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

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

Haunted Montreal is very proud to have won the prestigious Making the World Happening Award! As we continue to develop and offer innovative haunted experiences, we are very happy to receive this recognition.

We are also pleased to announce that our new Haunted Old Montreal ghost tour is almost ready and tickets will be on sale soon! Stay tuned on our website and Facebook page!

Haunted Montreal is offering our regular ghost tours every Saturday evening on rotation up until June, when the season will be expanded:

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

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

While public tours are available on Sunday afternoons for the Haunted Pub Crawl, private tours can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

Our Virtual Ghost Tour is also available on demand!

Additionally, our team is releasing videos of ghost stories from the Haunted Montreal Blog every Saturday, in both languages!

Our hosts include Holly Rhiannon (in English) and Dr. Mab (in French).

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

You can now order a Haunted Montreal Gift Certificate through our website. They are redeemable via Eventbrite for any of our in-person or virtual experiences. There is no expiration date.

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

This month we explore the giant metal cross on Mount Royal, which is alleged to be haunted.

Haunted Research

The Mount Royal Cross is one of Montreal’s most iconic symbols. Perched high on the mountain and standing at 98-feet high, when it is lit up at night it can be seen from up to eighty kilometers away.

Rooted in deep the city’s colonial history, to many Indigenous people the cross symbolizes genocide. Because the mountain was used as a burial ground for millennia by the Mohawk and other First Nations, some feel that the Mount Royal Cross desecrates this sacred place.

On May 1^st, 2022, an Indigenous group called the Mohawk Mothers (Kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera) said now is the time to take down Montreal’s cross on the city’s famous mountain.

In a Global News report, they noted that the religious symbol rests on un-ceded Indigenous territory.

Another Mohawk resident of Kahnawake named Elizabeth reacted, saying: “Good, I am glad they want the cross down. The cross represents the churches that tortured those poor innocent Native children.”

She added:

“Montreal is haunted by restless souls, as an Elder once told me, who were buried all over the mountain.”

This information is corroborated with archaeological evidence and Indigenous oral history. There are also rumours of Indigenous burials in the vicinity of the Royal Victoria Hospital and even at the Mount Royal Cross itself.

According to paranormal experts, the site where the Mount Royal Cross is located is rife with haunted activity. Ghost hunters have captured photos or orbs and blurry images of what could be spirits lurking in the forest.

According to one paranormal investigator from Toronto: “When I got to the giant metal structure, I immediately sensed that something was wrong and felt panicky. As I went about setting up my equipment, I could feel eyes staring at me from within the forest. My ears started burning, as though someone was talking about me in a negative way. That night I recorded all sorts of EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena) and ghostly images. I have never felt so uneasy in my life during the investigation. Luckily, those feelings subsided as I descended the mountain in the dark.”

Mount Royal is part of a range of hills known as the Collines Montérégiennes.

Situated in the center of Montreal Island, it rises to 233 metres at its highest point. Mount Royal is often said to be an ancient, extinct volcano, and indeed it is part of a vastly eroded volcanic complex, which was probably active about 125 million years ago.

This entire area was underwater until about 10,000 years ago. When the waters started to recede, the mountain appeared as an island at first.

The ancestors of the Kanien’kehá:ka, or Mohawk First Nation, called the island Tiotà:ke, meaning “where the currents meet” because over a dozen rivers developed as the waters receded, with Tiotà:ke being at the center of their convergence. They called the mountain Otsirà:ke, or the “place of the fire”, because they would often build a great fiery beacon on the top of the mountain to attract trade delegations and diplomats from other First Nations for important conferences. The mountain was also considered sacred ground and was used for burials, with bodies being interred in the foetal position, as was the custom.

The ancestors of the Mohawk First Nation built a sophisticated city at the foot of the mountain called Hotsirà:ken, a major trade centre of over 5000 inhabitants. Taking advantage of fertile soils and south-facing sunshine. Hotsirà:ken was a sophisticated city with over 50 longhouses and had a wooden palisade surrounding it. The inhabitants not only traded, but also grew what were known as the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. For thousands of years it thrived as a prosperous Indigenous city.

However, in 1535, a French explorer by the name of Jacques Cartier arrived on the island. He had claimed the entire region for the King of France a year earlier by planting a cross into the ground in the Gaspé region, and now he was exploring the St. Lawrence River.  Cartier was welcomed by the inhabitants of Hotsirà:ken, which he erroneously recorded as “Hochelaga”.

The leader of the city, or Agouhanna, was a disabled man who was carried to Cartier on animal hides. According to Cartier: “This chief was completely paralyzed and deprived of the use of his limbs.”

Guided by the native inhabitants of Hotsirà:ken, Jacques climbed the great mountain Otsirà:ke and re-named it “Mount Royal”, after French King François I.

The name appeared on subsequent maps that were used by European navigators and eventually the name stuck. Today, the vast majority of Montrealers do not know that the original name of “Mount Royal” was Otsirà:ke.

The French did not return in force until 1642. The mountain city of Hotsirà:ken had mysteriously disappeared, clearing the way to colonize the island in the opinion of the French. In reality, the Mohawks at Hotsirà:ken had temporarily retreated and fled south to the heart of their territory in the Mohawk Valley due to warfare with other First Nations who had allied with the French and an epidemic brought by French colonizers. 

Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve, was sent by an ultra-religious Catholic organization in Paris called “The Notre Dame Society for the Conversion of the Savage Peoples of New France” to establish a colony. This is not a joke – it was actually called that!

In 1642, he arrived with three boats of soldiers, colonists, and religious authorities, and they established a fort called Ville-Marie in what is now Old Montreal.

Named after the Virgin Mary, it was intended to be a sort of New Jerusalem, a religious city devoted to converting First Nations to Christianity. There was a relative peace in the colony until the Mohawk First Nation learned the following year that the French had colonized Tiotà:ke, which sparked a brutal war between French and Mohawk that lasted until 1701.

Before the war, the young religious colony faced disaster on December 24, 1642, their first Christmas Eve. An ice jam caused the waters of the St. Lawrence River to rise, threatening to flood their colony.  Sieur de Maisonneuve, Jeanne Mance and the settlers prayed to the Virgin Mary for deliverance from the rising waters about to inundate their fort.

De Maisonneuve built a wooden cross on the spot and promised to carry it to Mount Royal if the flood subsided. Miraculously, the waters receded.

True to his word, on January 6, 1643, de Maisonneuve climbed the mountain and planted a wooden cross on Mount Royal to offer thanks to God for saving the settlement of Ville Marie from flooding.

The location of this cross was not the same as the present-day symbol. Indeed, it was located much lower on the mountain somewhere along Côte-des-Neiges road to the north of the Grand Séminaire de Montréal.

During a pilgrimage to the cross in 1653, de Maisonneuve discovered that the cross had been destroyed by the Kanien’kehá:ka. He entrusted newly-arrived teacher Marguerite Bourgeoys with the mission of erecting a new cross and protecting it with a stake palisade. Accompanied by thirty men and a skilled carpenter named Gilbert Barbier, Bourgeoys spent three days overseeing the construction of a new cross surrounded by a wooden palisade.

Bourgeoys would later go on to help found the first Residential School in modern-day Canada – the ominous Fort de la Montagne.

When the British Army took over the city in 1760, the cross was removed. British authorities, as Protestant worshippers, wanted this prominent Catholic symbol to be removed from the cityscape.

During the 19^th century, Catholic adherents began agitating for another of their symbols on the mountain. When anticlerical mayor Honoré Beaugrand received a proposal for a “titanesque”, 200-foot tall bronze statue of the Virgin Mary, he immediately shot down the idea.

It would have been much taller than the 151-foot Statue of Liberty.

In the early 20^th century, the Catholic Jean Baptiste Society proposed erecting a new cross on the mountain, a much larger version to be installed on the summit. This time they had an ally in Mayor Médéric Martin, a Catholic who enjoyed stirring up trouble with English Montreal residents.

The steel cross was designed by a Sulpician priest. As architects prepared the drawings, other followers started fundraising. Over 4,000 Catholic adults and 100,000 children sold commemorative stamps for five cents apiece, effectively raising $10,000 during the lengthy campaign.

Weighing 26 tons, the cross is made of steel and consists of 1,830 pieces joined by 6,000 rivets. While the original plans included an observation tower on top of the cross, that idea was scrapped for financial reasons.

On December 24, 1924, the cross was illuminated for the first time, allowing it to be seen from about 80 kilometers away.

It is also noteworthy that the cross sometimes changes colour. In the old days, the incandescent lightbulbs had to be changed manually, a very time-consuming task. In 1992, a fibre-optics system was installed to replace the antiquated bulbs.

The colour can now be changed at the flick of a switch.

It usually switches from a bight whitish-golden colour to a deep purple when the Catholic Pope dies. It remains that way until a new Pope is chosen, when it is switched back to the original colour.

This was done for Popes in 1958 (Pius XII), twice in 1978 (Paul VI and John Paul I) and again in 2005 (John Paul II). When Pope Benedict XVI retired (instead of dying) in 2013, many Montrealers were disappointed that the cross did not change colour.

The cross has also changed purple for the death of King George V (1936), yellow for the “Great Mission”, an event of the Diocese of Montreal (1960), blue at the Saint-Jean Baptiste Day celebrations on Mount Royal (1975), and red to mark a march against AIDS in the 1980s.

In 2004, the City officially took possession of the Cross, as it had been offered by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society. Today it is festooned with cameras and motion sensors that alert police the moment someone attempts to climb it.

Returning to the issue that the Mount Royal Cross may have been erected on an Indigenous burial ground, this theory is entirely possible.

Historically, Europeans have shown almost no respect for the many Indigenous burial grounds found on the mountain and elsewhere on the island. In Lumières sous la ville: Quand l’archéologie raconte Montréal, archaeologists have pinpointed the exact locations of some of these Indigenous cemeteries.

One of them can actually be found underneath the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery on the mountain, which was built over Indigenous graves. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most prominent ghost seen wandering the cemetery is that of an Algonquin warrior.

Another example can be found on a colonial map where the cartographer noted a “Cimetière des sauvages” (a racist expression for an Indigenous cemetery) just outside the city walls to the north of the Sulpician Seminary.

There is very little historical knowledge about who was buried there or why.

Was it the Indigenous people killed or executed by French authorities? Was it those who converted to Catholicism and then passed away? Or was the cemetery already present when the French started colonizing the island? It is certainly a mystery.

Today, there is a luxury condominium on the site called Les Étolies and there isn’t even a historical plaque to mark the now-destroyed Indigenous cemetery. 

Constructing on Indigenous burial grounds is a common theme in many horror novels and movies – and it almost always ends badly.

The fact that the Mount Royal Cross is seen as a symbol of genocide by many Indigenous people, the idea of removing it is certainly worth debating.

For far too long European colonists have insisted on the erasure of Indigenous history, culture and languages – and its replacement with European versions. In the Age of Truth and Reconciliation, the time is ripe to find ways to reverse this disturbing trend.

Company News

Haunted Montreal is very proud to have won the prestigious Making the World Happening Award!

This is our second award, after winning the Travel and Hospitality Award for “Quebec’s Most Unique Experience of the Year” in 2019.

We are also pleased to announce that our new Haunted Old Montreal ghost tour is almost ready and tickets will be on sale soon! We did a prototype version on June 11^th for the Bloomsday Festival. Stay tuned on our website and Facebook page!

Haunted Montreal is offering our regular ghost tours every Friday and Saturday evening on rotation:

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

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

While public tours are available on Sunday afternoons for the Haunted Pub Crawl, private tours can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors and pubs.

Our Virtual Ghost Tour is also available on demand!

For private tours, clients can request any date, time, language and operating tour. These tours are based on the availability of our actors and start at $170 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk, haunted pub crawl, paranormal investigation or virtual event during the 2021 season!

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

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

Coming up on July 13^th: Jeanne Le Ber’s Ghost

Jeanne Le Ber was a Catholic recluse who paid for a new church on condition she could live in cramped quarters behind the altar. As one of New France’s most revered personalities, she was known for self-flagellation, prostrating herself before the altar, praying, sewing and eating the leftover scraps of the poor. Recently, her ghost has been spotted near the site of the now-demolished church that was once her home – on the west corner of Saint Laurent Boulevard and Cours Le Royer in Old Montreal.

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.

Haunted Research

Located high up on the slopes of Mount Royal, the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery is rumoured to be one of the most haunted places in Montreal. Often described as a City of the Dead overlooking a City of the Living, it is reportedly home to many ghosts, fairies and other mysterious apparitions.

Haunted Montreal recently received an anonymous letter from a former Westmount High School student who had a terrifying experience in the graveyard. The letter-writer claims that a spirit followed him or her home following a visit to the cemetery. After going to sleep, the author was woken up by a ghostly male figure who was quietly uttering his or her name. Drenched in sweat from fear, the letter-writer found the strength to flick on the light switch, only to realize there was nobody present. In telling Haunted Montreal his or her story, the author joins a long list of others who have experienced ghostly and paranormal activity in the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery.

The 165-acre Mount Royal Cemetery was incorporated in 1847 after the Protestant St. Lawrence Burial Ground was deemed full and could no longer accept any new corpses. Opened in 1852, the Mount Royal Cemetery was one of the first cemeteries in North America to follow a European trend whereby burial grounds were moved outside of city limits and landscaped into beautiful gardens, ensuring the dead could rest in peace.

Administered by 21 elected Trustees, the cemetery is a private non-profit organization and, while originally designed for burials of six Protestant denominations, is now open to persons of all faiths and races. Among the lush gardens, majestic monuments, obelisks and statues have been erected over the years, creating an exceptional funerary setting. Burial rights have always been offered in perpetuity and the Cemetery Managers ensure that no graves are ever reused or abandoned, making it a very popular place to spend an eternity. Due to its exceptional history and beauty, the Mount Royal Cemetery was designated a National Historic Site in 2002.

Today, there are almost 200,000 bodies interred in the cemetery, which is slowly running out of space. Statistically, Mount Royal Cemetery is part of the largest intact burial ground in North America when combined with the neighboring Catholic Notre-Dame des Neiges Cemetery and two smaller adjacent Jewish burial grounds. These include the Spanish and Portuguese – Shearith Israel Cemetery and Shaar Hashomayim Cemetery. Of the four graveyards, the Mount Royal Cemetery is said to be the most haunted.

Legend has it that just after sunset shadowy figures begin roaming the graveyard and lingering on its bluffs. Strange, undead entities have been seen wandering through the cemetery and at night there are reports of paranormal shadows flickering about. The most famous ghost of the Mount Royal Cemetery is said to be an Algonquin warrior who has been seen near the cliffs overlooking the Camillien Houde Lookout, often terrifying tourists below.

Mount Royal Cemetery is very popular with ghost hunters, who have even been featured in VICE Magazine. There have been many reports of paranormal activity in the graveyard and unexplained photographs have appeared featuring ghostly images. Teams of paranormal investigators have reported seeing fairies in the cemetery and have heard disembodied noises, including wood creaking and a little girl giggling. One psychic likened it to the sound of “a coffin opening.”

It should also be noted that the cemetery closes at 5 pm during the colder months and that security guards patrol the entire graveyard at night in cars. One of the reasons for that, aside from the usual vandals, are rumours that black masses sometimes occur in the cemetery, allegedly involving the sacrifice of animals. This could be another reason why Mount Royal Cemetery is rumoured to be so haunted.

Returning to the anonymous letter writer, the author declared: “I wish to remain anonymous, so I created this email account which I will delete within a day or two.  I used to live in Montreal and I did have a spirit follow me home once after a walk on the Mount Royal Cemetery. I was in a college at the time and with a friend.  I didn’t know it until that night when I was alone and woken up by a male figure quietly saying my name.  I promptly told it to go away without even realizing how quickly I was responding and turned on my other side. By the time I realized that I had just seen and heard something abnormal, it left but within a second I was drenched in sweat from fear. I got the strength to turn on the light after a few seconds and saw nothing. I never had an event take place afterwards.  NO I WAS NOT HALF ASLEEP AND IMAGINING IT. I can say for certain I was woken up by this spirit.”

The author also mentioned a male friend who “has witnessed EXTREMELY strange and unexplainable things” in the cemetery, including a mysterious cult of some sort  with “a circle of candles possibly floating” nearby. The friend was also startled when “a massive white dog or wolf appeared and started running towards him.” Terrified, he ran away as fast as he could and, once at a safe distance, counted his blessings that he was unharmed.

With their creepy encounters, the anonymous author and his or her friend joined a long list of people who have experienced the paranormal in the Mount Royal Cemetery.

There is no easy answer to the question as to who or what is haunting this hallowed ground.With almost 200,000 bodies, including many people and children who died under tragic circumstances, there are a lot of possibilities.

Indeed, the first corpse to be buried, on October 19th 1852, was that of a holy man named Reverend Squire who had perished during the course of his duties.

Four days earlier he was asked to go to the Ottawa Hotel to visit a sick merchant who was dying of cholera. The next day, Reverend Squire himself fell ill and then perished soon after. His burial would mark the beginning of long series of funerals that is still going on to this very day.

The cemetery also contains a section for children who died prematurely, often due to contagious diseases, as well as 459 war graves. Many of these military personnel, 276 from World War I and 183 from World War II, were killed violently in battle. Notable politicians who died tragically include Montreal Mayor John Easton Mills, who succumbed to typhus in 1847 while caring for Irish Famine refugees, and Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott, who was cut down by brain cancer in 1892.

There are many others who met tragic fates, including some of the victims of the Titanic’s sinking. Charles Melville Hays, once the President of the Grand Trunk Railway, drowned at sea when the great ship sank after striking an iceberg in 1912. Many hours after the tragedy, his body was found floating in the ocean by a rescue boat and was identified by a gold watch with his name engraved on it. Charles Melville Hays’s corpse was transported to Montreal on a train from Halifax and he was buried in the Mount Royal Cemetery on May 8th 1912, almost a month after the tragedy.

Five more Titanic victims are buried in Mount Royal Cemetery, and there are also five in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, and one in the Baron de Hirsch Cemetery.

There is also a commemorative plaque, installed at the Montreal Sailors’ Institute Lot, where more than 550 sailors have been buried since 1890, many of them from drowning. The list of tragic deaths goes on and on.

As for the ghostly Algonquian warrior, there are many questions as to why he haunts the cemetery. Is he guarding something? Did he perish long ago in a forgotten war? Is his presence related to other First Nations burial sites found on Mount Royal? Historically, there have been discoveries of aboriginal graves on the mountain, often with the deceased being buried in the fetal position. Could the Protestant Cemetery have been laid out on top of another older burial site, creating a disturbance for those originally interred? If so, could the spirit of the Algonquian warrior have returned to this world in a sort of paranormal protest?

While nobody knows the answers to these questions, the appearance of the ghostly Algonquian warrior is definitely one of Mount Royal’s most mysterious legends.

With so many possibilities among the almost 200,000 burials, it is almost impossible to determine just who or what is haunting Mount Royal Cemetery. With all the shadowy figures, strange cults, ghosts and fairies, only one thing is certain: Mount Royal Cemetery is one of the most haunted places on the island of Montreal. It’s a true City of the Dead overlooking a City of the Living.

Company News

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

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

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

A big thank you to all of our clients who attended a Haunted Montreal ghost walk during the 2016 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, to receive the blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on January 13: Westmount’s Haunted Murray Hill Park

Westmount’s Murray Hill Park is a 14 acre, bucolic greenspace that has long attracted residents to enjoy picnics and games on its grassy slopes. The recently deceased Montreal bard Leonard Cohen grew up beside these grounds and left readers with haunting descriptions of it in his novels. There are also rumours that Murray Hill Park is haunted by ghosts from an older era. More specifically, there are unsubstantiated reports that a host of phantom children in antique under-things can sometimes be seen singing while traipsing through the large, open greenspace. If true, who are these ghostly children and why do they haunt Murray Hill Park?

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

The Camillien-Houde Belvedere is a charming spot perched high above the north-eastern slope of Mount Royal. Complete with winding stairways and garden-like slopes, the area features benches, lamp-posts, coin-operated telescopes, and places to park. The romantic belvedere offers incredible views of the Olympic stadium, Jacques-Cartier Bridge, Saint Lawrence River, and Plateau-Mont-Royal and Mile-End districts. Named after Montreal’s colorful wartime mayor, Camilien Houde, the delightful lookout is also rumoured to have a dark side. Unfortunately, despite its romantic appeal, the Camilien-Houde Lookout can be a very dangerous place at times.

Many lovers, tourists and students celebrating their high school graduation have reported strange sightings on the cliff behind the lookout, which is actually the border of the Protestant Mont-Royal Cemetery. While the most recognized ghost is that of an Algonquian warrior, undead apparitions of all sorts have been known to appear on this haunted cliff, terrifying the sight-seers on the Camilien-Houde Lookout below. To make matters worse, there have been several mysterious deaths at this location caused by people falling down the steep slopes of Mount Royal.

Starting with the history of the location, the Camilien-Houde Lookout was created in 1958, during the construction of Camilien-Houde Parkway, which required a special law to build. Following the old Number 11 tramway line established in 1930, the road links Beaver Lake at the top of the mountain with Mount Royal Avenue in the Plateau.

Always a popular location, the Camilien-Houde Lookout was renovated and enhanced in 1996 by award-winning landscape architect Wendy Graham, which enhanced its romantic appear and hence reputation as a “Lover’s Lookout”.

Camilien-Houde was the popular and flamboyant mayor of Montreal on four separate occasions, including during World War II. He was a reform-minded and also pushed for improvements on Mount Royal, such as the construction of Beaver Lake during the Great Depression.

Ever the colorful character, he is fondly remembered for expressions like: “As long as we keep a balance between the praying and the sinning, we’ll never sink into wickedness”.

Houde also had a rebellious side, and on August 2, 1940, Montreal’s controversial mayor publicly urged the men of Quebec to ignore compulsory conscription for World War II, as introduced by the Federal Government. Three days later, he was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on charges of sedition. With no trial, he was sent to be confined in internment camps in Petawawa, Ontario, then Minto, New Brunswick until his release several years later on August 18, 1944. When he returned to Montreal, he was greeted by a huge crowd of 50,000 cheering citizens. The popular mayor easily won his re-election as the leader of the city that same year.

Even in death, the old mayor was flamboyant. Following his passing in 1958, Camillien Houde was interred in an Italian marble replica of Emperors Napoleon’s tomb in the Catholic Cimetière Notre-Dame-des-Neiges.

Years later, Mayor Jean Drapeau would name the new road and lookout over Mount Royal after Houde. The move was considered ironic by many citizens because Houde had long opposed building any roads on Mount Royal.

Incidentally, the Camilien-Houde Lookout is located at the bottom of an ominous cliff, on top of which is Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery.

The 165-acre Protestant Mont-Royal Cemetery, which was founded in 1852, was designed as both a beautiful garden and hallowed burial ground. Being high up on the mountain, it has been described as a “city of the dead overlooking a city of the living.”

Adjacent to the Protestant Mount Royal Cemetery is the much larger Catholic Cimitière Notre-Dame-Des-Neiges, which was founded in 1854. Once farmland, the cemeteries were designed after a Parisian theory that suggested burial grounds should also be beautiful parklands. The two massive cemeteries are presently running out of space. Cimitière Notre-Dame-Des-Neiges is estimated to have one million graves, whereas the smaller Protestant Mont-Royal Cemetery has about 162,000 interments. When statistically combined, the cemeteries on Mount Royal constitute the largest intact burial ground in North America.

When it comes to Paranormal Activity, the Protestant Mont Royal Cemetery is said to be the more active of the two. Security guards are known to patrol the creepy burial ground in cars at night. Rumours suggest that not only have there been cases of vandalism, but also Black Masses involving animal sacrifice. Apparitions have also been seen walking through the graveyard as well standing on the edge of the high rock cliffs at the boundaries of some parts of the cemetery.

While the most recognized ghost is that of an Algonquian warrior, undead apparitions of all sorts have been known to appear on this haunted cliff, terrifying the sightseers on the Lookout below.

The island of Montreal has hosted various First Nations for thousands of years.  When French explorer Jacques Cartier visited the island in 1535, he encountered Iroquoian villagers at Hochelaga, a small city surrounded by a wooden palisade, located at the base of the mountain. When the French returned in 1642 to colonize the island, Hochelaga has mysteriously disappeared. Other First Nations, including the Algonquian, have had a relationship with the island for thousands of years, given its place as a hub of transportation and trade.  The Algonquian called the island “Minitik 8ten entag8giban” or “the island where there was a village.”

Why an undead Algonquian warrior might haunt a Protestant cemetery is anyone’s guess. Is he guarding something? Did he perish long ago in a forgotten war? Is his presence related to other First Nations burial sites found on Mount Royal? Historically, there have been discoveries of aboriginal graves on the mountain, often with the deceased being buried in the fetal position. Could the Protestant Cemetery have been laid out on top of another older burial site, creating a disturbance for those originally interred? If so, could the spirit of the Algonquian warrior have returned to this world in a sort of paranormal protest? While nobody knows the answers to these questions, the appearance of the ghostly Algonquian warrior is one of Mount Royal’s most mysterious legends.

In addition to the undead apparitions that frequent the cliff, there are other unsolved mysteries at the belvedere. A strange sighting occurred at the Camilien-Houde Lookout during the 1990s, which may have been a UFO. The former manager at the now-defunct Caverne Grecque restaurant was shocked when he witnessed a “10 foot orb” floating across the air in front of his parked car.

The large orb hovered there, in front of the belvedere, for several minutes before floating away towards the east. Unable to comprehend what exactly had happened, the baffled man still discusses the strange incident to this very day.

There is also an infestation of raccoons living in the forested area surrounding the lookout. After being fed by tourists over the years, the raccoon population exploded, prompting the City to erect signs warning people about the nocturnal rodents.

According to one tourist who visited the lookout in 2016, “The raccoons can be aggressive and seem to have no fear of people. They want one thing and one thing only – food! One of them almost tripped me when it suddenly scurried between my legs to go after a bag of chips someone was offering it. I hope they don’t have rabies.”

The darkest secret of the Camilien-Houde Lookout is that its nearby slopes can be extremely dangerous after the sun has gone down. Several years ago, at around 1 a.m. on Sunday, September 23, 2012, a 48-year-old American tourist mysteriously fell from the lookout. His worried friends called 911 to report him missing. Firefighters with mountain climbing gear were dispatched to navigate the dangerous slopes. They found the man’s body 20 minutes later at the base of a tree. He had fallen an estimated 33 meters, or 100 feet, a spokesperson for Urgences Santé said. Emergency personnel were unable to resuscitate the man using defibrillation and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Montreal police say it doesn’t appear that alcohol of a criminal act was involved, raising questions as to why he fell in the first place. While the fall appears to be accidental, authorities could not determine what may have caused the man to plunge to his death. The name of the victim was never released.

In another instance, on June 24, 2015, three people in their 20s were injured early after they toppled off Mount Royal at the Camilien-Houde Belvedere lookout while drunk. At the exact same time as the incident in 2012, at 1 a.m., a young man fell from the lookout and tumbled several meters down the slope.

According to the Montreal police, two young women tried to help him and ended up losing their footing and falling as well. Again, specialized climbers with the Montreal fire department were called in and rescued the trio. All suffered minor injuries.

Whether or not the undead apparitions or scurrying raccoons have anything to do with tourists falling to their injury or death is anyone’s guess. That the falls often happen at 1 a.m. raises further questions about whether it is mere coincidence or if there could be a recurrent haunting. Could an undead apparition consistently stalk the area at 1 a.m., looking for someone to push down the slope?  One thing is certain: the Camilien-Houde Belvedere is not only known as a “Lover’s Lookout”, but it also has a haunted reputation and is a potentially deadly place to visit after the sun has gone down.

Company News

The public season is in full swing and Haunted Montreal now offers Ghost Walks in both English and French! This year both Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Mountain are being offered, alternating on Friday nights. French tours are at 8:00 p.m. and English tours are at 8:30 p.m.

Friday, July 15              Haunted Griffintown
Friday, July 22              Haunted Mountain
Friday, July 29              Haunted Griffintown
Friday, August 5           Haunted Mountain
Friday, August 12         Haunted Griffintown
Friday, August 19         Haunted Mountain
Friday, August 26         Haunted Griffintown
Friday, September 2     Haunted Mountain
Friday, September 9     Haunted Griffintown
Friday, September 15   Haunted Mountain
Friday, September 23   Haunted Griffintown
Friday, September 30   Haunted Mountain
Friday, October 7         Haunted Griffintown

Tickets can be booked in the 2016 Tours section.

Haunted Downtown is currently being revised before translation, but is still available for private tours for groups of 10 or more people (in English only, for the moment). Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Mountain are also available for private bookings, in both English or French, subject to availability.

Finally, we invite clients who attended a ghost walk to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that is very helpful for Haunted Montreal in promoting its tours.

For those reading the blog who want to receive a new Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month and stay updated, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on August 13: Au-Pied-du-Courant Prison

Au-Pied-du-Courant Prison is popular with ghost hunters and paranormal investigators. Built to replace the decrepit Montreal Jail in 1836, the riverfront Au-Pied-du-Courant Prison is infamous for its role in the Patriot’s Rebellion of 1837-1838. Designed to house less than 300 prisoners, approximately 1500 were packed in during the political uprising. The jail also witnessed 19 executions, including several of the leaders of the rebellion. Au-Pied-du-Courant Prison  was abandoned in 1912 and sat empty for almost a decade, until 1921, when it was taken over by the Société des Alcools to warehouse copious amounts of alcohol. Today, the site includes a museum called La-Prison-des-Patriotes Exhibition Centre where visitors can learn about the failed rebellion and possibly experience something otherworldly. According to paranormal investigators, there are several ghosts haunting the old prison at the foot of the St. Lawrence River.