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 an 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 Montreal’s famous Red Roof Church, or St. John the Evangelist, which could be permanently shuttered. This raises questions about how its resident ghost might react.

Haunted Research

The Red Roof Church, or St. John the Evangelist, enjoys a prime location in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles – and a reputation of being haunted by its founder, Reverend Edmund Wood. 

Reverend Wood is a legend in the Montreal Anglican community.

Not only did he go from offering masses within a crumbling cemetery to establishing a historic church, but he was also known to have banished an offensive gargoyle that was terrorizing the city in the 1890s.

The Reverend died in 1909 and since then his ghost has been known as a friendly spirit who leaves warm feelings among those who encounter him. People have reported being hugged and comforted by an invisible force in his church.

Sadly, the Red Roof Church, which the Reverend conceived and founded, is now threatened with permanent closure. In 2023 church officials debated putting the historic church up for sale after disclosing urgent repair work that the congregation can ill afford. 

There are now concerns that if the church is shuttered, the ghost of Edmund Wood might feel lonely and start haunting other locations in the Quartier des Spectacles.

It is worth noting that the Red Roof Church has a history of supporting artists and renting its space out for everything from classical music symphonies and a homeless mission to sublime candlelight concerts to and even horror film festivals.

One classical musician, who has played at both the Red Roof Church and the neighbouring Opera House, contacted Haunted Montreal to report her concerns about the situation. 

She wrote: “I wish to remain anonymous, but I wanted to tell you that I play an instrument in a prominent orchestra in Montreal. I have played at both the Red Roof Church and the Opéra de Montréal, along with many other famous venues. The Red Roof Church has great acoustics, but there is sometimes the risk of an interruption during a performance.”

The musician added: “Once, when I was playing in a symphony at the Red Roof Church, I started to feel very warm. It was a winter concert, which was unusual. Here I was sweating when the old church is usually a bit chilly at this time of year. I was actually starting to boil as I played my instrument in the orchestra.”

She then reported what happened next: “Suddenly, as I was playing a very intense part of the symphony, I felt a warm hand grab my shoulder, as if to reassure me. However, I was jolted. Because of this weird interruption, I screwed up the next few bars of the music. I was very embarrassed to have compromised the symphony.”

The musician had heard of Reverend Wood’s ghost and chalked her paranormal experience down to this. She then added: “If they shut down the Red Roof Church, what is the Reverend’s ghost going to do? In both life and death he was very animated and sociable. I don’t think his spirit will tolerate being in an empty church for very long.”

One agent who works in programming for the Quartier des Spectacles is aware of the issue. Wishing to remain anonymous, he told Haunted Montreal: 

“Reverend Wood’s ghost is on our radar. While we know he is friendly and welcoming of people in the church he built, we cannot predict what he might do if the church is closed.”

He concluded: “The last thing we want are disturbances in other nearby artistic venues such as the Place des Arts and Opera House. We must hope that they find a way to keep the Red Roof Church open long into the future.”

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!

Before we launch our season, we are offering the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour with Augmented Reality (in English) at 1 pm on Saturday, March 15!

Learn about Black ’47, the year 75,000 Irish refugees fleeing the Famine landed on Montreal’s wharves. The tour visits key sites associated with this tragedy, such as the locations of fever sheds, burial grounds and hospitals, providing in-depth history about the Irish Famine’s impact on Montreal in 1847.

Led by Donovan King, the Irish Famine in Montreal Walking Tour also features Augmented Reality to resurrect Saint Ann’s Church, the heart of the Irish Famine community in Griffintown!

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 $235 for small groups of up to 7 people.

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are also pleased to unveil it this month! The book is titled Haunted McGill, and is authored by yours truly, Donovan King!

Our publisher is The Stygian Society. They are crowdfunding Haunted McGill through The Stygian Society’s Scriptorium. The first 25 backers will receive an exclusive 1st edition copy, beautiful art prints, and other spooky treasures. Help them reach their goal by July and secure your piece of Montreal’s haunted history!

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 April 13: The Ghostly Soldiers of Pointe à Quenet

There is a little-known old ghost story set in Beaurepaire Village, Beaconsfield, called “The Ghostly Soldiers of Pointe à Quenet”. Recorded by famous folklorist E.-Z. Massicotte, the tale involves the oldest house on the peninsula. Connected to a colonial fort from the New France Era, people in the home have spotted ghostly soldiers in the cellar and sometimes marching about the property in formation. This mysterious ghost story has been passed from generation to generation in the ancient home known today as the Maison Beaurepaire. There is wild speculation about who these ghostly soldiers are, from the ranks of the French and British Armies to Irish Fenian rebels.

Author:

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

Translator (into French):

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

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

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

For this year’s Hallowe’en Season we are launching a new ghost tour – Haunted Old Montreal!

We are currently testing the tour in English and the following dates are available at a discounted price of only $19.50 per ticket:

Sunday, August 14th @ 8 pm

Sunday, August 21st @ 8 pm

Sunday, August 28th @ 8 pm

Haunted Old Montreal will also be available in French for the Hallowe’en Season!

Haunted Montreal is currently offering our regular ghost tours in both languages:

Every Friday:

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Every Saturday (on rotation):

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

Every Sunday:

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.

Private tours can also 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 a hotel in the Quartier des Spectacles that may be haunted because several murders occurred in the building when it was known as the Bolero Tourist Rooms.

Haunted Research

An old hotel sits in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles and it is rumoured to be haunted. Built in the 1870s, it was originally named the Bolero Tourist Rooms. The establishment had a long history of catering to the seedy characters of Montreal’s old Red Light District. During that era, the hotel rented the rooms by the hour and the alleged hauntings may be related to the sordid history of the building.

In its glory days, Montreal’s Red Light District was characterized by grinding poverty, exploitation, disease, drunken debauchery, premature death and frequent violence. Not only did dangerous mobster and gangs fight each other for control of gambling, booze and prostitution rackets, but the area also witnessed violent crimes, including several unforgettable and terrifying murders.

When Prohibition kicked in across most of North America, including Canada in 1919, Montreal (and Québec) refused to join. With a strong Catholic influence, the very thought of banning wine was outrageous due to its use in Mass as the sacred “Blood of Christ”.

As millions of visitors began streaming in from all over North America looking for a good time, Montreal’s reputation as a “wide open city” was solidified. The city became even more infamous for its boozing, gambling, prostitution, and deeply entrenched corruption. Gangs, brothel-owners, criminals, prostitutes, police, and government officials were all in on the scheme.

With such a lax attitude, social problems in the neighbourhood began to multiply quickly. Illegal drugs were sold openly and women and children, some as young as 12, were forced into prostitution by violent pimps. 

Starting in the 1950’s, city officials began trying to find ways to shut down the notorious Red Light District. Slowly, with everything from brothel raids to massive demolition projects, the area started to reduce in size and illicit activities.

In 2002, proposals were made to rebrand the entire Red Light District as the Quartier des Spectacles, or Entertainment District.

Since then, the wholesale destruction of the area has continued unabated, complete with the tearing down of old theatres, displacement of street prostitution and the erasure of the salacious history of Montreal’s old Red Light District.

Today, the old Bolero Tourist Rooms no longer exist as they once did. Indeed, the building now hosts the Hotel l’Abri du Voyageur. Fully refurbished into a boutique hotel, it now features beautiful rooms with brick walls that are adorned with tasteful paintings.

In July, 2014, a Texan man named Brock wrote a very positive review of the establishment.

He wrote that he “loved the creaking of the wooden floors as we walked around the hotel !!!!” He also explained how the manager helped him play a prank on his 9-year-old granddaughter. Brock told her that the hotel was haunted by “Marie the little girl ghost who didn’t listen to her parents” and the manager backed up his story. The granddaughter fell for the prank until Brock told her a few days later that they had made up the ghost story.

Little did Brock know that the hotel may harbor real ghosts!

The most common report about hauntings in the hotel is that electronic devices can seem to take on a life of their own. One guest reported that the TV in his room randomly changed channels and would not stay on one of them. The phone also rang randomly throughout the night with no one on the other end, prompting him to think they may have been haunted by something.

In other cases, cell phone and tablet batteries have unexpectedly been drained inside the hotel, only to spring back to life once outside. One common theory suggests that ghosts are capable of draining batteries due to their negative energy.

A psychic medium also visited the hotel in mid-1990s and detected what she described as a shadowy figure staring at her through one of the windows. When she tried to communicate with it, she felt an evil presence and it disappeared, only to reappear in another window. She felt uncomfortable as the shadow seemed to be studying her, so she abandoned the investigation for her own safety.

During the Red Light era, when the hotel was called the Bolero Tourist Rooms, it was a centre for drugs and prostitution. The corner of Clark and St. Kit’s (the nickname for St. Catherine Street) was the centre for drug dealing, making the hotel ideally located. Whenever the police arrived, the dealers and junkies made themselves scarce.

Murder was not unknown in the tourist rooms either. On Friday, December 14, 1984, a 24-year old woman of no-fixed address named Sharon Deslandes was found dead in one of Bolero Tourist Rooms. There was a layer of froth on her lips.

Police initially suspected a drug overdose, but the autopsy confirmed she had been strangled.

Almost two months later, a maid discovered something gruesome. While cleaning the rooms, she found another strangled sex worker – Francine St. Hilaire, aged 35.

Based on their initial investigation, Montreal Police immediately began looking for a suspect in his early 20s. The case would lead them to Toronto. On December 3, 1985, another body was discovered. This time it was Faith Constance Russell, 38, a University of Toronto dental technician. Her corpse was found wrapped in a sleeping bag in an apartment she shared with a man named Gregory George Ashford.

Toronto police linked Ashford to the murder of at least five young women and issued a Canada-wide warrant for his arrest. They warned that Ashford should be considered violent and extremely dangerous.

Ashford was finally arrested in Winnipeg, after murdering another woman in Halifax.

Montreal police were able to eventually interrogate Ashford about the strangling of the sex workers at the Bolero Tourist Rooms, but if they got any information, it was never used in court. The murders of Sharon Deslandes and Francine St. Hilaire were never solved.

In January, 1987, Ashford pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Faith Constance Russell before Ontario Supreme Court Justice John O’Driscoll. He was given a life sentence with no chance of parole for 20 years. A few months later, he received an additional life sentence after being linked to the murder of a prostitute in Halifax.

A psychiatrist diagnosed Ashford as a sociopath and has said he a “reasonably severe, paranoid personality disorder.” Ashford has never expressed any remorse for his crimes, expressed amazement at how easy it was to kill and believes he deserves to die for what he has done.

Private Investigator Annie M. Richard wrote in-depth about the murders in La dépoussiéreuse de crimes: Lumière sur 12 énigmes judiciaires.

After serving a life sentence of 25 years, Ashford began seeking release from prison. He has been eligible for parole since 2005, but always abandoned his application when the families of his victims have gone public with their opposition.

Despite concerns from the Parole Board that he remains an “above average risk,” in 2016 Ashford was allowed to go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings in the community for his heroin addiction.

He was not to consume alcohol or drugs and had to report any female friendship to his parole officer.

Family members of the victims worry that he will strike again and the police are still trying to link him to several other murders, including those at the Bolero Tourist Rooms.

It is unknown at this time if Gregory George Ashford has been released from prison.

Whether or not the electronic hauntings and shadowy spirit are related to these murders is unknown at this time. It is not uncommon for there to be these types of disturbances at sites where tragedies have occurred, such as the brutal strangulations and murders that happened in the mid-1980s, when the Bolero Tourist Rooms were rented by the hour.

Company News

For this year’s Hallowe’en Season we are launching a new ghost tour – Haunted Old Montreal!

We are currently testing the tour in English and the following dates are available at a discounted price of $19.50 per ticket:

Sunday, August 14th @ 8 pm

Sunday, August 21st @ 8 pm

Sunday, August 28th @ 8 pm

Haunted Old Montreal will also be available in French for the Hallowe’en Season!

Haunted Montreal’s summer season is in full swing!

Every Friday:

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Every Saturday (on rotation):

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain Ghost Walk

Every Sunday:

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

For those who want to try to communicate with the Dead, we offer a real Paranormal Investigation the first weekend of every month (Fridays in French and Saturdays in English):

Paranormal Investigation – Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

Private tours for any of these experiences can be booked at any time based on the availability of our actors.

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!

Our team also releases 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.

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 2022 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 September 13^th: Manoir MacDougall

The stately MacDougall Manor is located on Gouin Boulevard in the borough of Ahuntsic-Cartierville. When it was used as a filming location for the popular television show La Galère on Radio-Canada, actresses reported paranormal activity. One felt an invisible force holding her arm and another experienced a strange silhouette. The home is popular with various paranormal investigators, all of whom are trying to figure out who or what is haunting the MacDougall Manor.

Author:

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

Translator (into French):

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

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

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

The Public Health Department has once again shut down all bars due to the Covid-19 pandemic, effectively shuttering our Haunted Pub Crawl until further notice.

To compensate, we are bringing back our virtual tour Winter Ghost Stories: A Québécois Tradition! It is currently playing on the last Saturday of January and February in the evening in both English and French!

We are also offering our other ghost walks and paranormal investigation as private tours, weather permitting:

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

Our Virtual Ghost Tour is also available on demand!

Want to give the gift of a haunted experience this winter? 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’s 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 examine Montreal’s Esplanade Tranquille, a new public square that is already rife with paranormal activity. Once the site of a revolutionary bookstore, the new esplanade must now contend with it turbulent artistic and cultural past.

Haunted Research

Esplanade Tranquille is one of Montreal’s newest public spaces.

Located in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles, the 5,000-square-metre public square was unveiled by Mayor Valerie Plante in August 2021.

Named after writer and bookshop owner Henri Tranquille, the space gives a nod to Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.

In the winter, Esplanade Tranquille features a large, refrigerated ice rink. During the warmer months, visitors can enjoy a mix of urban furniture, green space, a pavilion and a food court.

There is also a self-service library, open year-round, as a nod to the famous Librairie Tranquille.

Despite only being open for a few months, there are already allegations of paranormal activity on the esplanade. The most common report is the appearance and disappearance of books, which sometimes vanish from bags only to reappear on benches or the ground. Others have spotted a ghostly image of the bookstore re-appearing on the site. Some superstitious people believe that Henri Tranquille’s old bookstore, Librairie Tranquille, influences the new public square in a paranormal way. Others have sensed his ghost.

For example, in September 2021, one Australian tourist complained to Haunted Montreal that while visiting Esplanade Tranquille he had a paranormal experience. He sat on a bench to check his Lonely Planet guidebook for Montreal, but when he dug into his backpack he noticed it was no longer there. In its place was a copy of Honoré de Balzac’s Le Père Goriot.

Given that he did not understand French, he left the book on a bench.

As he was exiting the esplanade, he spotted his Lonely Planet book on the ground and retrieved it. The tourist explained that he felt Henri Tranquille’s spirit had something to do with his bizarre experience.

Henri Tranquille grew up in poverty in the suburb of Lachine during the Duplessis era. At the time, Quebec was a deeply Catholic society that negatively influenced almost every aspect of life. Today, the period is referred to as the La Grande Noirceur, or “The Great Darkness” in English.

Tranquille was a bright young man with high grades and a passion for reading. Impressed, the Catholic Church thought he was a good candidate to become a priest.

As such, religious authorities sponsored him for eight years of Classical Studies, a pre-requisite at the time to enter the seminary and ultimately the priesthood.

Tranquille studied topics such as Latin, Syntax, Rhetoric, Philosophy, Poetry and Literature. As he approached the end of his studies, he asked his professor if he could read the works of Auguste-Maurice Barrès. The professor frowned upon the idea, given that that Catholic Church had blacklisted Barrès’ works for being critical of the religion.

Tranquille argued that he should be able to analyze the works of Barrè critically. His professor reluctantly set out one condition. Tranquille could read the books – but his teacher forbade him from furthering any arguments that challenged the doctrine of the Catholic Church. Tranquille was outraged and saw this censorship as an attack on his intelligence.

The following year, he told his professors that he had lost interest in the priesthood. When pressed as to his reasoning, Tranquille confessed that he found the whole thing ridiculous. The Church, which had been sponsoring his studies, immediately cut off all financing, effectively expelling Tranquille from its Classical Studies program.

Undeterred, Tranquille began reading more radical authors that the Church had banned. As his anti-clerical sentiment flourished, Tranquille dreamt of opening his own bookstore – a place where nobody could tell him which books were “permissible” or not. He envisaged a gathering place where Freedom of Expression reigned supreme.

On October 30, 1937, Tranquille opened his first bookstore, Librairie Françoyse, at 61 Ontario Street West. He began to associate with radical artists, intellects and bohemians as he struggled financially to keep his bookstore afloat. It was not uncommon for Tranquille to live and sleep in his shop, despite inadequate heating. He proudly sold books that were blacklisted by the Catholic Church.

As the years passed, Tranquille would open many new bookstores in succession as his older ventures failed. These included Librairie Hollywood, Librairie Lilliput, Librairie Ménard et Tranquille and Librairie Tranquille et Boucher.

Tranquille often squabbled with his business partners when they did not see eye-to-eye over how the bookstores were run. Tranquille’s personal motto was “Exactitude before all else” and arguments would often break out over lazy employees and others who would loiter all day long inside the bookshops.

Tranquille wanted to open a new bookstore branded in his name only. He imagined Librairie Tranquille as a place not only to sell books, but as a lively cultural venue that would feature events and where ideas could circulate freely.

During his search for a new store, he found an opportunity to purchase the English-language Bleury Books at 67 Sainte-Catherine Street West, located below the Blue Sky bar. Tranquille seized the opportunity, realizing that the central location was ideal for his plan. He negotiated the sale and then began moving in his large hoard of books.

Finally, in May 1948 he opened Librairie Tranquille as the sole proprietor. Located on the southern portion of today’s Esplanade Tranquille, this bookstore would prove to be his most successful. Indeed, the events that unfolded within Librairie Tranquille would go on to help trigger Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.

On the opening day, May 8, Librairie Tranquille hosted a vernissage with the paintings of twenty artists displayed above the bookshelves.The day marked new way of doing business: a bookstore that also included art displays, literary discussions, book launches and other cultural activities.

Librairie Tranquille was an immediate success and soon many of the most avant-garde artists and intellects were participating in the bohemian establishment. People began to refer to Henri Tranquille as Monsieur Livre (“Mr. Book” in English).

The bookstore’s most famous moment occurred mere months after opening. On August 9 1948, it launched 400 copies of a controversial manifesto called Refus global (“Total Refusal” in English).

Refus global originated from a group called Les Automatistes, led by anarchist painter and professor Paul-Émile Borduas. This group created abstract paintings inspired by French surrealists and also scorned the conservative academic teaching that was wide-spread in Quebec at the time. These avant-garde artists were mostly anti-establishment and anti-religious.

The principal essay of Refus global was written by Paul-Émile Borduas and signed by fifteen other artists. It included texts by Bruno Cormier, poet Claude Gauvreau, painter Fernand Leduc and Françoise Sullivan. The manifesto was illustrated by Marcel Barbeau, Paul-Émile Borduas, Marcelle Ferron-Hamelin, Pierre Gauvreau, Jean-Paul Mousseau, Jean Paul Riopelle and Maurice Perron. Other signatories included Thérèse Renaud, Madeleine Arbour, Françoise Riopelle, Muriel Guilbault and Louise Renaud.

The manifesto advocated a strong need for liberation, preferably “resplendent anarchy.” Refus global also anticipated the coming of a “new collective hope.” It was a cultural time-bomb that finally exploded in Quebec’s deeply Catholic society.

Refus global scandalized authorities, religious figures and the press. They condemned and censored large parts of the manifesto and venomously attacked the signatories.

Borduas was singled out and subsequently lost his job as a professor at the École du meuble de Montréal, a position that he had held for over a decade. Traumatized and unemployable in Montreal, he went into self-exile into the United States with his family.

In the aftermath of the Refus global, many of the brave artists who had signed the manifesto began suffering from the attacks and blacklisting. Families were broken apart, at least one signatory, Muriel Guilbault, committed suicide and many of the artists fell into varying states of depression and mental anguish.

Manon Barbeau, the daughter of one of the signatories, documented this tragic situation in the National Film Board’s 1998 Les enfants de Refus global (in French).

The filmmaker went to meet the sons and daughters of Borduas, Mousseau and Riopelle, whom she calls “children of Refus global.” All of them, like her, suffered from serious consequences due to their parents’ revolutionary proclamation. None of them has emerged unscathed.

In any case, it is widely agreed that the Refus global was a major trigger for Quebec’s Quiet Revolution. Essentially, the provincial government took over Health and Education sectors from the Catholic Church and nationalized key resources such as banking and hydro-electricity. This ushered in the modern era, where French would be the predominant language.

The Catholic Church was widely discarded in favor of a more secular era – and Tranquille’s work at demanding Freedom of Expression was instrumental in these profound changes in Quebec society.

On January 19, 1973, Radio-Canada’s Actualités 24 released an interview with Henri Tranquille in his bookstore, which is featured here (in French).

Just over a year later, in May 1974, Tranquille found himself in serious financial difficulty and moved his bookstore to 4511 Saint-Denis. Unfortunately, his old clients did not follow the move and soon his new shop was often empty as his bills piled up.

In May 1975, he relocated for the last time to 434 Mount-Royal East. Again, he did not attract the customers he needed to keep his bookstore afloat. Three months later, he declared bankruptcy. The once-famous Librairie Tranquille was taken over by a grocery store.

The grocery store’s owner sold off Tranquille’s treasure trove of 17,500 books, among many other important documents, to Libraire René-Léon – for a mere $150.

It was the end of an extraordinary era for Henri Tranquille.

Over the next several decades, Tranquille would continue his work in Quebec’s literary scene and won the prestigious Prix Fleury-Mesplet in 1996. He was inducted into the l’Ordre national du Québec three years later.

In 2005, biographer Yves Gauthier published Monsieur livre : Henri Tranquille with Les éditions du Septentrion (in French). The fascinating biography features information about Tranquille’s nine bookstores, bohemian lifestyle and cultural achievements.

Henri Tranquille died on November 21 of the same year, age 89.

The building that hosted his most successful Librairie Tranquille, on 67 Sainte-Catherine Street West, was eventually demolished to make way for the Quartier des Spectacles.

Haunted Montreal has received several messages about the old Librairie Tranquille bookstore returning in a ghostly manner to haunt the site, most notably over the years on May the 8^th.

In 2018, Haunted Montreal received the following message from an American client who had attended one of our tours: “I was visiting the Quartier des Spectacles and Place des Arts on May 8 when I spotted an old bookstore on Sainte-Catherine Street in an old grey stone building. However, as I went to enter it, the entire building vanished into thin air, revealing an empty space. It was one of the weirdest things I have ever experienced.”

More recently, a construction supervisor on the new Esplanade Tranquille told Haunted Montreal about another paranormal experience at the site, this time on May 8, 2021. She had been working on preparing a section of the new park when one of the workers she was supervising approached her. Disturbed, the man claimed to have seen a ghostly image of the old bookstore “flickering on an off” throughout the morning.

It should be said that ghostly buildings returning to haunt their original sites are not uncommon in the Montreal region, especially on important anniversaries. Two particular examples come to mind.

The first is a ghost story called La Fantome de L’Avare (“The Miser’s Ghost” in English) from Honoré Beaugrand’s La Chasse Galerie: Legendes Canadiennes. In the story, a 70-year-old grandfather recounts a ghostly house that appeared to him when he was 20. En route with a horse-carriage to the village of Lanoraie for New Year’s Eve, he gets stuck in a severe snowstorm with very low visibility. The man said:

“I wandered for several minutes and was becoming disheartened when I noticed, on the left side of the great road, a shack half-buried in snow that I didn’t recall having seen before. I made my way with difficulty, cutting a path through the snowbanks toward the house, which I initially thought abandoned. I was wrong, however; the door was closed but through the window, I could see the reddish glow of a good hardwood fire burning in the hearth.”

Inside, is the ghost of a miser named Jean-Pierre Beaudry who had once refused hospitality to a man banging on his door during a previous blizzard. The man froze to death, condemning Beaudry to return as a ghost every New Year’s Eve to right his wrong deed. Beaudry’s ghost explained:

“For 50 winters, I have come, on God’s orders, to spend the night of the last day of each year here, without a traveler in distress ever knocking on my door. You finally came tonight, and God forgave me.”

The storyteller faints at this point and eventually wakes up in his sleigh – with the ghost house no longer in existence.

The second legend of a ghost house re-appearing comes from Griffintown’s since-deceased Denis Delaney. He was a specialist in locating the ghost of the decapitated Mary Gallagher, who is said to re-appear every 7^th year on the anniversary of her murder on June 27^th in 1879.

According to lore, 1998 was an exceptional anniversary for Mary Gallagher ghost sightings. On that occasion, Denis Delaney claimed that, by the light of a full moon, he had “looked up…and saw a house appear” at the corner of William and Murray Streets – the exact site where the infamous murder had occurred.

He explained: “In the yellow light through the window upstairs, like a lamp…I saw a figure standing there, and it asked me, ‘Will you help me look for my head? I said ‘Yes’, and then she asked me to close my eyes, and I could feel something, like a rising up around me, and when I opened my eyes, the house had vanished and she was gone.”

In conclusion, ghostly buildings often reappear on important anniversaries and Librairie Tranquille appears to be one of these. By re-appearing on May 8, the day the bookstore opened in 1948, it is entirely likely that Henri Tranquille’s ghost remained to haunt his old establishment – the bohemian bookstore that helped trigger Quebec’s Quiet Revolution.

Company News

The Omicron variant of Co-vid 19 has essentially shuttered all bars indefinitely in Quebec. This means our Haunted Pub Crawl cannot operate and we have refunded all tickets until we can re-open.

As such, we are bringing back our virtual tour, Winter Ghost Stories: A Québécois Tradition, on the last Saturday of January and February in the evenings.

We are also offering our other ghost walks and paranormal investigation as private tours, weather permitting:

The Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

The Haunted Griffintown Ghost Walk

Paranormal Investigation in the Old Sainte Antoine Cemetery

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!

We are also offering our Virtual Ghost Tour on demand in both English and French.

Please spread the word to those who might be interested in a Haunted Montreal experience and if you want to send someone a haunted experience as a gift, now you can. We now offer Haunted Montreal Gift Certificates available 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 in these hard times.

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^th: The Smallpox Ghosts of Rue Saint-Louis

Heading eastwards from the Old Montreal’s Champ-de-Mars, Rue Saint-Louis is a quaint but neglected street that does not appear on the tourist circuit. Perhaps it is just as well, given the disturbing ghosts who allegedly haunt the area. During the smallpox epidemic of 1885, when Rue Saint-Louis was at the heart of a largely French-speaking slum, the street was one of the most infected parts of the city. It witnessed many deaths due to the terrible disease, including a large number of children. One of the most notable ghosts is that of a woman carrying a small child, both of whom are bursting with smallpox pustules.

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

The Théâtre du Nouveau Monde is one of Quebec’s most famous theatres and is a star attraction in the Quartier des Spectacles, Montreal’s new Entertainment District. Located on the bustling corner of Sainte-Catherine Street and Saint Urbain streets, today the theatre offers both classical and contemporary theatre in the French language and is widely regarded as one of the most popular and professional theatres in Quebec. The theatre also has a long history of haunted activity.

Originally called the Gayety Theatre when it was constructed in 1912, the building was designed by architects Ross and MacFarlane. The theatre had been built by Canadian Theatres Ltd., a company which also owned the popular Orpheum Theatre, and was served by Columbia Amusement Company. This American company had 40 burlesque troupes in circulation to ensure theatres could host a wide variety of performances. The Gayety Theatre enjoyed financial and critical success until the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and subsequent Great Depression.

In 1930, The Gayety was renamed Théâtre des Arts and began offering French shows. When this plan failed, in 1932 it was renamed The Mayfair and began screening American movies. Again, the business model proved a failure after several years.

Finally, with the economy improving, in 1941 The Mayfair was reborn once more as The Gayety. As a nod to the good old days, the popular burlesque shows resumed, this time with even more bare skin than before. Indeed, by adding stripteasers into the mix, the theatre could guarantee excellent box office returns.

The most popular burlesque star during the 1940s and 50s was Lili St. Cyr. Bold, blonde and busty, her salacious performances quickly became the talk of the town. On some nights she could be seen taking a bath on stage or doing the reverse strip, whereas on others she performed the “Flying G”, whereby her G-string, which was hooked to a fishing line, would fly off into the balcony as the lights dimmed.

She was soon the most infamous burlesque queen in Montreal, casing much consternation among Quebec’s Catholic clergy.

Concerning Lili St. Cyr and her ‘numbers’, the Catholic diocese of Quebec seethed that “the theater is made to stink with the foul odor of sexual frenzy.” The Comité de Moralité Publique, also known as the “Morality Squad”, was called in to investigate. Led by zealous lawyers Jean Drapeau and Pacifique (Pax) Plante and other uptight citizens, the goal of the Morality Squad was to clean up the Red Light District, in which the Gayety Theatre was located.

St. Cyr was arrested and charged with “immoral, obscene and indecent” behavior. Following a well-publicized trial, she was acquitted of all charges. However that didn’t stop the wrath of the public authorities: in 1953, they went on to close down the Gayety Theatre once and for all.

That same year the theatre was sold to actors Jean Grimaldi and Michael Custom, who produced Québecois burlesque at the time. The theatre was again renamed, this time as Radio City. Only three years later, in 1956, it folded.

The theatre didn’t sit empty for long. It was bought by actor Gratien Gélinas, who renamed it La Comédie Canadienne, and began offering French theatre and music. This proved to be a popular past time and kept the theatre full of spectators for over a decade.

Meanwhile, the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde had been founded in 1951 as an itinerant company when it launched a production of the classic play L’Avare (The Miser) by Molière. Overseen by artistic director Jean Gascon and located at the Gesù from 1951–1958, it subsequently moved to the Orpheum. In 1966, the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde transferred to the Théâtre Port-Royal (today Théâtre Jean Duceppe) at Place des Arts and remained there until 1972.

In 1972, the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde acquired La Comédie Canadienne and took over the building. It has been known as the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde ever since and has produced many award-winning plays, all in the French language. However, despite the popularity of the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, the building is reputed to be haunted.

In the book Maisons Hantées (translation: “Haunted Houses”) author and researcher Danielle Goyette describes some of the hauntings at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in a story called “La Vielle Dame du F106” (translation: “The Old Lady of Seat F106”).

The theatre has many mysteries and is said to be haunted by several ghosts. Strange, unaccountable noises, including mysterious creaks and phantom footsteps, can sometimes be heard echoing throughout the theatre. There are also tales of people feeling suddenly terrified when descending into the basement or standing on the stage. There is talk that the fear is caused by a dreaded, unseen presence that unnerves even the strongest-willed people.

In one instance, an anonymous box office employee recalled a story that happened to the theatre manager in 1984 or 1985. One late evening, after midnight, the manager was doing the final rounds before heading home. While closing up the theatre, he entered the audience area for a final inspection. He was surprised to see an old woman wearing a distinct hat a small flower attached to it, sitting all alone in the theatre, in seat F106. Their eyes met and the woman smiled at him, but in the next instant, she was gone, having suddenly vanished. It happened so quickly that the manager did not have time to feel scared. Scarcely believing his eyes, the weird incident got him thinking about the mysterious seat, F106, where the woman had apparently been sitting moments before.

The manager recalled that seat F106 was defective: it was always in the downward position and could never be raised, despite several attempts to repair it. When the story began making the rounds, staff members speculated that the ghost of the old lady might be one of the theatre’s former patrons who had returned in a paranormal afterlife to continue enjoying the shows. The belief was that the seat could never be raised because the spirit of the elderly woman was sitting on it. Others suggested that the ghost haunting seat F106 might be an elderly woman who once lived in a home at the site where the theatre was now located. Whatever the case, in 1997 the theatre was completely renovated by architect Dan S. Hanganu, including the seats in the audience. Seat F106 does not exist anymore, raising questions about whether or not the ghost of the old lady still haunts the theatre.

Other mysteries at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde are related to the stage lights, which at times seem to have a life of their own. There are stories of the stage lamps turning themselves on and off over the old sound booth, even when they were disconnected from the electricity grid.

In another incident, a guide named Dominique Durand was leading a group of students on a field trip through the theatre. They had just arrived on the stage area and Dominique began to point out the ghost light hanging above the stage. The guide explained that most theatres have a ghost light, or a dimly-lit bare bulb hanging above the stage. Pointing upwards, he explained that ghost lights are always left on when the theatre is not in use to prevent accidents by ensuring people can see. He also told them the tradition started as a superstition from the days of Shakespeare, when a candle was lit to keeps ghosts away from cursing the performances.

As Dominique spoke to the group, a student jokingly flipped the off switch of the ghost light, plunging them into darkness. Dominique Durand panicked and flipped it back on, but the damage was already done. The following day, the guide learned that at the exact same moment the ghost light went out, an actor in the performance had an accident while working on his roof. Thespian Serge Postigo lost his footing and fell off the roof, seriously injuring his hand, which put the performance at risk. Luckily, despite needing to do some acrobatics in the show, the actor was able to continue playing by being very prudent.

From that time onwards, the ghost lamp has been known occasionally to turn itself on and off, joining the numerous other stage lamps in the theatre that seem to have a life of their own. There are also elevators in the theatre that sometimes move up and down on their own accord, and some staff members have occasionally reported hearing what has been described as “strange music”, despite the sound system being turned off.

On another occasion, a manager whose office was in the basement was closing up for the night. He had felt an unseen presence when alone before, but on this particular evening the presence felt stronger. At first he thought it might be another employee playing a joke on him, but he soon confirmed that he was alone in the building. As the hairs began to rise on the back of his neck, he became more and more afraid. Overwhelmed with building feeling of terror, he bolted from the theatre, leaving the door unlocked, and ran home as fast as he could.

Nobody at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde has any solid explanation for any of these bizarre happenings. Indeed, the sheer number of paranormal activities in the theatre suggests that it is very haunted.

Who are the ghosts that haunt the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde? Former guide Dominique Durand speculated that maybe one of the ghosts was born from an old manager who never left the theatre. Others believe a deceased, nostalgic actor returns to haunt the boards, unable to stay away from the theatre he loved in life. There is also the speculation about the old lady haunting seat F106 being a former theatre patron or wealthy resident in a home on the site before the theatre was built. There are also rumours that the ghost of famous stripteaseuse Lili St. Cyr haunts the theatre, although these have been discounted by author Danielle Goyette because St. Cyr died in 1999, long after the hauntings began.

One final theory is related to Claude Gauvreau, the only poet to participate in Quebec’s radical Refus Global manifesto in the late 1940s. Despite being an accomplished artist, Gauvreau was known to be emotionally fragile. He was often institutionalized at Saint-Jean-de-Dieu, a Montreal psychiatric hospital. In 1971, shortly before his play Les Oranges sont Vertes was due to open at the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, Gauvreau died mysteriously one night after falling off his roof. While some people speculated that he had committed suicide, the coroner ruled that his death was accidental. There is some speculation that his spirit may have returned to attend the opening performance of his play and that, following the show, he never left the building.

Whatever the case, if one accepts these stories, the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde would appear to be haunted by more than one ghost. Who these spirits are and why they haunt the old theatre are questions that still remain unanswered. Perhaps only with time and more paranormal encounters will more light be shed on this mystery.

COMPANY NEWS

Haunted Montreal has been busy planning its 2016 public season of ghost tours. We are pleased to announce that all public tours will now be offered in both English and French! This year both Haunted Griffintown and Haunted Mountain will be offered in both languages, alternating on Friday nights, starting in June. All English performances begin at 8:30 p.m.

Friday, June 3                      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, June 10 Haunted Mountain
Friday, June 17 Haunted Griffintown
Friday, June 24 Haunted Mountain
Friday, July 1                      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, July 8                      Haunted Mountain
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 June 13: Notman House

The Notman House is a handsome, limestone mansion on the corner of Sherbrooke and Clark Streets. Originally constructed in 1845 for Sir William Collis Meredith by famous architect John Wells, the building has changed hands and vocations many times over the decades. It has served as a home for the city’s wealthy elite, including famous photographer William Notman, a religious hospital for those deemed “incurable”, a home for elderly women, a location for film shoots and, most recently, a “dream home” for tech start up companies. It is also rumoured to be haunted and in the June edition,  the Haunted Montreal Blog features a first-person account of an uncanny encounter in the building that happened in the autumn of 2002. A man named André was working as a security guard in the Notman House, then abandoned, during a film shoot of “Wicker Park”. One night, when alone in the house, he heard the sound of uncanny, disembodied footsteps walking towards him in the passageway from the old hospital. What happened next was so unsettling that André is still seeking answers to this very day.

HAUNTED RESEARCH

Montreal’s hip Quartier Latin neighbourhood plays host to numerous theatres, cinemas and cultural and educational facilities. Located in the eastern part of the Quartier des Spectacles, the area is renowned for both entertainment and education.  La Cinémathèque québécoise is a government-funded film library, set in an old Catholic elementary school,  that screens movies which were often made in Quebec. A popular cinematic diversion in a bustling area, the facility is enjoyed by thousands of local cinephiles and tourists every year.

However, despite the cinema’s jovial atmosphere, there are persistent rumours that the building is haunted by the ghost of a little schoolgirl. Janitors have reported seeing her on many occasions, and in 2005, the girl’s spirit was spotted by an employee in one of the projection rooms, clutching a stack of school books. Could the ghost be one of the school’s former students, and if so, why is she haunting the building?

Looking at the history of the vicinity, Montreal’s Red Light District was bursting at the seams in this same area during the roaring 20s. The ramshackle neighborhood was characterized not only for its numerous brothels and prostitutes working the street corners, but also by its rampant poverty and severe overcrowding. Never the best place to raise children, the Red Light District was an unsanitary and dangerous place to be at times. Not only was rampant violence a common theme in the neighborhood, but older children, usually female, were also at risk of being recruited and trafficked by unscrupulous pimps.

Religious authorities with the Catholic School Commission of Montreal (la Commission des écoles catholiques de Montréal) intervened and had the Saint-Jacques Boys’ School built in the heart of the Red Light District in 1921. Located on the corner of Sanguinet and de Montigny Street (now de Maisonneuve), it was designed to serve the Saint-Jacques Parish. The following year, the Jeanne-Mance School for Girls was erected immediately to the east of the boys’ school, forming a small zone where youth could focus on education instead of all the endless shenanigans unfolding throughout the Red Light District.

Just one block north, for example, existed Canada’s most notorious brothel at 312 Ontario Street, where 80 prostitutes worked in three shifts around the clock. Opened for business from the World War I until the 1950s, the first floor of the building included a smoky salon to drink, dance, and socialize. The upper floors of the brothel were described as a “honeycomb” of approximately 80 small rooms where locals, tourists, and soldiers could experience prostitution. 312 Ontario was run by a notorious manager named “Madame Bobbe” and  was located just across from Police Station Number 4. From the window of his office, the commanding officer could clearly see the debauchery, although he usually turned a blind eye.

The teachers at the Jeanne-Mance School for Girls, all nuns, wanted to ensure their charges were protected from the debauchery associated with the Red Light District and 312 Ontario. The nuns were very strict and taught handwriting, history, and grammar among other subjects, including catechism to ward off any sinful thoughts. Nuns were known to punish students by smacking them with rulers, especially if they wrote with their left hand, which was seen as a sign of the Devil. For decades, the nuns diligently educated their Catholic schoolgirls.  Slowly, on the heels of World War II, the neighborhood began to change. The Red Light District slowly began to fade after the Canadian Army ordered it shut down because soldiers were contracting too many sexually-transmitted infections, endangering the overall war effort.

By 1968, Quebec’s education system was transforming from a religious system to a more secular one. After 45 years of teaching Catholic schoolgirls, the nuns decided to change their mission to social work and religious engagement. They replaced the nun’s habit with street clothing and set to work among the destitute. Two of them continued teaching at the school, with a new clientele of itinerants and others in need. In 1978, the nuns finally moved away to teach at Collège Regina Assumpta on Gouin Boulevard, leaving the Jeanne-Mance School for Girls empty.

Meanwhile, the Cinémathèque québécoise was founded in 1963 with a mission is to “preserve and document film and television heritage in order to make it available to an ever-growing and diversified public.” It hosts an extensive collection which includes tens of thousands of films, television programs, posters, photos, pieces of historical equipment, scripts, production files, books, magazines, props, costumes and other items associated with the film industry.

In 1982, the Cinémathèque québécoise acquired the old Jeanne-Mance School for Girls and moved into the premises. From 1994 to 1997, the complex was extensively redesigned and enlarged by the architectural firm Saucier + Perrotte, earning the 1999 Governor General’s Award for Architecture.

Everything seemed to be going very well at the Cinémathèque québécoise until an unexplained incident in 2005, which left many of the staff members feeling deeply disturbed.

In October, 2005, staff at the Cinémathèque québécoise were alarmed by a spike in paranormal activity in the building. As Hallowe’en approached, strange, inexplicable sightings and unexplained phenomena became more and more frequent. A young woman was working at the Cinémathèque québécoise as a ticket-taker and one evening she found herself in one of the projection rooms. As a film rolled, she witnessed the ghostly figure of a little girl, clutching a stack of school books, enter the cinema. Not believing her eyes, she began inquiring to other staff members if they too had noticed the spirit of the schoolgirl. The janitor who worked at the Cinémathèque québécoise at the time confirmed that the ghost had been spotted many times over the years, but had no explanation as to who she was or why she was haunting the old school-cum-Cinémathèque.

Rumours of the haunting continued to circulate over the years, and in March, 2015, Journal 123 reported that the Cinémathèque québécoise was one of the five most haunted sites in all of Quebec.

Staff currently working at the Cinémathèque québécoise seem unaware of any ghost presently haunting the premises. When questioned, the receptionist at the Cinémathèque québécoise said, “Those who witnessed the ghost no longer work here and we don’t have their contact details anymore.” The current film librarian added: ” I’m not aware of a ghost story at the Cinémathèque. The janitor is no longer employed by the library and I do not know the ticket-taker who worked there in 2005.” All other attempts to glean information about the hauntings from present staff have been met with silence.

However, other avenues of research have proven more fruitful: the story is spelled out in detail in Histoires paranormales au Québec, a book of ghostly and paranormal tales compiled by Thomas-Charles Vachon and Éloïse Trinel.

In the second chapter, entitled “Le petit spectre de la Cinémathèque” (translation: The little ghost of the Cinémathèque), the authors relay the ghost story in more detail.

Apparently the name of the ticket-taker was Kate and during the evening of the paranormal incident she was working as an usher for an experimental film festival. She was sitting in a near-empty cinema, in the section reserved for ushers, watching a strange film roll. Kate was sleepy and began to feel her eyelids drooping. She was about to doze off when she noticed a little girl enter the cinema clutching what she assumed was the festival’s program. Kate whispered to the girl to take a seat without bothering to check her ticket because she did not want to disturb the handful of cinephiles watching the film. The little girl paid no attention to Kate. Frustrated, Kate made a waving gesture to motion that the girl should take a seat. Again, there was no reaction. The experimental film at this point became very bright, with a snowy tele-visual effect unfolding, which lit up the cinema. Kate noticed that the light seemed to stream right through the little girl, who now appeared as ghostly and transparent. Kate assumed it was an optical illusion from the film so rubbed her eyes, but the ghostly girl was still there.

Kate tried to speak to the girl, but no words came out. Kate felt as though her mouth and body had become paralyzed. Speechless, she could only stare at the phantom schoolgirl in horror. Suddenly, the ghostly image began to fade and the little girl rushed towards a wall before disappearing into thin air. Kate’s paralysis instantly subsided. Shocked, she blinked her eyes to make sure she had control of her body and was relieved to realize that she could now move.

When the film ended, Kate turned on the lights and inspected the cinema, deeply disturbed by her experience that evening. Was she losing her mind? When she approached a close colleague with the story, her friend told her not to worry, explaining that it was not an isolated incident. Her colleague explained that since 1982, when the Cinémathèque opened in the old Jeanne-Mance School for Girls, the phantom schoolgirl had been spotted on many occasions, but only in the section of the enlarged and renovated building where the old school had existed. According to the janitor who worked there, the phantom schoolgirl was always seen clutching a stack of schoolbooks. Kate realized that it was not the festival program the girl had been carrying, but rather a bunch of books.

Over the next several weeks, Kate continued looking for answers and heard rumours that a girl had once died in a fire in the old Jeanne-Mance School for Girls. There was some speculation that the fire had occurred in an older version of the school, before it was rebuilt in the Red Light District in 1922. One theory suggested that the girl who had died in the fire was such a good student that she returned to the new school as a ghost to continue her education, albeit in a paranormal sort of way. Despite the school’s closure and ultimate re-purposing into the Cinémathèque québécoise, it appeared that the ghostly girl, perhaps unaware, continued to haunt the place.

Kate made a startling discovery a few days later. While flipping through a booklet that employees used to leave notes for each other, she noticed a sketch between two of the note-taking pages. Upon closer inspection, she was stunned to see a drawing of the phantom schoolgirl in the lower right-hand corner of a page. Scrawled in pen, the spooky drawing resembled the ghostly girl to a tee, right down to the schoolbooks. Also disturbing was the fact that sketches of immense flames filled up the rest of the page.

Kate assumed it was one of the sketches created by an absent-minded employee who enjoyed doodling. Upon questioning, the man explained that the drawing was the result of a sudden inspiration he had experienced. He had never actually heard of or seen the ghostly girl with the schoolbooks, but was inspired by some mysterious force to draw her – and the flames – in detail. When Kate told him about the ghost and rumours of her death in a fire, the colleague was deeply disturbed. Had the ghost entered his mind and prompted him to draw her?

Kate never experienced the phantom schoolgirl a second time, but according to the authors of the story, long after quitting the Cinémathèque québécoise, she would never forget her uncanny encounter with the paranormal that fateful October night in 2005.

Whether or not there have been any more recent sightings of the phantom schoolgirl is unknown. In other possibly-related news, the Cinémathèque québécoise has recently come under a cloud of scandal. On February 17, 2016, the French newspaper La Presse published an article alleging that Quebec’s most famous film director, the late Claude Jutra, was a pedophile who had molested children as young as six years old.

In 1987, the Cinémathèque québécoise named its main cinema “Salle Claude Jutra” in honour of the late filmmaker, prompting rumours that it is cursed and debate about whether or not it should be renamed as something less controversial. It is unknown whether or not Salle Claude Jutra is the same projection room where the ghost of the schoolgirl was spotted in 2005.

Whatever the case, until the phantom schoolgirl makes another appearance at the Cinémathèque québécoise, this is one ghostly tale that will likely continue to baffle Montrealers due to the mysteries surrounding it.

COMPANY NEWS

Haunted Montreal has been busy planning its 2016 public season of ghost tours. We are pleased to announce that all public tours will now be offered in both English and French! This year Haunted Griffintown (Griffintown hanté) and Haunted Mountain (Le Mont hanté) will be offered in both languages, alternating on Friday nights, starting in June:

Friday, June 3 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, June 10 8:30 pm  Haunted Mountain
Friday, June 17 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, June 24  8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, July 1              8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, July 8              8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, July 15 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, July 22 8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, July 29 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, August 5 8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, August 12 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, August 19 8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, August 26 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, September 2 8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, September 9 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, September 15 8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, September 23 8:30 pm      Haunted Griffintown
Friday, September 30 8:30 pm Haunted Mountain
Friday, October 7 8:30 pm      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 English or French, subject to availability.

Haunted Montreal is also please to announce a Jane’s Walk called “Haunted Red Light District”, on Sunday, May 8 at 2 p.m.

Jane’s Walks are an opportunity for anyone to give a free walking tour in a neighbourhood of their choice, on any given topic. The Haunted Red Light District Jane’s Walk will involve Donovan King sharing some recent research with attendees. Space is limited and guests must sign up at the Centre d’écologie urbaine de Montréal.

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 May 13: Théâtre du Nouveau Monde

Located in Montreal’s new Entertainment District (Quartier des Spectacles) is an old theatre that has changed hands many times and is reported to be haunted. Built in 1912 as the Gayety Theatre, it is presently known as the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde and is one of Quebec’s most popular venues for francophone theatre. According to various reports, the building is haunted by several ghosts that are known to cause disturbances. Mysterious, disembodied footsteps echo throughout the theatre and in the past a benign seat refused to fold into its upright position, as though someone was still sitting there. In another instance, when a visiting student turned off the theatre’s ghost light against the wishes of a guide, an actor suddenly fell off his roof and injured himself. Lastly, one employee was so terrified when working alone one night that he bolted from the theatre, leaving the door unlocked. While no one is certain exactly who is haunting the Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, there is speculation that the ghosts could include former patrons, managers from long ago and even the spirit of Montreal’s most famous burlesque star, Lili St. Cyr!

Haunted Research

Tourists wandering around Montreal’s Place-des-Arts area are often struck by an old, Neo-Gothic stone church with a striking red roof, seemingly out of place among the more modern architecture in the vicinity. With its rugged look and ecclesiastical vocation,  St. John the Evangelist Church is definitely an anomaly in the bustling new Entertainment District. Erected in 1878, the venerable Red Roof Church is certainly the oldest building in the area, which is presently undergoing a 21st Century construction boom.

As glossy new theatres, cinemas and performances venues go up, St. John the Evangelist Church remains firmly planted on the corner of St. Urbain Street and President Kennedy Avenue. It is both an architectural reminder of an earlier era and a fully-functioning Anglo-Catholic Church, which continues to serve its congregation and operate a drop-in center for the needy. What the tens of thousands of tourists streaming past during the festival season likely don’t realize is that the Red Roof Church has long been rumoured to be haunted.

The hauntings, however, are extremely unusual: they are benign. Interestingly enough, instead of unsettling cold spots and other unpleasant paranormal activities manifesting themselves, the spirit haunting the church is said to be very gentle. Indeed, “warm spots” are known to surface on occasion, comforting the parishioners lucky enough to experience one. The feeling, according to one church-goer, is not unlike “being embraced by a loved one.”

St. John the Evangelist Church is unique in Montreal. Built from 1877-1878, dedicated in 1878, and consecrated in 1905, the Red Roof Church was designed by architect William Tutin Thomas, in consultation with Rector Edmund Wood, the founder of the parish. Wood had studied churches in England and his vision was central to the construction of St. John the Evangelist.

The style of the Victorian church is perhaps best described as “slum Gothic”, originally developed for the poor Ritualist parishes of London, England. Described as “muscular” and “big-boned”, the church was designed to be sensible and restrained on the outside, but robust in decoration and capable of “advanced ritual” inside. With services offered in Latin, a pipe organ and choir, and billowing incense, the Anglo-Catholic Church, or “High Church”, caters to those who have sometimes-controversial beliefs and practices within Anglicanism. Emphasizing the Catholic heritage of the Anglican religion and the differing identities of various churches, Anglo-Catholicism embraces ancient Catholic rituals such as Solemn High Mass, Solemn Evensong and Benediction. Some controversial worshippers also hope that the Anglican and Catholic churches will eventually reconcile and merge together.

The church’s founder, Edmund Wood, was undoubtedly a remarkable man. Born in 1830 to a scholarly family in the south of England, he followed in his family footsteps as a devoted student. Following stints at schools in Brighton and London, Wood was admitted into the Ivy League at St John’s College, Oxford, in 1849. However, due to financial constraints within his family, he was quickly transferred to the less expensive University College in Durham, shattering his original dream to receive a world-class education. According to Wood, this unexpected situation caused “a wound which time will never wholly heal”. However, Wood ploughed through his studies and received his B.A. in 1854 and M.A. in 1857. He also became involved in Durham’s Anglican High Church, where he was made a deacon in 1855. He paid particular attention to the plight of poor and disadvantaged coal miners, which led to accusations of “popery” from some parishioners and raised the ire of his local bishop. Meanwhile, his family emigrated to Lower Canada and his father died in Montreal in 1857. Wood decided to follow his family and arrived in Montreal in November, 1858.

Montreal Anglican Bishop Francis Fulford immediately put Edmund Wood in charge of ministering to the poor in the south-eastern part of the parish, a vocation he would continue for the remainder of his life. Wood excelled at his work and showed a lot of empathy for the less fortunate, however the original centre for his mission work was far from ideal. At first, Wood had to contend with working from an old stone mortuary chapel in the Protestant Burying Ground (today the location of the Complexe Guy-Favreau). Bishop Fulford, with the assistance of John Samuel McCord, granted permission to use the homely and decrepit building. The first day Wood and Bishop Fulford opened the mortuary door, they were nearly overpowered by the stench of decay. The Bishop, his nostrils twitching, remarked, “Do you not think, Wood, a little incense would be appropriate?”

Edmund Wood was not discouraged. The creepy mortuary was opened for church services and seats were provided free of charge. Wood’s pastoral work concentrated on the poor, prompting the congregation to grow quickly in size. Before long, there were twice as many people sitting outside, among the tombstones, as there were inside the mortuary.

Wood, a lover of elaborate theatrical rituals, impressed his parishioners with the first choral evensong in Montreal, if not in Canada, on Christmas Eve in 1859. In 1860, he opened a school and assumed the role of teacher and headmaster.

In July, 1861, Bishop Fulford ordained Edmund Wood as an Anglican priest, laying the foundations for his future work overseeing the construction and administration of St. John the Evangelist Church.

That same year Wood founded Canada’s first Anglo-Catholic parish and the first Anglican “free seat” church in Montreal. The old system involved renting out pews, which provided income for the church but also allowed wealthy citizens to purchase the best seats. In replacing the pews with chairs, Wood advocated that the rich and poor should sit together at Church and worship as equals before God.

By 1874, the mortuary was deemed too small. A lot was purchased at Saint-Urbain and Ontario Streets, and Edmund Wood got to work planning and overseeing his dream church. After many years of meticulous work, St. John the Evangelist Church was finally opened for worship on March 6, 1878.

Wood instituted weekly and daily choral services and the ceremony of the liturgy was enhanced through a surplice-clad choir, altar candles, and a prominent cross erected on the altar.

Wood’s love of the ritualistic would eventually lead to a conflict with Reverend Ashton Oxenden, Fulford’s replacement as Bishop in 1869. Oxenden was unhappy with the “mode of conducting the ritual of public worship in one of our churches,” and tangled with Reverend Wood over his unorthodox approach to the Anglican religion. Wood, never a person to compromise his ideals, responded with a publication entitled “The catholic and tolerant character of the Church of England”.

By the 1880s, Wood’s reputation had solidified as an excellent spiritual counsellor, a passionate proponent of the use of music and ceremony to enhance the liturgy, and an initiator of a daily Eucharist in Church. Wood had successfully subdued his religious adversaries while attracting thousands of followers. Frederick George Scott, assistant master at the school Wood founded from 1884–85, suggested, “There is no church in Canada that has not learned something from the standard of worship set by Father Wood.”

When the great Rector Edmund Wood died in 1909, the city felt his loss keenly. A compassionate and selfless man, Wood was sorely missed. Bishop John Cragg Farthing began an address to his synod the following year by stating: “In the death of Mr. Wood, the Canadian Church lost one of her best known and most honoured priests. Such a life as his is witness to the fact that sacrifice alone is fruitful.”

During the church’s history, there have been many reports of benign hauntings inside the building. Parishioners speculate that the ghost might be that of the church’s selfless founder, Rector Edmund Wood. The spirit of the good rector is rumoured to still visit the Red Roof Church now and again to check up on the congregation. The ghost is not regarded as sinister, but rather is seen as a happy reminder that the church’s first patron, a passionate and visionary man, who still appears to be involved in the ministry.

According to a Montreal Gazette article from October 26, 1985, the church has been haunted since 1909, the year Rector Edmund Wood died. The article cities the rector of the era, Canon Humphrey Slattery, who believed that Wood still visited the church sometimes, but that there was nothing sinister about it. On one occasion, Slattery was alone and praying at the altar when he heard someone enter the church and take a seat. The rector began to pray aloud, expecting a response from the worshipper, however nobody responded. When he turned around to see who was sitting there, he realized that the chair was empty and he was still alone.

“It’s a presence,” claimed Slattery “There’s a feeling about the church…and sometimes it is intensified.” He went on to conclude: “It’s not a bad feeling at all,” explaining that both clergymen and parishioners have experienced Wood’s presence at the church since his death in 1909. One standing joke, according to Slattery, occurs when objects such as keys or documents go missing for short periods of time. Those seeking the lost items often claim: “Father Wood must have taken them.”

Furthermore, those attending or visiting the church have sometimes experienced comforting warm sensations. According to a theology student named Stephanie Rendino: “The only public building that I know is haunted in town is St. John the Evangelist Church.  That’s the one with the red roof behind Place-Des-Arts metro.  The founder, Fr. Edmund Wood, still visits now and again, manifesting with a warm spot as opposed to a cold spot.”

While in many churches the idea of a clergyman becoming a ghost might be seen as sacrilegious, at St. John the Evangelist Church there is no scandal. Indeed, in 1985 Rector Slattery stated: “We believe in the communion of souls so it’s not out of order to realize that the world we live in is full of spirits of those who have gone before.”

Today, the Red Roof Church is making an effort to fit in to the Quartier des Spectacles. Presently overseen by a rector named Fr. Keith Schmidt, the church continues to offer ritualistic religious services in Latin, English and French. St. Michael’s Mission offers free art classes every Thursday. Recognized for its heritage by the Conseil du Patrimoine religieux du Québec, the church has also appeared alongside Nick Nolte in the 1997, Academy Award-winning film “Affliction”, and was featured in the Quebec science-fiction television series “Dans une galaxie près de chez vous”.

The church also rents out the building for various workshops, film-screenings and spectacles. It would appear, to the satisfaction of artists, that censorship is not an issue. For example, the Pop Montreal Festival advertised a film screening of “The Omen” at the Red Roof Church as a “Midnight Mass Church Screening.” They described the horror film as being about “the pint-sized spawn of Satan wreaking havoc over a powerful political family certainly contributed to its status as one of the greatest horror films of all time.” Furthermore, the screening was co-organized with The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, a non-profit endeavour whereby “established horror writers, directors, scholars and programmers/curators celebrate horror history and culture while helping enthusiastic fans of the genre to gain a critical perspective.” Named after the fictional university in American horror master H.P. Lovecraft’s literary oeuvre, The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, despite its dark mandate, was most welcome to use St. John the Evangelist Church for their activities.

It is unknown whether or not the spirit of Edmund Wood visits when non-church activities are taking place, such as horror workshops and movie screenings. Those familiar with the ghost probably wouldn’t be surprised if the good rector did make an appearance: not only was Edmund Wood a fan of the theatrical, but he also insisted that absolutely everyone would be welcome in his church, a tradition that continues to this very day.

Company News

Haunted Montreal’s public season of ghost walks is now over for the winter months, but private bookings for groups of 10+ are still available for all of our tours. For more information or to see which times and dates are available, please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com.

Haunted Montreal is expanding for the 2016 season. Our goals are to reconfigure our website in order to improve it, to create a new box office system, to hire more actors and to have all of our tours available in both English and French. We plan to open our 2016 public season of ghost walks in May.

For clients who attended a ghost walk, we invite you 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 stay updated and receive a new Montreal ghost story on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on April 13: La Cinémathèque québécoise

Montreal’s hip Quartier Latin neighbourhood plays host to numerous theatres, cinemas and cultural and educational facilities. Located in an old Catholic elementary school, La Cinémathèque québécoise is a government-funded film library that screens movies which were usually made in Quebec. A popular cinematic diversion in a bustling area, the facility is enjoyed by thousands of local cinephiles and tourists every year. However, despite the cinema’s jovial atmosphere, there are persistent rumours that the building is haunted by the ghost of a little girl. Janitors have reported seeing her on many occasions, and in 2005, the girl’s spirit was spotted by an employee in one of the projection booths, clutching a stack of school books. Could the ghost be one of the school’s former students, and if so, why is she haunting the building?

Donovan King is a historian, teacher and professional actor. As the founder of Haunted Montreal, he combines his skills to create the best possible Montreal ghost stories, in both writing and theatrical performance. King holds a DEC (Professional Theatre Acting, John Abbot College), BFA (Drama-in-Education, Concordia), B.Ed (History and English Teaching, McGill) and MFA (Theatre Studies, University of Calgary).canadienne a perdu l’un de ses prêtres les plus connus et les plus honorés. Une vie telle que la sienne est le témoin que seul le sacrifice est fructueux. »

Au cours de l’histoire de l’église, il y a eu de nombreux rapports de hantises bénignes à l’intérieur du bâtiment. Les paroissiens pensent que le fantôme pourrait être celui du fondateur désintéressé de l’église, le révérend Edmund Wood. L’esprit du bon recteur est réputé visiter l’église au toit rouge, encore et toujours pour veiller sur la congrégation. Le fantôme n’est pas considéré comme sinistre, mais il est vu plutôt comme un rappel heureux du premier patron de l’église, un homme passionné et visionnaire, qui semblerait toujours être impliqué dans le ministère.

Selon un article de la Gazette de Montréal du 26 octobre 1985, l’église serait hantée depuis 1909, l’année ou le révérend Edmund Wood mourut. L’article cite le révérend de l’époque,  Canon Humphrey Slattery, qui croyait que Wood visitait toujours l’église de temps en temps mais qu’il n’y avait rien de sinistre là-dedans. À une occasion, Slattery était seul et priait à l’autel quand il entendit quelqu’un rentrer dans l’église et s’asseoir. Le révérend commença alors à prier à haute voix, espérant une réponse de l’adorateur mais personne ne répondit. Quand il se retourna pour voir qui était assis là, il se rendit compte que la chaise était libre et qu’il était toujours seul.

« C’est une présence » affirma Slattery « Il y a une atmosphère dans l’église… et des fois elle est plus intense. » Il en est venu à la conclusion : « Ce n’est pas une mauvaise sensation du tout, » expliquant qu’autant les membres du clergé que les paroissiens avaient expérimenté la présence de Wood dans l’église depuis sa mort en 1909. Une blague, selon Slattery, circule quand des objets tels que des clés ou des documents viennent à manquer pour une courte période de temps. Ceux qui recherchent les objets perdus affirment souvent : « Père Wood a dû les prendre. »

En outre, ceux qui vont à l’église ou qui la visitent ont parfois expérimenté des sensations chaudes et réconfortantes.  Selon une étudiante en théologie du nom de Stephanie Rendino : « Le seul bâtiment public de la ville que je sais être hanté est l’église évangélique St. John. C’est celle avec un toit rouge derrière le métro Place des Arts. Le fondateur, le Père Edmund Wood, visite encore et toujours l’église, se manifestant avec des zones chaudes par opposition aux zones froides. »

Alors que dans beaucoup d’église l’idée qu’un ecclésiastique devienne un fantôme pourrait être considérée comme un sacrilège, à l’église évangélique St. John, il n’y a pas de scandale. En effet, en 1985, le révérend Slattery a déclaré : « Nous croyons à la communion des âmes donc il n’est pas hors de propos de réaliser que le monde dans lequel nous vivons est plein d’esprits de ceux qui sont partis plus tôt. »

Aujourd’hui, l’église au toit rouge fait des efforts pour s’intégrer dans le Quartier des Spectacles. Actuellement supervisée par un révérend nommé Père Keith Schmidt, l’église continue d’offrir des services religieux ritualisés en latin, en anglais et en français. La Mission St. Michael offre gratuitement des cours d’art tous les jeudis. Reconnue pour son patrimoine par le Conseil du Patrimoine religieux du Québec, l’église est aussi apparue aux côtés de Nick Nolte dans le film qui a reçu de l’académie le prix du meilleur film en 1997 « Affliction » et a fait une apparition dans la série télévisée de science-fiction « Dans une galaxie près de chez vous ».

L’église loue également le bâtiment pour divers ateliers, projections de films et spectacles. Il semblerait, au grand bonheur des artistes, que la censure ne soit pas un problème. Par exemple, le festival Pop Montréal a annoncé le visionnement du film « The Omen » dans l’église au toit rouge comme une « projection sur l’autel d’une église sur le coup de minuit. »  Ils ont dit que le film d’horreur traitant « d’un suppôt de Satan haut comme trois pommes causant la déchéance d’une famille influente de politiciens – a certainement contribué à en faire un des plus grands films d’horreur de tous les temps. » En outre, le visionnement fut co-organisé avec l’Institut Miskatonic d’études sur le fantastique, une organisation sans but lucratif selon lequel «des essayistes, des réalisateurs, des chercheurs et des programmeurs/commissaires reconnus dans le domaine du fantastique et de l’horreur qui célèbrent l’histoire et la culture du fantastique tout en aidant les amateurs du genre à aborder cet univers d’un point de vue critique. » Nommée après l’université fictive dans l’œuvre littéraire du maître de l’horreur américain H. P. Lovercraft, l’Institut Miskatonic d’études sur le fantastique, en dépit de son mandat sombre, était plus que bienvenue à utiliser l’église évangélique St. John pour ses activités.

Personne ne sait si l’esprit d’Edmund Wood visite l’église quand aucune activité religieuse n’a lieu, comme lors des ateliers  et des projections de films. Ceux qui sont familiers avec les fantômes ne seraient probablement pas surpris si le bon révérend faisait une apparition : non seulement Edmund Wood était un fan de théâtre mais il insistait également sur le fait qu’absolument tout le monde était le bienvenue dans son église, une tradition qui continue encore à ce jour.

Haunted Nouvelles

La programmation grand public des tours de fantômes de Haunted Montréal est suspendue pour la période hivernale mais des réservations privées pour les groupes de 10 personnes ou plus sont toujours possibles pour chacun de nos tours. Pour plus d’information ou pour voir quelles sont les dates et horaires disponibles, veuillez nous écrire à info@hauntedmontreal.com.

Durant les prochains mois et en vue de la saison 2016, Haunted Montréal prévoit d’évoluer. Notre objectif est de reconfigurer notre site Internet afin de l’améliorer et d’y intégrer un nouveau système de réservation, mais aussi d’engager davantage d’acteurs et d’offrir tous nos tours aussi bien en français qu’en anglais. Nous projetons d’offrir notre programmation grand public 2016 des tours de fantômes dès le mois de mai.

Nous invitons les clients qui auraient participé à un tour de fantômes à écrire un commentaire sur notre page TripAdvisor qui s’avère très utile à Haunted Montréal dans la promotion de ses tours.

Pour ceux qui lisent pour la première fois le blogue et qui souhaiteraient rester à l’affût des dernières nouvelles et recevoir le 13 de chaque mois une nouvelle histoire de fantômes se rapportant à Montréal, veuillez-vous inscrire à notre liste d’envoi.

À venir le 13 avril : La Cinémathèque québécoise

Le Quartier Latin, quartier huppé de Montréal accueille de nombreux théâtres, cinémas et institutions culturelles et éducationnelles. Située dans une ancienne école élémentaire catholique, la Cinémathèque québécoise est une bibliothèque de films financée par le gouvernement qui projette essentiellement les films qui ont été réalisés au Québec. Distraction populaire de ce quartier animé, l’établissement est fréquenté par des milliers de cinéphiles et de touristes chaque année. Cependant, en dépit de l’atmosphère joviale qui règne dans le cinéma, il y a plusieurs rumeurs persistantes selon lesquelles  le bâtiment serait hanté par le fantôme d’une petite fille.  Les concierges ont rapporté l’avoir vue à plusieurs reprises et, en 2005, l’esprit de la jeune fille a été repéré par un employé dans l’une des cabines de projection, serrant une pile de livres scolaires. Le fantôme serait-il celui de l’une des anciennes élèves de l’école? et si oui, pourquoi hante-t-elle le bâtiment?

Donovan King est historien, professeur et acteur professionnel. Fondateur de Haunted Montréal, il coordonne ses talents pour créer les meilleures histoires de fantômes possibles, que ce soit dans la qualité rédactionnelle ou dans la performance théâtrale. Donovan King détient un DEC en Interprétation théâtrale (Collège John Abbot), un Baccalauréat en arts appliqués (Arts dramatiques en éducation, Université Concordia), un Baccalauréat en éducation (Enseignement de l’histoire et de l’anglais, Université McGill) et une Maîtrise en arts appliqués (Études théâtrales, Université de Calgary).

Haunted Research

Lurking in the basement of the grandiose Monument-National, one of Quebec’s oldest and finest theatres, is a dark drama studio that is rumoured to be haunted. Presently branded the “Studio Hydro-Québec”, the building’s basement has a very bizarre and unsettling history.

It is the site of the infamous Eden Musée, a Victorian waxworks museum where visitors could experience some of the era’s most deranged crime scenes and enjoy weird and disturbing artifacts, including at least one freakishly tall human corpse.

In 1894, Montrealers were treated to the opening of the bizarre new museum. Located beneath the busy Monument-National theatre, the Eden Musée offered an unparalleled experience into the mysterious and satisfied a taste for the sensational.

Founded by International Shows, Ltd., the company aimed “to organize in the metropolis of Canada an undertaking especially consecrated to fine arts and the glorious episodes of the history of the world.” The museum’s subterranean galleries were designed “principally for the young people”, intended as “a continual source of instruction and amusing recreation, the actual reproduction of events…being more lasting than a page of history learned off by heart.” The directors of the company sought to curate “subjects for the instruction and amusement of the public, carefully excluding the vulgar or offensive.”

The grandiose front entrance of the Eden Musée was made of rare-looking wood and had colored glass embedded throughout. A clerk with a gold-trimmed costume took a ten-cent entry fee.

Upon entering, guests were treated to a magnificent art gallery where a wax statue of Her Majesty the Queen, in court dress and jewelry, reigned above the crowds. Nearby, also cast in wax, was His Holiness Pope Leo XIII, wearing pontifical garments. Numerous artworks were generously displayed on the walls.

From the gallery, guests climbed a short staircase and entered the Room of Curiosities. Living curiosities, such as midgets and contortionists, intermingled with a strange collection, including “vagaries of nature, scientific and optical wonders of informative and interesting character.” The room also contained several statues and wax figures, stereoscopic views of battlefields and other historic sites, not to mention a wide assortment of curiosities. Visitors could also spend time trying to navigate a “magical maze.”

Nearby was the Chamber of Horrors, where guests experienced Satan’s imps, an ossified man, mummies from Mexico, a skeleton of a “devil-child” born with feet and a tail like a calf, and a replica opium den, amongst other strange offerings. Notorious murder scenes were also re-created and some of the society’s most dangerous criminals were cast in wax. The museum proudly offered life-like reproductions of the Rawdon murder, the St. Canut murder, the St. Henry mystery, the Valleyfield murder, the St. Cunegonde tragedy, Dr. Crippen and Jack the Ripper. Another popular exhibit featured a gorilla carrying off a woman after having killed her husband, whereas in “the Devil’s Kitchen” visitors could witness “Satan and his Imps roasting a human over a large fire.”

There was also a Théâtrorium, an intimate 200-seat theatre with “wonderful performances” set every hour, including live concerts, farces, plays and other presentations. Eventually, as technology advanced, Eden Musée began offering silent films and other projections. The museum also employed a special police force to maintain order in the exhibitions and to ensure women and children could visit without fear of harassment or molestation. With frequently changing exhibitions, guests never knew what was in store for them at the Eden Musée.

One of Eden Musée’s strangest attractions appeared in 1905, when the corpse of the world’s tallest man, Beaupré the Giant, was put on display. At 8-foot-three-inches, the cadaver became a major tourist attraction, an embalmed human specimen among the waxwoks.

Édouard Beaupré was born in the southern Saskatchewan town of Willow Bunch on January 9, 1881. An aspiring horseman, he had to give up the trade at 17 because, at 7-foot-1-inch, he had grown too tall to ride a horse. His freakish growth continued until he finally reached a towering height of 8-foot-three-inches. Beaupré abandoned life on ranch and launched into show business, demonstrating his strength by bending iron bars and lifting horses onto his shoulders. He toured from Winnipeg to Montreal and stayed for a time In California. While in Montreal, on March 25, 1901, Beaupré wrestled Louis Cyr, a famous French-Canadian strongman, who was regarded as the strongest man to have ever lived. While Cyr easily won the match, Beaupré’s reputation as a strongman only increased. He was very much in demand by the numerous travelling circuses, museums and freakshows of the era.

On July 1, 1904, Beaupré signed a contract with a circus promoter to appear at the St. Louis World’s Fair. However, shortly after arriving in Saint Louis, Beaupré contracted tuberculosis, which quickly resulted in a high fever. Only 23 years old, he became gravely ill and died suddenly at a local St. Louis hospital only two days after signing the contract.

His family had been unable to afford the costs of transporting his body home to Saskatchewan, so the circus requested that his corpse be embalmed – in order to display it. In death, Beaupré was more popular than ever. His towering, embalmed corpse drew huge crowds at the St. Louis World’s Fair and was the envy of many circuses, freakshows and museums.

Eden Musée was somehow able to obtain the body of Beaupré the Giant, and had the cadaver transported to Montreal in 1905. The deceased, embalmed giant was put on display amongst the waxworks, despite assurances to avoid “vulgar and offensive” displays. The macabre exhibit proved to be extremely popular. Huge crowds began to overwhelm the museum, in hopes of catching a glimpse of the dead giant. After crowds became too large and unruly, managers were forced to remove Beaupré’s corpse from the exhibition. His body was left abandoned in a warehouse and eventually it was claimed by the University of Montreal for research purposes. Doctors, professors and medical students, no doubt fascinated by his freakish anatomy, proceeded to perform various medical experiments on the body, some of them surgical.

Beaupré’s corpse was finally repatriated to Saskatchewan in 1989, after his family overcame numerous bureaucratic obstacles to get the cadaver back from the University of Montreal. Beaupré’s corpse had been seriously compromised, no doubt after decades of medical experiments, so family members had him cremated before finally burying his ashes, 85 years after his death.

Meanwhile, Eden Musée was closed in 1940 after it was deemed too tawdry by the St. Jean Baptiste Society, the owners of the Monument-National. The organization representing francophone Catholics had commissioned the theatre’s construction in the 1890s as a monument to celebrate the glory of the French-Canadian “nation”. The striking building, designed with a Neo-Renaissance façade, officially opened it on June 24, St. Jean Baptiste Day, 1893.

Over the years, the Monument-National witnessed all sorts of incredible performances. Located on the Lower Main, an area that was in the process of becoming the Jewish district of Montreal, the Monument-National “soon established itself as a hotbed of creativity, innovation, debate and performance that made it one of the most important multi-ethnic community and cultural centres in America.” Famous 19th century celebrities performed in the huge auditorium on the first floor and a burlesque theatre called “The Starland” occupied the ground floor. The Monument-National also hosted feminist performances and Yiddish theatre and is regarded as the birthplace of the struggle to establish women’s voting rights in Quebec.

Following the Second World War, the Monument-National began a long, downward spiral. The Lower Main had blossomed into Montreal’s sketchy Red Light District, characterized by brazen prostitution, overt gambling, and trafficking of all kinds. Audiences opted to attend the larger, safer and more comfortable theatres located on Ste-Catherine Street, leaving the Monument-National to sink into oblivion. The St-Jean Baptiste Society, which was struggling financially at the time, moved out in 1976.

For a time, it seemed inevitable that the Monument-National would be demolished. After miraculously avoiding the wrecking ball several times, the Monument-National was officially designated as a “valuable cultural property” in 1976. The National Theatre School of Canada took control of the building and carried out a full restoration from 1991 to 1993.

Today, an intimate theatrical studio sits in the basement where Eden Musée once flourished and, according to staff and students, this part of the building is haunted. There are reports of pipes inexplicably banging and strange noises erupting in the basement studio. According to an article in Journal Métro, the school’s Technical Director, Yves Duceppe, was very reluctant to go there alone when he was a student from 1979 – 81. At the time, the dark, un-renovated basement was creepy and infested with rats and insects. He never ventured there alone. Apparently, despite being converted into a versatile theatrical studio, the mysterious hauntings continue. Many of the students report unsettling feelings of unease and of being watched by someone or something hiding in the studio’s dark recesses. Furthermore, two floors above the studio, there are also numerous reports of a ghostly woman appearing at the top of the stairs leading to the main theatre of the Monument-National.

There are whispers among theatre students that the ghost haunting the Monument-National is none other than Sarah Berhardt, one of the greatest French actresses of her era. Bernhardt was known to play in Montreal and Quebec City and had a reputation for upsetting Catholic authorities with performances that were critical of the Church. The theory suggests that Bernhardt haunts the Monument-National because in 1905 she had wanted to play there, but due to financial constraints, had to play at the cheaper Théâtre Français instead, a mere five minute walk away in what is today Club Metropolis.

Despite being referred to as “the most famous actress the world has ever known”, Bernhardt was an extremely eccentric actress. She had several strange phobias, including the fears of being buried alive, becoming thin, growing old on stage and losing her fascinating and almost uncanny beauty. To overcome her fear of premature burial, Bernhardt was known to sleep in an uncomfortable coffin for several years.

She also kept the skeleton of a man, whom she said had died from love, hung before the mirror in her creepy boudoir, with its finger pointing at its own reflection.

When Bernhardt died in 1923, from uremia, the funeral arrangements were simple. She had had her tomb built decades before her demise, in 1889, in Paris’ Cimetière du Père Lachaise. Could her ghost have returned to the grandiose Monument-National, a theatre she had always wanted to play at? The ghostly image seen at the top of the theatre’s main staircase could be a match.

However, what of the mysterious noises, including banging pipes and upsetting feelings, that haunt the “Studio Hydro-Québec”? It seems unlikely that the ghost of a demure actress could cause such a ruckus. Perhaps a more feasible theory is that noises are caused by the spirit of Édouard Beaupré, the giant whose embalmed cadaver was unceremoniously put on display amongst the waxworks in the old Eden Musée. Generally-speaking, the Dead do not like to be disrespected, whereas Beaupré’s remains suffered numerous indignities.

Denied a proper burial with family in Saskatchewan and pumped full of formaldehyde, his corpse was transformed into a freakshow curiosity to be bartered and shipped to the highest bidder. From the Saint Louis World’s Fair to the Montreal’s Eden Musée, Beaupré’s remains would be continuously gawked at by thrill-seekers until ultimately abandoned in a dusty warehouse. Reclaimed by medical staff at the University of Montreal, his corpse would suffer many more indignities until finally reclaimed by family in 1989. Édouard Beaupré, a giant and strongman in life, would certainly be capable of making a lot of noise.

As such, perhaps a more realistic theory about the ghost haunting the basement studio is that the restless spirit of Beaupré the Giant remains, constantly reminding those who dare to enter the studio about his unnatural ordeal by banging pipes, making noises and glaring at spooked people from dark nooks and crannies. After all, being denied a proper burial for 85 years is good reason to make any spirit restless and inclined to haunt locations where their remains were disrespected.

Company News

Haunted Montreal’s public season of ghost walks is now over for the winter months, but private bookings for groups of 10+ are still available for all of our tours. For more information or to see which times and dates are available, please contact info@hauntedmontreal.com.

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Coming up on March 13: St. John the Evangelist Church

Located in the heart of Montreal’s new Quartier des Spectacles, St. John the Evangelist Church stands out with its striking red roof. What thousands of tourists streaming by it during festival season likely don’t realize is that the Anglo-Catholic church with the red roof has long been rumoured to be haunted. However, instead of unsettling cold spots and other unpleasant paranormal manifestations appearing, the spirit haunting the church is said to be gentle. Indeed, comforting “warm spots” are known to materialize, leading parishioners to speculate that the ghost might be that of the church’s selfless founder, Rector Edmund Wood, who died in 1909. He is said to still visit now and again to check up on the church’s flock. The ghost is not regarded as sinister, but rather is seen as a happy reminder that the church’s first patron still appears to be involved in the ministry.

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).

Il a jadis accueilli le dérangeant Eden Musée, un musée de cire Victorien où les visiteurs pouvaient découvrir certaines des scènes de crime les plus éprouvantes et apprécier d’étranges et inquiétants artefacts, comme le cadavre d’un homme anormalement grand.

En 1894, les Montréalais furent confrontés à l’ouverture d’un nouveau musée bizarre. Situé sous le théâtre achalandé du Monument National, l’Eden Musée offrait une expérience mystique inégalée et satisfaisait les amateurs de sensationnel.

Il fut fondé par la compagnie International Shows Ltd qui visait alors à « monter dans la métropole du Canada une entreprise qui se concentrerait essentiellement aux beaux-arts et aux épisodes glorieux de l’histoire du monde. » Les galeries souterraines du musée furent conçues « principalement pour les jeunes » et se voulaient être « une source continuelle d’apprentissage et d’amusement, la reproduction réelle d’événements… plus durable donc qu’une page d’histoire apprise par cœur. » Les administrateurs de la société ont cherché à regrouper des « sujets qui instruiraient et amuseraient le public, en prenant soin d’exclure le vulgaire ou l’offensant. »

La grandiose entrée principale de l’Eden Musée était faite de bois rare et de verre coloré entremêlé. Le droit d’entrée de dix cents était récolté par un commis au costume orné d’or.

Dès l’entrée, les invités avaient droit à une magnifique galerie d’art où trônait sur la foule une statue de cire de Sa Majesté la Reine, en robe de tribunal et pleine de bijoux. Non loin de là, également coulé dans la cire se trouvait Sa Sainteté le Pape Léon XIII, vêtu des vêtements pontificaux. De nombreuses œuvres d’art ornaient généreusement les murs.

Depuis la galerie, les invités rejoignaient par un petit escalier la Salle des Curiosités où se trouvaient des curiosités vivantes telles que des nains et des contorsionnistes, mêlées à une étrange collection comprenant notamment « des caprices de la nature, des merveilles scientifiques et optiques à caractère instructif et divertissant ». La pièce contenait également plusieurs statues, des personnages de cire, des belles vues stéréoscopiques de champs de bataille et d’autres sites historiques, sans oublier un large assortiment de curiosités. Les visiteurs pouvaientégalement passer du tempsà essayer denaviguer dans un« labyrinthe magique. »

Un peu plus loin se trouvait la Chambre des Horreurs, où les invités rencontraient parmi d’autres étrangetés, les lutins de Satan, un homme sclérosé, des momies du Mexique, le squelette d’un « enfant-diable » né avec les pieds et la queue d’un veau et la réplique d’une fumerie d’opium. Diverses scènes de meurtre étaient également recréées et certains des criminels les plus notoires de la société y étaient coulés dans la cire. Le musée offrait fièrement des reproductions réalistes de l’assassinat de Rawdon, du meurtre de St. Canut, du mystère de St. Henry, de l’assassinat de Valleyfield, de la tragédie de St. Cunegonde, du Dr. Crippen et de Jack l’Éventreur. Une autre exposition populaire mettait en vedette un gorille enlevant une femme après avoir tué son mari, tandis que dans la « Cuisine du Diable » les invités pouvaient observer « Satan et ses lutins en train de faire rôtir un humain au-dessus d’un grand feu.

Il y avait également un Théâtrorium, un théâtre intime de 200 places qui donnait « de magnifiques performances » à chaque heure, telles que des concerts en direct, des farces, des pièces et d’autres représentations. Ultimement, avec la technologie de pointe, l’Eden Musée se mit à offrir des films muets et d’autres projections. Le musée employait également une force de police spéciale pour maintenir l’ordre dans les expositions et s’assurer que les femmes et les enfants pouvaient faire leurs visites sans crainte d’être harcelés ou agressés. Avec le constant renouvellement des expositions, les invités ne savaient jamais à quoi s’attendre en venant à l’Eden Musée.

L’une des attractions les plus étranges de l’Eden Musée fut son apparition en 1905, quand le corps du plus grand homme au monde, le Géant Beaupré, fut ajouté à l’exposition. Le cadavre de 8 pieds 3 pouces devint alors une attraction touristique majeure.

Édouard Beaupré est né dans la ville de WillowBunch au sud du Saskatchewan le 9 janvier 1881. Cavalier en herbe, il dû abandonner le commerce à 17 ans car à 7 pieds 1 pouce il était devenu trop grand pour monter à cheval. Sa croissance déroutante continua jusqu’à ce qu’il atteigne finalement la taille de 8 pieds 3 pouces. Beaupré abandonna sa vie sur le Ranch et se lança dans le show business, exhibant sa force en soulevant des barres en fer et des chevaux avec la force de ses épaules. Il fit une tournée de Winnipeg à Montréal et resta quelque temps en  Californie. Alors qu’il était à Montréal le 25 mars 1901, Beaupré lutta contre Louis Cyr, un célèbre homme fort Franco-Canadien qui était considéré comme l’homme le plus fort ayant jamais vécu. Bien que Cyr remporta facilement le combat, la réputation d’homme fort de Beaupré décolla. Il était très en demande par les nombreux cirques ambulants et les exhibitions de monstres de l’époque.

Le 1er juillet 1904, Beaupré signa un contrat avec le gérant d’un cirque pour faire des apparitions à la Foire Mondiale de Saint-Louis. Cependant, peu de temps après son arrivée à Saint-Louis, Beaupré contracta la tuberculose, qui se matérialisa rapidement en forte fièvre. À seulement 23 ans, il devint gravement malade et décéda subitement à l’hôpital local de Saint-Louis, seulement 2 jours après avoir signé son contrat.

Sa famille n’était pas capable de payer les frais pour rapatrier son corps en Saskatchewan donc le cirque demanda à ce que son cadavre soit embaumé. Une fois mort, Beaupré fut plus populaire que jamais. Son immense corps embaumé attirait d’immense foule à la Foire Mondiale de Saint-Louis et créait l’envie auprès de nombreux cirques, foires au monstre et musées.

L’Eden Musée trouva un moyen d’acquérir le corps du Géant Beaupré et le cadavre fut transporté à Montréal en 1905. Le défunt géant embaumé fut exposé au sein des personnages de cires. La macabre exposition s’avéra extrêmement populaire. Des foules immenses ont commencé à déferler au musée, dans l’espoir d’entrevoir le géant mort. Les foules devinrent trop indisciplinées et les gérants furent contraints de retirer le corps de Beaupré de l’exposition. Son corps fut abandonné dans un entrepôt avant d’être finalement réclamé par l’Université de Montréal pour des fins de recherche. Les médecins et étudiants en médecine, sans doute fascinés par sa déroutante anatomie, procédèrent à diverses expérimentations sur le corps, dont des opérations chirurgicales.

Il a fallu attendre 1989 pour que le corps de Beaupré soit finalement rapatrié auprès de sa famille en Saskatchewan, après qu’elle ait dû surmonter de nombreux obstacles bureaucratiques pour le soustraire à l’université. Le cadavre de Beaupré était sérieusement endommagé, ce qui n’avait rien d’étonnant après des décennies d’expérimentations médicales, si bien que les membres de sa famille durent se résoudre à l’incinérer avant de l’enterrer, 85 ans après sa mort.

L’Eden Musée fut fermé en 1940 après qu’il eut été jugé trop tapageur par la Société de Saint-Jean-Baptiste, propriétaire du Monument National. L’organisation qui représentait les catholiques Franco-Canadiens avait élevé la vocation du théâtre en 1890 au rang de monument pour célébrer la gloire de la « nation » Franco-Canadienne. L’impressionnant bâtiment arborant une façade de la Néo-Renaissance, ouvrit officiellement ses portes le 24 juin 1893, jour de la Saint Jean-Baptiste.

Au fil des années, le Monument National vit toutes sortes de performances incroyables. Situé sur la partie basse de la Main, une zone qui était en train de devenir alors le quartier juif de Montréal, le Monument National « s’imposa bientôt de lui-même comme un foyer de créativité, d’innovation, de débat et de performance, ce qui en faisait un des plus important centre communautaire multi-ethnique et culturel d’Amérique. »  Les célébrités du 19e siècle se produisaient dans l’immense auditorium du premier étage et un théâtre burlesque du nom de « The Starland » occupait le rez-de-chaussée. Le Monument National accueillait également des spectacles féministes et du théâtre Yiddish, et il est considéré comme le berceau de la lutte qui visa à établir le droit de vote des femmes au Québec.

Après la seconde guerre mondiale, le Monument National a commencé une longue spirale descendante. La partie basse de la Main avait vu naître le superficiel quartier Red Light de Montréal, caractérisé par la prostitution effrontée,  le jeu assumé et les trafics en tous genres. Le public choisit de se rendre dans les théâtres plus grands, plus sûrs et plus confortables de la rue Sainte-Catherine, condamnant le Monument National à sombrer dans l’oubli. La Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste, qui avait à l’époque des difficultés financière, déménagea en 1976.

Pendant un certain temps, il sembla inévitable que le Monument National serait démoli. Mais après avoir évité miraculeusement et à plusieurs reprises le boulet de démolition, le Monument National fut déclaré comme un « bien culturel précieux » en 1976. L’École Nationale de Théâtre du Canada pris le contrôle du bâtiment et en fît une restauration complète de 1991 à 1993.

Aujourd’hui, un studio de théâtre intime occupe le sous-sol où se trouvait le jadis florissant Eden Musée et, selon le personnel et les étudiants, cette partie du bâtiment serait hantée.Ont été rapportés des claquements de tuyaux inexpliqués et des bruits étranges. Selon un article paru dans le journal Métro, le directeur technique de l’école, Yves Duceppe, était très réticent à y aller seul quand il y était étudiant, de 1979 à 1981. À l’époque, le sombre et non-rénové sous-sol était effrayant et infecté de rats et d’insectes. Il ne s’y est jamais aventuré tout seul. Apparemment, bien qu’il ait été converti en un studio de théâtre très polyvalent, les mystérieux phénomènes de hantises continuent. De nombreux étudiants ont rapporté de troublants sentiments de malaise et avoir été observés par quelqu’un ou quelque chose tapi dans les recoins sombres du studio. De plus, deux étages au-dessus du studio, il y a aussi eu de nombreux rapports d’un fantôme de femme qui apparaitrait en haut de l’escalier menant au théâtre principal du Monument National.

Il se murmure parmi les étudiants en théâtre que le fantôme qui hante le Monument national ne serait nul autre que Sarah Bernhardt, une des plus grandes actrices françaises de son époque. Bernhardt se représentait à Montréal et à Québec et elle était connue pour la colère qu’elle attirait des autorités catholiques de par ses prestations qui se voulaient très critiques envers l’Église. La théorie voudrait que Bernhardt hanterait le Monument National parce qu’en 1905 elle avait voulu y jouer mais qu’en raison de contraintes budgétaires elle avait finalement choisi de se représenter au Théâtre Français, à peine à 5 minutes à pied de ce qui est aujourd’hui le Club Metropolis.

Bien qu’on la disait être  « la plus célèbre actrice que le monde ait jamais connue », Bernhardt était une actrice excessivement excentrique. Elle présentait plusieurs phobies étranges, telles que la peur d’être enterrée vivante, de devenir mince, de vieillir sur scène tout en perdant sa fascinante et presque inquiétante beauté. Pour surmonter sa peur de l’inhumation prématurée, on raconte que Bernhardt aurait dormi dans un cercueil inconfortable pendant plusieurs années.

Elle aurait également gardé le squelette d’un homme dont elle disait qu’il était mort d’amour, accroché devant le miroir de son effrayant boudoir, avec son doigt pointant vers sa propre réflexion.

Quand Bernhardt mourut d’urémie en 1923, les arrangements funéraires furent simples. Elle avait fait construire son tombeau des décennies avant sa disparition, en 1889, dans le cimetière parisien du Père Lachaise. Est-ce que son fantôme serait retourné au grandiose Monument National, un théâtre où elle avait toujours voulu performer? L’image fantomatique aperçue au sommet de l’escalier principal du théâtre pourrait être la sienne.

Cependant, qu’en serait-il des mystérieux bruits dont les claquements de tuyaux, et des sentiments d’inconfort qui hantent le « Studio Hydro-Québec »? Il semble peu probable que le fantôme d’une actrice tranquille puisse causer un tel chahut. Une théorie qui serait plus plausible serait que ces bruits soient causés par l’esprit d’Édouard Beaupré, le géant dont le cadavre embaumé avait été exposé sans ménagement parmi les personnages de cire de l’Eden Musée. On a l’habitude de dire que les morts n’aiment pas être insultés et les restes de Beaupré ont subi de nombreuses profanations.

Après s’être vu refusé une sépulture auprès de sa famille en Saskatchewan et avoir été rempli de formaldéhyde, son cadavre a été transformé en curiosité de Freakshow pour être troquée et expédiée au plus offrant. De la Foire Mondiale de Saint-Louis à l’Eden Musée de Montréal, les restes de Beaupré furent empreints d’émotions fortes jusqu’à ce qu’ils soient finalement abandonnés dans un entrepôt poussiéreux. Récupéré par le personnel médical de l’Université de Montréal, son corps a subit encore plus d’indignités jusqu’à ce qu’il soit finalement récupéré par sa famille en 1989. Édouard Beaupré, géant et fort dans la vie, serait certainement capable de faire beaucoup de bruit.

Ainsi, une théorie qui serait davantage probable concernant le fantôme qui hante le studio du sous-sol serait que l’esprit inquiet des restes du Géant Beaupré chercherait constamment à rappeler son périple contre-nature à ceux qui osent s’aventurer dans le studio, en tambourinant sur les tuyaux, en faisant du bruit et en dévisageant les gens depuis les recoins sombres. Après tout, se voir refuser une sépulture pendant 85 ans rendrait n’importe quel esprit inquiet et enclin à hanter les endroits où ses restes se virent manquer de respect.

Hanted Nouvelles

La programmation grand public des tours de fantômes de Haunted Montréal est suspendue pour la période hivernale mais des réservations privées pour les groupes de 10 personnes ou plus sont toujours possibles pour chacun de nos tours. Pour plus d’information ou pour voir quelles sont les dates et horaires disponibles, veuillez nous écrire à info@hauntedmontreal.com.

Durant les prochains mois et en vue de la saison 2016, Haunted Montréal prévoit d’évoluer. Notre objectif est de reconfigurer notre site Internet afin de l’améliorer et d’y intégrer un nouveau système de réservation, mais aussi d’engager davantage d’acteurs et d’offrir tous nos tours aussi bien en français qu’en anglais. Nous projetons d’offrir notre programmation grand public 2016 des tours de fantômes dès le mois de mai.

Nous invitons les clients qui auraient participé à un tour de fantômes à écrire un commentaire sur notre page TripAdvisor qui s’avère très utile à Haunted Montréal dans la promotion de ses tours.

Pour ceux qui lisent pour la première fois le blogue et qui souhaiteraient rester à l’affût des dernières nouvelles et recevoir le 13 de chaque mois une nouvelle histoire de fantômes se rapportant à Montréal, veuillez-vous inscrire à notre liste d’envoi.

À venir le 13 mars : L’église évangélique St. John

Située au cœur du nouveau Quartier des Spectacles, l’Église évangélique St. John se distingue de par son toit rouge clinquant. Ce que les milliers de touristes qui l’environnent durant la saison des festivals ne réalisent surement pas c’est que l’église anglo-catholique au toit rouge est réputée hantée depuis fort longtemps. Cependant, au lieu des troublantes zones froides et autres déplaisantes manifestations paranormales, l’esprit qui hante l’église est décrit comme doux. En effet, des « zones chaudes » réconfortantes sont connues pour se matérialiser, conduisant les paroissiens à envisager que le fantôme soit nul autre que le fondateur désintéressé, Rector Edmund Wood, qui mourut en 1909. On dit qu’il la visite encore de temps en temps pour veiller sur les fidèles. Le fantôme n’est pas considéré comme sinistre mais plutôt vu comme un heureux rappel que le premier protecteur de l’égliseest toujours impliqué dans les saints ordres.

Donovan King est historien, professeur et acteur professionnel. Fondateur de Haunted Montréal, il coordonne ses talents pour créer les meilleures histoires de fantômes possibles, que ce soit dans la qualité rédactionnelle ou dans la performance théâtrale. Donovan King détient un DEC en Interprétation théâtrale (Collège John Abbot), un Baccalauréat en arts appliqués (Arts dramatiques en éducation, Université Concordia), un Baccalauréat en éducation (Enseignement de l’histoire et de l’anglais, Université McGill) et une Maîtrise en arts appliqués (Études théâtrales, Université de Calgary).