HAUNTED RESEARCH

The City of Westmount is a tony Victorian municipality directly to the west of Montreal proper. Murray Hill Park, a 14 acre, bucolic greenspace, has long attracted residents to enjoy picnics and games on its grassy slopes. The recently deceased Montreal bard Leonard Cohen grew up beside these grounds and left readers with haunting descriptions of it in his novels. There are also rumours that Murray Hill Park is haunted by ghosts from the an earlier era. More specifically, a host of phantom children in antique underthings has been spotted singing while traipsing through the large, open greenspace. Who might these musical ghosts be and why do they haunt Murray Hill Park?

In 1857, a man named William Murray purchased land from the Leduc family farm and built a country residence which he named Westmount. The name was very popular, so in 1895, the Town of Côte-Saint-Antoine changed its name to Westmount. The park was originally created in the 1920s when William Murray sold a piece of his farmland to the City of Westmount. In 1936, William Murray’s original home was demolished to make way for the park’s tennis courts.

In 1939 the grounds were renamed “King George Park” to mark the British monarch’s visit to Canada along with his wife, Queen Elizabeth. However, to this day locals still affectionately call it Murray Park.

At the northern limit is an immense playing field where locals play lacrosse, rugby and soccer. During the winter months, the park hosts an outdoor rink for skating enthusiasts and a tobogganing hill. There is also a dog run, a tennis court area, a wading pool, a basketball net, a comfort station, a children’s playground and a lovely water pond nestled at the base of a great stone wall.

According to some sources, there are fresh water wells beneath the park that were sacred to the native people who first inhabited the area. Murray Hill Park is located beside Côte-Saint-Antoine Road, which traces an old trail that was used by various First Nations. When French settlers first began colonizing the area in the late 1600s, they discovered the wells along with mysterious pictographs carved into the trunks of trees along this pathway.

There are also reports of a First Nations graveyard in the vicinity. In 1898, an ancient native burial ground was discovered on the grounds and in the vicinity of the St. George’s Snowshoeing Club, near the corner of Aberdeen Avenue and The Boulevard.

Many of the skeletons were found buried in the fetal position with their knees up and academics at the time speculated that the burial ground belonged to an era prior to the fifteenth century.

Another connection to Murray Hill Park is the fact that the late Leonard Cohen grew up adjacent to it on the heights of Belmont Avenue, his childhood home being at 599 Belmont. He described Westmount as a “collection of large stone houses and lush trees arranged on the top of the mountain especially to humiliate the underprivileged.”

In his 1963 novel “The Favorite Game,” Cohen immortalized the window in the home’s tiny sun room, which is connected to his old music room. He wrote: “The window gave over the slope of Murray Park, across the commercial city, down to the Saint Lawrence, American mountains in the distance.”

In Chapter 4, he penned haunting descriptions of Murray Hill Park at night: “The flower beds, the terraces of grass had an aspect of formality they did not have by daylight. The trees were taller and older. The high-fenced tennis court looked like a cage for huge wingless creatures which had somehow got away. The ponds were calm and deadly black. Lamps floated on them like multiple moons…The empty baseball diamond was blurred with spectacular sliding ghosts.”

Cohen was clearly inspired by the park and he may have also found his muse there during his teens. After meeting a Spanish man by Murray Park’s tennis court, Cohen took informal lessons in flamenco guitar, which may have helped spark his career as a singer and songwriter later on in life.

Returning to the ghostly children, several online sources describe them as “a host of singing children in antique underthings traipsing through Murray Park, in Westmount.” The rumour first appeared in 2003 in the now defunct weekly newspaper Hour. When asked about the singing ghosts and whether or not the municipality is haunted, a Westmount Historical Society archivist replied: “Not really, and as for the singing children in antique underwear, I have to laugh.  Someone out there is fabricating this preposterous claim.”

Extensive research has revealed very little about these child-like spirits and whether or not they actually exist, raising questions as to why someone might report seeing “a host of singing children in antique underthings traipsing through Murray Park.”

One possibility is a case of mistaken identity. The nearby St. Matthias’ Church is located on the corner of  Church Hill Avenue and Côte-Saint-Antoine. This Anglican hall of worship, constructed in 1912, until recently has hosted a children’s choir. When performing, the children were known to wear billowing robes that could possibly be mistaken for “antique underthings.”

One theory is that the children in the choir may have been spotted singing in nearby Murray Hill Park, perhaps in preparation for a concert during an informal rehearsal of sorts.

According to a former St. Matthias’ Church Choir Director there has not been a children’s choir since around 2008. Concerning the possibility of the children going to Murray Hill Park while wearing their robes in the past, the former Choir Director said: “It sounds like something the kids choir would have done. In a good wind their robes would have been very substantially spooky. I know they even went tobogganing in their robes on Murray Hill…”

As such, there is a good chance the alleged ghost sighting was made was in error. However, another possibility is that the ghosts are actually real, although at this time there is little evidence to prove that, beyond the online rumours.

Concerning the question as to whether or not Westmount is haunted, despite the denial by the archivist, there are many ghost stories from this Victorian municipality. Dan Aykroyd, of Ghostbusters fame, described the spooky things he heard and saw as a child that inspired the film. Aykroyd’s great-grandfather, Samuel Augustus Aykroyd, was a well-known mystic during the peak of the spiritualism craze of the 19th and early 20th centuries and used to host séances in Westmount. His son, Peter Aykroyd, spent his childhood watching his family’s parlor séances through the crack of a basement door and recently penned a book called “A History of Ghosts — the True Story of Séances and Mediums and Ghosts and Ghostbusters.”

During a 2009 interview on CNN with Larry King, his son, Dan Aykroyd, elaborated: “When I was 8 years old… I attended my first séance, and our family has been interested in the whole thing all during my life… My uncle… he told a story about coming into the room in Westmount, Montreal, where they’d held séances… There was a trumpet flying around the room, and it was speaking – And there were voices coming out of it… As soon as he came in, it dropped to the floor.”

There are also rumours that a good number of Westmount’s picturesque Victorian mansions are haunted by spirits of the past. For example, in 1982, a children’s book titled “The Haunted Dollhouse” was written and set in Riverview, a historic and rumoured-to-be haunted manor high on the slopes of Westmount Mountain.

It was a scary story about a young girl who wakes up in a haunted Victorian dollhouse. Other allegedly haunted houses in Westmount attract teams of paranormal investigators who visit in search of ghosts, often to the disapproval of wealthy homeowners.

Regarding these mysteries, more research is definitely needed to help shed more light on the spirits that potentially haunt Westmount. If you have any information about other Westmount ghost stories or the phantoms of children allegedly haunting Murray Hill Park, please contact Haunted Montreal with your story.

COMPANY NEWS

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

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

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

A big thank you to all of our clients who attended a Haunted Montreal ghost walk during the 2016 season! If you enjoyed the experience, we encourage you to write a review on our Tripadvisor page, something that helps Haunted Montreal to market its tours. Lastly, 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: 1428 Stanley Street

Today a pizzeria occupies 1428 Stanley Street, a building that has seen a lot of action throughout Montreal’s history. Once the location of gay cruise bars Le Mystique and Truxx, Montreal police raided the location on October 22, 1977, drawing comparisons to Stonewall in New York City and sparking demonstrations the next day. Le Mystique closed in 2009 and several businesses have occupied the space since. More recently, a Haunted Montreal client relayed some disturbing stories about the place. She claimed that the building is haunted, according to those who have worked there in the past. The most common story involves the sounds of heavy footsteps running on the upper floor, which would have been impossible due to the fact that the entire floor was filled with stacked chairs. Other stories involve door chains unlocking themselves, speakers moving on their own accord and employees turning white after being terrified. Just who or what is haunting this storied 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). He is presently studying to obtain an ACS (Montreal Tourist Guide, Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec).

Haunted Research

For over a century, the mysterious Trafalgar Tower looked down on the city from a height. Perched on a steep slope, it was located in the valley between Mount Royal and the peak of Westmount. Gothic in style and hexagonal in shape, the little stone tower was commissioned by fur trader John Ogilvy, who had purchased a large swath of land in 1805, which he named the Trafalgar Farm.

Not only was the area exceptionally beautiful, but the property also lay among the fields where General Amherst’s troops had camped in 1760 before taking Montreal from the French. John Ogilvy, ever the British loyalist, appreciated the historic location.

In fact, to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar, where British Admiral Horatio Nelson won a decisive victory over the French, Ogilvy fired a small cannon from the top of the Trafalgar Tower every October 21st in remembrance.

The Trafalgar Tower was built by James Gillespie, John Ogilvy’s protégé. Gillespie was well-suited for the job because he had been present at the battle of Trafalgar and served on Nelson’s flagship, the “Victory”. The chosen Gothic style, with pointed arches and a handsome design, blended in well with the leafy countryside. A common feature in the gardens of the wealthy, such towers were described as a “follies” for rich people and were used as summer houses to entertain guests and host enchanted gatherings. Romantic in character and shrouded in mystery, the Trafalgar Tower was intended to be an architectural showpiece highlighting John Ogilvy’s fervent British loyalty, financial success and excellent taste.

A common legend referred to a strange old hermit who used to live in the forlorn tower and speculated that it was he who haunted it.

In another story, the local toll-gate keeper, an old man name Quinn, had the fright of his life one moonlit night. One of his cows had strayed away from the toll-booth and wandered towards the Trafalgar Tower, prompting the owner to go retrieve the animal in the beautiful moonlight. Quinn had heard about the haunting from several people, but he thought it was a joke and had no fear. According to Quinn:

“I had just found my cow at the foot of the haunted summer-house and saw, with my two eyes, a beautiful form of a woman looking out of one of the windows. I was transfixed to the spot and could not take my eyes off the vision. She was in white with her hands clasped, as if in prayer, looking upwards. I remember falling down on my knees and crossing myself, and I remember nothing more.”

One of the most deranged tales about the Trafalgar Tower suggested it was haunted by a pair of young lovers who had been murdered on the site by a jealous suitor. After being rejected by the young lady, the suitor was said to have hacked them apart with an axe. One anonymous young man recounted meeting the rejected suitor, whom he described as “a fierce looking man sharpening a bloodstained axe.” The murderous suitor then “poured out his fearful story” and proceeded to show the terrified listener a locket he claimed had belonged to his “fiancée”.

In 1836, the Trafalgar property was bought by one Albert Furniss, who remodeled the crumbling tower. He also reserved a small piece of the land for himself on Côte-des-Neiges Road and sold the rest of it in 1845 to Frederick B. Matthews, including the farm and cottage. Matthews was a businessman who recognized the need for a new Protestant cemetery, largely because the Old Protestant Burial Ground was almost full. He felt that the Trafalgar site, nestled in a lush valley between two peaks, was ideal for its beauty and location.

In 1846, the Trafalgar Mount Cemetery Company was founded on 16 acres of John Ogilvy’s old farm. It was overseen by a prominent Board of Directors, including John Young, Luther Holton, William Workman, William Lyman and Jacob DeWitt. John Ogilvy’s old house, the “Trafalgar Cottage”, was occupied by Frederick B. Matthews, the cemetery’s owner and superintendent, along with his gardener. The Trafalgar Mount Cemetery Company began an advertising campaign to highlight the famous tower as a way to sell lots for burial:

“The extreme natural beauty of the situation, the vast, picturesque and diversified views it affords. the present advanced artificial improvement of the grounds, with clumps of flowers, natural terraces, and winding path to the TRAFALGAR TOWER peering from the summit of the MOUNT clothed with luxurious arbors – contribute to render this spot peculiarly adapted to the purposes of a CEMETERY, the existence of which will be at once a source of attraction, usefulness and celebrity to the Metropolis of Canada.”

The first and possibly only burial in Trafalgar Mount Cemetery was that of a New York civil engineer named W.R. Casey. He died on Saturday, August 8, 1846.

A railroad engineer, W.R. Casey was in Montreal to plan the city’s first railway, a link between the city and Lachine. Casey had contracted tuberculosis so he moved from the overcrowded city to the leafy countryside, where the air was clean, with his sister serving as his nurse. At first, he chose to stay at Sword’s Hotel on Mount Royal’s western slope. However, as death approached, he requested to be moved to the nearby Trafalgar Cottage, which he apparently felt was more comfortable. His sister contacted the owner, superintendent Frederick Matthews, and was surprised to learn that the land had recently been converted into a cemetery. Matthews allowed the dying Casey to stay in the cottage until his death, when he was buried at “a beautiful site, at the ascent to the Trafalgar Tower, shaded by a grove of young trees.”

Whether or not Casey was the only burial is a matter of speculation. One source suggests up to eight more bodies may have been buried in the fledgling Mount Trafalgar Cemetery, however, it wasn’t long before the enterprise folded after Protestant officials decided on an alternate burial location. Just to the east of the Catholic Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery, the Mount Royal Cemetery was opened in 1852.

While nobody knows the exact location of Casey’s grave, there are rumours that today local residents sometimes dig up human bones in their gardens.

In 1848, Furniss built a grand Tudor-style summer residence on the piece of land he had reserved for himself on Côte des Neiges Road. Keeping with the tradition set up by John Ogilvy, he named his new home “Trafalgar”.

Other institutions that adopted the famous name included the Trafalgar School for Girls (1887) and the luxurious Trafalgar Apartments (1931).

The mysterious phantom footsteps in the vicinity of the old Trafalgar Tower are perhaps one of the most well-documented hauntings in Montreal. While first documented by John Ogilvy, many other prominent Montreal citizens would go on to report hearing the strange disembodied footfalls.
Around 1880, John William Molson recalled that the Trafalgar Tower was used as a summer-house and lookout for visitors and that his mother had spent many happy hours there. He noted that both she and Albert Furniss had repeatedly mentioned the phantom footsteps.

On a wintry morning in 1890, a worthy citizen of Montreal visited the Trafalgar Tower with his wife and young son in tow. As he hoisted himself to peer through the Gothic window and examine the tower’s interior, he heard footsteps approaching. His wife heard them as well and urged him come down to avoid getting into trouble for trespassing. The man, still looking inside the tower, listened as the footsteps approached until they stopped right behind him. He spun around to confront the intruder, but there was nobody there. The couple were baffled by the fact that there were not any footprints in the crisp, white snow.

During another similar incident in 1925, a curious archivist named Dr. Massicotte, along with others, claimed to have heard the mysterious footsteps at the site of the tower. Again, no footprints appeared in the snow.

One theory about the mysterious footsteps relates to the geography surrounding the tower. Given that the Trafalgar Tower was located on a perch in a valley, some people speculate that the phantom footsteps are nothing more than the echoes of people walking around. Indeed, long-held rumors suggested that John Ogilvy had experimented with exaggerated footsteps in order to produce an echo when strolling near the tower. Apparently it eventually became John Ogilvy’s custom to approach the tower by stomping about in this manner, and after a pause, he would return home.

Whatever the case, for well over a century the Trafalgar Tower frightened and intrigued Montrealers until it finally began to crumble and ultimately collapse. The last memory of the tower’s existence is from 1937, when a student from the nearby Trafalgar School snapped some photographs of its dilapidated remnants. Thus ruined, the once infamous haunted tower began to fade from the collective memory of Montreal’s citizens. It wouldn’t take long before its exact location was forgotten.

Perhaps the best evidence comes from a 1946 letter, when Trafalgar School teacher Miss Martha Brown wrote: “I am afraid there is nothing left of the Tower. In 1937 one of the pupils took a snapshot of what remained. It is difficult to explain just where the Tower stood, though I visited it, with schoolgirls, many times, years ago. As you pass from Côte-des-Neiges along the Boulevard, Belvedere Ave. is on the right, and the Tower used to be easily seen on the elevation just above the Boulevard.”

Today, the 1848 Trafalgar House still stands on Côte-des-Neiges Road, but there is no evidence of where the tower once stood. There is much speculation that it was probably located in what is now a citizen’s back yard, on the escarpment somewhere above The Boulevard. As for the mysterious ghostly footsteps, local residents can still report hearing them sometimes.

According to one teenage girl who has lived most of her life on Belvedere Road, “The weird sound of footsteps is pretty normal in our neighborhood. You can usually hear the invisible feet walking when it is very quiet and when you are alone, like in the early morning or after sunset. I have heard them many times.” When asked her theory about the mystery, the girl explained: “I don’t know. For as long as anyone can remember, we have heard these unusual sounds around the area.”

Whether the mysterious phantom footsteps are merely the result of an echo, or something more sinister, has always been a hot topic in the neighborhood. If it is a spirit causing the sounds, nobody is certain as to the identity of the phantom or the reason it haunts the site of the old tower. While some residents believe the ghost is probably John Ogilvie or W.R. Casey, others believe it is related to General Amherst’s infamous march that led to the capitulation of Montreal, a sort of paranormal reminder of the military boots on the ground.

Whatever the case, the name “Trafalgar”, which John Ogilvie was so enamored with, still adorns much of the neighborhood. Despite the disappearance of the infamous Trafalgar Tower, Ogilvie would have been satisfied that the famous British name still appears as a street, in the home built by Albert Furniss, in a private school and even a local luxury apartment complex.

Whether is area is actually haunted or not, and if so, by what, is perhaps one of Montreal’s most enduring legends.

Company News

Haunted Montreal’s 2015 public season of ghost walks is now over, 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.

Over the next few months Haunted Montreal plans to expand 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 February 13: Eden Musée Site at the Monument-National

Montrealers were treated to the opening of a bizarre new museum in 1891. The Eden Musée  featured waxworks of historical figures, reproduced crime scenes and other strange curiosities. Located in the basement of the Monument-National, a busy theatre, the museum featured Satan’s imps, an ossified man, mummies from Mexico, a skeleton of a “devil-child” born with feet and tail like a calf, a gorilla hauling away a woman and a replica opium den. Various murder scenes were also re-created and some of the society’s most notorious criminals were cast in wax. Eden Musée was closed in 1940 after it was deemed too tawdry by the St. Jean Baptiste Society, the owners of the building. Today, the Monument-National is run by the National Theatre School of Canada. 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. There are whispers amongst theatre students that the ghost haunting the site of the Eden Musée is none other than Sarah Berhardt, one of the greatest actresses of her era.

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).