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The Waterdown Ghost

In 1934 Canada had already suffered through five years of the Great Depression, evolving from being among the world’s fastest growing economies to suffering an unemployment rate of almost 30 percent and a gross national product decline of 40 percent.[1]

At the start of the Great Depression, Canada’s economy was shifting from primary industries, such as mining, logging, farming, and fishing, toward manufacturing. Hamilton was among the hardest hit cities, as the effect felt across the country was intensified in Canada’s largest steel-manufacturing city.

Though a slightly strengthening economy was met in the summer of 1934 with a severe drought that destroyed crops and injected further hardships into an already stressed society, not all the talk in Waterdown was about the economy or the weather.[2]

More often than not, as people met on street corners or shared gossip with one another over the fences in their backyards, there was much discussion regarding a strange, unknown figure seen about town.

The village of Waterdown, which since 2001 has been amalgamated into the city of Hamilton, was established on the edge of the Niagara Escarpment, east of the junction of King’s Highways 5 and 6. Legend holds that the name of the community stems from Ebenezer Culver Griffin, who purchased a portion of land from Alexander Brown in 1823 and a dozen years later had it surveyed into village lots. Griffin was a prohibitionist who disapproved of the vast quantities of alcohol being consumed, particularly during the christening of new mills. A spectator shouting out, “Hey Ebenezer, throw that water down!” while a carpenter was christening a mill led to it being known as Waterdown, which was then adopted as the name for the village itself.[3]

As described in an article entitled “The Walking Wraith of Waterdown,” published by The Waterdown–East Flamborough Heritage Society, Art Hood and his family were driving home from church one Sunday night when they first spotted a stranger, unfamiliar to his family, dressed completely in white, standing on the side of the road. But it wasn’t until Hood saw the man again that he contacted the local police to inquire about him. The police could find no evidence of such a man living in Waterdown.[4]

Nonetheless, reports began to stream in from others spotting him in similar situations, and suddenly there was talk everywhere of the strange man in white appearing in outlying concessions as well as in town.

Nervous whispers that flowed through the community described the white stranger as being very tall (with some accounts putting him at over seven feet) with humongous feet. Footprints left in the dust where he was spotted reportedly measured several inches beyond the largest shoe size commonly available at that time in the community.

Known as the “Walking Wraith,” the strange visitor was most often seen at night along the fourth concession. Couples parked in cars along the side of the road for some privacy were often the targets of this stranger’s advances. Their nighttime sessions of romance became evenings of terror, the lovers crying out not in passion but fear when the wraith suddenly appeared, approaching the vehicle through the fog-like dust of the side of the road.[5]

Thankfully, nobody was injured or killed in any of these alleged sightings — with the exception, perhaps, of a shrieking and terrified female clawing at her companion, yelling for him to start the car.

Perhaps in an unintended ode to Waterdown founder Ebenezer Griffin’s prohibitionist attitude, an abrupt end came to the young couples’ vehicular necking sessions. But children and women were also kept close to home and inside after dark as a wave of mass panic continued to spread throughout the town.

Those with a bit more courage and bravado scoured the area when the sun went down, hoping to capture or trap the wraith, and newspaper accounts began to appear in the local papers as well as in Toronto. The village very quickly began to attract visitors who were hoping to spy the Waterdown Wraith for themselves. Roads were reported to have been filled to capacity with people flocking in from outlying communities, likely as eager to catch a glimpse of the spectre as they were to escape the day-to-day angst of the Depression and drought.

Most newshounds and tourists failed to satisfy their morbid curiosity, but one reporter from The Toronto Evening Telegram saw the apparition. The reporter bemused that, despite legends having ghosts drifting over the ground, this particular one was spied running, even stumbling through a field. What’s more, when it came to a fence, instead of melting through it as ghosts are wont to do, the Waterdown Wraith climbed over it.[6]

As popular as the visions of the ghost had been in the early days of the mass paranoia, regular sightings that were obvious pranks, or copycats, began to pop up, becoming even more popular than the original. Instead of prowling after dark in search of a ghost, men were loading their shotguns and awaiting the arrival of a prankster.

A woman thinking it would be good sport to have some fun with her jittery husband decided to play a prank on him one night. Sneaking off into some bushes near the house, she waited patiently until he was walking past from an errand to fetch a milk bottle and a bucket of water. Just as he neared, she leapt from the bushes, wrapped in a white sheet, shouting, “Boo!” Fearing for his life, he reacted by knocking the “ghost” over the head with the milk bottle. Seconds after the fear abated and he could see that it was his wife, he used water from the bucket he had been carrying to revive her.[7]

Russell Thompson, a track team member and medical student from Toronto, and the Briggar boys, two well-known high-school athletes, were top suspects in the local investigations of alleged pranks due to their sprinting ability. They also lived on the fourth concession, which was a popular area for sightings of the ghost.[8]

One particular evening, members of the fire department spotted a figure dressed in white at a distance and started to follow it up the railway track and into the Thompson driveway. The next morning, when Officer Darby of the Ontario Provincial Police arrived at the Thompson house, requesting he be allowed to search for evidence of a ghost, Mr. Thompson reportedly stated that if people didn’t drink so much beer, they likely wouldn’t be seeing ghosts.[9]

As the summer ended, and September arrived, sightings of the ghost and the prankish behaviours also came to an end. Some attributed this to Thompson’s return to medical school in Toronto, while others speculated that perhaps the original Waterdown Wraith had found what he was looking for.[10]

One wonders, though, prior to the rise of pranks and the copycat ghosts that came later, just who that original stranger dressed in white was and what he was doing wandering the sides of the roadway. Was he a wraith with some malicious intent, or merely a spirit trapped in time?

For whatever reason, Waterdown seemed to grow and expand over the following decades without any further evidence of ghostly presences, until 1978, when two tombstones were discovered at the Waterdown Library (the former East Flamborough Township Hall) as Mill Street underwent extensive renovations.

The white marble tombstones commemorating Alexander Brown and Merren Grierson (owners of one of the very first land grants in the area) hang outside the library’s elevator, which has been reported to have continued to operate by itself for the better part of three decades.[11]

Over the years, other eyewitnesses have recounted similar tales. One young man was searching for a book on the second floor, when the elevator door opened for no apparent reason. Patrons would often blame these occurrences on a “crappy elevator.”

Despite multiple inspections, elevator mechanics are baffled as to what could be causing the elevator to move up and down between floors, opening and closing its doors without human guidance. Visitors to the library, which was originally built in 1850, have reported not only seeing the elevator operate independently, but have also mentioned hearing unexplainable voices and footsteps.

Many people believe there is a simple and straightforward explanation for the strange occurrences: Merren Grierson haunts the library, perhaps drawn to the building by the tombstone that bears her name (or, at least, a slight misspelling of her name, since the tombstone gives her first name as “Merion”).

In any case, Waterdown, a community that has grown from a small village into a vastly expanding hub for commuters from Hamilton and Toronto, has long had its share of local lore and spirits.