Sunday of the year for a haunted pub crawl in English or at 4 pm in French! Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal also offers private tours and pub crawls for 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 promote a 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 also like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk or haunted pub crawl recently!

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. If you have any feedback, please email us at info@hauntedmontreal.com so we can improve our visitor experience.

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

Coming up on August 13: Jean St. Père’s Talking Head

According to Montreal’s first historian, Dollier de Casson, in the autumn of 1657, a notary named Jean St. Père was killed by Oneida warriors while laying thatch on a roof. The warriors then cut off his head, and took it away to the other side of the river. De Casson explains that the decapitated head of Jean St. Père began insulting the warriors in the Oneida language, something he had not spoken while he was alive. In retaliation, the head was scalped, the skull crushed and flesh peeled away and discarded. Unfortunately, even the scalp kept on berating the warriors in one of the first pieces of recorded “History” in what is today Montreal.

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).

HAUNTED RESEARCH

The City of Westmount is a tony Victorian municipality directly to the west of Montreal proper. Murray Hill Park, a 14 acre, bucolic greenspace, has long attracted residents to enjoy picnics and games on its grassy slopes. The recently deceased Montreal bard Leonard Cohen grew up beside these grounds and left readers with haunting descriptions of it in his novels. 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?

In 1857, a man named William Murray purchased land from the Leduc family farm and built a country residence which he named Westmount. The name was very popular, so in 1895, the Town of Côte-Saint-Antoine changed its name to Westmount. The park was originally created in the 1920s when William Murray sold a piece of his farmland to the City of Westmount. In 1936, William Murray’s original home was demolished to make way for the park’s tennis courts.

In 1939 the grounds were renamed “King George Park” to mark the British monarch’s visit to Canada along with his wife, Queen Elizabeth. However, to this day locals still affectionately call it Murray Park.

At the northern limit is an immense playing field where locals play lacrosse, rugby and soccer. During the winter months, the park hosts an outdoor rink for skating enthusiasts and a tobogganing hill. There is also a dog run, a tennis court area, a wading pool, a basketball net, a comfort station, a children’s playground and a lovely water pond nestled at the base of a great stone wall.

According to some sources, there are fresh water wells beneath the park that were sacred to the native people who first inhabited the area. Murray Hill Park is located beside Côte-Saint-Antoine Road, which traces an old trail that was used by various First Nations. When French settlers first began colonizing the area in the late 1600s, they discovered the wells along with mysterious pictographs carved into the trunks of trees along this pathway.

There are also reports of a First Nations graveyard in the vicinity. In 1898, an ancient native burial ground was discovered on the grounds and in the vicinity of the St. George’s Snowshoeing Club, near the corner of Aberdeen Avenue and The Boulevard.

Many of the skeletons were found buried in the fetal position with their knees up and academics at the time speculated that the burial ground belonged to an era prior to the fifteenth century.

Another connection to Murray Hill Park is the fact that the late Leonard Cohen grew up adjacent to it on the heights of Belmont Avenue, his childhood home being at 599 Belmont. He described Westmount as a “collection of large stone houses and lush trees arranged on the top of the mountain especially to humiliate the underprivileged.”

In his 1963 novel “The Favorite Game,” Cohen immortalized the window in the home’s tiny sun room, which is connected to his old music room. He wrote: “The window gave over the slope of Murray Park, across the commercial city, down to the Saint Lawrence, American mountains in the distance.”

In Chapter 4, he penned haunting descriptions of Murray Hill Park at night: “The flower beds, the terraces of grass had an aspect of formality they did not have by daylight. The trees were taller and older. The high-fenced tennis court looked like a cage for huge wingless creatures which had somehow got away. The ponds were calm and deadly black. Lamps floated on them like multiple moons…The empty baseball diamond was blurred with spectacular sliding ghosts.”

Cohen was clearly inspired by the park and he may have also found his muse there during his teens. After meeting a Spanish man by Murray Park’s tennis court, Cohen took informal lessons in flamenco guitar, which may have helped spark his career as a singer and songwriter later on in life.

Returning to the ghostly children, several online sources describe them as “a host of singing children in antique underthings traipsing through Murray Park, in Westmount.” The rumour first appeared in 2003 in the now defunct weekly newspaper Hour. When asked about the singing ghosts and whether or not the municipality is haunted, a Westmount Historical Society archivist replied: “Not really, and as for the singing children in antique underwear, I have to laugh.  Someone out there is fabricating this preposterous claim.”

Extensive research has revealed very little about these child-like spirits and whether or not they actually exist, raising questions as to why someone might report seeing “a host of singing children in antique underthings traipsing through Murray Park.”

One possibility is a case of mistaken identity. The nearby St. Matthias’ Church is located on the corner of  Church Hill Avenue and Côte-Saint-Antoine. This Anglican hall of worship, constructed in 1912, until recently has hosted a children’s choir. When performing, the children were known to wear billowing robes that could possibly be mistaken for “antique underthings.”

One theory is that the children in the choir may have been spotted singing in nearby Murray Hill Park, perhaps in preparation for a concert during an informal rehearsal of sorts.

According to a former St. Matthias’ Church Choir Director there has not been a children’s choir since around 2008. Concerning the possibility of the children going to Murray Hill Park while wearing their robes in the past, the former Choir Director said: “It sounds like something the kids choir would have done. In a good wind their robes would have been very substantially spooky. I know they even went tobogganing in their robes on Murray Hill…”

As such, there is a good chance the alleged ghost sighting was made was in error. However, another possibility is that the ghosts are actually real, although at this time there is little evidence to prove that, beyond the online rumours.

Concerning the question as to whether or not Westmount is haunted, despite the denial by the archivist, there are many ghost stories from this Victorian municipality. Dan Aykroyd, of Ghostbusters fame, described the spooky things he heard and saw as a child that inspired the film. Aykroyd’s great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Aykroyd, was a well-known mystic during the peak of the spiritualism craze of the 19th and early 20th centuries and used to host séances in Westmount. His son, Peter Aykroyd, spent his childhood watching his family’s parlor séances through the crack of a basement door and recently penned a book called “A History of Ghosts — the True Story of Séances and Mediums and Ghosts and Ghostbusters.”

During a 2009 interview on CNN with Larry King, his son, Dan Aykroyd, elaborated: “When I was 8 years old… I attended my first séance, and our family has been interested in the whole thing all during my life… My uncle… he told a story about coming into the room in Westmount, Montreal, where they’d held séances… There was a trumpet flying around the room, and it was speaking – And there were voices coming out of it… As soon as he came in, it dropped to the floor.”

There are also rumours that a good number of Westmount’s picturesque Victorian mansions are haunted by spirits of the past. For example, in 1982, a children’s book titled “The Haunted Dollhouse” was written and set in Riverview, a historic and rumoured-to-be haunted manor high on the slopes of Westmount Mountain.

It was a scary story about a young girl who wakes up in a haunted Victorian dollhouse. Other allegedly haunted houses in Westmount attract teams of paranormal investigators who visit in search of ghosts, often to the disapproval of wealthy homeowners.

Regarding these mysteries, more research is definitely needed to help shed more light on the spirits that potentially haunt Westmount. If you have any information about other Westmount ghost stories or the phantoms of children allegedly haunting Murray Hill Park, please contact Haunted Montreal with your story.

COMPANY NEWS

With the Hallowe’en Season now over, Haunted Montreal is moving into 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.

We are going to try and develop some activities for the winter, such as haunted pub crawls and ghost investigations in haunted buildings. If you have any suggestions for haunted activities during the winter months, please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com.

We also plan to improve and upgrade our website and blog to make them more manageable and user-friendly.

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 February 13: 1428 Stanley Street

Today a pizzeria occupies 1428 Stanley Street, a building that has seen a lot of action throughout Montreal’s history. Once the location of gay cruise bars Le Mystique and Truxx, Montreal police raided the location on October 22, 1977, drawing comparisons to Stonewall in New York City and sparking demonstrations the next day. Le Mystique closed in 2009 and several businesses have occupied the space since. More recently, a Haunted Montreal client relayed some disturbing stories about the place. She claimed that the building is haunted, according to those who have worked there in the past. The most common story involves the sounds of heavy footsteps running on the upper floor, which would have been impossible due to the fact that the entire floor was filled with stacked chairs. Other stories involve door chains unlocking themselves, speakers moving on their own accord and employees turning white after being terrified. Just who or what is haunting this storied building?

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).

HAUNTED RESEARCH

Jeanne Mance Park is one of the best places in Montreal for ghost sightings. Occasionally, residents even set up lawn chairs in the evening on the south-eastern slope of the park on L’Esplande Street, waiting for the apparition to arrive.

There have been many reports, some of them recent, about a mysterious ghostly soldier who has been seen limping in the area. Witnesses have reported seeing him walking with a cane up a long set of wooden stairs, and entering to one of the old homes at the dimly-lit southern end of l’Esplanade Street.

Jeanne Mance Park was once called Fletcher’s Field. The history of this park began at the end of the 19th century with the planning of Mount Royal Park.

The city’s acquisition of land for Mount Royal Park included the summit of the mountain to Esplanade Avenue, between Pine Avenue to the south and Mount Royal Avenue to the north. Fletcher’s Field was originally designed for military parading, however, it had many other uses.

In 1878, Montreal’s Crystal Palace, a gigantic piece of architecture that appeared to be made entirely of glass, was relocated to Fletcher’s Field from the downtown area.

Crystal Palace had originally stood at the corner of Ste. Catherine and University Streets. It was inspired by a much vaster building of the same name that was erected in London, England for the Universal Exhibition of 1851. It had the same barrel-vaulted shape and iron-girder framework, but Montreal’s version was a mere tenth the size London’s at just 56 meters long, plus it had brick and not glass walls due to the Canadian winter. When Crystal Palace originally opened in Montreal, it exhibited products such as textiles, furniture, machinery, food, and Canadian art.

It was moved due to issues with land ownership. McGill University owned the land beneath and when the board and the university couldn’t agree in 1877 on a price for this property, the Quebec government stepped in and purchased it on behalf of the board for $80,000. Crystal Palace was dismantled and re-erected on the newly established fairground on Fletcher’s Field. Its new purpose was to form an Exhibition Grounds, this time near Mount Royal Avenue.

Fletcher’s Field was also a notable source of Henbane, according to the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. The psychoactive and somewhat poisonous plant, also known as Hyoscyamus niger, produces hallucinations and feelings of flight when ingested, no doubt providing some residents with endless opportunities to indulge in the substance.

To the south of the field is Montreal’s oldest hospital: Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal. It was originally founded in what is now Old Montreal, by Jeanne Mance, on October 8, 1645. Jeanne Mance was the first nurse in New France, arriving in 1642 with colonists to establish the religious settlement of Ville-Marie. Sponsored by the “Notre Dame Society for the Conversion of the Savage Peoples”, Jeanne Mance built the hospital to treat injured colonists, soldiers and converted native inhabitants during the wars with the local Mohawk First Nation, on whose territory the colony was built.

Over the years, the Hôtel-Dieu hospital suffered three fires, but it continued to grow with the city’s increasing population. In 1861, the hospital moved to its present site near Mount Royal. Not only was the old location near the river getting too dense and overcrowded, but the fresh mountain air was also seen as being important for healing.

When  the living nuns and patients move to new hospital on the mountain they also took all of the remains of the deceased nuns, who were transferred to the chapel of the new Hôtel-Dieu. 178 nuns had died over the span of two centuries, however only 23 coffins were needed to carry all the dusty bones to the new location. They are still there.

In 1910, at the time of the Congrès eucharistique de Montréal (Montreal Eucharistic Congress), devout Catholics demanded that the park pay homage to Jeanne Mance as the founder of the first Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal by renaming the greenspace temporarily. The new name for Fletcher’s Field proved so popular that the City of Montreal made the name change officially permanent in 1990.

Returning to the ghost of L’Esplanade Street, according to one recent source: “His apparition is a bit striking, as you notice the details of his walking slowly with a cane up the wooden steps, one at a time. If you’re lucky, you just might see him entering into one of the buildings, located in the more dimly-lit section of that street closer to Duluth Street. Just sit in the park across the street, and wait.”

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.

Following a 12 day incubation period, tiny red pustules would appear on the victim, and eventually spread all over the body. These would soon burst and begin oozing pus and ravaging the body. In about a third of cases, the disease killed its victim with days. In cases of survival, the victim was often left disabled and permanently disfigured, with deep pock marks replacing the old pustules once they had healed.

In 1885, Montreal’s smallpox epidemic was so bad that they had to re-open the smallpox hospital at the Hôtel-Dieu de Montréal to isolate patients to try to stop the spread of the disease. The smallpox hospital had been built during another epidemic in 1872 and was shuttered several years later, in 1875. By 1885, it was seen as run down and many citizens did not want to send their sick relatives there.

Officials began concocting a new plan to deal with the crisis. When the number of patients rose dramatically, the buildings in the Exhibition Grounds to the north of Fletcher’s Field were commandeered. In hopes of assuaging the fear of the citizens, authorities converted one of the provincial exhibition buildings into a clean and spacious temporary smallpox hospital.

However, local residents were terrified of this disease and those who lived near the Exhibition Grounds protested vigorously with a large scale riot.

The army was called in to quash the unrest and keep order. They were instructed to guard the new temporary hospital buildings. This was an assignment many soldier feared due to the high risk of contracting smallpox.

In 1885, thousands of people died of smallpox in Montreal before the winter finally snuffed out the virus. It was to be the last time the disease ravaged the city, but not before taking a terrible toll. Overall, 9,600 people contracted smallpox in the administrative territory of Montreal, and 3,234 of them perished. Out of a population of about 167,000 citizens, approximately 2% of Montrealers were killed by the horrifying disease.

Following the epidemic, it wasn’t long before the smallpox hospital in the Exhibition Grounds was closed. Just over a decade later, in July of 1896, the Exhibition buildings that sheltered the temporary smallpox hospital were destroyed by a fiery inferno that had accidentally been started when tramps squatting on the property emptied a tobacco pipe that was still smoldering, sparking the blaze.

While there is little evidence today of this tragic episode in Montreal’s history, perhaps the mysterious ghost of the limping soldier is the best reminder of our smallpox history. Because of the highly contagious nature of smallpox, many of the soldiers guarding the Exhibition Grounds contracted the disease themselves. As such, there is speculation that the ghostly soldier who haunts L’Esplanade Street could very well be one of the old hospital guards who was debilitated by smallpox in 1885 while on duty. Why he is seen going up a flight of long wooden stairs is anyone’s guess.

COMPANY NEWS

With the Hallowe’en Season now over, Haunted Montreal is moving into 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.

We are going to try and develop some activities for the winter, such as haunted pub crawls and ghost investigations in haunted buildings. If you have any suggestions for haunted activities during the winter months, please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com.

We also plan to improve and upgrade our website and blog to make them more manageable and user-friendly.

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.

Coming up on December 13: Mount Royal Cemetery Ghosts

Located high up on the slopes of Mount Royal, the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery is rumoured to be one of the most haunted places in Montreal and is often described as a City of the Dead overlooking a City of the Living. Haunted Montreal recently received an anonymous letter from a person who had a terrifying experience in the graveyard. The letter-writer claims that a spirit followed him or her home. After going to sleep, the author was woken up by a ghostly male figure who was quietly uttering his or her name. Drenched in sweat from fear, the letter-writer found the strength to turn on the light, only to realize there was nobody present. In telling Haunted Montreal the story, the author joins a long list of others who have experienced ghostly and paranormal activity in the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery.

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).