The massive Sûreté du Québec Police Headquarters on Parthenais Street is rumored to host all sorts of paranormal activity. Disembodied screams are known to echo throughout the building, officers have spotted a ghostly inmate wearing a straitjacket, and sometimes the nauseous stench of burnt food wafts through the air, disgusting staff members.
Once it was dark outside, his cat would become agitated and started hissing at unseen things. The cat would even chase, attack and run away from something that simply was not there. Professor V. also started to have a recurring nightmare whereby a deranged man with a medieval leather mask would visit him in what seemed to be an old, dungeon-like chamber with stone walls.
According to many sources, the ghosts of the former prisoners and guards still haunt the building and former prison grounds. The apparitions of the executed men and other prisoners who died on the site have been spotted, along with those tasked to guard them. Hidden bodies are also rumoured to be buried on the grounds. There is said to be a host of paranormal activity in the old prison: shadowy figures, light anomalies, unexplained mists, disembodied voices, weird feelings (unease, not being wanted, not being alone, anger, despair, violent thoughts and physical illness), phantom footsteps, electrical disturbances, objects disappearing and then reappearing, doors and windows opening and closing, lights turning on and off and other unexplained noises.
What the visitors are oblivious to is a dark secret: lurking just below the square lies an old dungeon, a series of creepy jail cells that once housed Montreal's most wretched and miserable prisoners, including those awaiting execution. It is the site of the first Montreal Prison, a notorious jail where inmates were locked up in dangerous and unsanitary conditions. The prison also hosted live executions, where cheering crowds on the Champ-de-Mars witnessed criminals being hanged from a scaffold erected in front of the prison wall. The old jail cells are presently off-limits to the public and are rumoured to be haunted, possibly by ghosts of criminals long-since executed.