Haunted Museums and Galleries of Canada

The restless spirits of former occupants still reside in many of Canada’s museums. Curators of nightmares, archivists of fears and trustees of all things that go bump in the night, museums are not simply places that preserve and display historical artifacts. Andrew Hind cracks open a crumbling vault of true ghost and guides the reader through cursed artifacts, spectral evidence of the afterlife and timeless mysteries in museums across the country:

• At Le Musée de Saint-Boniface Museum in Winnipeg, spectral nuns walk the halls and sing hymns in the chapel, tending to suffering souls long into the afterlife

• The mysterious spirits inhabiting the elegant Brown House at the Whitchurch-Stouffville Museum reveal their secrets to a paranormal investigation team

• The Haliburton House Museum in Windsor, Nova Scotia, is home to the restless spirits of a long-dead soldier as well as the master and the mistress of the house, Thomas Chandler and Louise Haliburton and more

• At the Art Gallery of Sudbury, the ghosts of the original owners of the mansion mingle with staff and visitors

• Canada’s ace of aces, the legendary World War I aviator Billy Bishop, inhabits his boyhood home in Owen Sound, Ontario, long after leaving this mortal plane

• At Toronto’s Black Creek Pioneer Village, the past may be more alive than even the costumed interpreters could imagine—the mill wheel turns of its own accord; unseen horses pull a wagon up to the door; a little ghost boy plays peek-a-boo

• The ghost of famed Canadian artist Emily Carr lingers at her former Victoria home, forever connected in death to the place she was happiest in life.

So visit a museum and experience its collection, physical and ethereal alike.