Haunted Queen's Park

You can call them ghosts or spirits. To most of the living it makes very little difference but what about to them? The next time I interview a ghost or spirit I will ask them.

As for this article, let's call them ghosts. Even politicians are not immune from these ghosts from another time and or dimension. Queens Park is the area of this haunting while the 117 year-old Ontario Legislative Building (OLB) is the place. According to the out-of-print publication Grandeur, Ghosts and Gargoyles which was printed in the late 1970s and distributed by the Legislative Assembly.

In the early days (at the building), the ghosts appeared. Frank Yeigh, author and journalist who wrote the only definitive history of the building (at the time), kept notes on them in his files, which are now in the Ontario Archives.

An old soldier, in full regimental dress, was said to parade in the office of the Queen's Printer. There were three women inmates of the old asylum – one in white with streaming hair, one wearing a checked dress thrown over her head and one who had hanged herself in the basement. All were said to make distressing moans. One night watchman refused to enter the reporters' room after dark because of the noise. They have not been heard of since the turn of the century.

The previous information was send to me by David Bogart, Parliamentary Protocol and Public Relations.

Before the OLB was built in 1893, the land was used as the University Lunatic Asylum (official title). The reasoning of the name might have been that the asylum was on the university grounds. The origins of the site go back to Kings College which became University of Toronto. The province took the land over in the 1850s thinking that it would be used to construct a new parliament in which it did.

The area was to be used as the new national capital, but it turned out to be in Ottawa. When the building wasn't used as the new national building, it was used as a hospital which is now the OLB. The old lease of 999 (666 upside down and the building is haunted. Could there be some kind of coincidence?) years no longer exists. Bogart said, "That lease was over in 1880 when the province acquired the land and became an official accusation in 1894. The lease had to do with the city and the university and not the province."

To quote Toronto Sun columnist Christina Blizzard in her article The hallowed, haunted halls The ghosts of Queen's Park harken back to a time when it really was an asylum. The White Lady wanders the halls, appearing sorrowful, with a long white flowing robe and long hair. The Maiden wears a checkered dress with an apron which she holds over her face to conceal her features.

Most gruesome is The Hanging Woman, who dangles from a hook in the long tunnel in the basement. Also here is a curious (and probably recent) apparition of a soldier in full regimental dress who appears angry as he descends the Grand Staircase of the main hall.

The chills start when you descend through the clutter and junk into the damp vault.

I personally believe that since that Canadian ghosts don't vote, they don't care where they haunt. All they care about is that they can go bump in a Canadian night.

Haunted Queen's Park

(The ghosts of Haunted Queen's Park)