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Residents of Hudson, an off-island suburb to the west of Montreal, have all heard of Maud. She’s the ghost who haunts the iconic Willow Inn, a striking building first constructed in 1820 as a private home and later used as a general store before becoming a pub and inn. But who is Maud? Does she actually haunt the Willow Inn, as she’s been said to for so long, or is she just an urban legend conjured up to keep the tourists interested? Did Maud ever really exist at all?

The story begins in 1837. In Ghost Stories of Canada, John Robert Colombo reports that the inn was used as a meeting place for the Patriotes as they planned the Battle of Saint-Eustache, an important battle in the Lower Canada Rebellion (1837–1838) that would see the British defeat the rebels of Quebec. Maud, a servant girl loyal to the British, was caught eavesdropping on one of their meetings. As it was believed she couldn’t be trusted, the rebels murdered her and buried her body in the basement. But that was not the end of Maud.

For many years, guests of the Willow Inn have experienced strange phenomenon. According to the Hudson Historical Society, stacks of rocks are routinely discovered outside of Room 8, where the meeting of the Patriotes took place. Maud is heard singing in the hallways. Objects fall over, seemingly by themselves, and the basement door slams shut of its own accord — apparently as Maud returns to her body’s resting place. Some people have even said they’ve smelled Maud’s perfume. The yearly haunting tends to take place between Halloween and the end of November, right around the time Maud was allegedly killed.

Condemned by the British as rebels, celebrated by the French-Canadian population as heroes, the men hanged in 1839 for their activities in the 1837 Rebellion remain celebrated figures. In Pendaison de cinq Patriotes au Pied-du-Courant, they are commemorated by the French-Canadian artist Henri Julien.

Eerie stuff indeed, and certainly a compelling story, but is there any truth to it? A local historian named Rob Hodgson thinks not. In a 2017 Global News article, Hodgson claims there never was a servant girl named Maud, and that in fact the whole story was made up by the owners in the 1970s to attract some attention to their inn. The only Maud who ever lived or died at the Willow Inn was one Maud Leger, the mother of the owner who passed in 1960, more than a hundred years after the Patriotes lost the Battle of Saint-Eustache.

It should also be pointed out that the original Willow Inn burned down in a fire in 1989 and was rebuilt later that year in the exact same style, only larger. It went through extensive renovations from 2016 to 2017 under new ownership. Would a ghost continue to haunt a building just because it resembles the one she died in and sits on the same land? Or is it her grave she is tethered to, which possibly remained untouched by the flames?

The Willow Inn, as it looks today. The original structure burned down in 1989 and was rebuilt in the same style.

In an effort to put the questions surrounding the veracity of the Maud story to rest, a team of paranormal researchers led by Dan Ducheneaux did their own investigation of the Willow Inn in the summer of 2017. After spending two nights in the inn with all their gear, Ducheneaux and his team couldn’t definitively rule out a paranormal presence in the building. They reported to Global News that they had heard a child’s voice calling out “one.” There were no children staying at the inn at the time and the owner claimed it’s unlikely they could have heard voices from the street. Rather more alarming was the sound they heard of an old woman either laughing or crying at the very moment their heat sensors went off.

Ducheneaux was uneasy about being on the second floor for most of the night. He believes something is going on at the inn, be it the restless ghost of Maud roaming the halls, or another explanation.

Though hardly a ringing endorsement, this modern investigation will surely keep the story of Maud, the ghost of Willow Inn, alive. Real or imaginary, her ghostly presence will live on in Hudson and beyond for years to come.