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Haunted McMaster

Having worked at Titles Bookstore at McMaster between 2006 and 2011, I’ve had many opportunities to be on campus alone after dark, to walk the empty halls of the buildings, to be by myself in a place that, perhaps just hours before, was bustling with thousands of students, faculty, and staff members, all hurrying on their way to complete another day of their academic rounds. To me, there’s always something just a bit eerie about being in a vacant location that is normally teeming with people. The unexpected quiet and calm offers an unsettling feeling.

In the course of finalizing the work on this book, in the late summer of 2011, I had worked several late nights at the campus bookstore, all in the lead-up to what is known in academia as the “September rush.” Several evenings, when packing and heading out to leave, my footsteps echoing off the walls, feeling as if I were the only person in the building, perhaps even on campus, the sheer concept of isolation sent a chill down my spine. It’s not unlike the chill I used to get walking through the tunnels that connect most of the older buildings on the campus at Carleton University, where I worked twenty years earlier while I was a student there.

Indeed, aren’t schools themselves somewhat of a hotbed for speculation about ghosts? Isn’t almost any academic hall some sort of mystical lightning rod for the generation of creepy tales?

I remember my own elementary school, Levack Public School, in Levack, Ontario, as being rumoured to have a ghost living in the basement. For weeks on end one year, my schoolmates and I would taunt one another and dare others to run inside, head down the stairs, race down the basement hall, come up the stairs on the other side of the building, and exit — if you made it out alive at all, of course. Because the ghost that lived down there and was sometimes heard playing the old abandoned piano that was stored at the end of the hall might get you. Naturally, many attempts were made, but few people got more than a few steps inside before hearing some thump or clack and racing back up to the door they had entered to share their wild, hot tale of terror and convince their friends they had indeed seen the ghost.

We might have grown up and escaped the games of childhood that kept us entertained during lunch break or recess, but as we moved on to buildings of higher education, we never really left those tendencies behind; perhaps because, as we learned more about the world, even as we learned about science and math and all other matters associated with reason and logic, we also embraced that feeling of reasonable doubt — the feeling that perhaps there is something out there that defies explanation, something that offers us a window into the afterlife, something that reveals to us an echo of times long past.

The research for this particular chapter began well before this book was even conceived. Since I started working at Titles, McMaster’s bookstore, we began to hold a “mysterious” or “spooky” annual event in the days leading up to Halloween. One year we hosted a “Who Murdered Manager Mark” event, where customers came in to a fictional crime scene where I had reportedly been found dead. Six staff members were listed as potential suspects, and customers were invited to regularly return to check out the clues hidden throughout the store every day for a full week and fill out an investigator sheet outlining who they believed the killer might be.

The following year we hosted a group of horror authors, including Canada’s John Robert Colombo, and paired up with Daniel and Stephanie from Haunted Hamilton Ghost Walks & Events. The group offered a free custom ghost walk of the campus that began and ended at the bookstore, where the authors were doing readings and signing copies of their books up until midnight.

In 2009 we again held ghost walks hosted by the folks from Haunted Hamilton, and inside the store we launched a specially themed anthology of ghost stories printed exclusively on our Espresso Book Machine. Entitled Campus Chills, the book featured ghost stories set on university and college campuses from across Canada. Some of the stories were based on actual legends or ghost stories familiar to the campus they were set at.

For the McMaster story, which I co-wrote with my friend, McMaster graduate Kimberly Foottit, we conceived of the ghost of a dead Shakespearean scholar who comes back to seek revenge on those who would dare replicate his precious “folio” edition of the bard’s works. Our tale was a tongue-in-cheek spot of dark humour regarding a traditional and conservative academic mind clashing with the future shock of new technology. But prior to setting about to write the tale, I had done some research to see if McMaster had any ghosts of its own that could inspire our story.

Frighteningly, there was no shortage of rumours, tales, and sad events peppering the history of the campus.

I learned the horrific tale of a quiet December evening when a history professor was working alone in her office, and a transient stranger wandering the campus jumped her for unknown reasons. She was found the next day, handcuffed and asphyxiated from a rag shoved too far into her mouth and throat.

Universities like McMaster inspire both learning and eerie legends.

Courtesy of Peter Rainford.

There were also, unfortunately, many sad accounts of women who were brutally slain or murdered, sometimes after being grabbed by a stranger while walking on campus after dark, but more often by a boyfriend or an ex-boyfriend whose grief, anger, and feelings of helplessness led him down a shockingly horrific path that would end the life of a young woman in the prime of her youth.

Out of respect for those who had relatively recently died at McMaster, Kim and I decided to stick with our completely fictitious tale. We preferred the concept of an outraged dead scholar lurking in the shadows of the library and bookstore, killing off those who dared replicate and thus soil the sacred text he so cherished.

Similarly, this book is not the place to share those tragic tales.

However, McMaster University, given its long history, is no stranger to ghostly tales, and many continue to keep residence students awake long into the night, or provide reasons for a person walking alone down the deserted hallway of a one-hundred-year-old building to question the odd shadows seen out of the corner of the eye.

The main campus of McMaster University is located on almost four-hundred acres of land in the Westdale neighbourhood, adjacent to the Royal Botanical Gardens and bordered to the north by Cootes Paradise, an extensive natural marshland.[1]

The institution bears the name of William McMaster, a prominent Canadian senator who bequeathed just under one million dollars toward the founding of the university, which was the result of the merger of Toronto Baptist College and Woodstock College.

McMaster first opened in Toronto, Ontario, in 1890. However, inadequate lands and a huge campaign and donation of land by the City of Hamilton prompted the university to relocate to Hamilton in 1930.[2]

The very first ghost story associated with McMaster is related to the founder of the institution rather than its location in Hamilton, but the tale itself is one worthy to be shared, particularly for those looking for an eerie romp.

In 1867 the McMaster family built the mansion that still stands at 515 Jarvis Street West, in Toronto. Arthur McMaster, nephew to the founder of McMaster University, was its first owner. In 1880 the house was purchased by the Massey family and renamed Euclid Hall. (The Massey family would be associated with Toronto’s Massey Hall among other significant landmarks.)[3]

Euclid Hall was given to Victoria College in 1915, and the building served as a radio station, an art gallery, and a restaurant before being purchased by The Keg in 1976.[4]

The mansion is reportedly haunted by various different ghosts. The first of which is the maid of Lillian Massey. Lillian, who was the only daughter of Hart Massey, was beloved by family and staff alike. Legend has it that, upon her death in 1915, the maid was so distraught that she took her own life by means of a noose attached to the oval vestibule above the main staircase. The ghost is sometimes seen hanging in this very same spot.[5]

The phantom footsteps of children can sometimes be heard from the second floor, which used to be the children’s quarters. The ghost of a young boy is seen running up and down the stairs and occasionally sitting at the top and watching diners in the restaurant below.[6]

The women’s washroom is also said to be haunted by an unseen but strongly felt presence. There are reports of feeling the cold chill of being watched when alone in the washroom, the lock on their stall coming unlocked on its own, and even a fallen handbag slowly drifting to the floor, as if being guided there by unseen hands.[7]

So begin the creepy tales that speak of the history one might find when walking the halls of the oldest buildings at McMaster. And the next story, while closer to campus, is still in a separate location; it involves a building owned by McMaster that is located right in the heart of Hamilton’s downtown.

Known by McMaster insiders as DTC, the Downtown Centre — the building at 50 Main Street West — is the home of various offices such as payroll, accounts payable, and the centre for continuing education. Other entities also exist in this building.

And these are ones who don’t pay for tuition or occupy a solid space — at least not for long.

The building used to be home to the Wentworth County Courthouse, and, over the years, many people have reported hearing, seeing, and feeling strange things in the area where some jail cells still remain. Some claim, working in the building after hours, that they have had the uncanny feeling of being watched and even caught glimpses of shadowy figures out of the corner of their eyes, down a corridor that they raced toward only to find empty.

Others claim to have heard voices coming from adjacent vacant rooms while working on a Saturday, a time when most of the building is completely unoccupied.

When wondering about the possibility of ghosts, and the fact that the building used to be a courthouse and jail, one wonders if perhaps executions might have taken place there, offering some sort of reason behind the strange noises and frightening shadows.

But the closest historical records come to supporting such a theory would be the public executions which took place back in the 1890s at gallows facing Jackson Street at the rear of 50 Main Street West. Is it close enough for the misguided spirits to continue to linger and make their presence felt? You might just ask one of the employees of the Downtown Centre at McMaster who has experienced the unexplainable sights and sounds.

So far we’ve taken a bit of a stroll around the periphery, through history related to McMaster and to one of the “outpost” locations — but what about the main campus itself? Sure, McMaster residence life can lay claim to having a part in inspiring Animal House director Ivan Reitman, but might it also lay claim to inspiring tales from the shadows?

Well, there’s always Anthony B. Percy, the resident ghost at Wallingford Hall.

This ghost tale has its start in 1934. Back then, there were two residences on campus. Edwards Hall, an all-male dorm, and Wallingford Hall, for females. Anthony Percy and Mary Baxter had the chance, through various social activities between the two residences, to get to know each other and become friends. They would spend leisurely afternoons in the Wallingford Tea Room or the Gentleman’s Waiting Area (two of the only places males were allowed to venture in the all-female building).

University Hall at McMaster boasts a Collegiate Gothic design with unique carved mouldings in the entranceways.

Courtesy of Peter Rainford.

As time passed, Mary became rather fond of Anthony. She found herself slowly and inevitably falling in love with him. This love mutated rather quickly into an obsession. As their moments of spending long segments of time started to fade away, and Anthony would engage in activities with other people, Mary found herself seeking him out. No matter where he went on campus, she was often not far behind, attempting to keep him in her sights. She was even occasionally spotted outside his room at night, quietly standing and simply looking in his window at him while he studied.

Anthony, however, was oblivious to Mary’s feelings for him. To him, she was a friend, someone whom he enjoyed spending time with. And unbeknownst to Mary, Anthony’s heart had already begun the process of belonging completely to another woman. It thus came as quite the shock to Mary when she found out that the love of her life had become engaged to another woman.

Shortly after she found this out, Mary requested a meeting with him in the Wallingford Tea Room, the place where they’d spend so many lovely and contented afternoons together, and where Mary had slowly fallen in love with this man of her dreams, this man who had betrayed her and broken her heart.

When Anthony arrived, Mary confessed her true feelings to him as well as her anger at his betrayal. Their conversation devolved rather quickly into a heated argument. The argument apparently ended with the sound of a loud thud coming from the tea room. A few minutes later, by the time someone entered the room to investigate the noise and the abruptly ended argument, the room was empty.

Anthony’s body was found stuffed in the dumbwaiter, and Mary was nowhere to be found.[8] To this day, the whereabouts of Mary Baxter is a complete mystery; however, if you ask certain people who have stayed in Wallingford Hall, they might tell you they know exactly where Anthony B. Percy is.

He is still there. Ironically, a man who was never allowed to venture far into Wallingford Hall now haunts the building for the rest of eternity.

Over the years, various stories have been shared regarding strange incidents that are sometimes attributed to the ghost of Anthony. Closed windows are found propped open, shower curtains have been pulled back and forth, lights are said to turn on and off by themselves, and, occasionally, a low and quiet weeping can be heard echoing off the washroom walls when there is nobody inside.

Of course, the tales of Mary Baxter and Anthony B. Percy might just be a story born of an evening of high spirits, with one or more residents wanting to create a tale to put a fun scare into the other people there. And this story might just be one of those fictions passed down through many generations of Wallingford Hall residents.

However, if you’re one of the students living in the old building and you experience the strange sensation of a blanket being pulled off, a shadow flitting past, or the odd sounds of crying from a vacant adjacent room, it might be a little harder, in the chill of the moment, to chalk it all up to an old myth that grew out of hand.