Halloween in Ontario - Scary Trips and Destinations

Spooky, eerie, and just weird: Upper Canada is full of history, and not all of it is fit for squeamish folk around a campfire or lantern of days-gone-by.

From spectral leftovers of brutal battles, to lost settlements, to screaming passageways, and a seeming reversal of gravity itself, there’s no shortage of creepy places to drive to and see in Ontario.

A haunting in Bytown
Visit the haunted sites of Bytown Museum, one of Ottawa’s most haunted buildings. PLUS, take the “Ghosts and Gallows” tour for even more stories of the Capital’s bloody past. D’Arcy McGee would be rolling in his grave (wait, maybe he is…)
http://www.hauntedwalk.com/ottawahalloween.php

Herron’s Mills (near Ottawa)
Take a drive to this Lanark County ghost town, founded in 1842. A local businessman started the settlement with a sawmill to supply lumber for construction in the area. As with many towns based on sawmills, though, the need for the mill dried-up and the local economy folded.  By 1950, the mill – and town – had totally shut down. A fun road trip.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=herron’s+mills+ontario&sll=45.048287,-76.402589&sspn=0.009263,0.022488&ie=UTF8&ll=45.0483,-76.401672&spn=1.185619,2.878418&z=9&iwloc=A

Haunted walks of old Kingston
Restless spirits are gathering – so the tour guides say – at the sites of some of Canada’s most vicious hauntings. Book on to one of the town’s Halloween walking tours, or dare to enter “Fort Fright”: A haunted (but still historical) version of the famed Fort Henry.
http://www.hauntedwalk.com/kingstonhalloween.php
http://www.fortfright.com

Feel the spirits in the streets of historic Cobourg
Just an hour east of Toronto, the beach is cleared out, the fall fair has left town, and the streets of historic Cobourg are growing dark with chilling tails from centuries-past. Grab a lantern (or a period-dressed tour guide with one) and get ready to peer around a dark corner or two, from the impressive Victoria Hall, to the last stop (if you make it that far) in the former town jail (now a full-service restaurant, open for late-night eats.)
http://www.concerthallatvictoriahall.com/index_1.htm

Nicholson (near Sudbury)
Established in 1903, Nicholson grew to a population of 300 at its peak. Though the local mill was profitable for many years, it burnt down during the Great Depression and wasn’t replaced. A few residents remained but in 1963, the last business closed and everyone left. In the early 1970s, the provincial government floated a proposal to turn Nicholson into a ghost town park, but as administrators deliberated, a careless hunter accidently set fire to one of the old structures, resulting in the loss of most of the town’s main street. Despite that, the buildings that remain – accessible via Shoals Provincial Park – comprise one of Canada’s coolest ghost towns. Image courtesy Ron Brown (www.ronbrown.ca)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Nicholson+ontario&sll=42.268139,-83.082008&sspn=0.077869,0.179901&g=ojibway+ontario&ie=UTF8&ll=47.950386,-83.770752&spn=0.281916,0.719604&z=11&iwloc=A

Best historic walking tours of downtown Toronto
Downtown Toronto boasts the spirit of William Lyon Mackenzie and his haunted printing press (in one of the most haunted houses in Canada), the remnants of a chase-to-the-death through the half-finished University of Toronto, and the ghost of a young girl nicknamed “Celeste” that roams the isles of the Royal Ontario Museum’s former McLaughlin Planetarium. Long-time tour guide/historian Richard Fiennes-Clinton and staff take lonely travelers on the some of the best guided ghost walks in Canada.
http://www.muddyyorktours.com

Gibraltar Point lighthouse
Unless you own a boat moored on Lake Ontario, you’ll need to get out of your car at some point for this one: The 150-year-old lighthouse at the southern end of Toronto’s famed island chain is said to be haunted vigorously by the ghost of former lighthouse keeper Radan Muller, who is rumoured to have been murdered in a late-night brawl.
http://www.toronto.ca/parks/island/lighthouse.htm

Creepy Burlington: the sleeper hit of the haunting circuit
A must-do on the fall road-trip circuit: Believe-it-or-not, there’s more to see in Burlington than you can possibly fit into one day. The region sports the storied Lover’s Leap at the top of the beautiful Albion Falls, where a jilted youth is said to have flung herself to her death. A night on one of the local ghost walks will reveal tales such as that of a dock-worker crushed under a wrecked barge, whose screams can still be heard to this day. To top it off, the area has one of Canada’s only “magnetic” hills (Like a science centre upside-down-room, these are really just optical illusions, but fun nevertheless.)
http://www.hauntedhamilton.com/local_albionfalls.html
http://www.burlingtonghostwalks.ca/burlingtonghosts3.htm
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/270041

Niagara’s Screaming Tunnel
Various municipalities lay claim to this eerie passageway, though the Ontario Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society notes the tunnel actually passes legitimately under an area between most of those townships. The Society has actually created a series of drop down menus – partially in jest of the ridiculous number of versions of the most prominent story related to the tunnel – to help sort it all out. Any way you slice it, this passage is creepy.
http://www.torontoghosts.org/niagara/screamtun.htm

Ojibway (greater Windsor area)
Even less than a ghost town, Ojibway is Ontario’s mysterious missing settlement. Founded in 1913 to house the American-Canadian Steel Corporation, salt deposits underground halted the construction of the town with only a few buildings completed. Abandoned, streets lay uncompleted and overgrown with trees. Today, Ojibway is a park in the middle of Windsor, where you can walk along the former town’s eerie paved sidewalks, now in the middle of an established forest. Image courtesy Ron Brown (www.ronbrown.ca)
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=ojibway+ontario&sll=46.097995,-78.895569&sspn=1.163664,2.878418&ie=UTF8&z=13&iwloc=A

Did we mention Toronto was haunted?
Seriously, as the place that most often leaves guests with at least a creepy feeling, Mackenzie house – just hundreds of metres from the Eaton Centre – is one of Canada’s most visited “haunted” sites. Staff claim to have heard the first Toronto Mayor’s printing press running by itself in the night. Staff and patrons have even seen doors and small pieces of furniture flung with alarming force, even in broad daylight.
http://www.pararesearchers.org/Ghosts/mack/mack.html

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