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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haunted Research

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

Today, McGill University is attempting to repurpose it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Company News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Please like, subscribe and hit the bell!

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

You can purchase a copy by clicking on this link.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author:

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

Translator (into French):

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

With over 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!

With the Halloween Season behind us, Haunted Montreal is moving into winter mode by restarting our Haunted Pub Crawl!

Offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English and the last Sunday of the month at 4 pm in French, the Haunted Pub Crawl is a great way to enjoy some spirits with a spirit! More details are below in our Company News section!

We are bringing back Winter Ghost Stories: A Québécois Tradition, our virtual holiday tour, for just two public presentations: December 23 and 30.

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

Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

Haunted Mountain 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 holiday 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’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 “secret pool”, one of the many terrifying sites on Mount Royal that are said to be haunted. Once a hidden oasis for hipster swimmers and sunbathers, today the pool is decrepit and has horrible rumours swirling around it of murdered children who are buried beneath its concrete foundations.

Haunted Research

Perched on the slopes of the mountain lies a mysterious and abandoned swimming pool. Authorities at the Old Royal Victoria Hospital constructed it during 1961, allegedly to allow nurses and patients to swim there. Since its construction, rumours have swirled that it was actually built to conceal murdered children buried on the site. These allegedly include Indigenous victims of the nearby Allan Memorial Institute Psychiatric Department.

Known as “Montreal’s Secret Pool”, it was closed down following the drowning of a man in 2013. Once considered a “hidden gem” and “urban oasis”, the pool is now graffiti-scrawled, crumbling and partially filled with stagnant water. It is not only creepy and decrepit, but some say haunted!

The pool is nestled between the Old Royal Victoria Hospital and the Allan Memorial Institute (a.k.a. Ravenscrag), both extremely haunted sites on the mountain.

Constructed in 1961, the swimming pool was allegedly the result of a philanthropic donation made by Henry William Morgan, chairman of the hospital board from 1957 to 1962. The pool is thus officially called the Henry William Morgan Pool. It was supposedly constructed to provide nurses an opportunity to swim and for patients in need of physiotherapy or rehabilitation.

According to the philanthropist’s grandson Charles S. Morgan:

“My grandfather, Henry William Morgan, donated the pool to the nurses of the Royal Victoria Hospital in 1961, during the time that he served as President of the Board of the hospital. He was absolutely devoted to the hospital and, in particular, to its nursing staff.  Over the years, access to the pool opened to the public and I have very fond memories of swimming there as a law student at McGill, a “secret” oasis on the side of Mount Royal.” 

As the years passed, eventually the pool took on a host of regular swimmers. However, it also slowly developed the reputation as a party scene. With an entry fee of only $5/day, it was soon swarmed by rowdy McGill students. Tourism websites and blogs started gushing about “Montreal’s secret hipster pool” and buzzing about the party atmosphere.

Some long time users began to complain that the party atmosphere had gotten out of control and that alcohol and drugs were being freely consumed in the pool area. Others objected to the lifeguards, who did not seem to be supervising the pool properly.

Another problem was that bad behaviour was going on after hours, when the pool was closed. Sometimes people would break in for late-night pool parties or to smash beer bottles and throw the picnic tables into the water.

Things reached a culmination on the afternoon of August 8, 2013. Tragedy struck at approximately 3:45 p.m. when a regular swimmer named Douglas Crabbe was spotted unconscious at the bottom of the pool by other bathers.

They summoned the lifeguards, who noted that Crabbe was not coming to the surface. A passing doctor ran over to help. Once the 67-year old man was finally pulled out of the pool, he was in a state of cardiac arrest. Crabbe was resuscitated, but was unable to breathe on his own. He was sent to the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital in critical condition and died two days later.

Following this incident, the Henry William Morgan Pool was immediately shut down by hospital authorities. Indeed, it has been sitting empty ever since.

This, despite a 2017 promise by Mayor Valerie Plante to try and re-open it, as requested by Les Amis de la piscine du Royal-Victoria . 

One of the problems it that the pool is owned by the McGill University Health Centre, which relocated the Royal Victoria Hospital to the Glen Super-hospital in N.D.G. in April, 2015. In other words, the old Royal Victoria Hospital is currently abandoned and there is zero incentive to re-open a pool with no nurses or patients to swim in it.

The other problem is much more ominous: there are persistent rumours that the pool was actually built to conceal the bodies of children who were murdered at the Allan Memorial Institute. Under the direction of McGill University psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron, unethical brainwashing experiments were carried out in the 1950s and 60s.

These included Project MKULTRA, commissioned on behalf of the CIA.

More details about the abuse are featured in our blog about Ravenscrag, the original name of the Allan Memorial Institute.

Rumour has it that orphans and children in Indigenous Residential Schools were recruited, against their knowledge, for deranged “experiments” involving excessive electro-shock sessions.

Some say that lobotomies were performed. The rumours suggest that Indigenous and other children were essentially murdered and then buried in a surreptitious manner at the site.

According to survivor Ann Diamond:

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

Kevin D. Annett’s Hidden No Longer: Genocide in Canada, Past and Present (2010) backs up Ann Diamond’s allegations. Listing unmarked Indigenous gravesites across Canada, on page 348 the document states:

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

Ann Diamond recalls visiting the pool:

“I have only been in it once or twice. The first time was in summer of 1972 with some friends – we climbed the stone wall at 2 am and swam in the dark. I think there was no Frost fence then because I don’t recall having to get over it– just the stone wall. There were a couple of other people swimming in it who arrived ahead of us. It was the place to swim on hot summer nights.”

Diamond continued: “Ten years later I heard Leonard Cohen went there all summer long and spent afternoons there. In the early 80s I think it was open to the public for 5$ and maybe you could get a membership pass for the summer. I went only once when a girl I met who was traveling to Montreal from Greece told me she wanted to meet Leonard Cohen — I guessed the best place to run into him casually was the Allan pool so I took her there and sure enough, there he was on the grass in his swim trunks.”

Twenty years later, circa 2003, Diamond was researching the MKULTRA program at McGill:

“By chance one day I was walking through NDG park and met a man, 45, who was selling off his possessions. He told me he had a brain tumor and had 6 months or a year to live. He had been a male nurse at Royal Victoria Hospital in the late 1970s and 80s. He was involved in destroying records of “births, adoptions and abortions” which were thrown into the dumpster. He said the swimming pool was a drug dealing site catering to Montreal’s beautiful people in the entertainment industry. He and other nurses would steal the purest cocaine from the hospital pharmacy and sell it to people around the pool.”

More recently, Montreal’s Office of Public Consultations (OCPM) launched a city-wide conversation on the fate of the Old Royal Victoria Hospital and Allan Memorial Institute site, which includes the so-called “secret pool”.

One of the most notable and important contributions came from the kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera, or Mohawk Mothers. They not only recalled that the Royal Victoria Hospital exists on un-ceded Mohawk territory, but also delved into the History of the site. They informed the OCPM that a former Mohawk village once existed on the site and also called out the fact that Indigenous and other children may be buried there.

In their final brief, they stated:

“In addition to archeological remains, the kanien’kehá:ka kahnistensera have been aware of allegations that indigenous and/or non-indigenous children may be buried in the vicinity of the Henry Lewis Morgan pool, and in adjacent grounds of the Ravenscrag gardens of the Allan Memorial Institute. The Henry Lewis Morgan pool was built in 1961 during Dr. Ewen Cameron’s unethical psychiatric experimentations on mind control, carried within the Allan Memorial Institute between 1954 and 1963, and funded by the Canadian government and the CIA’s MK-Ultra project.”

As part of their brief, the Mohawk Mothers interviewed 80-year-old Winnipeg resident Lana Ponting, one of the last remaining survivors of the Allan Memorial Institute. The Mohawk Mothers noted that Lana Ponting stressed three points:

1) That indigenous peoples were victims of these experiments, as she remembers seeing at least one indigenous individual receiving intense shock treatment in the Allan Memorial Institute during her stay, in April 1958;

2) That underage children were victims of these experiments, as Lana Ponting witnessed many minor individuals in the building, and as she was herself 16 years old at the time. It is also public knowledge that several MK-Ultra sub-projects included psychiatric experiments on unwitting children;

3) That the rumour that the experiments’ victims were buried in the Ravenscrag gardens surrounding the Allan Memorial Institute was already in circulation amongst its patients as early as 1958. Notably, Lana Ponting recalls that suspicious activities were conducted outside the building at night. Lana Ponting has obtained a letter her doctor attesting that she is of sound mind. Lana Ponting and many other family members of psychiatric experiments at McGill University have strong suspicions that unmarked graves, potentially including indigenous children, will be uncovered beneath the grounds of Ravenscrag.”

Indeed, according to Lana Ponting’s testimony:

“And you know it’s funny, I would get out of my room… One night I saw these people all by the south wall. And they had lights on. What was going on there? It may have happened that they were burying bodies there… They were by the south wall, a cement wall outside, on the south side of the grounds. Now over the years people were hurt by the Allan. I was tortured too, and so were a lot of other people that were in there. There is a swimming pool in the Allan, and it is rumored that it was built to hide the bodies that were buried.…They said the swimming pool was built to hide the bodies that they felt were being buried there. I am convinced that there are bodies buried in the property.”

When pressed about whether or not there were children at the Allan Memorial Institute, Lana Ponting replied:

“Oh yes. I saw underage people. I saw kids that were possibly around 8 to 10 years old. And then there were other younger ones as well.”

Lana Ponting concluded her interview by discussing the many rumours surrounding the Henry William Morgan Pool:

“Yes that was the rumor that was going around the Allan at the time that they built the swimming pool… because they wanted to hide what was around the area…It’s a terrifying thing to have to remember all this. And also the government knew what was going on, because a lot of people complained. They did nothing.”

With such shocking History unfolding, I should mention that I, Donovan King, also gave my own presentation to the OCPM.

Over the years, Haunted Montreal has received several communications about the “secret pool” on the mountain. Most of them describe haunted or paranormal activity within the vicinity.

For example, in June 2017 a client contacted Haunted Montreal who had visited the decrepit pool. She said: “Out of curiosity, I visited Montreal’s Secret Pool today. It is abandoned and filled with about a foot of stagnant water. While I was taking photos of it, I heard a sort of splash in the water. When I looked down into the pool, I swear I could see a decaying hand reaching out of the water!”

The woman was so startled that she dropped her camera and was unable to take a photo of the wretched hand before it submerged again in the murky water.

In another case, a man reported in 2020 that he had a paranormal experience at the site of the old pool. He recalled stretching out by the crumbling poolside to catch some rays and a short nap. As he dozed off, he started to have deranged nightmares. In his troubled dreams, he could hear the voices of children calling out to him, asking him for help. He visualized them underneath the pool trying to get his attention. The man woke up in a cold sweat, and immediately reported his experience to Haunted Montreal.

In conclusion, the Henry William Morgan Pool is a contested site, to say the least. Was it merely constructed to allow nurses to swim and for patients to rehabilitate, or does it hide a much darker secret?

Could it be that the concrete foundations of the “secret pool” were actually built to conceal the bodies of children murdered in deranged “experiments” at the Allan Memorial Institute?

Until a full forensic investigation is launched, the “secret pool” on the mountain will remain one of Montreal’s most notorious and unexplained sites.

Company News

With the Halloween Season behind us, Haunted Montreal is moving into winter mode by restarting our Haunted Pub Crawl!

Offered every Sunday at 3 pm in English and the last Sunday of the month at 4 pm in French, the Haunted Pub Crawl is a great way to enjoy some spirits with a spirit!

Starting at McKibbin’s Pub on Bishop Street, guests will hear some of Montreal’s most infamous ghost stories while enjoying drinks in three haunted pubs!

Designed for the winter, the pubs are each within a 5-minute walking distance to ensure clients stay warm!

We are bringing back Winter Ghost Stories: A Québécois Tradition, our virtual holiday tour, for just two public presentations: December 23 and 30.

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

The Haunted Downtown Ghost Walk

The Haunted Mountain 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 for the holidays, now you can. Introducing 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 2020 – 2021 season!

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

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

Coming up on January 13^th: Esplanade Tranquille

One of Montreal’s newest public spaces, Esplanade Tranquille, was unveiled by Mayor Valerie Plante in August 2021. Located in the heart of the Quartier des Spectacles, the square was named after writer and 1940’s bookshop owner Henri Tranquille. In the winter, it will feature a large, refrigerated ice skating rink. In the warmer months, visitors will be able to enjoy urban furniture, greenspace, a pavilion and a food court. 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 and that sort of activity. Some superstitious people believe that Henri Tranquille’s old bookstore somehow influences the site in a paranormal way.

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

On the eastern slopes of Mount Royal sits the abandoned Royal Victoria Hospital, a dark, creepy and imposing structure. Built in 1893 in the Scottish baronial style, the hospital operated for well over a century before finally being shuttered and relocated in 2015. The Royal Vic witnessed tens of thousands of deaths over its lifespan and rumours suggest that the old buildings had simply become too haunted for patients to recover peacefully any more.

Fondly nicknamed the “Royal Vic”, the hospital was established because Montreal did not have any English-language health facilities at the end of the 19^th century. The costly venture was covered by the financial contributions of two wealthy Scottish immigrants, Donald Smith and George Stephen.

Set on 18 acres of land, the hospital was designed by prominent British architect Henry Saxon Snell and built with Montreal limestone. The vast medical compound was constructed to cater to the needs of the sick “of all races and creeds” and to provide training for nurses.

Over the years, the philanthropy of many prominent members of Montreal’s English-speaking community helped make the hospital a major center of healthcare and learning. Some of the city’s most talented doctors and surgeons worked there, including John McCrae, author of “In Flanders Fields”.

In 1920, the Royal Vic became a medical research institute attached to McGill University leading to the first organ transplant in the British Commonwealth, which was performed there in 1958. The hospital has a long list of medical accomplishments.

Presently, the Royal Vic is part of the McGill University Health Care (MUHC) network, a conglomeration of hospitals and health services. In 2015, the MUHC relocated the Royal Vic and merged it into to the new Glen Superhospital in N.D.G., leaving the original limestone buildings on the slopes of Mount Royal abandoned.

Indeed, one of the reasons for the move is because the old hospital was said to be too haunted. In the past, visitors would sometimes report seeing apparitions of former patients wandering the hallways wearing antiquated hospital gowns from the late 1800s. Disembodied voices and phantom footsteps could sometimes be heard echoing down hospital corridors. Buzzers would often go off in empty rooms, summoning nurses to nonexistent patients. Strange light anomalies, such as floating orbs and flickering lights, were also known to appear on occasion. It was said that “The dead passed away here, they just did not move on.”

Some patients have had very strange and frightening experiences at the old Royal Victoria Hospital. According to various testimonials, it was not exactly the best hospital for peace of mind while trying to recover.

One particularly squeamish woman was a surgery patient in 1996. Known only as DB, she wrote of her experience at the now defunct hauntednorthamerica.net website. DB disliked hospitals and wasn’t pleased to hear rumours of hauntings at the Royal Vic. Following her surgery, DB has several bizarre experiences at the hospital. She testified:

“In bed, I woke up to a huge pool of blood, on my bed and my pajamas. Thinking my stitches had opened I rang the nurses. One nurse came, then a second, then a third. They were baffled. My bandage was intact, no blood anywhere on my skin. So they decided to remove my bandage, thinking perhaps there was a leak somewhere around it. Once they removed it everything was fine. I wasn’t bleeding from anywhere, it was so very strange. My entire body showed no sign of blood at all, yet my pajamas and bed was full. Later, after some blood work, the doctor found I had dangerously low anemia, and I needed 2 pints of transfusion.”

Despite being disturbed, DB described the uncanny experience as a good thing, stating “for some odd reason it may have saved my life.”

During her recovery period, she had another paranormal experience. DB had to visit the nurses’ station for a follow-up procedure. She wrote:

“So there I was walking the hall, just a little walk up and down the hall, minding my own business, I never chatted with anyone on that floor. Then suddenly, this old lady was standing beside one of the doorways of a room, holding that long metal thing we drag with us which holds our intravenous drip in which a salted solution of some kind keeps us hydrated.”

The old lady spoke to DB, saying: “You really want to get out of here, don’t you?”

DB was a little freaked out by what the old woman said, because she had never seen her before (or after) and there was no possible way she could have known what DB was thinking. DB wrote:

“And a strange feeling went through me, like, I just knew I shouldn’t be replying…. I just felt this…. For some strange reason I knew I shouldn’t be talking to her. The nurses’ station was close by and it was more like a feeling that the nurses shouldn’t see me ‘talking’ with her. So I just nodded my head, slightly.”

The old lady then advised DB: “Straighten your back and walk as fast as you can in front of the nurses station. It’s going to hurt, but you’ll then be out in no time”.

DB took a deep breath, pulled herself up straight, and walked the dozen steps to the nurses’ station as fast as she could.

While the procedure did “hurt real bad”, DB was pleased when that afternoon a doctor came to see her. He told her she could go home, which surprised her because she had not been due to be released for several days.

DB credited her early release to the old woman’s advice. Indeed, she began to think of the old lady as a ghost, stating: “Back at home I couldn’t understand why I never talked to her, I felt like if I had talked to her the nurses would have seen me talking to a wall.”

A few months later, DB had to go back to the Royal Victoria Hospital for a routine follow up, but her appointment was on another floor. At the time there was construction in the hospital that affected the elevators. As DB was going up to the floor where her appointment was scheduled, the elevator suddenly stopped at the floor where she had encountered the ghostly old woman. When the doors opened, DB was startled when she spotted the same intravenous pole in the exact location where she had first encountered the mysterious old lady.

“That was just weird,” wrote DB, “like some sort of reminder.”

DB’s bizarre story was but one of many that plagued patients and staff over the years at the Royal Victoria Hospital. As Hallowe’en approached in 2013, trouble started brewing when staff members decided to publish some of their own ghostly tales on the hospital’s website. On October 30, the Royal Vic announced: “In the spirit of Halloween this week, we would like to share some chilling ghost stories that were submitted by our MUHC staff.” A total of three haunted tales, all disturbing, were posted online.

The first, entitled “Haunted painting”, described a deranged artwork that used to upset people unfortunate enough to pass by it in one of the pavilions:

“Hanging upon the walls of a patients’ ward in the Ross Pavilion of the Royal Victoria Hospital, was once a unique painting. The scene was of a house and a beautiful landscape but it had been reported by patients and staff that sometimes, an old lady appeared in the window looking out. At times, patients said they saw an old lady coming out of the house, looking around, before going back in. The painting was so disturbing to the patients and staff, they decided to remove it from the wall.”

Whether or not the elderly lady in the painting was related to the old woman with the intravenous pole who DB encountered is unknown, but it raises questions about why an elderly woman might haunt the hospital.

The second story posted on the website, “Ghosts of the RVH”, described an exhausted nurse who was harassed by wispy, malevolent spirits while trying to take a nap on a couch:

“One night at the Royal Victoria Hospital, a nurse was taking a break. While lying on a couch she saw an apparition standing over her, which she described as a white smoky light. She got up to take a better look and told it to go away. When it didn’t move, she proceeded to pass her hands through the apparition several times to disperse the white “fog.” Eventually, it did go away but it came back with two other apparitions. She tried to scream, but nothing came out. The apparitions finally left but the nurse never rested on that couch again.”

The last of the three stories had an ominous title: “Locked door…”

“A patient had just passed away in M5 Cardiac of the Royal Victoria Hospital. The staff arranged him and closed the door as they waited for his family.  Later, they realized the door of the room was locked from the inside. No one was in the room, except for the dead patient. Security had to come and unlock the door.  The staff thought the patient did not want his family to see him like that.”

Following the publication the Royal Victoria Hospital’s ghost stories, some patients began to complain that the dark tales were not good for their peace of mind. Simply put, in order to recover efficiently, they felt that they should feel safe and peaceful instead of disturbed and frightened.

Officials assured the complainants not to worry because plans were afoot to move the operations of the Royal Victoria Hospital into a new super-hospital called the Glen. The old hospital, which was seen by some people as being too haunted after over a century in operation, would be abandoned once and for all. The thinking at the time was that the ghosts would most likely remain in the old buildings, meaning patients and staff would no longer have to cope with them in the shiny new facility. As for the buildings comprising the old Royal Victoria Hospital, they could be recycled into something else.

Around that time, Montreal’s former mayor, Denis Coderre, announced that he was going to meet with provincial officials in an attempt to hammer out a plan to repurpose the old hospital.

He explained: “We’re all working together because we don’t want to create kind of a ghost village there.”

As promised, in 2015, all the staff and patients were moved to the new Glen superhospital in N.D.G., a few kilometers to the west of the original. Billed as the “biggest hospital move in Canadian history”, the operation began at 7 a.m. on Sunday, April 26. A total of 154 patients were transferred from the old Royal Vic by a convoy of ambulances to the new superhospital, the first being a baby in neonatal intensive care.

Over the next several hours, an ambulance would depart roughly every three minutes.

To mark the event, the Black Watch Royal Highland Regiment paid tribute in a ceremony with swirling bagpipes.

Just slightly after the twelve bells of noon, the operation was complete. After a full 122 years in operation, the old Royal Victoria Hospital was unceremoniously shuttered, leaving its ghosts behind once and for all.

An ER doctor named Greg Clark was clearly relieved following the successful move. He told reporters: “We’re very excited to have this opportunity to be in this modern hospital.”

The Royal Vic’s new home, the MUHC or Glen superhospital, is a brand new health care facility featuring state-of-the-art technology. Spanning five city blocks, the health complex has 346 adult care beds, 154 pediatric care beds, more than 8,000 staff and a research institute attached to McGill University.

Other hospitals that have since moved into the structure include the Montreal Chest Institute, the Cedars Cancer Centre, the Montreal Children’s Hospital and the Shriners Hospital for Children. The new Royal Vic has the honor of occupying the very center of the massive health care complex.

As the new superhospital began bustling with its many new arrivals, the abandoned Royal Vic began to take on a forlorn look, its empty windows staring down onto the city below. With no decision taken about repurposing the buildings, the old structures began to take on the haunted atmosphere that the former mayor was trying to avoid.

While many Montrealers began to shun the creepy old hospital, other braver souls decided to try and make some good use of it. Occasionally, it is used for a film shoot or other cultural activity.

Just a few months after the Royal Vic’s closure, playwright Alyson Grant wrote an immersive, site-specific piece of theatre called “Progress!”, which she set in the hospital’s old nurses’ lounge.

Perhaps inspired by the spooky surroundings, Grant included several ghosts in her dramatic work. In a review, Montreal Gazette theatre critic Jim Burke wrote: “It begins with a middle-aged patient waking up from a suicide attempt to find two Victorian vaudevillian ghosts putting on a show of her life. The ghosts represent the very first two patients to die in the woman’s sick room, circa 1893, which allows Grant to muse over the hospital’s 120-year history.”

In the article, Grant elaborated: “The Royal Vic loomed so large in the lives of Montrealers as it stood on the hill here. So many Montrealers know all the nooks and crannies of this hospital. They walked the corridors, or held the hands of people dying here. They were born here or gave birth here or got better here.”

With the shuttering of the hospital, Grant openly wondered about its ghosts: “What’s going to happen to all those other people who died here? Obviously not literally, but their spirit, or my sense of their spirit.”

She explained that the two ghosts in her play are upset because “they were supposed to be here forever, taking care of people who were also dying in their room. And now that’s all been changed.”

For Grant, this paranormal dynamic was an important point for Montreal: “In the city’s psyche, it’s a huge thing.”

Grant was not the only person still thinking about the ghosts in the abandoned hospital.

In August, 2017, authors Mark Leslie and Rhonda Parrish published “Haunted Hospitals: Eerie Tales About Hospitals, Sanatoriums, and Other Institutions”.

The book is introduced as such:

“Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing, places of birth, and places of hope. But with all of the varying highs and lows that are experienced in these buildings, is it any wonder when echoes linger indefinitely?”

The book covers various institutions and features “frighteningly eerie tales from Canada, the United States, and around the world.” Sure enough, the many ghosts of Montreal’s old Royal Victoria Hospital are highlighted in the book (pages 83 – 86).

Co-author Rhonda Parrish explained: “If paranormal phenomena are going to occur, what better place than in a hospital? Day after day the most extreme of human experiences play out within the walls of hospitals. The most intense emotions are experienced again and again. Birth. Death. Trauma. Suffering…Furthermore, if human spirits are trapped on this earth by trauma, disturbance or unfinished business…what better location than a hospital to forge the chains that hold them here?”

With so much buzz about the haunted hospital, more recently, Radio Canada sent an urban chronicler to investigate. Just before Hallowe’en in 2017, Hugo Lavoie was given the assignment to explore the underside of the old Royal Victoria Hospital for a French-language program called Gravel le matin.

The segment was titled “Visite du tunnel de la mort de l’ancien hôpital Royal Victoria” (translation: Visit to the Tunnel of Death at the Old Royal Victoria Hospital).

Accompanied by Dr. Jonathan Meakins, who is now in charge of heritage at the old Royal Vic, and conservator Alexandra Kirsh, Hugo Lavoie began his visit in the former emergency room of the old establishment.

Wanting to recreate the experience of a patient dying, Lavoie was then taken to the now-empty resuscitation chamber and then an old surgery room.

He mused: “When things go wrong, we die and then are brought to the autopsy room. You have to go down to the basement to go through the infamous corridor. It’s a bit disturbing.” His next stop was the infamous Tunnel of Death.

When the hospital was in operation, the Tunnel of Death was a very busy place. When a patient died, the corpse was placed in a large box and was then transported through the macabre tunnel, passing under University Street, to the autopsy room at the Institute of Pathology.

“If you don’t feel a sense of worry in this tunnel,” said Dr. Jonathan Meakins, “you have a level of courage – or imbecility – that is unavoidable.”

Now that the Royal Victoria Hospital is abandoned, the buildings, tunnels and grounds are spookier than ever. While nobody knows what is in store for the Old Royal Vic, the adjacent McGill University has its sights on it. The university is hoping to expand its campus to increase space for teaching and research. McGill hopes to create a state-of-the-art “living laboratory” for new ways of working, collaborating and tackling complex problems. The university even created a slick video of their proposal to take over and integrate the old hospital buildings and grounds into its campus.

The plan is to preserve the hospital’s heritage while opening up green spaces, improving access to Mount Royal, and reducing the height of some of the more modern buildings to allow for a better skyline. An impressive glass atrium is also on the cards.

Whether or not McGill will be successful in acquiring the old Royal Victoria Hospital is a matter of pure speculation. Only one thing is certain: whoever inherits the creepy old hospital buildings will also inherit their haunted legacy – and, of course, their ghosts!

COMPANY NEWS

Haunted Montreal is currently in winter mode, meaning there will be no more public ghost tours until May, 2018. Private tours are still available for groups of 10 or more people, subject to the availability of our actors and weather conditions.

Haunted Montreal has been contacted by an media production company, because they wish to do an episode about ghosts and hauntings in Griffintown. Based in the United Kingdom, the company has requested Haunted Montreal’s assistance in finding people to appear on the television program to share their personal ghost story from the Griff. Shooting will take place in late April or early May, 2018.

If you have a Griffintown ghost story or paranormal experience to share and are willing to appear on television, please contact Donovan King at info@hauntedmontreal.com

Furthermore, Haunted Montreal has been doing extensive research into potential winter activities, such as haunted pub crawls. After visiting Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia, Haunted Montreal researchers are now distilling the information gathered in hopes of creating some winter activities in Montreal.

We may offer a prototype in early 2018 and are planning a full season of activities the following winter.

Haunted Montreal would like to thank all of our clients who attended a ghost walk during the 2017 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, if you would like to receive the Haunted Montreal Blog on the 13th of every month, please sign up to our mailing list.

Coming up on March 13: The Black Rock

The Black Rock, also known as the Irish Stone, sits in the middle of a traffic island on Bridge Street and marks the final resting place of approximately 6000 victims of the Irish Famine. In 1847, Montreal was overwhelmed with tens of thousands of Irish refugees. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean on “coffin ships”, many of them stricken with the deadly typhus disease. Fever sheds were erected and those who died were hastily “trenched” into mass graves in the middle of the night. To commemorate the Irish dead, the Black Rock was erected on December 1, 1859 when workers building the Victoria Bridge discovered one of the communal cemeteries. For over a century, Montreal’s Irish community has continued to march to the Black Rock on the third Sunday of every May. The city is still haunted by Black ’47, one of the worst tragedies in Montreal’s history.

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