Читать книгу Real Hauntings 5-Book Bundle - Mark Leslie - Страница 56

Ottawa is a very special place to me for numerous reasons.

As an attendee of Carleton University, Ottawa was my very first home away from home — the first city I moved to when I moved away from my parents’ home at the age of nineteen.

But, most intriguingly, it was where I discovered the special magic that can happen when ghostly tales allow you to explore and better understand the history of a place.

I’ll never forget the first ghost walk that I went on. It was the one that starts on the corner of Sparks Street and Elgin, just outside D’Arcy McGee’s Irish Pub. It was a cool, late-summer evening, and there was a sense of excitement and nervous tension in the crowd of us who huddled in a group before the woman dressed in black, flowing Victorian-style robes and holding a lantern. Most of the folks gathered that evening had never been on a ghost walk before and did not know what to expect.

I expected to have chills run up and down my spine; that, of course, happened wonderfully throughout the evening. I expected to learn some fascinating and intriguing stories about ghosts in the area, unrolled in a creative and tantalizing story arc, and I most certainly did. But something else happened that I did not at all expect. Something that forever changed my perspective about the world.

I fell in love with history.

That might seem like a mundane thing to acknowledge, but it’s pretty significant. You see, growing up, history was one of the subjects I most hated in school. Okay, I was never all that good at math, but at least I could find relevance in understanding and being able to solve particular problems. History had always seemed to be taught in such a boring and disconnected way to me. It was flat, and about boring people and boring times that seemed to have absolutely no relevance to me and my life. I suppose, given that I was a teenager during much of my first exposures to history, my mind wasn’t all that open to the things being shared.

I felt that way until I was treated to the multiple history lessons brilliantly embedded within the creepy tales shared on the ghost walk of downtown Ottawa. That night, history came alive, and the tales of ghosts were made much more fascinating because of the manner by which they drifted in, spectres born from the ripples of time, from all of the interesting things that had happened here in this city I so adore.

I didn’t just learn about ghosts that night. I learned far more about the history of the city of Ottawa, of the Parliament Buildings and the Rideau Canal, not to mention details about the culture and politics of this fine city and our great nation.

Thus, when sharing ghostly tales, I’ve found it important to reach down into the depths of history and paint the scene with elements of that rich past dripping from the brush. Understanding the times, the people, and the places as they were in the past brings a richer sense of appreciation in our present.

I have tried to do the same thing in this book, as well as my other explorations of the paranormal. In Haunted Hamilton I explored a great deal about the people and times, in particular the effect that the War of 1812 had on the city and the many ghostly tales that resulted. Spooky Sudbury reached all the way back to the formation of the Sudbury Basin and the rich nickel deposits that resulted from a meteorite crash in prehistoric times. And in Tomes of Terror there was a respect paid to the magic that happens in libraries and bookstores, places that are dedicated to books — that incredible creation that so eloquently captures all that humanity itself has to offer.

Researching and writing this book has rekindled my love and passion for a city that I spent many formative years in, and that will always hold a special place in my heart. But it has also been very much a homecoming, a return to that very first realization that ghost stories and historic tales can merge in a spectacular danse macabre.

In the spring of 2015, I returned to Ottawa with my intrepid research assistant Liz to finalize research for this book, and to again explore the city via the wonderful Haunted Walk tours. The magic, the wonder, and the sense of eeriness filled our minds and hearts as we trekked through the cold Ottawa night and listened to fascinating tales about Ottawa’s dark history and the ghosts that creep stealthily through the city’s streets.

Now it is time for you and I to walk those dark streets together, take a peek into the history, the violence, and danger inherent in this locale once known as Bytown, into the city where people who formed our great nation resided, and where those who should have passed on to other worlds continue to reside, skulking through the shadows, whispering to us from the past, and reminding us that there are, indeed, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

Come, take my hand.

Let’s explore the dark corners, the deep rich shadows of the past, the tales best told in the dark thick of the night.

Let’s walk together and I shall share with you a few fascinating things I have learned about the city of Ottawa and the surrounding region.

The Rideau Canal lower locks, nestled between the Château Laurier and the Bytown Museum.

Author’s collection.