Haunted Walk celebrates Canada 150 with special tour
By Courtney Buchanan
One of Centretown’s most popular tourist attractions — The Haunted Walk of Ottawa — has brought back its special-edition tour, 150 Years of Canada’s Scariest Ghost Stories, for the fall season.
The tour includes some of the country’s most spine-chilling tales and takes those who dare on a 90-minute walking tour through downtown Ottawa, stopping at what are described as the capital’s most haunted buildings.
The Sparks Street-based Haunted Walk of Ottawa is offering the “national” tour until Nov. 4. It includes a visit to the Bytown Museum, Ottawa’s oldest and – according to tour guides — most haunted building.
“We’ve dug into our archives and found some of the scariest stories from across Canada,” said Haunted Walk’s Stephanie Robinson. “It’s a special tour for this year. We wanted to be a part of the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday.”
Robinson said the company brought the tour back specifically for the most popular ghost story-telling season, Halloween.
Meaghan Flaherty, 24, has been a tour guide with The Haunted Walk of Ottawa for the past two years and said this tour is her favourite to guide. Flaherty also said the 150 celebration tour received lots of praise and positive reactions from customers in the summer months, which is the reason why the company is offering an encore.
“Our customers were having so much fun with it, our guides were loving it so much that we thought, ‘Why wouldn’t we offer it for our most popular time of year?’”
150 Years of Canada’s Scariest Ghost Stories incorporates local ghost stories with scary tales from across the country. The tour begins at The Haunted Walk of Ottawa office beside D’Arcy McGee’s pub and takes customers through the downtown area and to the museum, located next to the headlocks of the Rideau Canal.
“We do go into the Bytown Museum, which is quite a haunted building, so you do get the atmosphere along with the ghost stories,” said Flaherty. “No matter what the night is, you feel spooked.”
The museum is said to be haunted by Rideau Canal construction-era supply manager Duncan McNab. He was known as a trickster who often played practical jokes on his co-workers during his lifetime.
Tour guides and museum workers have reported what seem to be suspicious and ghostly pranks occurring inside the building. Computer screen savers changing sporadically, lights flickering on and off and footsteps coming from what seemed to be an empty floor are a few of the purported incidents.
In addition to tales about the museum, customers can expect to hear stories about other historical Ottawa locations, such as the Château Laurier, tied in with stories from other provinces.
“The way we set up our stories is with a combination of ghost stories and historical facts. So oftentimes we will prelude a ghost story with some facts about where we are standing, what we’re looking at, where we are. Then we tie that into the ghost story that comes from a different location across Canada,” said Flaherty.
The Château Laurier, for example, is said to be haunted by the ghost of Charles Melville Hays, the hotel’s founder. After Hays’ death aboard the Titanic in 1912, some say his soul returned to Ottawa to haunt his life’s work. The tour explains in detail how people have reported hearing whistling and ghostly singing in the stairwell of the grand hotel, as well as feelings of being watched in certain rooms.
The Fort Garry hotel in Winnipeg is known for similar ghostly incidents. Hotel guests have reported seeing closet doors swung shut and feelings of a hand brush their shoulder, only to turn around and see no one there. The allegedly haunted room 202 at the Fort Garry is just one example of the cross-Canada content the special tour incorporates.
Tour participant Alana Langlois, 19, said the special Canada 150 walk was the scariest she’s ever been on.
“The museum was really creepy at night. Walking around the building I felt like I was always watching my back and listening for strange sounds,” said Langlois.
She said she experienced an eerie occurrence while on her tour. “The scariest moment was definitely when we were in the Bytown Museum and the door swung shut by itself. After that I was very paranoid walking around.”
Flaherty said she’s looking forward to guiding more people through the 150 Years tour, which she called her favourite to lead. Some stories on the tour, she said, are simply unexplainable and have left most customers chilled to the bone.
“It has got that amped up spook factor,” said Flaherty. “Is Canada haunted? We sure think so.”