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Dundas District Elementary School

Actor Dave Thomas graduated Dundas District Elementary School in 1967. He and his brother, Ian, who graduated a few years later and went on in his musical career to win a Juno, are perhaps the best-known graduates from this school.

Some years after leaving Dundas District, Dave Thomas worked on Second City Television (SCTV) with a colleague named Joe Flaherty. Flaherty played a character known as Count Floyd, a low-budget local-television “horror” show host. Though Thomas lives in California, his long-time colleague Flaherty still lives in the Hamilton area. Given the legends surrounding Dundas District Elementary School, one wonders if Flaherty might occasionally be tempted to don his old costume, stand on the grounds of the school his comedic pal used to attend, and in his “Transylvanian” accent, say something like, “Gather ’round, kids, and be prepared to hear a scary story about the ghosts and pranks that took place here.” He would, of course, finish with his trademark eerie werewolf howl (despite being dressed as a vampire).

The reason the fictitious host of the equally fictitious Monster Chiller Horror Theatre might be appropriate to introduce this haunted school isn’t just due to the tie-in with a locally born alumni. The tales of this particular site range from the truly tragic and horrific to a series of pranks that don’t seem to have stopped upon death of the alleged prankster.

The Dundas District Public School stands vacant on the former Highway 8 at the foot of the Niagara Escarpment. This landmark building was the perfect scenic and easily accessible location for students in both Dundas and Flamborough.[1]

Originally built as the Dundas District High School and designed by Hamilton architect William J. Walsh, the goal was to mimic a Collegiate Gothic style. Budget limitations resulted in the completed building not looking as grand as originally intended in the design; however, the result was a well-proportioned three-storey building of rug brick with finely carved stone detailing.[2]

The Gothic stone ornamentation on the building includes decorative crests, door lintels marking separate entrances for girls and boys, as well as pinnacles and gargoyles. Legend has it that gargoyles are meant to scare off, or protect the building from, any evil or harmful spirits — but in this particular case, though much of the original architecture maintains a high degree of architectural integrity, a testament to the original designers and builders, and the gargoyles still stand watch over the building, it seems as if their mission has failed.[3]

Stylistically, this abandoned school might be compared to other Hamilton schools built in the same era, such as Westdale High and George R. Allen.[4] The building dates back to 1849 when the Dundas Select Academy, a private grammar school on Ogilvie Street, was established. The original building at 397 King Street West was constructed in 1928 on the former mill property donated by Robert and Frank Fisher. The brothers agreed to donate the property containing the Fisher Paper Mill (Gore Mills) as well as the vacant lot on the opposite side of King Street. They stipulated that the property must be kept in perpetuity for educational and public playground use.[5]

A historic train wreck and a bizarre pact formed by a group of custodians are tied to the strange occurrences at Dundas District Public School. Is the very ground it stands on still cursed?

Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.

The building operated as a high school until it was closed in 1982. Between 1987 and 1989, it became the temporary home for students of Dundas Central Public when their building was closed due to safety concerns. On November 5, 2007, Dundas District was closed, just a few months after it was deemed a historic site and was to be preserved.[6]

The boarded-up building at 397 King Street West currently sits unoccupied — at least by those among the living. As legend explains, there’s likely more than one restless spirit that occupies the spot.

Going back to December of 1934, you’ll see a shockingly tragic scene, one that a December 26 article in the Hamilton Spectator refers to as “the starkest tragedy that has ever darkened Hamilton’s Christmas.”

On a fateful Christmas Day in 1935, engineer Norman Devine pulled the CNR Holiday Special out of the Dundas Station and was heading eastbound toward Toronto for the holidays. On board were 365 passengers.

The train had been experiencing some minor mechanical problems, and with another train’s approach on the schedule, the Holiday Special was stopped and diverted to a side track about 190 metres east of Dundas Station. However, a series of human errors and failures to observe signals led to the forward brakeman, Edward Lynch, to not be aware that the train had been moved to a side track.

Shortly after, due to engine issues, Lynch was walking back to the station to call for a new locomotive when he spotted a light in the distance — CNR No. 16, the Maple Leaf Flyer, on its scheduled run from Detroit to Montreal. Sent into a panic, and thinking the Maple Leaf Flyer was going to crash into the Holiday Special, Lynch rushed to the switch, unlocked it, and threw it open. Believing he had just prevented a horrific crash, he had inadvertently done just the opposite.

The speeding train crashed into the Holiday Special, smashing the rear car almost completely, destroying half of the second car, and shooting the third car up on its end. The fourth car was also damaged from the impact. Splinters and screams shot into the air, the terrifying soundtrack of mayhem audible to people in the village below.

The lights on the passenger cars went out as passengers were flung forward from the impact, some of them tossed out into the winter night. Chaos ensued in the darkness as fire broke out on the demolished rear car. Passengers were trapped in various locations of the wreck, and for several hours nearby rescue workers who arrived at the scene and medical personnel who happened to be on the train set about tending to the injured. Due to the almost complete darkness, the rescue efforts went to those whose groans and screams of pain could be detected among the wreckage.[7]

Either side of the tracks was littered with injured people and dead bodies. In an article published in the Hamilton Spectator on December 31, 1993, Brian Henley wrote, “What followed was a hellish scene. Pandemonium broke out as surviving passengers crawled from the wreck, steam pipes burst scalding the trapped, and the right-of-way was littered with the bodies of the dead.”

Stan Nowak, president of Dundas Valley Historical Society, similarly describes it in a November 12, 2004, article published in the Ancaster News as a “grisly scene of horrible death and suffering,” with many passengers “trapped inside the twisted wreckage of the rear cars.”

Edward Lynch was arrested and charged with manslaughter for his involvement in the accident. In January of 1935, after a great deal of confusing and conflicting testimony, the jury found Mr. Lynch not guilty.[8]

During that fateful night, Hamilton’s old CNR passenger station on Stuart Street was used to hold and transfer patients to the hospital on Barton Street. An article in the Hamilton Spectator at the time described the site as resembling a clearing station behind the lines following an engagement in the First World War. Rumours continue to spread about the basement of the Dundas District School being used as a morgue to house the dead, despite assurances from groups such as the Dundas Historical Society that it is a myth.

Certainly, due to the chaos and confusion in the dark that night, some of the real facts might never be known, and it is entirely possible that, even for a limited time, the basement might have been used in this manner. But even if it was not, many experts in the field of supernatural investigation would agree that the proximity of the location might be enough for the intense experience of pain, suffering, and horror to leave an indelible psychic impression that continues to be felt at the location of the school.

Something, after all, has to explain why so many people have experienced strange and unexplainable events at that site. Something has to be behind the eerie noises, banging on lockers, and other poltergeist-like occurrences reported there.

An October 29, 2004, story in the Ancaster News by Erin Rankin entitled “Hair-Raising Local Legends Live On” spotlights strange things happening through an interview with Peter Greenberg, who was a principal at the school for five years.

Greenberg shared a story of when he came to work in the vacant school early one Saturday morning and the security guard warned him that someone might be inside, because the motion detector had gone off. The building was searched but nobody was found. Shortly after he had started working on some paperwork, he heard locker doors banging and clanging. Believing that vandals had indeed broken in, he called the police and immediately left the building.

When the police arrived, Greenberg went back into the building with one of the sergeants while the other officers waited outside. The thought was that the two men’s entrance would frighten the kids out of the building and the awaiting officers outside would catch them.

As Greenberg and the sergeant approached the third floor, they could hear a crashing noise echoing through the halls; it sounded as if things were being thrown around and glass was being smashed. But when they got to the third floor and opened the door, the noise suddenly stopped, nothing was out of place or damaged, and there was no sign of any mischievous kids on the premises.[9]

One wonders if the banging and crashing Greenberg and others have heard might have been audible psychic echoes of the tragic events that occurred on that fateful December night in 1934.

Greenberg also spoke about custodians at the school who told stories of having left work undone only to return some time later and discover it had been completed. He also shared the fact that most of the custodians refused to go to the third floor after dark.[10]

He was referring, of course, to the legends of a former custodian by the name of Russell and a bizarre promise or pact that was made.

In 1954 there was a group of five men who worked quite closely as custodians at the school and shared convictions about being hard-working and dedicated to their tasks. Russell was the name of the man mostly responsible for maintaining the third floor of the building. He took great pride in keeping fastidious care of the school and his area in particular — offering the service, cleanliness, and attention to detail that one might expect in the parliament buildings, a mansion, or a palace.[11]

Russell, however, was as known for his perfectionism and attention to detail as he was for his fondness of jokes and playing pranks on his fellow workers, and he developed quite the reputation to that end. It was Russell who suggested that he and the other four make a simple pact: whoever died first would keep up the fun by coming back to haunt the school and prove to the others that there was indeed life after death.[12]

As it turns out, Russell was the first of the group to die and to, naturally, have played the role as set forth in the pact.

In an article in the Hamilton Spectator in October 2006, Suzanne Bourret interviewed two custodians at the Dundas District Public School, Veronika Lessard and Tony Vermeer, who shared their experiences. They mentioned having the ominous feeling of being watched as well as having heard voices and seen strange shadows moving while working in the supposedly vacant building.

Lessard, who worked at the school for more than six years, shared the story of how one evening she had left a bucket of water on the third floor before heading down to the first floor to have supper with the other custodians. When she returned, the entire floor had been washed and the bucket was still in the spot she had left it.

She also spoke about a time when, during the March break, she was up on a ladder, cleaning some lights, when she heard the clanking of keys. She had thought it was Tony setting out to tease her. (They both had been familiar with the legends of Russell.) She called out for whoever was there to show himself, and the shadowy form of a tall, lanky man jingling his keys passed by the door and offered her one of the biggest smiles she’d ever seen, before walking out of the room and vanishing. “I’ll never forget that sight,” Lessard said, believing that what she had seen was the ghost of Russell himself.

One evening both Lessard and Vermeer were leaving the otherwise vacant building when they heard the voice of a little old lady calling out from upstairs. From the top of the darkened stairway, they could hear an old lady calling out, “Help me!” They knew enough not to go back and instead hot-footed it out of the building: one of Russell’s favourite tricks on his co-workers had been to imitate the cries of a helpless woman or child in order to get them to rush over to help, only to laugh at them for being tricked.

Vermeer spoke about seeing five ghostly figures walking down the back stairs as well as a night when he continued to hear footsteps coming from the floor above him, but whenever he went upstairs nobody was there, and the lights, which had previously been turned off, were back on again.

One time, Vermeer was working in the basement mopping the floor when suddenly he wasn’t able to move the mop. “It was like someone was standing on it,” he said. He then asked the invisible entity to get off his mop. The mop became unstuck and he then finished the job “real quick!”

Both Vermeer and Lessard have heard strange whistling echoing through the empty halls of the school and have admitted to just getting the willies for no reason at all, becoming filled with an intense desire to just get out.[13]

Several years after Suzanne’s article ran in the Spectator, a woman named Kay submitted a story to the folks at Haunted Hamilton about a time when she was walking her dog in the field across the street from the school. She took a break to sit under her favourite tree when she experienced the strange feeling of being watched. Her dog started barking at the lights of a third-floor window, which were on and off; she had to struggle to pull the dog away as she slowly backed away down the street. She was convinced it was the ghost of Russell calling out to her and her pet.[14]

In 2000 a security guard, who wished to remain anonymous, described an unexplainable event that happened to him while doing a patrol during Christmas Eve.[15] He received notification that motion detectors to the office and one of the hallways were going off in the building. Responding to the call involved doing a perimeter search, then entering at the back of the parking lot and heading past the caretaker’s office to the boiler room area, where the alarm could be reset.

This particular time, the guard felt a little unnerved as he descended the half-flight of stairs into the dark basement. He passed the closed caretaker’s door, turned the alarms off, and then headed back upstairs to investigate the hallway, where the alarm had been activated. Finding nothing there and quickly writing up a report, he headed back downstairs to re-arm the system.

As he passed the caretaker’s office, the door shot open to the sound of a radio blaring inside. He jumped and swung into the room, believing he’d found the trespassers, but nobody was inside. A moment later, as he was heading back to the boiler room, he noticed a fire door hanging open directly across from the alarm room. He shone his flashlight into the room, which was a basement gym, and found an Indian rubber ball bouncing on its own in the corner.

Understandably, he didn’t stick around long. Later that evening, when he bumped into a police officer at a local Tim Hortons, the officer shared similar stories he had heard, including another officer seeing the phantom image of a little girl holding out her hand, as if to plead for help, then disappearing. He also spoke of doors opening on their own, as if some invisible gentleman were being polite to people passing through.

As mentioned earlier, the building’s use as school ended in 2007. Around that time, a group of concerned residents led by Julia Kollek and calling themselves Dundas District Innovation Group put forth business plans to try to keep the school open and operating as a community arts and youth centre. There was also a lot of talk of various institutions and agencies purchasing the building. At that point, Charles Fisher, son of Robert Fisher, began a case regarding a 1989 court ruling that removed the original protective covenant of the use of the grounds for a school or public playground property. Heated debates raged on while Hamilton police continued to report break-ins, vandalism, and mischief at the abandoned building.[16]

In 2009 Mike Valvasori, a developer, and his brother Dave, bought the school for $600,000 and began the process of converting it into condos by gutting the interior and creating lofts.[17]

Strangely enough, in June 2011, a forty-five-year-old photographer who was taking pictures of the development building plunged twenty-five feet from an illegally placed construction lift. He had set up the lift to take pictures of the school from across the street and the stabilizing legs were not properly extended. The lift tipped, dumping the photographer out. He was treated on site for head injuries and rushed to the general hospital in serious but stable condition.[18]

It seems to have been an accident caused, perhaps, by a careless act. But, given the history of the Dundas school and the long history of supernatural pranks, one might have second thoughts or doubts about the cause. Could the restless spirits, perhaps eager to put a stop to the forthcoming construction, be trying to throw a proverbial “monkey wrench” into the plans? You never know.

According to the proposed construction plans, the building, or at least the core structure of it as it was originally designed, will still stand, and if plans go ahead, a new series of tenants will occupy the building.

One wonders, however, how long it might be before the new tenants begin to experience strange bumps in the night, unexplainable occurrences, and more of the otherworldly encounters so often reported on these allegedly haunted grounds.