Halloween may have passed, but paranormal fascination doesn’t need to take a break.
Hamilton is full of history dating back centuries, to the beginning of the settlement. And with all that history there are plenty of ghosts haunting some of the city’s oldest buildings.
Dundurn Castle is a historic landmark that people from all around southern Ontario visit to learn about the history of the MacNab family, old Hamilton, and how the wealthy lived in the 17th century, but as the legend has it, Lady MacNab never truly left the building.
“[One of the workers] started to hear this beautiful singing, a lady’s voice a very strange Christmas carol was being sung,” Chris Friesen, a reenactor at Dundurn Castle said. “So she stepped back and just let that sound echo through the halls, it was just magical. All of a sudden her eyes grew wide as she realized, she was the only maid left in the building”
Friesen spent the last couple weeks of October taking visitors through Dundurn Castle and recounting the ghost stories of the grand manor as part of a special ghost walk experience that only runs around Halloween.
Hamilton has a variety of ghost walks that take visitors around some of the most haunted places in the city and teach some of the spooky history that lies behind them.
“I like the history that they bring, and even more so, the spooky history. I like to know the backstories on places, and the ghost stories just make it more interesting,” said Karen Ritchie, one of the ghost hunters at Dundurn Castle.
Hamilton’s Custom House by Bayfront Park has one of the most famous ghost stories in the city.
The tale goes that a woman arrived on an immigrant ship and died shortly after arriving on the docks. Her body was buried on the grounds of the Custom House that she now haunts, waiting for her long-lost love to come for her.
Across the street from Mohawk College is Century Manor, the last remaining section of the long-abandoned Hamilton Asylum for the Insane. Sounds of footsteps, and dragging metal echo through the old decrepit halls, and ghosts drift along the tunnel network that runs under the building.
But be careful if you want to go explore Century Manor, the interior building is closed off to the public. But at night, even the silhouette of the Victorian-era hospital and the stories its boarded-up windows keep behind them are enough to send a shiver down your spine.
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