Читать книгу Real Hauntings 5-Book Bundle - Mark Leslie - Страница 55

I love ghost stories. And Ottawa, my hometown, is no stranger to the paranormal.

This first thing most people think of when they picture Canada’s capital city is that it’s home to the prime minister and many of our national institutions. Walk Ottawa’s streets and you’ll come across museums, galleries, the Royal Canadian Mint, the Department of National Defence, and, of course, the Parliament Buildings. Many of these imposing gothic buildings are older than Canada itself. As calm and peaceful as the city is today, it used to be a rough and lawless community. Following construction of the Rideau Canal many of the immigrant workers from England, Ireland, Scotland, and France formed gangs in an attempt to secure work. With little police presence, these gangs were largely left to their own devices and settled disputes without the authorities getting involved. As you can imagine, many of these disputes ended with the spilling of blood. So it should come as no surprise that, although Ottawa now enjoys a reputation as a safe and quiet city, there are many restless spirits haunting its streets.

The city, with its dark history hidden around every corner, is a major source of my fascination with ghosts. During the past few years I’ve spent a great deal of time researching and writing about the country’s paranormal population for Scholastic Canada’s bestselling Haunted Canada book series. I’m an advisor, writer, and researcher for Canada Post’s new line of Haunted Canada stamps. On the day the first set of stamps were released (Friday the 13th, naturally) I appeared on CTV’s Canada AM to share the stamps’ famous ghost stories, such as the ghost bride of the Banff Springs Hotel. And if that wasn’t enough, I voluntarily checked into one of the most haunted hotels in the country, Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Olde Angel Inn, and filmed myself through the night as I searched for spirits. Needless to say, I got very little sleep.

I have no doubt this paranormal preoccupation stems from my Ottawa upbringing and, even more specifically, a class trip to one of its most haunted locations, the Ottawa Jail Hostel, formerly the Carleton County Gaol.

With multiple reports of ghost sightings and a dark reputation as a site of sinister past deeds, the jail might seem like an odd location for a fifth-grade field trip. But that’s the type of city Ottawa is — none of the adults who had a hand in the planning of the trip, from the teachers to the tour guide to the parents who happily signed the permission forms, blinked an eye about sending a group of young and impressionable children to a building with an unmarked grave that’s choked with bodies hidden beneath its parking lot.

You’ll read more about the Ottawa Jail Hostel in this book, but if you ever have the opportunity to visit — or, better yet, spend a night in the hostel — don’t hesitate. Stepping through the stone archway into the jail was something of a transcendent experience for me at the tender age of ten. The guide took a morbid pleasure in sharing tales of public executions, the horrible conditions in which the inmates lived, and the stairwell that is rumoured to have been the location of secret executions — unrecorded killings that created a surplus of bodies that needed to be hidden … so into the ground beneath the parking lot they went.

Those macabre stories weren’t necessary to conjure up ghosts in my imagination — the building is creepy enough to do that on its own. And so is much of Ottawa. Take a trip with this book as your personal guide and you’ll see what I mean.

By the time you return home, chances are you’ll never view Ottawa in the same light again.

Joel A. Sutherland

A 1971 statue of Lieutenant-Colonel John By (1779–1836), founder of Bytown, overlooks Parliament, the Rideau Canal, and the Bytown Museum from Major Hill’s Park, behind the Château Laurier.

Author’s collection.