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Château Ramezay is a building full of history … and full of ghosts.

Located on Notre-Dame Street in Old Montreal, the Château has had half a dozen personas in the 313 years since it was built. Originally constructed in 1705 as a residence for Mayor Claude de Ramezay, the building has changed hands many times. It was purchased by the fur trading French East India Company in 1745. During the American Revolution it became the campaign headquarters for the Continental Army, and Benjamin Franklin stayed there overnight. It was used during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a courthouse and later housed the Ministry of Public Education and the Faculty of Medicine of Laval University.

It became a museum in 1894 and remains so to this day, displaying works of art, ethnological artifacts, a coin collection, historical photographs, and antiquarian books, all chronicling the culture of Montreal through the ages. It is the oldest private history museum in the province, and in 1929 it became the first building in Quebec to be designated a historic monument.

The Château has lived many different lives since it was built, and so it follows that it now houses many different ghosts. Paranormal activity has long been reported within its walls by employees of the museum as well as visitors, each encounter similar in the unease it inspires but singular in detail. Could each spectral event be the work of one ghost? Possibly. We’ll leave it to you to decide.

Here are some of the “many” ghosts that haunt the Château Ramezay.

Château Ramezay in the early 1900s.

The Dancer

On the Paranormal Studies & Inquiry Canada website, a visitor to the Château describes hearing footsteps and a door closing as she entered the ballroom. Out of the corner of her eye she spotted a woman in period clothing leaving the room through another door. She was barely startled because there were a few costumed guides in the building. Only when she entered the ballroom fully did she realize there was no other door out of the room other than the one she’d just come through.

The Hand Washer

A museum employee arrived at work one morning, unlocked the door, and went upstairs to put his lunch in the fridge. While in the kitchen, he heard the sound of toilet paper being pulled from the roll in the women’s washroom, which was odd since he thought he was alone in the building. The light in the bathroom was off, and there was no answer when he knocked. Going inside, he noticed bubbles in the sink, as though someone had just washed their hands, but there was no one in the room.

The Jacques Cartier Impersonator

There was once a young employee at the museum who was a direct descendant of Jacques Cartier. While at work one day, she heard someone calling her name from the next room. That room contains a framed portrait of Jacques Cartier. The girl was alone in the building.

The Avid Reader or the Book Hater

Upon opening the doors one morning, staff members noticed a pile of brochures scattered across the floor. On another day two books had fallen from a shelf while all the other books on the bookshelf were undisturbed. It is unlikely that an ordinary disturbance would cause just two volumes to fall from a shelf in such a way. Could they have fallen without ghostly help? If a spirit was responsible, it is difficult to know whether the spectre in question was offended by the tomes, or had read them and then left them carelessly on the floor. Either way, its interest in the written word is notable.

The Sneezer

Four technicians were preparing an exhibit after-hours when they heard a loud sneeze out in the corridor. They immediately went to see who it was, since the museum was closed. There was nobody there.

The Decorator

An employee was alone in the basement when he left a room to go check on something. When he returned just seconds later, he found six X-acto blades lying in a perfect fan shape on top of a pile of papers he’d only just put down. He was so unnerved by the experience that it was six months before he mentioned the occurrence to anyone.

The Squealers

Perhaps the strangest occurrence reported in the museum took place in 2005. Two staff members were in the basement when two chairs seemed to twist strangely, as though people of considerable weight were sitting in them. Then a strange noise began to emenate from the chairs, growing louder and higher. The noise continued for almost thirty seconds. It stopped just as suddenly as it began.

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Some believe they know the identity of the Château Ramezay ghost. One museum volunteer suggests that it is the spirit of Anna O’Dowd, a live-in caretaker who died in her bathtub in 1985. The Haunted Places website names a former guard, Mr. O’Leary, as the likely candidate. It’s possible the two of them together could cover all the encounters listed, if they were both heavy-set. Alternatively, there are eight ghosts — or more — haunting this historic building. Whatever the number, they may be amused that visitors who come to the museum are oblivious to the fact that the figures from history they are learning about are standing in the very same room.