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

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

We are pleased to announce that our season of public outdoor ghost tours is now in full swing and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

Haunted Montreal is also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

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

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

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

This month we explore a legend about the most cursed structure in Montreal – McGill University’s MacDonald Physics Building!

Haunted Research

McGill is a research-intensive university credited with many scientific discoveries and other inventions. The university boasts that its professors have discovered everything from DNA as the building blocks of genetics to neuro-scientific breakthroughs and have invented all sorts of wonders. 

These include the world’s first artificial blood cells, gas masks, plexiglass, pre-cooked fish sticks, the Canadian national anthem and even the game of basketball itself.  McGill calls these discoveries “Eureka moments that changed the world”.

However, there are certain research projects that went horribly wrong and the university tends to downplay them. One of the most devastating discoveries ever made occurred in McGill University’s MacDonald Physics Building, which is now said to be cursed.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, an American B-52 bomber dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

The bomb was called “Little Boy” and when it exploded in a fiery holocaust, an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 people were killed instantly.

The heat from the nuclear explosion was so intense that many people were vaporized and the blast destroyed 10 square kilometers of the city and contaminated the rest with nuclear radiation. The victims included the residents of Hiroshima, Korean prisoners-of-war, and even some American POWs who were imprisoned there. 

The discovery that led to the nuclear bomb happened in the MacDonald Physics Building.  

The building was constructed in 1893 as a “gift” provided by Sir William Christopher MacDonald, the founder, owner and head of the MacDonald Tobacco Company. 

Even though he abhorred smoking himself, he was happy to make millions of dollars by hawking the dangerous product to other people. 

Over half of his workforce was comprised of women and children, who were paid much less than men. They did much of the hard work such as stripping, sorting, and drying the tobacco plants.

The motto for MacDonald’s company was “the tobacco with a heart.” 

MacDonald also fancied himself a man of science so created chairs in Physics, Engineering and Chemistry at McGill University and funded the construction of various buildings.

Architect Sir Andrew Taylor, along with his partners Morley Hogle and Huntley Davis, designed the Macdonald Physics Building with particular care.

They constructed the edifice in the Richardsonian Romanesque style using only wood, masonry, copper, bronze and brass for the nails and fixtures.

No iron or steel was used anywhere in the building to minimize magnetic interferences that could compromise experiments. The interior was made with heavy bricks and laboratories were stocked with state-of-the-art equipment for the era. 

The portico has two columns, one symbolizing “Power” and the other “Knowledge”. Additionally, the entrance hall fireplace hosts a mantelpiece engraved with “Prove All Things”.

In 1898, McGill University recruited Ernest Rutherford, a young New Zealander with penetrating eyes and an awkward manner, as the new MacDonald Chair and Professor of Physics. 

In 1903, Professor Rutherford had his “Eureka moment”, when he theorized that radioactive energy could be emitted from within an atom under the right conditions.

His theories about radioactivity revolutionized scientific understanding of the atom and ushered in the Atomic Age – and the nuclear bomb.

During Rutherford’s nine-year tenure at McGill, he conducted many groundbreaking experiments and remarkably published 69 papers. Described as “the father of nuclear physics”, Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908.

Furthermore, his colleague at McGill, Frederick Soddy, received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research in radioactive decay.

However, despite these accolades that glorified McGill University for its quality research, things were about to take a very dark turn.

On the evening of the Hiroshima bombing, the Montreal Gazette sent a reporter to the MacDonald Physics Building, hoping to get an interview with Dr. John Stuart Foster, the successor of Professor Rutherford. 

Entering the dark and deserted building, the reporter wandered the shadowy corridors until he came upon Dr. Foster, hunched over a table in one of the lecture amphitheatres.

A light shone over his table with the rest of the place darkened. 

Professor Foster was rapping his knuckles on the table nervously and had a wild look in his eyes. He began talking to himself, like a madman. “It all began right here, in this building,” he muttered, “right here in this building!” 

The reporter, sensing it wasn’t a good time to interview the trembling professor, snuck out, leaving Dr. Foster alone to his thoughts in the big, silent amphitheatre. As such, he had difficulty filing his article.

Professor Foster was never the same again after that evening. Rumours spread about his mental health and soon he developed the reputation of a “mad scientist”.

Since that fateful day when McGill research bore its awful fruit, it is rumoured that many other students and teachers have gone crazy working in the McDonald Physics Building.

According to legend, Mother Nature was very upset with the unnatural violation of her sacred work.  As such, She cursed the McDonald Physics Building to fall into ruin. 

Soon thereafter, all sorts of problems began to happen within the edifice. 

Doors jammed and windows cracked. Water dripped through the ceiling when it rained. Rats, mice and insects of all sorts began infesting the building. As a result, important experiments sometimes went awry, despite the meticulous architecture designed to protect them. 

Outside, the masonry began to crumble, tiles fell from the roof and various birds nested in the architectural nooks and crannies. As vines began growing up its walls, the MacDonald Physics Building began to take on a forlorn appearance.

There were also complaints among students, professors and staff working inside the cursed building. These included frequent headaches, nausea, feelings of depression and even the development of dementophobia – or the fear of going crazy. 

Individuals with this phobia experience anxieties related to losing their grip on reality, such as concerns about hallucinations or the display of other psychotic symptoms.

These numerous problems did not lend themselves well to the precise scientific conditions required by the McGill Physics Department. Ironically, the hope for new “Eureka Moments” and Nobel Prizes were being thwarted by the very MacDonald Physics Building itself. 

As the complaints mounted and the building continued to fall into ruin, in 1948, the McGill Physics Department created a new Radiation Lab and Cyclotron under the direction of Dr. Foster. Following his death from a heart attack in 1964, the facility was named in honor. 

However, despite this new laboratory, the old MacDonald Physics Building continued to fall into ruin.

In response, McGill University erected the new Ernest Rutherford Physics Building in 1977. It was meant to provide more modern facilities and laboratories as a complement to the crumbling MacDonald Physics Building. 

Built in the Brutalist style, the five-story structure was made of prefabricated concrete slabs that were individually fastened to a massive steel frame. 

Precautions were made to keep the new building as stable as possible. The sensitive nature of the experiments being carried out inside its laboratories required precise conditions. 

Indeed, this new and remarkable concrete structure would foreshadow the demise of the original building.

In 1982, McGill University admitted that the MacDonald Physics Building was no longer deemed fit for purpose. Officials stated: “It no longer met the needs of the modern Physics department.” 

As such, the cursed, old building was shuttered, fully renovated and then repurposed into the “Macdonald-Stewart Library Building of Physical Sciences and Engineering”. 

McGill University claimed: “Its sturdy structure has been well adapted to house many thousands of volumes and remains regularly filled with physicists doing research.” 

However, despite its refurbishment and conversion into a library, the MacDonald Physics Building continued to slowly disintegrate.

By 2019, the edifice was in dire condition. To try and prevent the building from falling apart, McGill invested $31.8-million to do a “full renovation”, which was completed in 2023.

According to the McGill Reporter:

“The core of the project consisted of repairing and upgrading the building envelope, including the deteriorating façades. Sections of the façades had in fact been covered up for many years to prevent stones from falling.” 

Project Manager Johanne Guertin explained:

“We had to add structural reinforcements to the building to improve its seismic resistance, solidify the building, and secure the façade.” 

However, despite the comprehensive renovations, serious concerns remain. The root problem – Mother Nature’s Curse on the MacDonald Physics Building – was never properly addressed. 

Some claimed that the renovations were a “band-aid solution” to a building that was doomed to eventually collapse into ruin.

Haunted Montreal approached a McGill Philosophy Professor to elaborate on this remarkable and unique dilemma. The Professor agreed to be interviewed, based on the condition of total anonymity.

Firstly, the Professor explained that the idea that Mother Nature had cursed the building to fall into ruin was debatable. “Some people claim that it is a mere Urban Legend and nothing more,” explained the Professor.

However, for the sake of philosophical interrogation, the educator agreed to examine the “Curse” hypothesis as though it were true.

The Professor began with the following quotation:

“People need to be cautious because anything built by man can be destroyed by Mother Nature.” 

He attributed the quote to American Lieutenant-General Russel Honoré, who led rescue efforts during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

The Professor explained that Mother Nature is known to strike back against destructive human activity, stating: “It could be in the form of planetary warming, natural disasters, global epidemics and other powerful forces.”

When questioned specifically about the MacDonald Physics Building, the Philosophy Professor said: “If the curse is indeed true, they should just probably just allow it to fall into ruin.” 

“Indeed”, added the Professor, “in doing so, McGill University could achieve another Eureka moment – and learn the valuable lesson to stop interfering with Mother Nature! Plus, crumbling ruins in the middle of the campus could provide compelling pedagogical opportunities for study and reflection. Maybe they could even partner with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial – or Genbaku Dome – in Japan!”

As such, all eyes are on the newly renovated MacDonald Physics Building to see if and when it will begin slowly falling into ruin again.

Company News

Haunted Montreal’s season of public outdoor ghost tours is now in full swing and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Old Montreal, Haunted Mountain, Haunted Downtown and Haunted Griffintown. Paranormal Investigations include Old Sainte-Antoine Cemetery and Colonial Old Montreal.

We are also running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

Private tours for any of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $235 for small groups of up to 8 people.

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

Haunted Montreal has temporarily altered its blog experience due to a commitment on a big writing project!  

The book is titled Haunted McGill, and is authored by yours truly, Donovan King! Our publisher is The Stygian Society.

McGill University isn’t just known for its academic prestige – it’s also home to some of Montreal’s most fascinating ghost stories.

Our upcoming publication, Haunted McGill, digs into the campus’s eerie legends and real-life hauntings, taking you to key landmarks like the Arts Building, Faculty Club, Duggan House and the Allan Memorial Institute, all rumored to house lingering spirits.

We’re crowdfunding through The Stygian Society’s Scriptorium, with the first 25 backers receiving an exclusive 1st edition copy, beautiful art prints, and other spooky treasures. Help us reach our goal by July and secure your piece of Montreal’s haunted history. To support the project please click on this link!

Until publication, new stories at the Haunted Montreal Blog will be offered every two months, whereas every other month will feature an update to an old story. As always, these stories and updates will be released on the 13th of every month!

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

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

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

Coming Up on July 13: Update on St. Joseph’s Oratory

Montreal’s iconic St. Joseph’s Oratory has been undergoing a major $150-million renovation since 2018. The goal is increase accessibility and create a new welcome centre, museum and observatory in the gigantic dome. However, in August of 2019, workers unearthed four pre-colonial Indigenous skeletons under the Oratory’s parking lot. In the Spring of 2023, three more sets of remains were discovered, leading to many questions and concerns about the disturbance of seven deceased Mohawk ancestors deemed to be over 1000 years old.

Author:

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

Translator (into French):

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

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

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

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

In the meantime, Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

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

Private tours for all of our experiences (including outdoor tours) can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors. Clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours start at $235 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

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

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

Haunted Research

In February 2018, Haunted Montreal reported on the Old Royal Victoria Hospital and its many ghosts. Built in 1893 in the Scottish baronial style, the haunted hospital operated for well over a century before finally being shuttered and relocated in 2015. 

Today, McGill University is attempting to repurpose it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Company News

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

In the meantime, Haunted Montreal is running our Haunted Pub Crawl every Sunday at 3 pm in English. For tours in French, these happen on the last Sunday of every month at 2 pm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link.

In other news, if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, you certainly can! We are offering Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates through our website and redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual events (no expiration date).

Finally, we have an online store for those interested in Haunted Montreal merchandise.

We are selling t-shirts, magnets, sweatshirts (for those haunted fall and winter nights) and mugs with both the Haunted Montreal logo and our tour imagery.

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

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

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

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

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

Coming Up On February 13: Saint-Jean-de-Dieu Insane Asylum

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

Author:

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

Translator (into French):

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

With over 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!

With the Halloween Season in full swing, Haunted Montreal is running a full roster of ghost tours and haunted experiences!

Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

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.

We also offer paranormal investigations! In addition to our investigation of the old Sainte-Antoine Cholera Cemetery, Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

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!

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 McGill University’s storied Arts Building and its various paranormal phenomena. As the oldest structure on campus, it is also one of its most haunted.

Haunted Research

McGill University’s Arts Building is an iconic symbol of the institution. Constructed in 1843, as the oldest structure standing on campus, it is also reputed to be haunted. This may be due to its deranged history as the first edifice where medical students performed experimental autopsies on unfortunate corpses, many of them stolen from local cemeteries.

Today, phantom footsteps echo throughout the old building and some students have reported spotting what could be the ghost of an old Anatomy professor.

McGill University officially opened in 1821, but its only initial building was the crumbling Burnside Hall. Originally the country home of James McGill, the structure was unsuitable for academic studies due to its farm-like layout and deteriorating condition.

Burnside Hall was named as such because it was located next to a babbling brook that ran across James McGill’s property. In Scotland, a “burn” is a commonly used word for a small stream, creek or brook.

James McGill enjoyed spending summers on his bucolic forty-six acre country estate. Named Burnside Place, it was situated well outside of the city during his lifetime. McGill enjoyed his leisure time here with his wife.

Indeed, his every whim was attended to by his various servants and slaves.

James McGill owned at least five slaves, including two Indigenous children and three people of African descent. One Indigenous girl was named Marie and the other’s name is unknown. The Black slaves included a man named Jacques and two women, Marie Louise and another lady referred to variously as Sarah Cavilhe, Charlotte or Marie Charles.

James McGill also traded in slaves. In 1784, he sold two enslaved Black people, named Caesar and Flora. Three years later, he sold four more slaves. He also made enormous profits from products created by enslaved people in other British colonies, such as sugar, molasses, rum and tobacco.

These nefarious transactions helped make James McGill one of the richest men in Montreal with a net worth of approximately £100,000.

In 1811, James McGill, bequeathed his beloved Burnside Place estate to the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning, based in London, England.

Stretching from what is now Doctor Penfield Avenue to a few streets south of Sherbrooke Street, the size of the land was substantial.

He also donated £10,000 to the Royal Institution, on the condition that they establish a university in his name within ten years following his death. He stipulated that if the university was not founded within ten years after his passing, the property and funds would be given to his heirs.

Ironically, James McGill was a school dropout himself. He may have wanted to redeem his lowly scholastic reputation by creating a university in his name.

When James McGill died suddenly on December 19, 1813, the Royal Institution began plotting the creation of McGill University. The school opened in 1821, just two years shy of the deadline.

However, due to the lack of adequate space for studies, in 1837 the Royal Institution commissioned the McGill College Building (which was later renamed the Arts Building). In 1839, well-known British architect John Ostell was hired to design the building in the Classical Revival style.

By 1843, Ostell’s team had constructed the central and eastern sections of the building. The central block featured classrooms, the college hall, a library, a kitchen, the steward’s residence, and a room for the Governors’ council. The eastern section contained the chapel and vice-principal’s residence.

Unfortunately, funds ran out which prevented construction of the western section and a two-story portico with Doric columns for the central building.

Furthermore, due to unfinished work, the building was uncomfortable to say the least. The roof leaked in various places, the rooms were both cold and dark, there were several broken windows and before long rats had infested the structure.

In order to raise funds to finish the project, the Royal Institution sold valuable land south of Sherbrooke Street.

E.A. Collard’s book “Oldest McGill” devotes an entire chapter called “Early Years in the Arts Building” (pages 30 – 45) where he describes this very difficult situation.

The first faculty at McGill University was the Faculty of Medicine. It emerged from the Montreal Medical Institution and was grafted onto the university in 1829. In 1845, the Medical classes were moved to the Arts Building, joining the new Faculty of Arts, which had started teaching there in 1843. 

Since Montreal had not yet expanded as far west as McGill, the only access to the Arts Building was by way of bumpy, unkempt lanes which became almost impassable in the harsh winter snow drifts. 

Indeed, many of the students felt that the campus was too far from the city and were grateful when a professor could offer a ride on a sleigh, especially during blizzards.

With the long distance, unfinished structure and nasty weather, there was a lot of discontentment with the facilities. Thus, the Faculty of Medicine was not satisfied with their relocation to the Arts Building. They described it as “a lonely building, far removed from other dwellings, imperfectly heated, and lighted by candles – the light being barely sufficient to render the surrounding darkness visible.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Faculty of Medicine decided to move out of the Arts Building in 1851. Their timing was very good, as the City of Montreal began constructing the nearby McTavish Reservoir in 1852.

Explosions to hollow out the reservoir inadvertently showered the Arts Building with rock fragments and boulders, making studies very dangerous and further damaging the structure. When cracks began appearing in the walls, the remaining staff and students relocated until the Arts Building could be fully repaired.

It took a full decade until repairs had restored the structure. By 1862, the Arts Building was finally functional and also saw the addition of its western wing. The structure was now complete according to most of Ostell’s original designs and professors and students reoccupied the building.

The final touch occurred on June 23, 1875, when the “James McGill Monument” was installed in front of the Arts Building.

The four-sided stone pedestal is topped with a decorative urn in memory James McGill. His human remains are in a box within the pedestal.

When McGill died in 1813, he was buried in the St. Lawrence Protestant Burying Ground next to his old friend, John Porteous. McGill’s wife, a Catholic, had to be buried elsewhere due to religious regulations that forbade Protestants from being buried in the same cemeteries as Catholics.

Over the years, the cemetery filled up and reached capacity as its tombstones and monuments began to crumble and vandals began destroying the place.

In 1873, the city expropriated the creepy cemetery to make way for a public square. Descendants were asked to remove any corpses they wanted to have re-interred elsewhere.

Upon hearing this, in 1875 McGill University administrators arranged for the transfer of James McGill’s skeleton and monument from Plot #16 to the location where it is today, in front of the Arts Building. They put his skull and bones in a box and placed it within the pedestal they constructed before securing his funerary urn on top. Coincidentally, Burnside Hall was also demolished in 1875.

As the urn eroded and deteriorated over the years due to the seasonal weather, in 1944 the McGill Graduates Society and Canadian Grenadier Guards replaced it with a replica.

Some people believe that the ghost of James McGill haunts the area around his urn, whereas others believe he is burning in Hell for his role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

On October 23, 2011, The Tribune published an article called “Haunted McGill”. Journalist Kyla Mandel wrote:

“Once upon a midnight dreary, McGill’s campus was quite eerie. The orange leaves rustled and the autumn air was crisp; shadows danced in the blustery wind. It was Halloween and the ghosts that lurk McGill were out to play. Where are these phantoms of the night, you ask? They can be found in many places; all it takes is a little faith and courage. The place to start hunting for McGill’s ghosts is in front of the Arts Building, where the remains of James McGill were reinterred in 1875.”

Mandel continued:

“There have been other stories of ghosts haunting the Arts Building itself. After passing the ghost of James McGill, take the steps up into the Arts Building to wander its echoing corridors and the recesses of its basement alcoves. According to Peter McNally, Director of the History of Montreal project, in the 1840s the Arts Building housed the Faculty of Medicine and its cadavers. So beware, the ghosts that prowl these quarters may not be as welcoming as the shape of James McGill. Perhaps the only detection of a ghost you’ll find is that chill that has just passed through you, or the light that appears only on some nights in the cupola atop the Arts Building.”

Additionally, some students have claimed to hearing phantom footsteps in the hallways and the creaking staircases of the Arts Building. Other reports document a horrible and nauseous stench that sometimes overwhelm students. Some of them have described the foul odour as “the smell Death” or “rotting flesh, mixed with formaldehyde.”

The nasty stench typically materializes in classrooms, hallways and staircases before dissipating within a few minutes. It has actually caused both students and professors to run to the toilets to vomit.

One Anatomy student was familiar with the stench. He described it as “effluvium”, an unpleasant or harmful odour, secretion, or discharge associated with autopsy drippings.

There have also been sightings of what could be the ghost of an old Anatomy professor. He is often spotted out of the corner of one’s eye before disappearing.

Described as wearing Victorian attire, including a cap and sporting a bloody full-length apron, his ghost has spooked many a student and professor in the hallways, classrooms and especially on the staircases. The fact that he carries a scalpel does little to ease those who spotted him.

One prominent theory is that the ghost is a Victorian academic who started his career preparing and dissecting corpses for Anatomy Professors. His name was Dr. D. C. MacCallum and his title was the “Prosector to the Professor of Anatomy”. Having suitably arranged the cadavers in the original Arts Building for his superiors, in 1847 he wrote the following words:

“I had to prepare, during the greater part of the session, the dissections of the parts which were to be the subject of the Professor’s lectures the following day. This necessitated my passing several hours, usually from nine to twelve o’clock at night, in the dismal foul-smelling dissecting room, my only company being several partially dissected subjects, and numerous rats which kept up a lively racket, coursing over and below the floor and within the walls of the room…”

Describing the rodents, Dr. MacCallum wrote:

“Their piercing and vicious shrieks as they fought together, the thumping caused by their bodies coming into forcible contact with the floor and walls, and rattling produced by their rush over loose bones, furnished a variety of sounds that would have been highly creditable to any old-fashioned haunted house.”

Some students believe that the infamous ghost haunting the Arts Building is none other than Dr. MacCallum, who went on to become a full Professor of Anatomy.

Indeed, unfounded and scandalous rumors have spread around the campus for many years about this professor.

According to the rumour, Dr. MacCallum was lecturing to his students in the dissecting room of the Arts Building when he suddenly fell ill at his podium and collapsed on the floor. However, instead of trying to help their professor, some of his students began agitating for his immediate autopsy.

Apparently, Dr. MacCallum was a tough professor and had failed almost half of his Anatomy students. Some of them described his behavior as “eccentric”, “unbalanced” and “odd”. With their careers in potential danger, many students saw the strict Anatomy Professor as a risk to their future success.

The unfounded legend suggests that when Dr. MacCallum fell onto the lecture floor from his podium, some of his students at risk of failure began chanting “Autopsy! Autopsy! Autopsy!”

While some level-headed students protested the idea, a mob mentality took over. Within minutes, a horde of students had descended upon the professor and thrust him upon the autopsy slab, scalpels in hand! They set to work on him, despite one student yelling that he was still alive!

Within an hour, the poor professor had been thoroughly dissected. To make matters worse, some of the students kept organs, bones and other body parts as “trophies” and brought them back to their residences.

It is worth noting that this legend is very questionable. While it is true that students were so desperate to acquire fresh corpses for McGill’s Anatomy class that they often resorted to grave-robbing, there is no evidence that they ever performed an autopsy on their own professor.

Indeed, Dr. MacCallum retired as Professor Emeritus in 1883 and passed away in 1904, suggesting that the outlandish legend is simply untrue.

In April 2019, the McCall MacBain Foundation gave a private donation of $200 million to McGill University on condition it could attach its name to the Arts Building.

At the time, it was largest gift to a university in Canadian history and the edifice was renamed the McCall MacBain Arts Building.

It is also worth noting that in March, 2022, the Arts Building and funerary urn were both given clandestine paint jobs. While McGill officials described the incident as “vandalism”, activists described it as “editing”. Indeed, the activists had painted the words “DIVEST” on university buildings and “Fucking Slave Owner” and “Take Him Down” on the urn.

This episode followed the removal of a statue of James McGill the previous year in the Lower Quad of the campus. Created by David Roper-Curzon and installed in 1996, the statue had also been painted red on many occasions due to McGill’s ties to the blood-soaked slave trade.

After much pressure, the university finally removed the offending James McGill statue in July, 2021 and placed it into storage.

Today, the Arts Building still stands as a major symbol of McGill University. Despite its deranged past, the building is bustling with professors and the many students attending their lectures.

However, one never knows what may be lurking in the shadowy hallways, staircases and recesses of this storied edifice.

Only one thing is certain – as the oldest structure on campus, the Arts Building reeks of paranormal activity and ghostly hauntings. Enter at your own risk!

Company News

With the Halloween Season in full swing, Haunted Montreal is running a full roster of ghost tours and haunted experiences! Our ghost tours include Haunted Old Montreal, Griffintown, Downtown and the mountain!

Haunted Montreal is proud to announce our latest haunted experience – Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal.

Hosted by professional Ghost-hunter Dominique Desormeaux of Investigations 13, Haunted Montreal’s “Paranormal Investigation – Colonial Old Montreal” takes guests on a dark adventure into the mysterious world of ghost hunting!

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.

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.

You are cordially invited to the official launch of the book, on October 17, 2024, at 6 p.m., at the Le Port de Tête bookstore (222 avenue du Mont-Royal E). See the Facebook event.

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 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 November 13^th: Update on Montreal’s Haunted Pubs and Drinking Establishments

In 2019, the Haunted Montreal Blog identified 40 haunted pubs, watering holes and other drinking establishments dotting the city. In the bar industry, places often fold and new businesses are born, including in haunted buildings. One common question is this: do the ghosts remain when a new owner takes over the drinking venue? In 2024, the haunted drinking landscape has changed somewhat in Montreal. Some places have gone bankrupt and been reopened under new brands. Others were demolished and replaced with condos – and new haunted drinking establishments have also been discovered!

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.

Happy Hallowe’en Season! 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 award-winning ghost tours and haunted experiences are operating and tickets are on sale! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery.

Our October blog examines a dark chapter in Montreal’s History when grave-robbing and body-snatching were rampant, leading to numerous sickening scandals and resultant haunted tales. Indeed, Montreal’s most infamous ghost story of the 1800s, that of Simon McTavish’s tobogganing ghost, is partially based on the antics of Montreal’s body snatchers.

Haunted Research

During most of the 1800s, Montreal had a serious problem with body-snatching. With the founding of McGill University in 1821, the Department of Medicine required corpses for education in the Anatomy classroom. Unfortunately, at the time it was illegal to carry out human dissections unless it was part of a criminal’s punishment.  Indeed, for the worst criminals, this ultimate and shameful punishment was sometimes written into sentences delivered by local judges.

For example, a lowly tavern-keeper named Charles Gagnon was sentenced to hang following the brutal murder of a client named Joseph Veau dit Jeanveau on Christmas Day, 1832. After being hanged at the old Montreal Gaol and his body collected by McGill University medical staff, the Montreal Gazette observed that it was “the final completion of the awful sentence that consigns the body of the murderer to the knife of the anatomist.”

Interestingly, in this case, the friends of Charles Gagnon hid in the McGill University Medical Faculty before his body arrived, and later stole the corpse, bringing it back to the St. Laurent Parish in today’s Laval where they begged the priest to bury him in consecrated ground. According to the newspaper: “The Curé of that Parish refused sepulture and gave information to the Professors of the College, who have had the body removed to the dissecting room.” Given a major shortage of legal corpses to autopsy in Montreal, the professors were very relieved that their macabre treasure, Gagon’s cadaver, was returned to the Anatomy Theatre.

Because it was rare to receive executed criminals, professors and students had to get creative in their constant quest for fresh corpses to dissect as part of the medical education offered at McGill University. The only realistic solution was grave robbery, or body snatching.

Medical students robbed graveyards and dead houses of their sepulchral possessions and smuggled them back to the university. With a surreptitious wink to the night watchman, the body was dragged into the Anatomy Theatre. In the early days, these “Resurrectionists”, or “Sack-em-up-men”, were a very clever bunch.

The corpses were exhumed by night and quickly stripped of their clothing and any jewelry to avoid any formal charges of robbery (the corpse itself was not legally designated as private property). Once stripped down naked, the cadaver was swiftly whisked away to the dissecting room.

One of the first bodysnatching episodes that triggered civic unrest among Montreal’s elite happened in the town of Chambly in 1843. The grave robbers burgled the corpse of a well-respected sergeant of the Eighty-Fifth Regiment and left his coffin and clothes strewn among the tombstones. It was an extremely scandalous affair. The police were summoned and soon traced the medical students to an old seigneury house only to find the militiaman’s corpse already dissected and disposed of in a storage vault.

The Montreal Transcript was outraged and denounced the students, describing their dissection room as “A Burking House”. Montrealers were familiar with the twisted legacy of William Burke, a Scottish criminal who murdered people in Edinburgh, Scotland during the 1820s so he could sell their bodies to medical schools. Edinburgh police eventually caught Burke and he was sentenced to hang and then be dissected in public.

Recalling the militiaman’s sacrifices for the British Empire and his many military honours, the Montreal Transcript concluded that “the least the soldier could expect… is that, when consigned to his grave, his remains should lie honoured and undisturbed.”

The scandal so shook the society, that the government took action and unanimously passed the Act to Regulate and Facilitate the Study of Anatomy in December 1843. It proclaimed that the body of any person who died in the care of a government-funded institution was to be handed over to the medical schools unless the corpse was claimed within forty-eight hours, by a “bona fide friend or relative.” Essentially, the law meant that those receiving charity, such as the destitute, the insane, convicts, and children who died in orphanages, would be given over to science unless the body was claimed.

Unfortunately, despite the law, there was still a shortage of bodies to autopsy and grave robbery continued unabated. The fact was that the body snatchers could earn a substantial amount of money per corpse. Many students paid their way through college in this manner, and were absolutely thrilled when Mount Royal Cemetery opened in 1852, followed by the Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery two years later. Not only were these burial plots secluded among the canopy of the mountain, but they weren’t too far a distance from the McGill Medical Building. Furthermore, from the cemeteries it is was all downhill to the campus, making body snatching easier than ever in Montreal.

Body-snatching was often a winter activity, due to the frozen ground preventing the burial of bodies. Until the ground thawed, corpses were stored above ground in cemetery “dead houses,” an easy target for students to forcibly enter and steal bodies. A winter body-snatching trip would typically include hiking to Côte-des-Neiges or Mount Royal cemetery in the dark of night, breaking in to a “dead house”, removing the corpses from their caskets, and then tobogganing the bodies down the snow-covered slope.

One professor named Dr. Shepherd recalled that students burgling the cemeteries of Mount Royal would wrap the bodies in blankets and toboggan them down slopes of Côte des Neiges Road.

Occasionally, there would be an incident in which the body would tumble out into the street in full view of passersby. To avoid suspicion, students would explain that there had been a fatal tobogganing accident, resulting in a naked corpse being sprawled across the snowy road.

In 1858, scandal struck again when the corpse of a widow of a high-ranking soldier named Captain Spillen was stolen from the dead house of the Montreal General Hospital.

The body had been claimed in the proper fashion, however when the funeral party opened the coffin for display, they found two sizeable maple logs instead of the widow’s corpse. The Montreal Herald reported: “A shroud was nicely adjusted over the logs of wood, and on the end of them was placed, with cruel ingenuity, the cap of the deceased lady.”

Following publication, a seething, angry mob gathered and began scouring the city for the perpetrators.

Terrified, the body snatchers dumped the naked corpse of Widow Spillen into an empty lot on the corner of Sainte Catherine and Guy streets and then fled as fast as their feet could take them.

Perhaps even more outrageous was a situation recorded in McGill medical student Griffith Evan’s 1862 journal. A group of students had snatched a corpse from a country graveyard only to be betrayed by their sleigh man when the bereaved family announced a reward for the body’s recovery. When the corpse was found at McGill, a humbled Board of G­­overnors returned it to the family, making great public assurances that from now on they “would not admit any corpse into the dissecting room except through the regular channel.”

However, this was an empty promise. Evans explained: “The ‘regular channel’ is from the United States where plenty of negroes are obtained cheap, packed in crates and passed over the border as provisions of flour.” Evans even added that it was somewhat rare for him to ever dissect a white body during his studies at McGill.

In another misadventure, Evans reported that one day deep in the winter of 1862 he was preparing to dissect a human corpse when the calm of the McGill Anatomy Theatre was suddenly broken. Two students, who had illegally stolen a corpse from some unnamed cemetery, were dragging it in for an autopsy when another student burst in, out of breath. He declared: “Good God! That is my aunt; my cousin, her son, is down below at the chemical lecture and will be up here soon.” With this, the anguished nephew fainted and those in the dissection rooms fell into a panic. “What shall we do?” one of them asked.

Another replied: “Dissect the skin off the face quickly!” As the nephew was being revived, the two students grabbed their instruments and immediately set about surgically removing the dead woman’s face, which was soon completely unrecognizable.

When the bereaved son finally arrived, according to Evans: “He went to see the new white subject, cheerfully joked with the dissectors, congratulated them for their successful adventure,” and then set about unwittingly dissecting his own mother.

That same year, a publication called Once a Week, printed by Bradbury & Evans in London, England, published a story called “Nips Daimon” in Volume 6 (December 1861 – June 1862). The deranged tale about a horrible apparition that toboggans down the mountain in a coffin is clearly inspired by the Simon McTavish ghost story. Following the untimely death of the Scottish fur baron in 1804, his ghost was said to terrorize citizens out snowshoeing or tobogganing on the mountain.

The story was made spookier by the fact McTavish had left an abandoned castle on the slopes above McGill Campus. Over time, the castle began to take on a look of dilapidation, as it slowly decayed and crumbled. Cattle wandered inside the ruin during the summer, and in the winter it took on an eerie appearance, as snow drifted through it. It was grey, gloomy, and almost skull-like, its empty windows staring down at the city below.

Further up the slope was a mausoleum that housed McTavish’s mortal remains.

McGill University was founded in 1821 and it is said that McGill students would go to burial vault in the winter, wearing snowshoes, and shout and holler to try and raise the ghost of McTavish. In 1827 the students went too far – the locks of the vault were smashed, and the interior of the tomb was violated.

An indignant article appeared in The Gazette condemning the vandalism. The locksmith later reported that he felt a frightening presence in the vault and noticed McTavish’s coffin had fallen on the floor, spilling its contents. Without venturing inside, he quickly repaired the lock and fled.

It didn’t take long before the castle was said to be haunted. Some people reported spirits flitting in and out of the doors and windows and horrible groaning noises coming from within the unfinished building, whereas others said that a ghost could be seen dancing on the roof. Even more strangely, it was said that McTavish could be seen on certain nights tobogganing down Mount Royal – not on a sled, but rather in his own coffin!

While many Montrealers believed the tales and stopped doing winter activities on the slopes, skeptics at the time claimed that it was probably just the Resurrectionists tobogganing corpses down from the cemeteries on Mount Royal to the McGill Medical Building – and not the ghost of McTavish. Whatever the case, the story fired up the imaginations in London. To read “Nips Daimon“, please see pages 602 – 608.

In 1861, the City of Montreal buried the McTavish ghost story, both figuratively and quite literally, by demolishing his crumbling castle and, using the rubble, to literally bury his mausoleum to protect it from further grave-robbery.

As the years passed, body snatching continued abated.  

Perhaps the most notorious case occurred in February, 1871, when two deceased Roman Catholic nuns were stolen from the dead house of a church in Lachine. The public exploded in fury, with the Montreal Gazette declaring “there has never yet been related a case of this kind of a more repulsive nature.” Priests thundered from the pulpits, citizens wrote outraged letters to the editor, and a large reward was offered for the return of the sacred bodies.

Perhaps afraid at the outrage they had generated, the thieves panicked and hid the bodies in a snowbank. They then concocted a ploy whereby they would claim the award anonymously in return for the location of the now-frozen corpses. The church complied, and the public outrage only worsened.

The English newspapers described them as “ruthless,” “heartless,” “ghoulish robbers,” “consummate scoundrels,” and “band of half-drunken and blasphemous students” whose “disgusting transactions” amounted to “atrocity” and “diabolical sacrilege.”

One anonymous citizen even published a vengeful warning in the Montreal Star, entitled “Body Snatchers Beware”, on February 11, 1871:

“We saw to-day a tremendous weapon just finished for the watchman at the Côte des Neiges Cemetery. The fun is of enormous proportions and will be loaded with about eight ounces of buck-shot. Parties meditating a raid on the above place of burial will do well to recollect the formidable shooting iron now in the hands of the wide-awake watchman. A pot shot gang of grave desecrators would most likely supply the dissecting room with enough subjects for several weeks.”

The reputation of medical students continued to sink. The Montreal Gazette even alleged that the Resurrectionists were capable of cold-blooded murder and infanticide, making them only more notorious and despised as the century wore on.

!n 1889, a citizen named R.S. Wright, who had graduated from McGill, wrote a letter The Daily Witness entitled “A Mockery of Death”. Wright complained about students from McGill and Laval universities parading human remains through the streets during a Carnival.

Wright recalled his days living in a residence at McGill, describing the medical students as such: “Among them was a clique, or gang, who used to flourish human bones, and talk of making tobacco pouches out of human hide, etc., etc. They were exceedingly drunken and immoral, and I used occasionally to see one of them with his head out of a window vomiting liquor into the quadrangle.”

After this gang threatened to throw Wight’s friend into an “ash pit, under the college, where refuse from dissecting room and other filth were thrown”, he stated: “since that time I have entertained a very poor opinion of men who flourished bones and skulls, or wore slippers made of human hide.”

Wright continued: “None but savages would make a mockery of human remains, or exhibit them in a pantomime.” He then pointed out that First Nations “generally show extraordinary care for human remains, and expend the most tedious ceremonies over them, and when a spot has been consecrated by funeral rites, severe punishment will overtake those who violate it.”

It soon appeared as though things were getting out of control. Illustrious Montreal anatomist Francis Shepherd recalled in the early 1880s, the McGill Faculty of Medicine was paying body snatchers between “thirty to fifty dollars” per corpse, a substantial amount at the time. Indeed, from December 1882 to March 1883 there were a reported 26 episodes of grave robbery in Montreal, prompting demands for stronger legislation.

In 1883, the Anatomy Act of Quebec was passed on March 30. The act effectively served to reinforce and empower the 1843 legislation with coercion and punishment. All hospitals, orphanages, prisons, poorhouses and other government-funded charities were forced to hand over corpses of those who had died there, and the body reclamation period was reduced to 24 hours. Medical schools that acquired bodies from anyone but the municipal Anatomy Inspector would be fined as much as $200, as would government-funded charities that refused to hand over their unclaimed dead. While St. Patrick’s Orphan Asylum initially objected, the government coerced them into sending the dead bodies of orphaned children to Anatomy under threat of punishment.

The Quebec Anatomy Act was an undeniable success. In March, 1884, the Canada Medical and Surgical Journal announced that no grave robbing had been reported in Quebec that winter, stating: “The requirements of the Medical Schools have been amply met.”

And thus, the dark and deranged arts of bodysnatching came to a crashing conclusion. Montreal’s era of grave robbery was effectively over and the twisted exploits of the Resurrectionists began to fade from the public memory. By the twentieth century, any mention of body-snatching had all but disappeared. Yet, as noted in the early issues of The McGill Daily, the legacy of these “brave resurrectionists” lived on in the medical faculty for decades.

Every year, students would celebrate “King Cook”, the medical faculty’s custodian who assisted students in sneaking stolen corpses onto the campus.

These celebrations consisted of a parade down Saint Catherine Street and humorous theatrical productions, which the famed professor Stephen Leacock was known to particularly enjoy.

The notorious “King Cook Celebration” last occurred in 1926, and since then the history of the medical student body-snatching has been largely forgotten.

However, these dark and twisted stories never totally disappeared from the imaginations of Montrealers. Indeed, they have been making a comeback ever since Haunted Montreal started resurrecting the McTavish story by doing in-depth research and offering ghost tours to his gravesite, starting in 2011 with the Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk. Haunted Montreal wants to ensure this deranged part of the city’s medical history and heritage is never, ever forgotten!

Company News

Haunted Montreal is ready for the Hallowe’en Season, with five different ghostly experiences available in both English and French! These include Haunted Mountain, Haunted Griffintown, Haunted Downtown, the Haunted Pub Crawl and our new Paranormal Investigation into the old Saint-Antoine Cemetery. Tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal has also launched our first promotional video ever! Please share it if you like it!

Our new Paranormal Investigation of the Old Saint-Antoine Cholera Cemetery is an experience 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 Paranormal Investigation runs every Friday night at 8 p.m. until early November and tickets are now on sale!

Haunted Montreal would also like to announce that our company supports the Victims and Survivors of the Allan Memorial Institute, the only Canadian ghost story with over 300 human victims.

On Sunday, October 6 Haunted Montreal was represented at a protest in Ottawa and plans to continue working with the survivors as they demand justice through a class-action lawsuit:

“The Montreal Experiments consisted of extreme mind-control brainwashing experimentation on unwitting patients, making a mockery of the doctor-patient relationship. Simply put, the Montreal Experiments were a form of psychological torture inflicted upon hundreds of unsuspecting persons and which had traumatizing, damaging, and emotionally-crippling effects that lasted for the remainder of their lives and the lives of their families. To this day, neither the Canadian government, the CIA, McGill, nor the Royal Victoria Hospital have issued formal apologies for their involvement with the Montreal Experiments.”

We will keep our readers updated regarding ways to help support this important case.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl or paranormal investigation during the 2019 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on November 13: Lachine Canal

The Lachine Canal is widely considered one of Montreal’s most haunted places. Since it opened in 1825, hundreds of people have drowned in its dark waters. These included suicides, murder victims, people who drowned while swimming and those who died during industrial accidents. The polluted banks are also peppered with old buildings, many being re-purposed into condominiums, that are reputed to be haunted. Last but not least, not only are ghost ships known to ply the canal, but there are also hundreds of bodies buried along its length, mostly victims of the Irish Famine of 1847, resulting in all sorts of ghosts and paranormal activity.

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

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

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

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

HAUNTED RESEARCH

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

According to a report in the McGill Tribune:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

COMPANY NEWS

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

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

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

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

The authors write:

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

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

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk during the 2018 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list (at the top of the page, on the right).

Coming up on November 13: The John Doe Pub

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

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

To receive a new Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list on the right of the screen (or below on mobile devices).

HAUNTED RESEARCH

Harry Houdini, once known as the world’s greatest magician, was a man of great mystery. His connection to the City of Montreal is both strong and extremely tragic. Houdini met his fate in Montreal while touring a magic show at the Princess Theatre on the afternoon of October 22, 1926.

Following an incident with a student from McGill University in his dressing room, Houdini’s health began to fail. While he attempted to continue touring, he died just over a week later in a Detroit hospital – on Hallowe’en, no less! Today, rumours swirl that Harry Houdini’s ghost haunts various locations throughout North America, including Montreal!

Harry Houdini was born on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. His parents, a Jewish rabbi and his wife, named him named Erich Weisz.  While still a child, his family moved to Appleton, Wisconsin and he spent much of his childhood there. When he was 13, the family moved to New York City and young Erich became interested in trapeze arts – and magic.

In 1894, Erich renamed himself Harry Houdini (in homage of the great French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin) and launched his career as a professional magician. Though his magic met with little success at first, his feats of escape using handcuffs drew lots of attention.

His assistant, Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, fell in love with him and they married. Her stage named was Beatrice “Bess” Houdini.

In 1899, Houdini’s act caught the attention of entertainment manager Martin Beck, who booked him at some of the best vaudeville venues in the United States. On the heels of success, a European tour followed. Houdini’s feats often involved the local police force, who would strip search him, place him in shackles and lock him in their jail cells. Every time, he was able to escape. Harry Houdini’s show became a huge sensation, and he soon became the highest-paid performer on the American vaudeville circuit.

Houdini continued touring his magic show in the United States in the early 1900s, constantly pushing boundaries with his feats. He escaped from handcuffs, straightjackets, locked tanks filled with water and packing crates with nails hammered through them. Once, he even spent 91 minutes in a galvanized iron coffin that was submerged at the bottom of a hotel swimming pool. Using his uncanny strength and his equally impressive ability to pick locks, he escaped dangerous situations time and time again.

His most famous act, the hallmark of his career, was unveiled in 1912 – the Chinese Water Torture Cell. The performance involved Houdini, suspended by his feet, being lowered upside-down into a locked glass cabinet filled with water. In this aquarium-like contraption, Houdini had to hold his breath for more than three minutes in order to escape.

The performance was considered so daring and was such a crowd-pleaser that it remained a staple in his act until his death in 1926.

As a great illusionist, Houdini was also involved in an impassioned debate that was unfolding at the time surrounding a practice known as Spiritualism. Spiritualism is the belief that the spirits of the dead have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living. Believers see the afterlife, or the “spirit world”, as a place where spirits are active and continue to evolve. Spiritualism was popular from the 1840s to the 1920s and was considered a part of Victorian subculture. It included mediums, specialist newspapers, pamphlets, treatises, and secret societies. Private and public séances included table rapping, table tipping, automatic writing, levitation, and other types of communication with spirits. Spiritualism was especially popular in English-speaking countries and drew followers mostly from the middle and upper classes.

Some of the society’s most influential people practiced Spiritualism. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert participated in Spiritualist séances as early as 1846. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, was an adherent and even Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King communicated with spirits.

Harry Houdini, despite being the world’s most famous magician, was never a believer in Spiritualism, although he claimed he wanted to be. When his mother died in 1913, she left an impression on Houdini with her last word: “forgive”. He began to visit a number of mediums in an attempt to receive confirmation that his mother’s spirit existed in the after world. However, the more séances he attended, the more Houdini began to believe that all mediums were fraudulent and were taking advantage of vulnerable people. None of the mediums he visited were able to repeat his mother’s last word, and for him, this was enough evidence that the movement was a hoax.

Houdini decided to use his talents as an illusionist to expose the sneaky tricks used by unscrupulous mediums to take money from grieving clients.

His mission to debunk such unethical quackery gained an impassioned, albeit small following.

Houdini’s position caused rifts within the Spiritualism movement and even ruptured friendships. His friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was convinced that Houdini possessed “divine” powers of dematerialisation, despite all of the magician’s protestations to the contrary.

Their relationship began to sour when Houdini began to publicly debunk mediums, both on stage and in a journal called Scientific American.

Conan Doyle was devastated when Houdini exposed a Boston medium named Margery Crandon, an attractive blonde who was also known as the “Blonde Witch of Lime Street”. She would often perform naked and apparently secreted ectoplasm from her private parts. Houdini attended her show, observed her sleight-of-hand tricks, and then publicly exposed her as a fraud.

When Houdini announced to the séance attendees that the game was rigged, Margery and her spirit guide, Walter, were furious. “Houdini, you goddamned son of a bitch,” Walter yelled. “I put a curse on you now that will follow you every day for the rest of your short life.” This threat didn’t deter Houdini, and he took his exposé public, publishing pamphlets that described in detail exactly how Margery performed her “tricks”. Before long, Houdini didn’t just have Margery’s career in a death grip, he was strangling the entire Spiritualist movement. In August, 1926, Walter declared “Houdini will be dead within a year.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle interpreted Houdini’s mission to unmask mediums and debunk Spiritualism as a personal betrayal. Their friendship devolved into a feud and they made tit-for-tat comments against each other in various newspapers.

In spite of this conflict, Harry Houdini would continue touring his magic shows throughout North America, enjoying the fame and fortune that comes with being the world’s greatest magician. However, Walter’s curse and prediction would come to fruition in October in Montreal, where an unexpected incident would put an end to the storied magician’s career – and life.

On the afternoon of October 22, 1926, Houdini was relaxing in his dressing room at Montreal’s Princess Theatre on Sainte Catherine Street before an evening performance.

He was visited by two McGill university students who were curious about his alleged magical powers. One student named J. Gordon Whitehead asked Houdini if it was true that he could withstand any punch to the stomach, as the magician had previously proclaimed. Houdini said yes. All of a sudden, the young man delivered a series of four punches to Houdini’s gut before the magician could tighten his muscles.

Taken off guard, Houdini’s appendix ruptured and his health quickly began to fail.

Throughout the evening, Houdini performed his show in excruciating pain. He was unable to sleep and remained in constant pain over the next two days as he travelled to Detroit to continue performing. When he finally sought medical help, Houdini was found to have acute appendicitis and a fever of 38 degrees. A doctor advised him to go to the hospital for immediate surgery, but Houdini decided to first complete his show, as planned, on October 24 at the tony Garrick Theatre.

When the curtain rose, Houdini’s temperature was a feverish 40 degrees. Despite help from his assistants, he was clearly exhausted and in pain. Houdini missed several cues and seemed in a rush to complete the show. By the middle of the third act he could not continue so asked his assistant to lower the curtain. Houdini collapsed backstage and was carried by his assistants to his dressing room.

Stubbornly, he continued to refuse medical care until the next morning, when his wife Bess insisted he go to the hospital. Houdini relented and was admitted to Detroit’s Grace Central Hospital.

Doctors quickly removed his ruptured appendix. The doctors did not have much hope for his survival. Several days later, on October 31, Harry Houdini was surrounded by his wife and brother on his deathbed in room 401. Houdini promised his wife that he would send her a message from beyond the grave, if it was possible. With the last words “I’m tired of fighting,” Harry Houdini died at 1:26 pm of septic poisoning caused by peritonitis from a ruptured appendix, making for an extremely macabre Halloween.

Houdini’s funeral was held on November 4, 1926 in Queens, New York, at the Machpelah Cemetery. More than 2,000 mourners in attendance witnessed his burial. The crest of the Society of American Magicians was inscribed on his tombstone and a Broken Wand Ceremony was conducted.

The ritual is performed at the funeral of a magician and a wand is broken, signifying that with the magician’s demise, the wand has lost its magic. The Society of American Magicians continues to hold an annual Broken Wand Ceremony at Houdini’s grave to this very day.

Houdini’s tragic and unexpected death on Hallowe’en and his promise to communicate from beyond the grave, even though he was a skeptic in life, raised a lot of eyebrows.

It didn’t take long for hundreds of mediums to emerge, each pronouncing that they had received messages from the late magician. Furthermore, the following year Bess organized a séance on Hallowe’en night in an attempt to bring forth his spirit.

It is a tradition that has continued into the present, with a séance being held somewhere in the world every Hallowe’en to try and communicate with Houdini’s ghost. In 2017, the séance is being held in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The contradictory nature of Houdini’s discourse about Spiritualism coupled his seemingly magical powers and the fact that he died on Hallowe’en have given rise to many, many theories about his ghost. While many skeptics don’t believe he ever became a ghost, others think he returned to haunt various locations around North America in a paranormal afterlife.

The first theory places Houdini’s ghost in Los Angeles. Ghost hunters Richard and Debbie Senate believe Houdini’s ghost haunts an old stone staircase at a ruined estate on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in Hollywood.

Known as the “Houdini Estate”, the mansion at 2400 Laurel Canyon Boulevard burned down in 1959.  When and Los Angeles’s three big daily papers ran stories about the old Houdini mansion burning, visitors to the grounds began to report spotting Houdini’s ghost. They described phantom light orbs that could be seen darting through the trees on the hill behind the old mansion’s foundations.

Houdini had lived in Laurel Canyon in 1919 while making two films for Lasky-Famous Players and was known to swim in the spring-fed pool at the luxurious estate. Houdini had said that Hollywood was his favorite place and the nine months that he stayed there may have been the happiest time of his life.

Could his ghost have returned there, perhaps to reminisce about happier days?

The second theory places Houdini’s ghost in Niagara Falls, Canada. In the book Shadows of Niagara, John Savoie explains that “in 1968, atop Clifton Hill, The Houdini Magical Hall of Fame opened its doors featuring professional paraphernalia of the famous magician and escape artist. The large amount of treasures were bequeathed to Houdini’s brother, known in the profession as Hardeen.”

Houdini had instructed Hardeen to burn the material so that no one would discover his secrets, but Hardeen did not want to destroy the items. Instead, kept them in storage for nearly 40 years. Eventually, the hoard of items Houdini used during magic shows were sold to the Houdini Magical Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls and put on display.

According to Savoie: “In the first year of the museum’s operation, there were a series of six fires, a robbery and a freak accident in which one of the museum’s directors walked through a plate glass window. It appeared as if Houdini himself was showing his displeasure of the museum.”

Savoie also mentions the numerous séances that were held each year to see if the spirit of Houdini would return: “Each time, the séances were less effective than previous years and finally in 1974, medium Ann Fisher, persuaded Houdini to make himself known and that this would be the last séance if he had not. Instantly, a pot of flowers fell to the ground and a book about Houdini followed. It opened to a page which featured a Houdini poster with the title, Do Spirits Return?”

In 1995, Houdini’s ghost was blamed for a massive fire that ripped through the building. Most of the artifacts were destroyed in the blaze, essentially fulfilling Houdini’s final wishes.

This building now houses a 3D Moving Theatre, and according to staff members, paranormal activities still unfold there, including disembodied voices that spook caretakers late at night. Could Houdini’s ghost haunt Niagara Falls, perhaps in anger that his last wishes were not respected?

The third theory suggests Houdini’s spirit remained in Detroit after his death. Some people believe his ghost haunts the David Stott Building, located on the same site of the Garrick Theatre, which was demolished in 1928. Other rumours place his ghost at the building that once housed Wm. R. Hamilton’s Funeral Home, where Houdini was embalmed. Still others feel it is more realistic that he haunts the site of the old Grace Central Hospital, which today hosts the Harper Professional Building. The hospital was, after all, the only place that Houdini was unable to escape from. Could Houdini’s ghost have returned to the site of his tragic death?

The fourth theory places Houdini’s ghost in Greenwich Village, New York. In the book Haunted Greenwich Village, author Tom Ogden speculates that Houdini haunts McSorely’s Old Ale House in Chapter 20, entitled “Escape from Beyond”. Founded by an Irish immigrant who had escaped the Famine, the tavern would go on to welcome some of America’s most famous people, including Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, e.e. cummings, Brendan Behan, Woody Guthrie and John Lennon. Houdini liked to frequent the establishment when in New York when between tours and Ogden believes his ghost haunts the watering-hole to this very day. The evidence? A pair of manacles that are rumoured to belong to Houdini are shackled to a gleaming bar rail.

The theory suggests that Houdini’s ghost returns to his old watering hole in the form of a black phantom cat, sitting in the window, before suddenly disappearing. Could Houdini’s ghost have returned to his favourite pub?

The final theory places Houdini’s ghost in Montreal, the city where he met his fate. Montreal’s old Princess Theatre, where Houdini received the punches that ultimately killed him, is located at 476 St. Catherine Street West in a building that is presently abandoned. The Princess Theatre was built in 1908 for vaudeville and burlesque shows, operettas and theatrical performances.

In 1915, it was completely destroyed by fire but was rebuilt two years later with a terracotta facade. It was in the second incarnation of the building that Houdini met his fate.

In 1963, the Princess was renamed Le Parisien, and underwent major renovations. In 1974, the theatre closed for more renovations and was later re-opened as a five-screen cinema. Le Parisien hosted the first Montreal World Film Festival in 1977, one of Canada’s oldest film events.

During its days as a cinema, there were wild rumours that Houdini was haunting the building. Staff members reported seeing his ghost on no less than three occasions, wearing a top hat and a cape.

In 2002, a fire destroyed one auditorium and damaged six others. Finally, the cinema closed its doors for good on April 12, 2007, after serving as a low-cost cinema showing French language movies. Could Houdini’s ghost have returned to haunt the site where he met his fate?

Today, the building is for rent, but with persistent rumours that Houdini’s ghost haunts the place, finding a tenant might be difficult.

There can be no denying that Houdini still inspires artists and magicians to this very day. In popular culture, the stories of Harry Houdini’s spirit continue to influence creative people. In 2011, a Canadian band called Punch Drunk Cabaret wrote a song called “The Ghost of Harry Houdini“.

Meanwhile, Montreal’s McCord Museum has recently launched an exhibition featuring some of Houdini’s posters. It is entitled Illusions – The Art of Magic and will run through to January 7, 2018.

While ultimately it is still unknown if Houdini returned as a ghost, there are certainly a lot of theories about which city he haunts. Given that he was considered the greatest magician to ever live, perhaps he continues to appear and disappear at various locations throughout North America in a paranormal afterlife. If he is indeed a ghost, the odds seem good that he haunts Montreal, if only for the reason that it was here that he met his fate, the unexpected and fatal blows from a McGill student, that led to his ultimate demise.

COMPANY NEWS

For the Hallowe’en Season, running through October to Hallowe’en and beyond, Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce a gamut of activities! For the first time ever, we are offering all three of our ghost tours in both languages on many different nights. Check our website for more information and to buy tickets for Haunted Mountain (Mount Royal), Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Downtown ghost walks.

Haunted Montreal is also very proud to assist organizers for the city’s 375th anniversary with a three day Hallowe’en Festival at the Place des Arts. Entitled La Trouble-Fête, the spooky event runs from October 27 – 29!

We have also been busy helping establish a new company called Secret Montreal! The new enterprise has taken over the Haunted Red Light District Ghost Walk and also offers a brand new Montreal Burlesque Walking Tour that is being led by real burlesque queens!

The Haunted Red Light District Ghost Walk is being offered in both languages on Friday nights. For the Hallow’en Season, tours will run from Thursday, October 26 to Tuesday, October 31st.

Secret Montreal plans to develop other tours in the future that delve into the city’s fascinating past with a focus on hidden history.

For details on Secret Montreal and its walking tours, please visit the Secret Montreal website.

A big thank you to all of our clients who attended a Haunted Montreal ghost walk! 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. Furthermore, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Lastly, Haunted Montreal wishes everyone a very happy Hallowe’en Season!

Coming up on Monday, November 13th: Paranormal Activity at the Hotel Bonaventure

Montreal’s Hotel Bonaventure is nestled on the top two floors of the 17-storey brutalist Place Bonaventure, the city’s original convention center. The 4-star hotel features 397 spacious rooms, including 5 luxurious suites, conference halls, the fancy Kube Restaurant and a heated rooftop pool. Described as “a true Garden of Eden overlooking the bustling streets of the city,” the hotel has also witnessed unexplained paranormal activity, including a well-documented UFO sighting on November 7, 1990! Tune in on November 13th to learn more about this mysterious hotel and its paranormal encounters!

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

HAUNTED RESEARCH

McTavish Street on McGill’s bustling campus is said to be the second most haunted street in Montreal, after Saint Paul Street in Old Montreal. There are said to be no less than three haunted buildings on this street: Duggan House, the McLennan Library, and the McGill University Faculty Club.

The Faculty Club welcomes the school’s elite of professors, deans, provosts, and other academics. The opulent mansion is a private oasis on the bustling campus, a place where academics come to relax, dine, socialize and discuss important matters. However, according to many sources, the Faculty Club is haunted by ghosts of the past. The opulent mansion was designed in 1886 by Baron Alfred von Baumgarten, a wealthy German sugar tycoon for his family.

Baron Alfred Moritz Friedrich Baumgarten, Ph.D., was born in Desden in 1842. After studying chemistry at the University of Berlin and the University of Göttingen, he came to New York City in 1866 intending to do business in the North American chemical industry.

In 1873, Baumgarten moved to Montreal to manage the de Castro Syrup Company, and in 1879 he co-founded the St. Lawrence Sugar Refining Company.

The company imported raw sugar from the British West Indies and Europe before refining it into pure sugar, which could be sold to local and international consumers. At first, the enterprise was relatively small and located on the Lachine Canal. However, with increasing demand, the plant was enlarged several times until the original buildings were destroyed by a fire in 1887. A new factory was built in the City of Maisonneuve, now a Montreal neighbourhood, on a riverfront site that allowed large, sugar-filled steamships to deposit their cargo directly at the facility.

By 1908, the company was valued at five million dollars and exported 300,000 barrels annually. Needless to say, the enterprise made the Baron extremely wealthy.

He spared no expense on his lavish home, located in Montreal’s posh Golden Square Mile, which was replete with detail and decoration in its sumptuous interior. With a taste for the extravagant, the sugar king added one of Montreal’s first indoor pools, the first electrical lighting system in a private residence and a lavish ballroom to better introduce his daughters, Mimi and Elsa, to society. To ensure their chances of finding good husbands, Baumgarten spring-loaded the hardwood floor of his ballroom in order to make dancers, his daughters included, appear lighter and more nimble on their feet.

The house also boasted high ceilings, elaborate carvings and a big fireplace. A Gothic Gallery, which spanned two stories of the house, was made to resemble a German hunting lodge. An immense, amber-coloured stained glass skylight capped the beautiful chamber. Opulent and beautiful, Baumgarten House was seen as an ideal location to entertain the city’s wealthy elite.

By the turn of the century, the Baumgarten house was a center of social activity. Indeed, it was the Governor-General’s favorite place to visit when he came to Montreal. By the 1910s, Baumgarten had established himself as one of the city’s most prominent citizens and he entertained people who held some of the most esteemed positions in the society.

However, trouble started brewing for the Baron as the First World War approached. Anti-German sentiment began to spread through the British Empire and once the war had started, hysteria reached its peak.

The St. Lawrence Sugar Refinery, where many of the main shareholders were of German origin, was accused of being ‘in the hands of the enemy’.

Every shareholder with a German-sounding name, Baumgarten included, was bought out. He was also forced to resign from all positions connected to the firm. After losing his position and much of his standing in the city, many of his former associates began shunning him personally. He began to fear that his daughters would never get married. The downtrodden Baron became very sad during the war, and despite offering his Montreal residence as a convalescent home for disabled soldiers returning from the Front, his reputation sank deeper and deeper.

He died in 1919, shortly after the war’s conclusion, some say a broken man. While his daughter Mimi never did find a husband, Elsa Baumgarten would go on to marry a man named Reginald Leslie Gault.

Following the Baron’s death, his widow continued living in the home with her two daughters until 1926, when McGill University purchased the building for a nominal sum to serve as the principal’s residence.

General Sir Arthur Currie was appointed principal and vice-chancellor of McGill University in 1920. Without the benefit of post-secondary education himself, the war hero was given the job due to his “exceptional powers of organization and administration” and his “capacity for inspiration and leadership”.

Principal Currie governed the university until his death in 1933, triggered by a stroke and then bronchial complications caused by pneumonia. Following an elaborate and well-attended military funeral, a decision was made to repurpose the residence into a club for McGill University’s faculty.

During extensive renovations, the Gothic Gallery was split into two separate floors, the lower one being the main dining room, and the upper floor the billiard room. In 1935, the McGill Faculty Club opened its doors in the old Baumgarten House.

Designed as an oasis for the university’s elite, the Faculty Club has since hosted countless receptions, meetings, dinner parties, and academic gatherings, all within the beautiful confines of the spectacular mansion.

However, professors and their servants have often felt that there is something amiss within the old Baumgarten House. People often feel uneasy inside the building, especially late at night. Over the decades, there have also been reports of all sorts of strange and paranormal activity unfolding within the Faculty Club.

One example is a piano in the basement that sometimes begins to play on its own accord.

On one occasion, a professor complained that the noise was disturbing an important meeting, so the staff tried closing the piano lid to stop it. When that didn’t work, they covered the piano with a thick blanket and wrapped chains around it. However, the piano continued playing, albeit with a more muffled sound. Then, as though the instrument was angry, it began to play more loudly with notes that were jangled and increasingly off key. The unearthly music got faster and faster and louder and louder before culminating in a loud crescendo. With one last clang, the piano finally stopped.

The McGill Faculty Club is the sort of place where things literally go bump in the night. Doors on the upper floors often slam on their own accord. The staff also reports that the elevator sometimes moves between floors, inexplicably, without any human passengers. In the billiard room, the balls are known to roll on their own, as though a game is being played by invisible spirits. Some servants are unnerved by the numerous portraits hanging on the walls, which they claim often follow them with their eyes. In 2010, Tony Austin, the Club’s longstanding maître d’hôtel, told the McGill Reporter: “I’ve never seen a ghost myself, but when you’re all alone in this house at the end of the night it can be a little creepy with all those portraits staring back at you.”

On other occasions the Faculty Club’s phone has called the Human Resources Department late at night, when no one is there. When office staff arrive at HR the next morning, they inevitably call back the Faculty Club to inquire why someone had phoned them so late at night. The servants are at a loss to explain.

One night a security guard was doing the rounds and he climbed the spiralling stairs to the second floor. He began to hear loud, banging noises on the second and third floors.

He felt a dangerous presence that seemed to be getting closer and closer to him. A wave of panic set in and he froze, paralyzed with fear. The banging noises got louder and more violent and he felt as though the presence was nearly upon him.  He snapped out it and bolted back down the stairs, before dashing out of the building into the cool night air.  He later told his colleagues that he had soiled his pants on the way down, so terrified was he by his experience.

While nobody knows exactly how many spirits are haunting the building, there is some speculation that the ghost of Baron von Baumgarten haunts the place, seeking to restore his reputation through ghostly parties in a paranormal afterlife. This could account for the ghostly billiard matches and the paranormal piano music. There is also one persistent rumour of a maid who was murdered on the 3^rd floor, in what is now the Montreal Room, a private dining chamber that can be booked by faculty members.

If the story is true, the murder would have taken place after the home was renovated, because in the original Baumgarten home the 2^nd floor was designed to look like a massive hunting lodge with a soaring ceiling. The 3^rd floor was only added after it was renovated into the Faculty Club. Whether this alleged murder is the result of overactive imaginations or was somehow covered up remains to be seen.

In 2014, Montreal Gazette journalist Mark Abley decided to research the city’s ghosts, including those at the McGill Faculty Club. He wrote an article called “Let me tell you some haunting tales about Montreal”, where he elaborated:

“Those who have cleaned and patrolled the building in recent years have been known to curse the baron’s decisions. The fireplace has long been blocked off, yet it’s said that sometimes at night you can still smell the ashes. Looking into one of the many tall mirrors, people have seen a spectral woman dancing in the ballroom. One maintenance employee — a former UFC fighter — refused to go into the ballroom after the day he heard music coming from it. The space was empty at the time. On tables in the huge billiards room, balls have been seen rolling toward a pocket for no reason.”

Abley went on to speculate:

“There have certainly been deaths in the building — even, it’s said, a murder about a century ago. (The McGill website is unaccountably silent on the topic.) And whether it be the psychic energy left behind by the deceased, or merely the nervousness felt by the living in the knowledge that a particular site has been the scene of pain or crime, ghostly experiences are most common in places that have hosted death.”

Others believe demonic felines infest the building, as evidenced by paw prints embedded in the northern brick wall of the Faculty Club. Geologists dismiss this theory however, explaining that cats in the past would often walk over hot bricks as they were drying in the sun.

On January 28, 2013, another strange event occurred, which some students blamed on faulty engineering and others on paranormal activity. A water main broke near the McTavish Reservoir above the campus, sending torrents of water gushing down McTavish Street, right past the Faculty Club. It was almost as though some unknown force wanted to cleanse the campus of its human element. One girl, while attempting to cross the McTavish Street, fell into the raging waters and was sent cascading down the hill, right past the Faculty Club. Was this episode caused by poor engineering or something more sinister?

While nobody is certain just who or what is haunting the McGill Faculty Club, only one thing is certain: those who work and play in the old Baumgarten House must share the beautiful mansion with ghosts from the building’s storied past.

COMPANY NEWS

The Haunted Montreal public season of ghost tours is now open, with Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Mountain being offered in both English and French. From August to October 7, Haunted Griffintown is being offered on Friday nights and Haunted Mountain is on Saturday nights.

There are also many extra tours that have been added on Mount Royal in French due to high demand.

For the Hallowe’en Season, running Friday October 13th to Hallowe’en and beyond, Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce, in addition to offering our regular tours, Haunted Downtown has been revised and translated and will be offered on several evenings in both English and French:

Fridays (October 13, 20, 27 & November 3): Haunted Griffintown

Saturdays (October 14, 21, 28 & November 4): Haunted Mountain

Sundays: (October 15, 22, 29 & November 5): Haunted Downtown

Monday, October 30: Haunted Downtown

Tuesday, October 31: Haunted Downtown

Our website will be updated soon with the new information.

We have also been busy helping establish a new company called Secret Montreal! The new enterprise has taken over the Haunted Red Light District Ghost Walk and also offers a brand new Montreal Burlesque Walking Tour that is being led by real burlesque queens!

From June 23 to September 4, the Haunted Red Light District Ghost Walk will be offered in English on Sunday nights, in French on Monday nights and in both languages on Friday nights. For the Hallowe’en Season, tours will be offered in both languages every night from Thursday, October 26 to Thursday, October 31.

Secret Montreal plans to develop other tours in the future that delve into the city’s fascinating past with a focus on hidden history.

For details on Secret Montreal and its walking tours, please visit the Secret Montreal website.

Lastly, a big thank you to all of our clients who attended a Haunted Montreal ghost walk! 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. Furthermore, 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 September 13th: Nightclub at 1234 De La Montagne Street

It is rumoured that guests at the trendy Club Le Cinq, located at 1234 De La Montagne, can “enjoy some spirits with a spirit.” Once the site of the Joseph C. Wray & Bros. Funeral Home, the building was used for decades by coroners and funeral directors until being sold and vacated in 1970 and converted into a nightclub. Today, all three floors of the club are reputed to be haunted. Women are warned never to go to the ladies washroom alone lest they encounter the terrifying ghost of lady with a jagged scar running the length of her torso, as though she had received an autopsy. Other frightening paranormal encounters over the years have solidified Club Le Cinq’s reputation as one of the most haunted buildings in downtown Montreal.

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

For the 2015 Hallowe’en Season, all of Haunted Montreal’s ghost walks can be booked for private groups and are scheduled in the public season!

Company News

Haunted Montreal is pleased to announce Haunted Griffintown, a brand new ghost walk for the 2015 Hallowe’en Season! Griffintown is one of Montreal’s most historic neighborhoods – and one of its most haunted. The area has witnessed everything from dying Irish refugees during the Famine of 1847 to the Industrial Revolution to Montreal’s worst air disaster. Today, condominium towers are sprouting up in the Griff, but new residents are learning that the area was once a rowdy shantytown – and it’s also ghost-ridden!

The Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk visits mysterious ruins, abandoned tunnels, a polluted canal, former burial grounds and creepy old buildings that are said to be haunted. A vacant, decrepit brewery hosts psychics in search of a murdered girl, a condominium reminds locals of its past as a chocolate factory, and the ghostly ruins of St. Ann’s Church sometimes produce paranormal activity.Guests will learn about Black ’47, when the area witnessed one of Canada’s worst tragedies, as tens of thousands of typhus-stricken Irish immigrants disembarked from “coffin ships” after crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Despite heroic efforts by nuns and Mayor John Mills to care for the sick in fever sheds, the disease killed over six thousand people, including the Mayor himself. Most of the dead were buried in nearby mass graves, only to be disturbed again and again by industrial activity.

There is also the tragic mystery of the Peel Basin, the site of many drownings over the years, including one recent case that may be connected to a will-o’-the-wisp – or a serial killer. Conspiracy theories also surround Montreal’s worst air disaster, when a Liberator Bomber slammed into the neighborhood, killing 15 people during WW II.Finally, the Griff is the setting for the tale of Mary Gallagher, the headless prostitute. Montreal’s most infamous ghost story, she was murdered and decapitated by her best friend Susie Kennedy in 1879. The headless ghost of Mary Gallagher is said to return to the Griff every seven years, still searching for her head!

For the 2015 Hallowe’en Season, Haunted Montreal is pleased to offer Haunted Griffintown on the following dates:

Friday, October 16 at 8 PM

Saturday, October 17 at 8PM

Friday, October 23 at 8 PM

Saturday, October 24 at 8PM

Friday, October 30 at 8 PM

Saturday, October 31 at 8 PM

The Ghost Walk begins at 8 pm at the Griffintown Café (1378 rue Notre Dame Ouest, a few blocks south of Lucien L’Allier Metro). Guests should arrive at least 10 minutes before the tour starts to check in. For those wishing to dine or have drinks and tapas before the ghost walk, Haunted Montreal recommends making reservations at the Griffintown Café, an artistic bistro-pub with an exceptional menu. Click here for more information and to book tickets.

For the 2015 Hallowe’en Season, Haunted Montreal is also offering final visits for both Haunted Downtown (Sunday, October 18 at 8 PM) and Haunted Mountain (Sunday, October 25 at 8 PM).

We invite our clients who attended a ghost walk to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal promote its tours.

Haunted Research

In addition to the extensive research being carried out into Griffintown, Haunted Montreal has also been studying the mysterious spirit who haunts McGill University’s imposing McLennan Library.

The words “In the quiet still air of delightful studies” are inscribed in the wall beside an outdoor staircase at the McLennan Library. However, according to rumours, the still air on the 6th floor is sometimes compromised by a spirit who is also known to disrupt the quietude and delightful studies that McGill is renowned for – by startling and terrifying unsuspecting students!

Allegedly the 6th floor of the McLennan Library is haunted by the ghostly apparition of an elderly man who wears a strange old coat. He is known to float quietly above the floor, sometimes towards students who are deep in a book or librarians stacking the shelves. Once he selects his target, the apparition is known to glide up behind a person, then lurk, almost perfectly still. He stares intently at his victim until he is noticed. When the startled person reacts, usually by screaming and jumping up from their chair, this ghost is known to vanish into thin air, leaving the victim embarrassed for having disturbed the quietude that makes the McLennan Library famous.

There is very little information as to who this apparition is or why he is haunting the 6th floor of the library. The concrete Brutalist structure housing the library dates to 1969, but it was built on the grounds where an elegant 19th-century mansion once stood. The beautiful home was named “Dilcoosha”, a Hindustani word often given by Indian princes and nobles to their garden palaces, meaning “The Heart’s Delight”. This exquisite home was originally the residence of Jesse Joseph, a prominent Montreal financier.

Dilcoosha was one of many elaborate mansions in Montreal’s Golden Square Mile. Designed in an exotic style known as Egyptian Renaissance, Dilcoosha featured high ceilings, a lavish interior, opulent furnishings, a curved central stairway and a charming circular upper hall with alcoves for statuary. Outside, a handsome garden burst with fragrant blooms. Jesse Joseph loved gardening and meticulously planned the grounds of Dilcoohsa to ensure a profusion of colourful flowers from spring to autumn.

In life, Jesse Joseph was an energetic, life-long bachelor who enjoyed living in the aristocratic tradition, which included hosting and entertaining the city’s elite with lavish and elaborate parties in his resplendent mansion.

In the summer, outsiders paused to admire Dilcoosha’s gardens and even in the winter people gathered there. The Snowshowing Club assembled there, at the foot of McTavish Street. After lighting up fiery torches, they would ascended Mount Royal in a column. Clambering away on their snowshoes, they would often holler at the tomb of fur baron Simon McTavish on the way up to the summit, allegedly to “rouse his spirit”. On these dark and frosty nights, from the city below it appeared as though a fiery snake was slinking its way up the mountain through the barren forest.

As the owner of Dilcoosha, Jesse Joseph enjoyed the attention he received. As a Jewish businessman with many interests, he served as president of both the Montreal Gas Company and the City Passenger Railway. He also operated the Theatre Royale, the Montreal’s finest theatre, promoted trade between Canada and Belgium (earning him the title of “Belgian consul in Montreal”), held vast real-estate holdings in the city and was a member of the executive for the SPCA. Ever the proud gardener, Jesse Joseph also spent countless hours in the winter planning his meticulous garden, which was said to be one of the most beautiful in the Golden Square Mile. Overall, Jesse Joseph enjoyed his reputation as a man of extremely refined taste. He died in 1904 at the age of 86.

Business interests purchased Dilcoosha with the hope of demolishing it to erect a luxurious Ritz-Carleton hotel on the site. However, a McGill benefactor named Sir William MacDonald objected, suggesting that Dicoosha should be incorporated into the campus instead. With his powerful business connections, in 1909 MacDonald was able to shelve plans for the hotel and buy the property, which he promptly gifted to McGill University.

During World War I, Dilcoosha served as a headquarters for the McGill chapter of the COTC, or Canadian Officer Training Corps. McGill University was active in recruiting and training soldiers from among its student body. Officers in training used the long upstairs hall at Dilcoosha as a target practice range, something Jesse Joseph would not have approved of.

After the War, in 1919, Dilcoosha was transformed into the first McCord Museum. McGill inherited the extensive collections of David McCord, an eccentric municipal lawyer who had spent much of his life collecting rare objects associated with Canadian history. Dilcoosha, despite being bullet-ridden, was seen as an ideal place to house and display McGill University’s new Canadian artifact collection.

In 1955, university officials detected structural problems in one of the walls at Dilcoosha. By now the lavish home was starting to appear faded and worn, so a decision was made to demolish it. The McCord artifacts were relocated to the Hodgeson House on Drummond and Dr. Penfield Streets, and Dilcoosha was unceremoniously torn down. The once beautiful garden and exotic mansion were replaced with a weed-choked, vacant lot. There was some speculation at the time that, due to Dilcoosha’s demolition, Jesse Joseph was rolling over in his grave.

After sitting empty for 12 years, the lot on the north-east corner of Sherbrooke and McTavish Streets was finally re-developed. Between 1967 and 1969, the McLennan Library, was constructed in the Brutalist style. It was named in honour of Isabella McLennan, a benefactor who had given McGill University a small fortune to purchase books. The firm Dobush, Stewart, and Bourke built the towering, seven-storey structure using reinforced concrete. The chosen style was Brutalist.

Brutalism is a movement in architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s. Part of the modernist movement, Brutalist buildings were usually designed using banal, angular shapes and constructed with reinforced concrete. The focus was on utility and not style.

In many ways, the Brutalist architecture of McLennan Library is the exact opposite of Dilcoosha’s Egyptian Renaissance style. While Dilcoosha succeeded in being exotic, magnificent and exceptional, much like its owner Jesse Joseph, the McLennan Library is probably best described as soulless, banal and non-descript.

While there is no evidence identifying the ghost haunting the 6th floor, there is strong speculation that the floating spirit is none other than Jesse Joseph himself. The most common description about this ghost is his “strange, old coat”, and old photographs of Jesse Joseph depict him wearing just that.

Many ghost stories involve people who, having died, return as spirits to sites of special significance. Did the ghost of Jesse Joseph remain at Dilcoosha after his death in 1904? The idea is perhaps not so far-fetched, especially given his love for his exotic mansion, beautiful garden, and his reputation as a man of the very best epicurean taste.

If so, Jesse Joseph’s spirit would have witnessed his once-magnificent home fade into disuse before being hawked on the market, used for target practice by rambunctious students, and being jammed full of Canadian artifacts before its unceremonious demolition. The unique and beautiful Dilcoosha, once his pride and joy, was no more. Instead, the ugly, concrete, Brutalist McLennan Library went up on the site.

While it is perfectly feasible that the specter haunting stacks of the library may indeed be Jesse Joseph, there is no explanation as to why he only haunts the 6th floor. One thing is certain – as a spirit known to float through the air, he would certainly have no difficulty getting all the way to the top of the McLennan Library.

Coming up on November 13: Haunted Wellington Tunnel. Hidden away in Griffintown, just off Wellington Street near the Lachine Canal bridge, lies a series of decrepit, abandoned tunnels. Covered in graffiti and protected by prison-like iron bars, the creepy Wellington Tunnel and surrounding area is rumoured to be haunted by the phantom of a boy wearing a suit. Constructed during the Great Depression in 1931, the various tunnels served cars, pedestrians and tramways, allowing ships on the canal to move more quickly. Previously, a swing bridge was located on the site. The tunnel developed a reputation as a filthy, fume-clogged, and dangerous place and was abandoned in 1995. Who is the young, well-dressed phantom haunting the vicinity?

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).

Haunted Research 

Perched at the very top of McTavish Street is Duggan House, a creepy, Gothic mansion. Nestled into Mount Royal, the shadowy estate is currently owned by McGill University. It is one of the oldest buildings on campus. Built in 1861, using grey, hand-cut limestone that was recycled from Simon McTavish’s haunted castle, Duggan House brings a whole new meaning to the expression “school spirit”.

The building is currently used by the Department of Education. At some point during the 1990s, a female Graduate student had a terrifying encounter in Duggan House. She was scheduled to have an important academic meeting her professor in the large foyer of the building. When she entered, she found him in a plush chair, awaiting her. The student sat down opposite him, put her purse on the ground to the right of her, and flipped open her notebook. She was in the process of explaining some new avenues of research, when suddenly she froze and stopped speaking. Her mouth agape, she stared at the shadowy, spiral staircase to the left behind the professor. The student appeared to be in a state of panic and started pointing at the staircase and screaming.

She witnessed the ghostly specter of a woman, clad in a 19th Century petticoat, who materialized on top the spiral staircase and then begin descending into the foyer. The girl was now shrieking hysterically, causing the professor to panic. He immediately spun his chair around to see the imminent danger that was terrorizing his student. There was nothing there.

All of a sudden, they both heard a rattling noise at the window, as though someone had thrown something at the Venetian blinds. The blinds shifted about violently, causing both student and professor to jump up from their chairs. At that moment the student realized that her purse was missing; she began to hyperventilate. As the blinds slowly stopped swinging, the noises stopped. As the professor tried to calm down his distraught student, he looked up towards the window. Her purse was dangling in the Venetian blinds, all tangled up in knots. Other strange phenomena also occur in the Duggan House, such as the sounds mysterious footsteps or the fact that objects are often displaced or go missing.

While nobody is certain exactly who or what is haunting Duggan House, there is a lot of speculation. Some journalists have suggested that perhaps the building is haunted by the infamous ghost of Simon McTavish. Others believe that a worker, who fell three stories to his death while demolishing the castle in 1861, haunts the site. Duggan House was also built from the recycled stones of McTavish’s haunted castle, on the same cursed land, lending credence to a theory that Duggan House is haunted because of its location and building materials.

Built originally for Orrin S. Wood of the Montreal Telegraphy Company, Duggan House was based on blueprints drafted by architect Andrew B. Taft. The Gothic mansion was originally named Braehead, and it passed through the hands of many prominent families. Orrin S. Wood, Charles D. Proctor, Matthew Hamilton Gault, and George Herrick Duggan all raised families in the house. It was also used as a home for convalescing soldiers from 1911 to 1929. In 1944, George Herrick Duggan gifted the property to McGill University on condition that he could stay until his death, which occurred inside the mansion in 1946.

Another theory relates to a mysterious tunnel connecting Duggan House and Purvis Hall to the West. During the 1940s, McGill’s Faculty of Commerce was using both buildings for classes and wanted to ensure ease of movement so they constructed the tunnel in 1946. The problem is that Purvis Hall is also rumoured to be haunted, in this case by aviator Arthur B. Purvis, who died tragically in a plane crash in 1941. Some students whisper about ghosts using the tunnel, traversing between the mysterious estates, for reasons unknown.

Indeed, apparently the Faculty of Commerce moved out in 1977 partly because the business students were unhappy with the haunted facilities. Duggan House was passed to the Faculty of Education, who have occupied the creepy mansion ever since.

While many of the theories suggest the place is haunted by the ghost of a man, none of them explain why a ghostly woman might appear on the spiral staircase.

Perhaps a more feasible explanation might be centered around Elizabeth Joanna Bourne, the wife of politician Matthew Hamilton Gault. She raised 16 children in the home, starting in 1868. Mothering so many children during the era was a very difficult task, even with the help of servants. Five of the Gault children died in infancy, no doubt traumatizing their mother. The first four were all male and they all perished as infants. However, the last child to die was a little 8 year old girl named Beatrice Frederika Baldwin Gault. When Beatrice died in 1880, her mother, Elizabeth, was said to have become unhinged, unable to deal with the tragedy. Could the ghost who appears on the stairs be the spectre of Elizabeth Joanna Bourne, who died in 1908, still tending to her lost children in a paranormal afterlife?

Nowadays, it is not future business leaders being terrified by ghosts, but rather aspiring teachers. McGill Education students are usually known for their enthusiasm, however those studying in Duggan House quickly learn an opposite meaning for the term “school spirit” – one that doesn’t bring about a sense of warmth and solidarity, but rather feelings of fear and panic.

Company News 

Firstly, Haunted Montreal is very pleased to announce that we now have a Tripadvisor page! As a company that strives for excellence, we welcome positive feedback from our clients and invite them to write a review of one of our ghost tours!

Secondly, Haunted Montreal’s public season is in full swing offers and ghost tours are available to private groups!

Private tours can be arranged for groups of 15 or more people and are subject to availability. For more information, please contact us at info@hauntedmontreal.com.

The public season is listed here:

Haunted Mountain Saturday, June 20 at 8 pm (Montreal Infringement Festival)

Haunted Downtown Friday, June 26 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, July 3 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Saturday, July 11 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, July 17 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Friday, July 24 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, August 7 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Saturday, August 15 at 8 pm

Haunted Mountain Friday, August 21 at 8 pm

Haunted Downtown Saturday, August 29 at 8 pm

We may add more tour dates in case of high demand.

Please note that the Haunted Mountain ghost tour on Saturday, June 20 is included as part of the 12th annual Montreal Infringement Festival. This festival celebrates a do-it-yourself culture in the arts and opposes corporate manipulation. The festival was created after the trademarking of the word “Fringe” by business interests and subsequently re-naming the once grassroots festival after corporate sponsors. The bilingual festival features dozens of artists. Details here: www.infringemontreal.com

Haunted Montreal supports authenticity in the arts and rejects corporate models that exploit artists and audiences. As such, Haunted Montreal is proud to be a part of the Infringement Festival and we encourage our readers to check out some of the other performances during the fest, running June 17 – 21 in Montreal!

Thank you for reading the Haunted Montreal Blog! Don’t forget to sign up to our mailing list if you want to receive the blog on the 13th of every month!

Coming up on July 13th: Hauntings in the Point Saint Charles Legion. This inconspicuous branch of the Canadian Royal Legion, located at 543 rue Sainte-Madeleine, is known by employees and locals to be haunted. Groups such as “Ghosts and Stories of Point St Charles” (Facebook) discuss the hauntings feverishly and Legion employees, such as the bartender, sometimes regale visitors with tales of their paranormal experiences.

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).