HGB Ep. 652 - Haunted Toronto

Moment in Oddity - Old RIP the Lizard

There is a tradition of encasing items in the cornerstones of new buildings as a symbolic time capsule. This dates back to Egyptian and Mesopotamian times. The usual items encased are newspapers of the day, coins, photographs and documents listing the architects of the building. It is meant to preserve the history of the era for future generations. In 1897, there was a very unique object placed inside the cornerstone of a new courthouse in Eastland, Texas, during its construction. Thirty one years later, on February 18th, 1928, the courthouse was torn down and the cornerstone was opened before a large crowd. What was found inside was a flat, dusty lizard that was showing signs of life! Let me introduce you to 'Old RIP'. RIP was a Texas Horned Lizard, the species is also often called horny-toad or horned toad. At the time of the encasement, there was a local folklore belief that horned lizards could hibernate for over a century without air, food or water. The county clerk of Eastland decided to test that theory with his son's young lizard named 'Blinky'. The clerk sealed the pet inside the cornerstone of the new courthouse. Upon emerging from the cornerstone, Ol' RIP was renamed for Rip Van Winkle. The lizard became a famous national celebrity. He even traveled across the country to visit President Calvin Coolidge at the White House. Sadly, the celebrity lizard died just under a year later from pneumonia on January 19th, 1929. His little body was embalmed, placed in a small velvet-lined casket, and put on permanent display in the new Eastland County Courthouse. Time capsules can be an interesting and fun look into the past. But encasing a live lizard who emerges alive 31 years later, certainly is odd. 

Haunted Toronto

Canada is home to some great haunts and Toronto is one of those cities harboring several locations with ghosts stories. We've covered Keg Mansion (Ep. 303) and Queen's Park (Ep. 57 & upcoming Redux) in previous episodes, but there are many other haunted locations in the city of Toronto and on this episode, we are going to explore several of them. There are theaters and jails, but also several little shops and restaurants that seem warm and inviting until one realizes you may be joined by the unseen. Join us for the history and hauntings of the city of Toronto.

Toronto was originally settled by the Wyandot (WHY-an-dot) People and then the Iroquois. A Frenchman named Etienne Brule (ay-TYEN broo-LAY) was the first to explore the area in 1615 and that is why the French would be the first Europeans to settle. Brûlé served as an interpreter and guide for Samuel de Champlain. As an aside, Brûlé would later betray his native France, helping the English capture Quebec City. This same kind of behavior against the Huron people, with whom he lived later, would lead the Huron to stab and dismember him and then eat him. The first European settlement was established in 1750 as a French trading fort known as Fort Rouille (roo-ee). In 1787, the Toronto Purchase happened and this was basically the Mississaugas (missuh-SAW-guh) tribe giving up the land to the British Crown. In 1793, the Town of York was established by Governor John Graves Simcoe, named for Prince Frederick, who was the Duke of York. It would be the capital of Upper Canada. The first post office opened here in 1833 and the name was changed to Toronto in 1834 when the city was incorporated. Toronto came from the Mohawk word tkaronto, which means "where there are trees standing in the water. Gas street lights were added in 1841 and the city grew and flourished. The railroad would come, as well as horse drawn streetcars that eventually were electrified. In 1867, Toronto became the capital of Ontario. The city would suffer its own great fire in 1904 and the Depression would hit it hard, but following World War II, the city rose to prominence. Today, it is the most populous city in Canada

The Grange

The Grange is the 12th oldest building in Toronto and was built in 1817 in the Georgian style for D'Arcy Boulton who was a well known resident of the city and came from a powerful family in the city. The name came from the family's property of the same name in England. The house was two storeys and made from bricks formed on the land. The front door opened into a central hall with a dining room, drawing room and bedrooms on the first floor and bedrooms on the second floor. The attic had servant rooms. The kitchen and scullery were in the basement. 

D'Arcy and his wife Sarah Anne had eight children. Their home became the social center for Toronto for a time and D'Arcy made a living running a dry goods store. When he passed in 1846, the house passed to his William Henry Boulton and his wife Hariette. William was the mayor of Toronto at the time. He died in 1874 and he left the house to his wife Hariette who remarried to a prominent scholar named Goldwin Smith. The house was bequeathed to the Art Museum of Toronto in 1910. The St. George Church was also on the property as the Boultons founded it, but it burned down in 1956, leaving only the tower and Sunday school building. The grounds became Grange Park. The house was restored in the 1960s and eventually renamed the Art Gallery of Ontario. Today, the Grange houses the Norma Ridley Members' Lounge and exhibit spaces and tours are offered, although it isn't furnished as a museum. Visitors and staff have seen a man in a yellow velvet coat that likes to roam the hallways. He has been witnessed walking straight through solid walls in the conservatory where it is believed there used to be some doors that are no longer there. A woman in black hangs out near a second-floor bedroom. The ground floor kitchen has a lady in white haunting it. People believe the ghosts of Goldwin Smith and weird fiction writer Algernon Blackwood are in the house. Blackwood had visited the house several times as he was friends with Smith.

Humber Polytechnic's Lakeshore Campus

Humber College's Lakeshore Campus is next to the shores of Lake Ontario and is part of Humber Polytechnic. This campus is one of three and was established in 1967. There is a lot of interesting architecture as it sits on the grounds of the former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital and Lakeshore Teachers' College. And interesting art like the sculpture of Persephone created by Harley Valentine in 2013. The Greek queen of the underworld was placed in the front plaza of the L-Building, which opened in 2011. There are several cottages around the L-Building. The psychiatric hospital was built in 1888 and originally named the Mimico Asylum. The cottages are left over from the asylum that was designed in the cottage system. The buildings and cottage were done in the Gothic and Romanesque style. The patients helped to build most of the buildings and they worked the farm on the grounds. This was basically forced labor. There was overcrowding and some mistreatment and violence among the patients. The hospital had a cemetery, which contained the bodies of 1,511 patients, most of them unmarked. It remains about a mile away from the hospital. There was a big renovation in 1959, but when another was needed in 1979, the decision was made to close the hospital. The hospital made appearances in most of the Police Academy movies and recently in 2020, it was the setting for the Matheson Academy on Netflix's Locke & Key. Humber College began leasing the property in 1991 and renovated the building and cottages. 

A story claims that a nurse hanged herself on an apple tree near the hospital and makes appearances as a ghost now. She has been seen walking the halls at night. Strange scents are reported in the F Building that had once housed the morgue. In the cottages, objects move on their own and chairs roll on their own. Phantom handprints have been seen on the windows.  

Chris Kelterborn was a community and justice services student who wrote when asked if he experienced anything weird in the residence hall, "F**k yes, toiletries randomly flying off the shelves, cutlery randomly clattering in the sink and lights turning on and off at random." Cece Courtemanche, another student, reported the following from her time in the residence hall in 2015, "Yeah, I do have a couple stories, definitely the weirdest one though was that I used to constantly hear stomping sounds, almost like someone running, nearly every night without fail, at 3am. Just someone running on the floor above me. And it wasn’t just me, other people on my floor heard it too. But the part that didn’t make any sense was the running would only ever happen at 3am. It was so bizarre, and to this day I don’t have any sort of explanation for it!" Another student said that random stuff would disappear from their kitchen and be missing for days and then in one case, they found the spatula in the middle of the room on the floor. 

Dentistry Building on the George Brown Campus

George Brown founded the Toronto Globe and was one of the Fathers of Confederation. The college was named for him and established in 1967. The dentistry facilities were located at the Casa Loma Campus before moving to the Waterfront Campus. This left a building abandoned and apparently, it had some paranormal activity.

Snoo22214 wrote on Reddit, "Used to go in there all the time on official business. Its dangerous to be in there, so you have to go with someone. We rounded a corner and saw someone standing in the hall watching us. They vanished into thin air. We decided to call the visit short after that. Phone calls also come from that building from a woman despite the phones being disconnected." Random flushing in the empty building was a thing. Another comment from Reddit reads, "I hated that building so much! I worked security at GBC long time ago and that was part of our daily patrols. Luckily I never saw anyone but I would always hear random toilet flushing and felt like I was being watched the whole time. Scary!" 

Colborne Lodge 

The Colborne Lodge is a unique looking cottage nestled in High Park that was built in 1837 by Toronto architect and High Park founder John Howard and his wife Jemima. The two were painters and quite eccentric and they filled the home with their art, drawings and inventions that still remain today. The style of the cottage is Regency Picturesque and the exterior is stuccoed. 

Jemima became the first documented case of breast cancer in the city of Toronto and rather than help his wife to battle the disease, Howard tried to have her committed to a Provincial Lunatic Asylum. The Asylum denied the request, so he locked in her room where she stayed until her death in 1877. She spent most days looking out the window, which faced the tomb he had built for the couple to share. The couple gifted the property to the City of Toronto upon their deaths. The ghost here is believed to be Jemima, who has been seen standing at a bedroom window. The first person to record seeing this was a police officer patrolling the park in 1969. He went into the house thinking someone had broken in and he found it empty. There are also reports of phantom soldiers in the park, although we don't know what that would be from. Perhaps a very early squirmish?

Gibraltar Point Lighthouse

We love lighthouses around here and they all seem to harbor ghost stories it seems. Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is no different. There was a long, finger-like peninsula that extended out into Lake Ontario from Toronto and this formed a natural harbor that needed defending. Fort York was built for this purpose - we'll get into that location next - and John Graves Simcoe, who was the first Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, named the peninsula Gibraltar Point. This was probably wishful thinking for Simcoe as he wanted to give the impression that it was "fortified so as to be impregnable." 

A blockhouse was built on the point with Fort York across from it. A few years later, in 1803, the Parliament of Upper Canada decided to put a lighthouse on Gibraltar Point. The lighthouse was completed in 1808 and is today, the oldest standing lighthouse on the Great Lakes. The lighthouse was constructed from limestone and built in a hexagonal shape and was 52 feet when finished. In 1832, it was raised to 82 feet. Simcoe was wrong about the point being fortified as the lighthouse actually helped guide American forces in an attack on Toronto. The first keeper was John P. Radelmuller (Radel mule er) and he would end up being the first death here. And, it was murder. The York Gazette reported on January 14, 1815, "Died on the evening of the 2nd of January, J.P. Radelmuller, keeper of the lighthouse on Gibraltar Point. From circumstances there is moral proof of his having been murdered. If the horrid crime admits of aggravation when the inoffensive and benevolent character of the unfortunate sufferer are considered, his murder will be pronounced most barbarous and inhuman. The parties lost with him are the proposed perpetrators and are in prison." The York Gazette reported three months later, "No conviction of the supposed murderers of the late J.P. Radelmuller." Unfortunately, these accounts give no details as to what happened, but tradition holds that soldiers from the York garrison came to the lighthouse for beer. Radelmuller was making bootleg beer in his free time and he either refused to sell to them or overcharged and they got angry and killed him. He disappeared and was never seen again. The next keepers would be James Durnan and his son George and they worked there until 1905. They often talked of the murder and even claimed to have found a human jaw bone. In 1915, the lighthouse got its fourth-order Fresnal lens and was electrified in 1917. Before this, the lighthouse went through a time using candles, then sperm oil and coal. With electrification, the light's last keeper, Blake Matthews, left in 1918. The flashing white light became green in 1945. The light was deactivated in 1959 and replaced by a tripod tower with a red flashing light. There had been a keeper's cottage here that was built in 1808 with the lighthouse, but it was demolished in 1950. Occasional tours are offered.

Reports of ghost stories go way back and the CBC even ran a special back in 1958 about the stories. They said there were hundreds of reports of ghostly happenings in and around the light. There were strange blood stains that would show up on the staircase. There were unexplained lights in the windows and shadowy figures seen. Many visitors have claimed to see Radelmüller’s ghost climbing the tower, probably in search for his body parts.

Fort York

And as we just mentioned, Gibraltar Point had Fort York, which is today known as Fort York National Historic Site. The first permanent fort was built in 1793 and was mainly a bunch of cabins. Two log barracks were added and then a stockade and sawmill. The following year, two blockhouses were built and a guard house. In 1798, many original buildings were replaced and a stockade was built around the property. Artillery batteries were added as were furnaces so that fire heated shot could be used. This is where British soldiers, First Nations warriors and Upper Canadian militiamen tried to hold the Town of York, which was Toronto's original name, against an American attack during the War of 1812. The Battle of York took place on April 27, 1813 and was a defeat for the British and Canadians. The British were led by Major General Roger Hale Sheaffe and they were outnumbered by the American led by Major General Henry Dearborn. The Americans had an entire Naval flotilla with them, numbering 14 ships. Not only were Sheaffe's forces outnumbered, but a company of Glengarry Light Infantry got lost on the outskirts of York and were unable to assist the Native tribes who were where the Americans were landing. Fort York was heavily bombarded and Sheaffe soon decided that the battle was lost, so he ordered the regulars to retreat and they set fire to a wooden bridge over the River Don so that the Americans couldn't pursue them. The militia was left behind with many of the citizens of York. They were described in the paper as "standing in the street like a parcel of sheep." Sheaffe told the militia to try to get the best terms they could with the Americans. He also had the HMS Sir Isaac Brock that was under construction at the York Naval Shipyard burned. The magazine was also blown up, which caused a large number of American casualties. Even after Sheaffe vacated the fort, the Americans kept firing because the British left their flag up as a ruse. The Americans had 320 casualties to Britain's 475. York was burned and plundered and the Americans occupied it for two weeks. As the Americans left York, they burned the structures in the fort, except for the barracks. The fort was rebuilt in 1813 and was in use until 1932 with many years of peace leading to decay and many years of preparing for hostilities leading to refurbishment. Fort York officially was handed over to Canada in 1870 by the British. The fort was reopened as a museum on Victoria Day in 1934. Recently, the fort hosted the 2026 Toronto FIFA Fan Festival. 

Fort York embraces its haunts. They occasionally host evening lantern tours, especially around Halloween. There is a soldier wearing a red coat that is seen near the fort's entrance and one of the old barracks. Unexplained noises are heard as well as disembodied footsteps and whispers. Cold spots are felt. A female spirit is seen roaming around the Officer's Quarters. And the ghost of Lt. Zachariah Mudge is said to be roaming about because he unalived himself in 1831 and was denied a proper Christian burial. Visitors and staff claim to get the eerie feeling of being watched.  

Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre

Elgin and Winter Garden Theaters are a pair of theatres that were built as the flagship of Marcus Loew's theatre chain in 1913. Architect Thomas W. Lamb designed them as Edwardian double-decker theaters and they started with vaudeville and short silent movies. The Elgin Theater was originally named Loew's Yonge Street Theater and had a gold-and-marble, domed, hard-top theater. This was the lower theater. Winter Garden was the upper theater and was set up as an atmospheric theater. The interior resembled a country garden under the stars, painted with murals of plants and garden trellises. There were lantern lights and the columns were designed like tree trunks. In 1928, the Elgin was converted into a sound theater for the new Talkies. The Winter Garden was closed at that time and stayed closed for 60 years. In 1969, Loews sold the Elgin to Famous Players and by the 1970s, the Elgin was showing mainly B movies and soft-core pornography. The Ontario Heritage Foundation bought the structure from Famous Players in 1981. The 1980s brought improvement with real theater. Cats ran here from 1985 to 1987 and was very successful. restoration was done to both theaters in 1987 and they reopened in 1989.

There are disembodied footsteps up in the balconies and doors open and close by themselves. There is a story that a girl allegedly was stabbed in the Winter Garden washroom on the 5th floor and she managed to drag herself to the elevator before she died on the floor. Today, staff and guests say the elevator travels by itself to the fifth floor. And they think she is a ghost they nicknamed the Lavender Lady who leaves behind the scent of lavender. The Winter Garden is haunted by Sam the Trombone Player who is said to be a friendly ghost.

Massey Hall

Massey Hall is one of Toronto’s most beloved concert venues. Hart Massey was a Canadian businessman and philanthropist who built the Massey Ferguson agricultural equipment firm. He decided he wanted to build a music hall that was secular and this was the Massey Music Hall, which was built in the neoclassical design with Moorish arches under the direction of architect Sidney Badgley. the interior was inspired by the Alhambra Palace in Spain. The hall was completed in 1894 and debuted with a choral performance of Handel's Messiah. A bar was opened in the basement in 1994 to commemorate the hall's 100th anniversary. There was a major renovation in 2013 and a new addition was added in 2022. The place has hosted musical performances, political speeches, speaking tours, memorials and even boxing. The future King George V and his wife Queen Mary visited in 1901. 

There have been various reports of spectral visitors. One of these spirits is a man in period clothing who wanders around the backstage area. People believe this man may be a custodian who had lived in an apartment behind the stage. A ghostly elderly couple have been spotted in the aisles late at night. And there is a female ghost who may belong to an opera singer that likes to watch performances from the audience. She seems to like it when a soprano takes the stage.

Old City Hall

Toronto's Old City Hall was one of the largest buildings in Toronto when it was completed in 1899. It was designed by Edward James Lennox in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and took a decade to complete and cost over $2 million. This is a magnificent building made from several types of stone: sandstone, grey stone and brown stone. This is an enormous Square quad with a courtyard in the middle and a tall clock tower that is slightly off center. There were carvings of animals and humans all along the exterior of the building. Three large oak doorways lead into a two-storey main hall with murals and stained-glass windows. This was the city's grandest interior space at the time. Lennox made sure to have the stonemasons put his name in corbels under the upper floor eaves because the councilors of the city were angry with cost overruns and wouldn't allow a plaque to be added to the building proclaiming him as the architect. Four gargoyles were part of the Clock Tower when it was finished, but they had to be removed due to erosion in 1938. Bronze casts of the gargoyles were reinstalled in 2002. The city hall proved to be inadequate so a new one was built in 1965. The old one was supposed to be demolished and replaced with a retail building, but community outcry saved it and it became a dedicated courthouse. The courts have since moved and the city is still working on its next steps. It probably will be a temporary home for the Ontario Legislative Assembly.

Judges claimed to feel mysterious tugs at their robes by things they couldn't see. Disembodied footsteps have been heard, especially at the building’s rear staircase. For some reason, muffled moans are heard coming from the attic. Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas were sentenced and charged here in Courtroom 125 (formerly 33) and were the last two Canadians executed in Canada. Their ghosts are said to haunt the courtroom. In John Robert Colombo’s book Haunted Toronto, he tells of a pair of reporters that almost managed to spend the night but gave in by 4am. But then the reporters experienced what they described as “cool fogs” and weird noises that left them, at times, glued to the floor and they decided to pack up and leave. 

Christie Mansion

William Mellis Christie was known as the cookie baron. He had emigrated from Scotland to Canada when he was a teenager in 1848. In Scotland, he had been an apprentice to a baker and so he quickly found work in a bakery in Ontario. At night, he would bake bread and then sell it from a handcart in the mornings. This grew into his own company and then he partnered with his old boss to form Christie, Brown and Company and they opened up a factory that took up an entire block. Christie won multiple awards for his cookies. By the end of the 1800s, Christie employed two out of every three people in biscuit making in Canada. He built a fortune and then built his mansion across from Queen's Park. Christie died of cancer in 1900 and the mansion passed on to his son Robert. And apparently, Robert had a secret. There is a legend that claims that Robert had a mistress and that he had the audacity to keep her at the mansion in a secret room located behind wood paneling in the library. A servant was bribed to take food to the mistress and keep quiet about the arrangement. After awhile, Robert got bored with the woman and ignored her and she became despondent and hanged herself from a rafter with a bedsheet. Robert moved the body out under the cover of darkness and rumors claim the mistress was buried over at Queen's Park. The guilt whittled away at Robert and he soon was in the grave. And the Christie cookies were bought by Nabisco. The mansion became home to the local chapter of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s. Today, it's Regis College, the Jesuit School of Theology affiliated with the University of Toronto.

The ghost of the mistress is said to haunt the mansion. The door to the former secret room slams shut by itself and would lock itself, trapping students inside. The mansion eventually became a female dorm for University of Toronto students, and there have been reports of a spirit haunting the mistress’s hidden room. An uneasy presence is felt in the room, that is referred to as Room 29. While no one can find evidence that the mistress story is true, there is really a secret room built into the framework of the building. 

Mackenzie House (Covered on a BonusCast)

The second occurrence of a ghost being listed in an official government document, happened in relation to Mackenzie House in Toronto. This is reputed to be the most haunted house in Toronto. It was once the home of firebrand and reformer William Lyon Mackenzie. He died in the home. And apparently, his spirit never left. 

The name Mackenzie comes from Clan MacKenzie of Scotland. This was one of the most powerful clans during the 17th Century. One of their members was William Lyon Mackenzie who was the first Mayor of Toronto. He had been born in Dundee, Scotland in 1795 and he emigrated to Canada when he was twenty-five. Mackenzie got involved in politics and served in the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada. He aligned with the Reformers who were seeking to get corruption out of the government. This activity led to the Upper Canada Rebellion, which ended in defeat for the rebels. Since Mackenzie had been a leader, he was forced into exile in the US where he resided until 1850. He returned to Canada penniless and his friends helped him to purchase the Mackenzie House. Mackenzie lived there with his family until his death in 1861. His wife and daughters continued to live in the house for ten more years even though it was seized by the Sheriff of Toronto because of unpaid financial obligations. Another man named John Taylor bought the property and allowed the Mackenzies to stay. Mackenzie's wife Isabel was able to buy back the house four years later. The Mackenzie House was located at 82 Bond Street and was one of several row houses on the street. It stood two stories and was designed in the Georgian architectural style. In 1936 when William Lyon Mackenzie King, Mackenzie’s grandson, was Prime Minister, the house was saved from demolition when its neighboring row houses were destroyed. By the 1940s, the house was being renovated into a museum and that's what it is today. The site features furniture from the nineteenth century, an 1845 printing press and artifacts from its former print shop. When the house was being converted, various caretakers resided in it and that's when the first reports of ghostly activity started.

There were many a story told of the ghost that lived in MacKenzie House. People heard footsteps creaking on the stairs and playing of the piano. Spirits were seen standing over those who were sleeping. Mackenzie’s body is buried at Toronto Necropolis, but some believe his spirit returns to his former home. The apparition of a small, bald man in a wig and frock coat is often seen around the home, especially in the third floor bedroom. This would be an apt description of the former famous occupant. 

Also, a woman with long hair has been spotted around the second and third floor areas. Cold spots and poltergeist activity have occurred. The printing press in the basement starting up on its own has been reported by the staff and many of the tourists. Apparently, one of the more interesting things is the ghosts' reported near obsession with something that is relatively new in the house, the indoor plumbing. One of the caretakers in the 1950s was named Mrs. Edmunds. Mrs. Edmund one night claimed that she was awoken by a soft touch on the shoulder. When she opened her eyes, Mrs. Edmund said there was a lady there bending over her, looking into her face. But a few seconds later, the lady vanished. A few weeks later, Mrs. Edmund claims it happened again, but this time, Mrs. Edmund said the lady drew back her hand and slapped her in the face before vanishing. In 1960, this house was donated to the City of Toronto. Part of this bequest was an inventory of all the artifacts that were in the house at that time and at the bottom of this list were the words, ‘One ghost. It was then decided to try to exorcise the house. A blessing was performed on the house in 1960 by Anglican Archdeacon John Frank to remove any spirits who were currently residing there. The haunting activity has continued, so it apparently didn't work. The Toronto Daily Star ran an article on June 28, 1960, which derided the allegations: “Ghosts in Toronto? No, ghost writers.” It quoted officials from the Mackenzie Homestead Foundation, which then owned and operated the house as a museum, as admitting they “dreamed up” the story with the Telegram to drum up interest. Caretaker Alex Dobban appeared to backtrack on the tales of spirits, telling a Star reporter, “There’s nothing to it.”

A seance was held two days after this story with seven spiritualists and they said, "The guest of honor failed to show up. He wasn’t even there in spirit." Medium Harold Hilton told the Star, "This proves definitely that the Mackenzie House isn’t haunted." In 1988, Toronto Star reporter Catherine Dunphy visited the house with the psychic Elizabeth Paddon and a professor who was a paranormal investigator named Ian Currie. Paddon apparently went into a trance and became the medium for the spirit of Mackenzie’s wife, Isabel Baxter Mackenzie. Currie claimed to have convinced her to move on to the world where her husband awaited.

Spadina (Spa dine ah) House

The Spadina House was once a sprawling country estate built for Dr. William Warren Baldwin in 1818. The original house burned down and had to be rebuilt in 1836. Baldwin called his estate Spadina after the Ojibwe word Ishpadinaa, which means "sudden rise of land." This was fitting as the house sat on top of a steep slope. The founder of The Dominion Bank, James Austin, bought the house in 1866 and 80 acres of the original 200 acres. The area had grown into the wealthiest neighborhood in Toronto. James gave the house to his son Albert in 1892. Albert added a third floor to the house in 1912. Albert's daughter Anna Thompson inherited the house and she lived in it from 1942 until 1982. The family donated the house and all its furnishings to the city of Toronto. The house opened as a museum in 1984 and features a mix of architectural style, Victorian, Edwardian and Italianate. The keystones feature botanical themes and the property is known for its gardens. The central hall has a floating staircase and there are 55 rooms. Stuffed wolves were found in the family's archives and they have been placed at the entryway of the museum.  

The Toronto & Ontario Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society claims that visitors and staff have seen a foggy grayish apparition that darts around the children’s bedrooms and in the hallway on the third floor. No one died in the house, but people wonder if this apparition might the spirit of one of the wolves. They think this because the wolves were sent off for restoration and when they were returned, that is when the gray mass started showing up.

Don Jail

The Old Don Jail was designed by architect William Thomas with directions to model it after the Pentonville Prison in London. The jail was done in the Renaissance Revival style and completed in 1864 from bricks out of the Toronto brickyards and stone from quarries from Ohio. Thomas incorporated an innovative heating and cooling system that consisted of a network of ducts and flues and two ventilation towers. This was the largest reform jail facility in North America when it opened and it eventually became notorious for poor treatment of the prisoners. It started out with inmates sleeping in small cells and working during the days on an industrial farm or in workshops and this trained them for better lives after release. Over time, this switched away from work programs and inmates would just be stuck in their cramped cells all day with more than one inmate in a cell at times. The overcrowding led to illnesses like tuberculosis sweeping through and the entire facility was vermin infested. There were executions conducted here with 34 hangings that included Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas who were hanged side by side in 1962 as the last executions in Canada. A new modern wing was added in 1958, bringing the capacity of the jail up to 550 inmates. The doors closed in 1977, with the new wing staying open until 2013, and the building was used for storage until Bridgepoint Health commissioned the complex for restoration as a new healthcare center in 2012. They transformed the place into welcoming and functional administrative space with modern office spaces. There are self-guided tours offered during the week with 10 cells restored to their original state. 

Some of the famous inmates here were from the bank-robbing Boyd Gang and the Polka Dot Gang. This crew got their nickname from the bandanas they wore as masks. The committed a bunch of violent break-ins and payroll robberies in 1945. There are supposedly several ghosts here, two of which are Ronald Turpin and Arthur Lucas. There is also an agitated blonde woman who wears a white gown and floats or paces around the second level of the central rotunda. She was an inmate here in the 19th-century who died by suicide in the women's west wing. Disembodied cries are heard as well as phantom noises. 

Opposite_Smile6780 wrote on Reddit, "I worked at the Toronto Jail from '08 til its closing in 2013. When they were refurbishing the Don Jail (original building from 1865) for Bridgepoint hospital, we would sometimes go inside the building on lunch break to look around. Definitely eerie. I've had quite a few experiences. On night shift, the kitchen was closed and locked. It was located in the basement of the building and many times while I was standing outside the kitchen waiting on the elevator, I would hear sounds from the kitchen, specifically that sound of the floor drains throughout the kitchen. They made a certain noise if you stepped on one and I would hear that exact sound in the locked kitchen. When 1 of the murders happened inside, there was one in particular who liked to show up. Inmates would tell me stories of seeing this particular inmate pass by the cell doors at night, make noise etc. I had no previous issues with the deceased inmate, always got a long. One day I'm working the unit he was murdered. I was in the control room and mind you, the control room doors where not flimsy. They were fairly heavy and had to be shut forcefully. So I'm standing there looking into the living unit and the door is open behind me and suddenly it starts to slowly creep its way closed. I watched for a second and then said out loud "knock it off insert inmates name" And the door stopped. Early morning shift, unit is still in night mode, inmates are all sleeping and I'm working alone in a very dimly lit area. There was a secure walkway around the entire perimeter of the living unit, where our desk was located and since we were still running in night mode, inmates must remain locked within their cells, within the living unit. As I sat at my desk doing some paperwork, I saw movement out of the corner of my eye down the hall to my right. I saw a full figured (though unidentifiable as the figure didn't have face) apparition dressed all in orange, turn the corner and begin walking down the hall toward me. I panicked because there should not be any inmates out at all within the living unit, let alone the secure area where I was and I whipped my head around and stood up, there was nobody there. There was nothing but a hallway with brown tile and walls of blue and white. One lone light at the end of the hall casting a horrible white light. NOTHING orange. Nothing that I could explain why I saw anything orange in my peripheral. I a few units, some more than others, I would often see shadow people within the groups of inmates I was in charge of that day." 

Hockey Hall of Fame

The former president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association, James T. Sutherland, established the Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario in 1943. The point of the Hall of Fame was to honor great hockey players and raise funds for a permanent building. They weren't able to get the funds and the NHL pulled their support until the project moved to Toronto in 1958. 

The first Hall of Fame shared a building with the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. By 1986, it was outgrowing its space and needed a new place. This place would be one of the former locations of the Bank of Montreal. That building at Front and Yonge Street was built in 1885 by Darling & Curry in the Beaux-Arts style. The Hockey Hall of Fame moved into it in 1993. The HHOF is the home of the Stanley Cup today. 

And it is home to a ghost reputedly. People have experienced doors opening and closing on their own, lights doing their own thing and the disembodied sounds of a woman. The spirit that haunts this location goes by the name Dorothy. The Star researched the back story on Dorothy and found some real evidence. They believe she was named Dorothea Mae Elliott and was a 19-year-old who shot herself in 1953. She survived long enough to make it to the hospital where she died 22 hours later. There were inferences  that she was sad over a broken love affair. Her boyfriend had left to work on the boats.

The Toronto Star reported in 2009, "In the early 1990s, a few years before the Hockey Hall of Fame moved into the historic building that had been a Bank of Montreal branch for close to 100 years, Toronto musician Joanna Jordan saw a female ghost looking down on her from a second-floor ceiling. Jordan, who was playing the harp at an event being held in the building’s Great Hall, was unaware at the time that a ghost purportedly haunted the space. 'I remember it so vividly,' she says, 'because it’s one of those things you’ll never forget.' Jordan refused to go up to the second floor by herself when she played at the Hall, which opened in 1993, some years later. 'It was just too spooky up there.'" And also, "Rob Hynes, who formerly worked at the Hall as a special events supervisor, had an encounter that spooked him. While preparing for an event, he entered a narrow kitchen that runs behind a second-floor conference room to get some coffee urns at around 6 a.m. A strong feeling, as if being watched by someone, 'but different than that,' enticed him to enter the conference room, which was in darkness. 'One of the chairs, and this is the God’s honest truth, was turning, as if a breeze was in there,' he says. 'It actually moved right into my hand. I’m rather skeptical about ghosts, but I just freaked out and ran out of there.' Despite all the reports, only one other person is believed to have actually seen the spirit. One summer a young boy was visiting the Hall of Fame when he started screaming, 'Don’t you see her, don’t you see her,' says Jane Rodney, who was the Hall’s coordinator of resource center services at the time. 'He claimed a woman with long black hair was going in and out of the walls.'" 

Toronto is a city full of history and historic buildings. The residents have made an effort to preserve many of their old spaces and that is a wonderful thing. Hopefully the spirits appreciate this. Are these locations in Toronto haunted? That is for you to decide!  

HGB Ep. 651 - Mont-Saint-Michel or "The Nest"

This Month in History - Birth of Cecil DeMille

In the month of August, on the 12th, in 1881, iconic American filmmaker, Cecil B. DeMille was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts. Cecil Blount DeMille's parents were playwright father, Henry Churchill DeMille, and educator and play-broker mother, Matilda Beatrice Samuel. Older brother William C. DeMille would also become a director and playwright. Cecil attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York starting in 1898. He worked as a stage actor and playwright in the 1900s. By 1912, Cecil co-founded the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company alongside Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn. Known as the "Master of Spectacle," he directed and produced roughly 70 films, spanning both the silent and sound eras. Cecil shaped the cinematic landscape with grand biblical epics and lavish historical dramas. By 1914, Cecil's co-founded company evolved into Paramount Pictures with which he won the Academy Award for Best Picture with his production, 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in 1953. He was known on-set as a strict, jodhpurs-wearing "director-general" who demanded absolute authority. Cecil B. DeMille died of heart failure in January 1959, at the age of 77. He is still honored yearly as a founding father of American cinema, and the quintessential Hollywood showman, by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association via the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. 

Mont-Saint-Michel (moh-sahn-mee-shell) or "The Nest"

We once again were inspired to research a location that we saw on a series. This one is Mont-Saint-Michel from "The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon." The location in the series is like a safe haven for the good people, at least that is the way it appears on the surface. The castle-like main building is so beautiful and large that it seemed like it had to be a creation of CGI, so we were shocked to look it up and find that it was a real place. And when we dug a little further to see if it was haunted, sure enough, it was! Join us for the history and hauntings of France's Mont-Saint-Michel.

Mont-Saint-Michel is actually its own island and is a village. An interesting aspect of the island is that it is ruled by the tides as to whether people can reach it from the mainland. The island was originally named Mont-Tombe (mohn tohnb-bay), which means Mount Grave, and is located off the northwestern coast of France off of Normandy. This island sits at the mouth of the Couesnon (KWAY-non) River and at high tide, the island is surrounded by water. The island is circular in shape and measures 3,000 feet around and is made from granite with this immense granite outcrop that stands 256 feet high. The name of the island was changed to Mont-Saint-Michel in the 8th century. It was at this time that the Bishop of Avranches (ah-vrahn-sh), St. Aubert (oh-BAIR), had 3 separate visions in 708 that he claimed were of the archangel Michael and he was told to build a small chapel there. It took three visions because the bishop thought the first two were just dreams. When the archangel showed up the third time, he pressed his finger into the bishop's forehead to let him know that this was the real deal. There is a relic that backs up this story, the bishop's skull. The Saint-Gervais (san zher-VAY) basilica in Avranches (ah-vrahn-sh) has a skull on display that bears a round hole and it has been venerated for centuries as St. Aubert’s (oh-BAIR's). The bishop built the chapel and it was consecrated on October 16, 709. When people were told that this chapel was inspired by the archangel, it became a pilgrimage site. There were so many manuscripts and books kept here that people started calling it "The City of Books." 

The bishop sent a community of canons to the chapel and they served for 250 years until Duke Richard I replaced them with Benedictine monks in 966. A Benedictine abbey was then built there and the Benedictine abbey lasted for 832 years, broken into two periods because the abbey was not without conflict. 

In 1067, the Mount supported William the Conquerer and he rewarded it with with property on the English side of the channel. King Philip II of France tried to capture it in 1203 and part of it was burnt in the melee. Fortunately, he apologized for the damage by building the monastery known as La Merveille (“The Wonder”) for the monks. The decision was made that the island needed to be fortified and so stronger walls were built in 1256 and it was able to resist sieges during the Hundred Year War between England and France (1337–1453) and the French Wars of Religion (1562–98). That Hundred Year War is the one that Joan of Arc became prominent during. But many years were spent in peace until the monastery went into decline during the 18th century. By the French Revolution, there were only seven monks at the abbey. The revolution caused its total dissolution for this first period of its Benedictine time in 1791. Napoleon I felt that the site would make the perfect prison as it was fortified and hard to reach. Mont-Saint-Michel would be a prison from 1791 to 1863, 72 years. The nickname "Bastille of the Seas" was given to it. A Wheel Room was built in the monks' former ossuary with an enormous wheel that could hoist food up to the prisoners held in the abbey. High profile political dissidents and revolutionaries were the main prisoners from the 1830s into the 1840s and this caused a lot of public protests. Writer Victor Hugo spearheaded a restoration campaign with writings that rallied the public to protest prisoners being kept in a place that was a medieval abbey that should be returned to such use. He wrote in a letter to the poet Louise Bertin on June 27, 1836 from Mont Saint-Michel, "Around us, everywhere as far as the eye can see, infinite space, the blue horizon of the sea, the green horizon of the earth, the clouds, the air, the freedom, the birds flying on all wings, […] and then, suddenly, there, in a crest of an old wall, above our heads, through a barred window, the pale figure of a prisoner. Never have I felt more keenly than here the cruel antitheses that man sometimes makes with nature." Public pressure worked at the prison was closed in 1863. 

In 1864, the Service des Monuments Historiques (sehr-vees day mon-y-muhnt eez-tor-eek) restored the building and opened it to the public. This proved to be a popular tourist spot and a road dike was built in 1879 to help with transportation. Five years before that, in 1874, it was classified as a historic monument. 

By 1901, a steam tramway was constructed from the town of Pontorson (pohn-tor-sohn) to the Mount. At this time, efforts were made to restore various buildings in the village that had fallen into disrepair and new buildings were also built in the Norman and Gothic Revival styles. The Mount survived both World Wars, but it was occupied by the Germans from 1940 to 1944. Towards the end of the War in August of 1944, an American Private named Freeman Brougher from Pennsylvania went to the Mount with two British reporters, Gault MacGowan of the New York Sun and Paul Holt with the London Daily Express and the men liberated Mont-Saint-Michel. Crowds were very happy and welcomed them and the mayor invited the American soldier to sign the Golden Book, the island's record of visiting nobility. The Benedictine monks returned in 1966 to celebrate the 1,000- year anniversary of the founding of their order. In 1979, UNESCO added Mont Saint-Michel and its bay to its list of World Heritage sites. The Benedictines stayed until 2001 when the brothers and sisters of the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem replaced them at the site. They remain and welcome pilgrims and visitors from all over the world. Car parks were built on the mainland to facilitate visitors and the old road dyke is now a walkway bridge. Today, Mont Saint-Michael is a major tourist spot and a small village of about 50 people and there are 132 hotel rooms. What people will find here includes the prominent abbey church that towers over the island and has an imposing 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque nave. This was built over four crypts. The main entrance leads into a fortified guard room that was staffed during the Hundred-Years War.

Creating the abbey was an architectural feat that continued to be added upon. There was an elegant choir in Flamboyant Gothic style that was built starting in 1450. The tower and spire were added in the 19th century. The tower has a statue of St. Michael atop it that was created in 1897 by the sculptor Emmanuel Frémiet at the request of the architect Victor Petitgrand. The statue was restored in 1987 and regilded in 2016.

Saint Michael has always been considered the leader of the heavenly host and is the leading defender against evil, specifically the dragon. He is usually depicted with a sword and a set of scales. Medieval people believed Saint Michael was the one who guided the dead into the afterlife and weighed souls on the Day of Judgement. After the Hundred Years’ War, the French held Saint Michael to be a patriotic figure. There is a the west terrace that was the original forecourt of the abbey church and has a panoramic view of the bay. There is a rich biodiversity in the bay. The view also includes a view of the abbey church, the bays of the cloister and the spire under the feet of the archangel. The site also has the 1228 Gothic monastery known as La Merveille, translated as The Marvel that is a group of Gothic buildings. It has both a religious look and and a fortress look with a refectory that has high, narrow windows and a cloister with sculptures. The cloister is at the top of The Marvel and was built in the 13th century. It is trapezoidal in shape and has a garden and a covered gallery that runs around it. The garden is separated by an original colonnade, composed of 137 columns arranged in staggered rows and forming tripods, which support the vault and the roof of the cloister gallery. The garden being open to the sky and this high up, aided the monks in their meditations and feeling closer to God and heaven. A chapter house was supposed to be built off it, but this never happened. 

The Refectory with all of its windows is always filled with natural light and the monks would eat here in silence while another monk stood at the pulpit and read to them. The Guests’ Hall is beneath the Refectory and was used to house kings and nobles when they came to visit. 

St. Peter's Church was dedicated to the patron saint of fisherman and is a small parish church in the middle of the village just below the main abbey. It was built between the 15th and 16th centuries. The Grand Rue is a steep, winding main street that is lined with the houses and shops of the village. Everything is surrounded by the Ramparts that remind everyone that this place used to have to keep out invaders. The Almshouse is beneath the Hall of Guests and the monks welcomed the poor and pilgrims from all walks of life. The Lace Staircase is amazing and is the highest point accessible to visitors. It spans one of the flamboyant gothic buttresses and was built at the time of the reconstruction of the choir, which was completed in 1523. The staircase is a real piece of Gothic art. 

With the history behind this site, it isn't surprising that there are reports of ghosts here. After all, it was originally named Mount Grave. People refer to the waters and sands around the Mount as Red Sands. That red represents blood. The blood of fallen soldiers. Local folklore claims that on quiet, stormy nights, the tides turn red and the cries of fallen soldiers are heard. The sounds of battles are also heard. Sometimes there is the sound of chanting and praying as well. And there are even bells because a legend claims a great flood took out a forest and village that was once here.

There are several legends connected to the Mount too. A legend claims that Saint Michael and the Dragon had their battle here, not in Heaven. And another claims that Saint Michael and the Devil were neighbors here at the bay. Saint Michael had a bunch of sand, but the Devil had rich farmland. The two agreed to split the harvest and the Devil decided he wanted the top of the crops and so Saint Michael got the roots. The first year, up came onions, carrots, and turnips. There were no top crops, so the Devil chose the roots the next year. Up came wheat that year. The Devil was pissed and so he decided to fight Michael. Michael kicked him so hard, it is said the Devil ended up near Mortain and people say you can still see claw marks on the rocks where he fell. There is a legend linking Mont Saint-Michel to Dante’s Hell and this plays on the idea of subterranean chambers, hidden passageways, and the sensation of being trapped in an otherworldly space. In Dante’s Inferno, Hell is depicted as a series of descending circles, each reserved for different sins and punishments. Some modern myths and local folklore suggest that beneath Mont Saint-Michel, there are secret tunnels, caverns, or even portals that could lead to an underworld—a concept that aligns with the dramatic architecture and mystical atmosphere of the site. However, these ideas are purely fictional and have no basis in historical fact. Instead, they tap into the rich tradition of using Mont Saint-Michel’s remote, almost inaccessible position as a symbol of both spiritual transcendence and the darker, unknown realms that lie beneath the surface of human experience.

The walls of the Mount are still inscribed by men who were prisoners here and left their marks behind. Some of their spirits were left behind as well. Their disembodied voices are heard. 

One of the commanders at the abbey was Captain Louis d’Estouville (dess-toot-veel). He served during the Hundred Year War. He led his troops into slaughtering thousands of English soldiers and the ground was soaked with their blood. This was during a brutal battle in 1434 with the English being led by Thomas de Scales into a full assault on the abbey. The Captain had a force of only 300 and they managed to kill 2,000 English soldiers.  One of the things that helped is that the tide came in, trapping the English. Many of them drowned. When the English were finally able to retreat, they left behind two massive wrought-iron siege guns called bombards or Michelettes and these heavy cannons still sit near the entrance gate today. The Captain also seems to have remained, guarding the Mount in the afterlife. His apparition has been seen on the ramparts.

People also claim to see phantom monks that appear as shadowy figures wearing robes. These apparitions roam the ancient stone hallways and crypts and it is thought this is because their burials within the abbey had been disturbed through the years. 

Mont-Saint-Michel looks like a location straight out of a fairy tale. It's history has nothing to do with fairy tales though/ A place of spirituality became a place of imprisonment and is today a place to embrace spirituality again while enjoying the architecture and beauty near Normandy. Is Mont-Saint-Michel haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 650 - Brownella Cottage

Moment in Oddity - Parachuting Tylenol Mice

Shortly after WWII, invasive brown tree snakes arrived on Guam. The snakes hitched rides in shipping cargo and military planes moving through post-war Pacific locations. This species of snake originates from eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and northern Australia. The island of Guam has no native predators to check the population growth of the brown tree snakes, leaving the populations of native forest birds and lizards in jeopardy. The snakes quickly multiplied into millions across the island with all the ample native food supply. In 1995, research and development began using acetaminophen as a toxicant to reduce the brown tree snake population. By September of 2010, early field trials and small-scale airdrops of Tylenol mouse baits took place on Guam. Each neonatal pre-killed mouse was laced with 80 mg of acetaminophen. Brown tree snakes are scavengers, making the method of administration feasible, with little impact on the native wildlife. The mice were dropped by helicopters using a parachute system to snag the released mice in the forest canopy. The jungle canopy is where the snakes naturally hunt. The mouse parachutes were constructed of biodegradable streamers and cardboard. During the first test in 2010, a mere 250-280 mice were dropped. In 2013, a major operation dropped 2,000 mice into Guam's jungle canopy. Additional targeted drops occurred in both 2016 and 2018. The unusual method of invasive snake control has proven to be a highly effective, targeted tactical tool for reducing brown tree snake populations in specific, hard-to-reach forest canopy areas on Guam. Although they have not completely eradicated the massive island-wide population, the control method certainly is odd.

Brownella Cottage (Suggested by: Josh and Sarah Kitchen)

Brownella Cottage in Galion is said to be one of the most haunted locations in Ohio and has stood for nearly 140 years. While this is not a small house, it definitely has the appearance of a cottage and it has the distinction of having only the couple that built it, live in it. Bishop Brown was a controversial figure and he and his wife Ella are believed to haunt their former home. Join us for the history and hauntings of Brownella Cottage. 

Benjamin Leveridge and his two sons came to the future Galion in 1817. They would have found Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking groups like the Wyandot and Delaware who used this as a hunting ground. They would have a strong presence here through the 18th century. William Hosford and his sons Asa and Horace would arrive on the outskirts in 1820 and they would move more into the town center after Colonel James Kilbourne laid it out. A post office was opened in 1824 with the name of Goshen. This was changed to Galion after it was discovered that Ohio already had a city named Goshen, No one is sure how the name Galion came to be. Early settler Asa Hosford became a state legislator and he was integral in getting a rail line to come through. People call him the "Father of Galion." He built a home here in 1892 and it still stands. A dark mark in the town's history was the lynching of a black man in 1882 after he was accused of raping a white woman. Lustron homes are a rarity, but Galion has four of them. Lustron homes were prefabricated, all-metal homes that were produced after World War II. They were low-maintenance and durable, fashioned from enameled steel panels. Production ended in 1950. President Hardings wife came from Galion, which remains a fairly small town today. It was here that Bishop Brown would marry his wife and pastor Grace Church.

William Montgomery Brown was born on September 4, 1855 in Ohio, the son of a tenant farmer. The family moved to Michigan in 1858. When the Civil War started, William's father enlisted in the Union Army and served in Tennessee before becoming ill. He went back home and died on August 1, 1862 and William's mother decided to take the family back to Ohio. The family needed money and so William went to work for a farmer who was unkind.

Things would change for William when he turned 15 and the county placed him at another farm owned by a man named Jacob Gardner. Gardner was very religious and a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, so he influenced William to follow this way of life. That was put to the test when William became ill with typhoid and close to death. He begged God to spare his life and in return he would devote his life to the ministry. Apparently, the bargain worked and William recovered. The farmer he had been with had given him money for his work and he used that to leave Ohio when he turned 21-years-old. He ended up in Omaha, Nebraska in 1876. His main job there was driving a carriage for a judge who was alarmed that William had no real education. The judge got William into school and he did well, graduating a couple years later. He moved back to Ohio after that and got a job in a tannery. William had a desire to go to seminary, but he didn't have the money for it. A Cleveland philanthropist named Mary Scranton Bradford agreed to underwrite his education at the Episcopal Seminary, Bexley Hall, at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, but first he had to do preparatory course work. This took him several years. He attended Seabury Divinity in Minnesota from 1879 to 1880 and then attended Bexley Hall, but never finished all his course work. He never received a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Bexley, but despite that, he became vicar of Grace Church in Galion, Ohio in 1883.

Shortly before that, in December 1882, William Brown married Ella Scranton Bradford, who was the adopted niece of Mary Scranton Bradford. So, the listeners can see why Mrs. Bradford was willing to foot the bill on William's education. She would pay to have Brownella Cottage built as a wedding present for the couple. 

The cottage was situated across the street from Grace Church. There was another brick structure on the property that had once been St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church. It was built back in 1866 and William would use this as his study. The cottage was built from 1885 to 1887 and was designed by Cleveland architect Clarence O. Arey in a mix of Queen Anne Victorian, Stick and Shingle and Gothic Revival. No expense was spared and reflected Mrs. Bradford's love of high style. There were 15 rooms and the most unique feature was added in the 1920s, a glass-enclosed hallway that connected the study to the main house. In 1891, William became the archdeacon for missionary work in the Diocese of Ohio and set about writing a book. This book would be named "The Church for Americans," which explained the beliefs of the Episcopal Church. The book proved to be very popular and gave him a bit of good renown. This spotlight on him later wouldn't be a good thing. Although he was vicar of Grace Church, the church consecrated him as assistant bishop of the state of Arkansas in 1898. He and Ella would live in Arkansas, but but they still spent several months of the year at Brownella Cottage. In the same year that he became assistant bishop, William received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Kenyon College. Shortly thereafter, the Bishop of Arkansas, Henry Niles Pierce, died and William became Bishop Brown over Arkansas. 

It was at this time that Bishop Brown started getting more vocal about more controversial views. He had some racist beliefs that supported segregation within the church. The Bishop didn't believe that blacks should be able to elevate in the church hierarchy of mostly white churches. He wrote in his 1907 book "The Crucial Race Question," that the only way for Black church members to go up in the ranks was to have their own church. This angered Northerners who had supported his church in Arkansas financially. And it seems so strange since he started his religious life in Ohio. 

Bishop Brown denounced these views later in life. There would be other stances that he would take though, that would get his own denomination to excommunicate him. The Bishop had written another book called "The Level Plan of Church Union" and this book rejected many practices of the Episcopal Church. Not surprising, this angered church membership and supporters. A conflict started brewing between Trinity Cathedral in Little Rock with the Bishop. The dean there refused to support this new book and didn't like the control the Bishop was wielding over the cathedral. Voices rose up against him and he was asked to leave, so he returned to Galion, Ohio in 1911. In 1912, he resigned as the bishop of Arkansas, citing poor health, but asking that he still be a member of the House of Bishops. This meant he could still vote in the House, but he never attended the House again. People started referring to him as the "Wandering Bishop" because he was a bishop without a diocese. He would make it even harder to get a diocese with more contentious views. With the free time on his hands, he started reading books written by Charles Darwin and Karl Marx and he started to watch what was happening in Russia. His mind started to be swayed and he would soon be on his way to the moniker he would be most famously known as, "Bad Bishop Brown."

By July 1913, the Bishop was announcing that he had converted to science.  He wrote to several Episcopal bishops, letting them know that he was changing his mind on several core tenets of not only the Episcopal denomination, but of the Christian faith. The key one being that he didn't believe that Jesus was the Christ and even more, he wasn't sure the man ever existed. He maintained that he still believed in God, but Christ was a myth to him. He wrote, "I no longer believed in a personal God, nor in a six-day creation, nor in a literal heaven and hell." The bishops reacted with strong hostility to his views, but they left him to be until he started promoting these ideas. 

In 1920, he published the book "Communism and Christianism: Banish Gods from the Skies and Capitalists from the Earth." And that did it. The House of Bishops charged him with heresy and then decided not to try him. They hoped he would just go away, but he remained a thorn in their side and in 1924, the Bishop of Vermont, the Bishop of Indianapolis and the Bishop of West Virginia brought heresy charges and a trial was conducted under Presiding Bishop, the Most Rev. Alexander Charles Garrett. Bishop Brown tried to prove to his fellow bishops that they believed like he did because they did not believe in a strict interpretation of the Bible. The Bishops had to make an example of him as 125,000 copies of his book had sold. And the book did, indeed, repudiate much of the tenets of the Christian faith. The Presentment cited twenty-three quotations from the book. An example from Pg. 90, "The one God of the Jews and the triune god of the Christians; if taken seriously, are superstitions." The bishop finally asked, "Is it my theology or my economics that is being attacked?" A 1924 article in Time Magazine ended a story about the event with "And thus, for differing reasons, every normal American objects to the aged and mentally warped Brown of Galion, Ohio." And that is what most of the bishops believed. That Bishop Brown was deranged. The trial found him guilty of heresy and he was deposed and excommunicated.

There were attempts to get him reinstated, but that never happened. The Russian Orthodox Church was connected to the Soviet authorities in Russia and they were open to the Bishop becoming part of them. The Old Catholic Church was also open to him. He chose the Catholic Church and they consecrated him as an Old Catholic bishop. Thus, many Old Catholic churches count Bishop Brown in the line of succession of their bishops.

Ella had inherited her mother's entire estate, so the couple were extremely well off with lots of real estate holdings in Cleveland. The land that the Terminal Tower was built upon was owned by Mrs. Bradford, so Ella and Bishop Brown got a large windfall from that. They would use some of the money to travel, but Ella was careful with the money. The Bishop had a real heart for the working class and when the Great Depression hit, the Browns bought truckloads of food for the poor. The Bishop was known for passing out nickels to the children. Ella passed away in 1935 and now that she wasn't around holding onto the purse strings, the Bishop started living extravagantly. When he traveled into Cleveland, he would stay in the most expensive hotels. And he would get there in his brand new Packard automobile. He also bought a plane eventually. The Bishop also kept up his writing on Communism and he hosted the head of the communist party in America, Earl Browder, on several occasions. His latter years were spent ill as the Bishop suffered from diabetes that took his eyesight. He died in 1937, on Halloween, at the age of 82 in Brownella Cottage. Both he and Ella are buried in Galion's Fairview Cemetery. The cottage sat empty for the next 50 years with a caretaker watching over it. 

The Galion History Center started in 1955 with six individuals and they bought the property and opened it as a museum. The property includes Brownella Cottage, the Historic Grace Church and the Galion History Museum that is housed in the carriage house. The house contains many of the Browns belongings and furnishings. 

The Center offers tours, ghost tours and public and private paranormal investigations. They are not shy about their ghosts. Staff, volunteers and visitors have all claimed to have experiences ranging from hearing disembodied footsteps and voices to doors opening and closing on their own to images caught on camera to full-bodied apparitions. The ghosts of both Ella and William Brown are purported to haunt Brownella Cottage. Stories claim that every Halloween night, the ghost of the bishop is seen walking the glass causeway between the house and the study. People on tours have reported the scent of pipe smoke even though there is no smoking allowed. Psychics have claimed that there is a young ghost named Patrick here, even though the Browns never had any children. Barry Moneysmith and his wife Cathy were members of the Galion Historical Society and they helped to host the paranormal investigations. They told the Heart of Ohio Magazine in 2014, "We have recorded some amazing EVPs (Electronic Voice Phenomena) that are direct answers to questions. K-2 meters measure EMF, or electro-magnetic fields, and we have communicated with spirits for long periods of time using the flashlight as a means of asking and answering questions. The dowsing rods are another way to make a connection. I’ve heard my name on EVPs, and I personally saw a full body apparition in the hallway just a week ago. Our communication has been constant and positive with the spirits. We find contact is divided into two parts, upstairs and downstairs. Upstairs we find the spirits who had the right to be upstairs in life — Ella, Mary and the family members. In the servants quarters we find the spirits of the servants are willing to talk to us. Downstairs we often make contact with family, friends and certain servants as well. EVPs recorded in the dining room often have the sound of dishes and silverware clinking in the background, and we’ve recorded what we believe is the Bishop whistling. The activity moves from place to place in the house, but it ends rather early. Generally by midnight or one o’clock, the house is still. I’ve spent the night at the house alone, and by 2 a.m. the house is as quiet as any house I’ve ever been in. We think the Browns were quiet, early-to-bed type people.” 

Season 2 Episode 10 of My Ghost Story on A & E featured the property. Parapsychologist Dr. John Douglas Gruber was interviewed on this episode and he snapped an interesting daylight image with a white shadowy figure that had a shape that looked like it was wearing something a bishop might wear. Upon seeing a picture of the Bishop in his coat and hat, we can say that the figure definitely looks to be wearing the same kind of hat. 

Doulgas captured an EVP of a man saying, "I'm fine, son." Douglas also asked, "Were you ever aware of spirits while you were alive?" The response was, "I believed in souls." He also asked the Bishop about his work and if he still had the same opinions and the response was, "My work is everything." A deacon named Greg Kirk was also on the episode and he was a caretaker who stayed at the cottage. The minute he moved in, he had an overwhelming feeling that he wasn't alone in the house. On his fifth night, he heard the sound of an old-fashioned bell. Kirk followed the sound down through the reception area and to a closed door. He opened the door and found an antique phone hanging on the wall inside of this closet. The phone wasn't hooked up. 

Skulls and Kittens investigated in 2021 and they used a Spirit Box. They asked, "Did you used to live here?" And a female voice came across the box and said, "Yes I did." They heard some knocking and the box said the name "Nick" twice and one of the investigators is named Nick. They also got a Max to come through and seemed to indicate he was nine-years-old. There was also a clear "Hi" from a child-like voice. They had a lot of equipment issues too.

Also located in Galion is the Gill House. Boomer Gill was born in 1859. He married Nellie Stewart in 1883 and they had four children. Gill became an automotive mogul and he became very wealthy. He built the Gill House in 1903 with architect Louis Kamper designing it in the neoclassical style. The house had a unique oval dining room and an intricate main staircase. They filled the home with the finer things, like a piano and a Victrola, and they hosted the likes of Thomas and Mina Edison, Henry Ford, and Harvey Firestone. The Talbot family were the next owners and they had it from 1924 to 1956. The mother of Mr. Talbot came to live with them at the house and she died there. Preserving Galion, Inc. owns the house and paid off the debt on it in 2025. The city helped raise funds to put a new roof on the house. The house is said to be haunted and several groups have come though to investigate.  People believe the basement has the spirit of a Native American who is usually seen as a shadow figure. The spirit of a young girl is in the house and an older gentleman hangs out in the attic. There have been disembodied footsteps, phantom voices doors open and close on their own and people have been touched or had their clothes tugged. Travel With Austin was using a spirit box in the basement and they got the word "suffering" to come through. Later, he got his name to come across the box. There was mostly a female voice coming through the box. Paranormal Quest investigated the house 11 years ago. A caretaker of the house told them, "We have this recurring, and I don't know how to describe it other than to say this swirling mist kind of thing and it's about this far off the ground. It darts from room to room, that kind of thing." While investigating, two of the guys felt something fly in between them.

Galion is a cute small town with lots of historic treasures. There is a historic local train depot that hosted whistle-stop campaign speeches from U.S. Presidents including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon. And we have these two historic homes that could be haunted. Are they haunted? That is for you to decide!

HGB Ep. 649 - Haunted Abingdon, Virginia

This Month in History - The Birth of Louis Armstrong

In the month of August, on the 4th, in 1901, legendary trumpeter, singer and bandleader, Louis Armstrong was born. Armstrong was born into severe poverty in New Orleans, Louisiana. As a child, Louis worked odd jobs for a local family who loaned him money to buy his first cornet. He learned formal cornet playing at the Colored Waif's Home for Boys after a New Year's Eve arrest in 1912. Armstrong had the fortune to be mentored by local jazz pioneer, Joe "King" Oliver before he began playing professional gigs on Mississippi riverboats. In 1922, Armstrong moved to Chicago to join King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. He popularized scat singing with his 1926 hit "Heebie Jeebies". Scat singing is a style of vocal jazz improvisation where the singer uses wordless vocals and nonsense syllables instead of actual words. After World War II, manager Joe Glaser officially disbanded Louis Armstrong’s big band. It was then that Louis Armstrong began touring with his band 'Louis Armstrong and His All Stars'. In 1964, he recorded the most famous version of "Hello Dolly" which became a Billboard number-one hit and won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Male Vocal Performance. Louis Armstrong was one of the most foundational and influential figures in jazz history. He died of a heart attack on July 6, 1971, at his home in Queens, New York. 

Haunted Abingdon, Virginia 

The small southern town of Abingdon in Virginia oozes charm with its large maple and dogwood trees lining the brick sidewalks of Main Street, which had once been a pioneer trail through the Blue Ridge Mountains. Quaint shops and eateries fill the 20-block historic district here and there are several haunted locations that make this one of America's most haunted small towns. Join us for the history and hauntings of Abingdon, Virginia. 

Main Street was once the Great Road that Native Americans and bison had traversed through the Blue Ridge Mountains before Thomas Walker arrived in 1748 to survey the area for the Loyal Land Company. The spot was known as Wolf Hills because a story claimed that Daniel Boone had camped here with his dogs in 1760 and that they had been attacked by wolves. Several pioneering men bought plots from Walker in 1765 and began to set up a town. In 1774, Joseph Black built a fort to protect the settlers from attacks by the Cherokee Nation and the town would take on the name Black's Fort. An act of the Assembly of Virginia would incorporate the Town of Abingdon in 1778 and then it would have a very important role in the Revolutionary War. In 1780, militias from North Carolina and Virginia gathered at the Muster Grounds in Abingdon and marched 300 miles to fight in Kings Mountain, South Carolina and this would be a turning point in the war. The name Abingdon is thought to have come from Abingdon-on-Thames in Oxfordshire, England, which was the ancestral home of Martha Washington's family. The railway would bring prosperity and the Civil War would bring destruction in December of 1864 when Union General George Stoneman’s cavalry forces raided the town, tore up railroad tracks, burned buildings and destroyed military supplies. The modern era brought the Theater District and the Market District. There are over 145 buildings in the historic district and they have played witness to most of this history and a few of them just may have spirits.

Barter Theater

There are two buildings that make up the Barter Theater. There is the Gilliam Stage at 127 W. Main Street and the Barter's Smith Theater across the street at 110 W. Main Street. The building in which the Gilliam Stage resides was constructed in 1831 for Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church. 

Eventually this was owned by the Sons of Temperance and they transferred the title to the Town of Abingdon in 1890. The building was then used as a town hall and later as a fire hall. Even after this is no longer a fire hall, the siren still sat on the roof and would sound when there was a big fire. This was there until 1994 and would occasionally interrupt performances. Barter’s Smith Theatre's building was constructed in 1829 as a Methodist church. Speaking of fires, a big one burned up the out buildings of the church in 1914, leaving only the main building. Martha Washington College used the building as a gymnasium and a storage area and in 1961, it became part of Barter Theater. Robert Porterfield was an out-of-work actor when he moved from New York City to Virginia in 1932. He was looking for a new beginning and he convinced 22 of his fellow actors to come with him. They founded the Barter Theater in 1933 in what would later be the Gilliam Stage. Their first show opened on June 10, 1933 and was a three-act drama called "After Tomorrow." The theater was packed because Porterfield had implemented an interesting system. The Great Depression had left most people without extra spending money, so patrons could barter crops and livestock for tickets. Hence the name, Barter Theater. This also gave the actors something to eat as they were poor too. That made this the longest-running professional equity theatre in the United States. Life magazine would call this system a "booming success" in 1939. This was a little tough on the actors who boarded at the theater because they had to deal with chicken and pigs running around the back of the theater.   

Porterfield heard that the Empire Theater in New York City was going to be demolished in the 1950s and he was given a weekend to get to the theater and pull everything out of it that he could. So he and the actors headed north and they salvaged $75,000 worth of seats, lighting fixtures and system (originally installed by Thomas Edison), carpeting, paintings, and tapestries. That lighting would be used in the theater until the 1970s. 

Both buildings have undergone several renovations through the years. The Smith Theater has 167 seats, making this an intimate theater. It was named Smith Theater in 2019 for Steve and Debbie Smith for their loyalty to the theater. The Gilliam Stage has seating for 506 patrons and features a traditional proscenium style theater. The Lounge was opened in 2018 for events. A couple of notable actors connected to the theater are Gregory Peck and Ernest Borgnine. Peck acted in five plays at the Barter Theatre during the 1940 season and Borgnine spent four and a half years performing with the Barter Theatre company. There is a secret tunnel under the theater and some lore claims that a Confederate soldier was killed in the tunnels while transporting some ammunition and he roams the property and if you see him, specifically his wound, you will die in two days. That tunnel also harbors a malevolent entity that was once said to have scared some carpenters working in the theater at night. They dropped their tools and wouldn't return. And the founder of the theater seems unable to let go of it. People have claimed to have seen him sitting in the audience or watching from his favorite opera box during live performances.

The Tavern 

The Tavern is located at 222 E. Main Street and is the oldest building in Abingdon and said to be the oldest pub in Virginia. The building was erected in 1779 to serve as a stagecoach stop for people on their way to Kentucky. This is a two-story Colonial style building constructed from hand-cut local limestone and logs. 

The tavern served as the first post office west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Some famous people who stayed here include Pierre Charles L’Enfant, Henry Clay, President Andrew Jackson and the King of France. The building would serve as a hospital during the Civil War and then a variety of things like a bank, a bakery, an antique shop, a general store, a private residence, a barber shop a cabinet shop and today as a fine dining restaurant. The wife of the founder of the Barter Theater, Mary Dudley Porterfield, bought it in 1965. Up to that point, from 1858 to 1964, it had been owned by descendants of Thaddeus Harris, who was a freed black man. Local attorney Emmitt F. Yeary owned the place next and then sold to Max Hermann in 1994. Josh Fuller worked for six years as general manager under Hermann and in 2019, he bought the restaurant from him and owns it still. Josh Fuller believes that the building is about 70% original and the interior features wooden beams across the ceiling, original fixtures and uneven brick flooring. And there is this glorious outdoor terrace. There are several spirits here. People hear disembodied footsteps and objects move on their own. This is one of our favorite nicknames for a ghost: The Tavern Tart. Obviously, this is a female apparition who is believed to have met a violent fate at some point in the tavern, although there is no specific evidence of this story. At least if you don't count getting a little pinch on the tush if you are a man. Men seem to get most of the attention from this ghost. Not only do they get pinched or grabbed, but they see her face in the window. What makes her haunting compelling is how similar stories are about her and these stories are coming from people who haven't heard of the ghost before. And there have been many of these experiences, so they are hard to ignore. 

James Wyatt's Horse

Some people claim to hear the galloping or clip-clopping of horse hooves on Main Street when there is no horse on the road. The ghostly horse is said to belong to Union Captain James Wyatt who was part of Stoneman's Raid. Major General Stoneman had a force of 6,000 men and their only job was to destroy stuff, which they did over 2,000 miles through six states. This would be one of the longest cavalry operations in military history. Wyatt decided to exact revenge in Abingdon because he had grown up there and he held a grudge over run-ins with authorities there as a youth. He set fire to the courthouse and this ended up burning the homes near it as well. Nearby Confederate cavalry soldiers went after Wyatt and they shot and killed him and his horse. And now that horse, and perhaps Wyatt atop the horse, still ride Main Street. 

The Valentine Baugh House

The Valentine Baugh House is located at 129 Main Street. The home started as a log house in 1798 that was built by Robert Dukes. A Federal-style expansion was added in 1807 by new owner, surveyor Valentine Baugh. The house encompasses the original log cabin built on the site. The house passed on through the family to Valentine's granddaughter Minnie Baugh who added a retail space on to the western side of the house. She operated it as an apothecary shop for ladies. Minnie and her sister Ethel organized the Washington County Historical Society. 

A story claims that Ethel fell in love with an intern at the hospital, but her father didn't want the two together. Ethel planned to elope, but before she could leave, her father locked her into her room on the second floor of the house. She never left the house and now people claim her spirit is still there. Cheré Dastugue Coen (shuh-RAY das-TIG-oo KOH-en) wrote on the Weird South website in 2020 about an experience a tour guide had at the house while dog-sitting. She wrote, "The current owner once asked Hietala to house-sit her dog for a week. The Assistant Haint Mistress would not pass up a chance at a haunted house, she told us, so she eagerly agreed. However, Hietala is more easily scared than she thought. She woke at 3 a.m. with the sound of a door creaking downstairs, right where the house opens to the store. 'I didn’t sleep that night,' she admitted. The second night she again woke at 3 a.m. with the same noise. About 30 minutes later, she felt as if someone was in the room with her, watching her. 'I felt every single hair on the back of my neck go straight up,” she said. “And it (the haint) did not want me there.' The next night Hietala moved to the living room where she left on all the lights as well as the TV. 'I binged watched ‘Diners, Drive-ins and Dives’ and felt that if that can’t protect me, nothing will,” she related with a laugh. Guy Fieri let her down, however. The dog began barking in the dining room and wouldn’t stop. Hietala scooped up the pooch but the dog kept returning to the spot, looking at the door leading to the shop and barking. That was enough for our Assistant Haint Mistress. She grabbed the leash, the dog and her stuff and spent the rest of the week dog-sitting in her apartment."  

Martha Washington Inn

Across the street from the Barter Theater is the Martha Washington Inn at 150 West Main Street.  Most people call it simply The Martha. This started as the private residence of General Francis and Sarah Preston and their nine children. The General was a hero of the War of 1812 and he was retiring to Abingdon. 

The two-story house was completed in 1832 in the Federal style and built from brick. The porch has a one-story Ionic portico with massive double doors topped by a large fanlight. The interior featured a grand staircase, high ceilings and formal parlors on the first floor, with bedrooms on the second floor. The house was bought in 1858 by the founders of the Martha Washington College. This was an all woman college and was open for 70 years, closing during the Great Depression because it was no longer financially stable. During its tenure as the college, the Civil War started and a Confederate unit called the Washington Mounted Rifles trained on the college grounds. The school also served as a hospital and both sides brought their wounded here. The Victorian era brought the updates of another floor with a mansard roof and dormers. The valedictorian of the Class of 1880 was Nellie Nugent Somerville and she would go on to become the first woman elected to the Mississippi Legislature. Her daughter would also be elected shortly thereafter. Nellie was described as "a major liberalizing force in Mississippi for forty years." An expansion in 1913 brought brick wings to the east and west with front porticoes supported by Doric columns. The college closed in 1932 and sat vacant until it opened as the Martha Washington Inn in 1935. The main lobby of the inn is the former living room of the Preston family. The East Parlor holds a 9-foot Dutch-baroque grandfather clock that had been shipped over from England by a Preston daughter. Notable people who stayed at the hotel through the years include First Lady  Eleanor Roosevelt, President Harry S. Truman, Lady Bird Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Elizabeth Taylor. 

The United Company bought the inn in 1984 and a multi-million dollar renovation was conducted. The Camberley was the next owner in 1995 and they rehauled everything, adding a spa, pool, tennis and pickleball courts and renovating guest rooms and they opened the Sisters American Grill. This is now part of their historic collection. And apparently, has several ghosts.

There are claims that slaves were kept down in the basement and that the basement is haunted with some of their spirits. The tunnel from the Barter Theater connects to tunnels at the house as well, so the malevolent entity that hangs out at the theater could be wandering around here too. Actors who used the tunnel to go from the theater to their rooms at the inn in the 1930s and 1940s, claimed to run into this spirit. Since the hotel had served as a hospital for a time, it isn't surprising that there might be a wounded Confederate soldier wandering around. He is usually seen hobbling along using a crutch for support and the strange thing about him is that he always leaves a trail of mud behind him. There was also a Union soldier who had been wounded and was at the hospital. He fell in love with one of the nurses while he was recovering. He was sent back to his regiment and then returned a while later to bring the nurse home with him. Confederate soldiers heard he was in the hospital and they shot him dead. A large pool of blood formed under him, leaving a bloodstain that no one can get out of the wood. Another version claims that it was two Union soldiers who killed a Confederate soldier whose girlfriend was attending the college. He had come to tell her goodbye and was shot and killed and he left behind the bloodstain that never goes away. Even when it is cleaned, it returns. Carpets over the area often develop mysterious holes over the stains. The most famous spirit here is Beth with her violin. She was a young lady at the finishing school who had volunteered to stay on and help tend wounded soldiers. Beth had a violin and she played it in the evenings to calm the nerves of the injured. One of these men was Captain John Stoves, a Yankee officer. He caught her eye and she played most often for him and the two fell in love. He actually asked her to marry him and she accepted. Unfortunately, his injuries were grave and eventually he succumbed to them. Beth was heartbroken. She herself caught typhoid fever and died a few weeks later. Now she has returned to the inn and is seen as an apparition in Room 403, where it is thought the Captain died. Female students at the college claimed to hear a ghostly violin playing and this has continued with employees and guests at the inn. 

Abingdon historic district has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970 and seems like a great place to experience history going all the way to the Revolutionary War. Do we have some spirits going back to this time too? Are there other ghosts here? Are these places in Abingdon haunted? That is for you to decide!