Visiting #Montreal + Taking Our Own Ghost Tour! #Canada #travel #paranormal #vacation

According to the friendly bartender, most ghost sightings
occur in the upstairs bar, which was closed that night.  But
I snapped pictures to see if anything showed up!

I love seeing new places, and as an author of ghost mysteries--and a life-long fan of all things paranormal--I often try to visit some local haunted sites.  Sometimes inspiration for a new book strikes, like when I visited the Old Jailhouse in Barnstable Village here on Cape Cod and came up with the plot for Haunted Souls.  A few weekends ago, my husband and I traveled to Montreal, Canada, for a wedding.  I'd never been, and it's a beautiful city!  Friday and Saturday were primarily taken up with wedding activities, but we made sure we had an entire free day on Sunday to explore.  I tried to sign us up for one of the evening Ghost Tours, but they were all booked...apparently there are a lot of people who share my interests!  I was disappointed, but I wrote down some of the sites the different tours visited, along with the history of the haunting, and we built some stops into our day's exploration.  It was considerably less spooky seeing these places in the bright sunshine, but at the end of the day, after 24,000 steps and 42 flights of stairs climbed, I was glad we had no more walking in store for the evening.  Instead, we had a wonderful dinner and a few pints at Hurley's Pub, a reputedly haunted pub pictured above.

First stop was Dorchester Park.  Beneath the beautiful expanse of grass lies the Sainte-Antoine Cholera Cemetery, containing over 70,000 skeletons, many in mass graves.  Apparently during the 1832 epidemic, some victims were likely buried alive by accident due to heavy morphine administration.  

We walked through the Quartier des Spectacles, which sits on the Old Red Light District, an area with quite a bit of haunting history.  As Prohibition laws took effect in the US and Canada beginning in 1919, Quebec quickly abandoned the laws banning alcohol, and Montreal's Red Light District drew crowds of visitors seeking rowdy fun, legal liquor, and the entertainment that goes along with that.  Murder, crime, and exploitation led to many stories of hauntings that still persist today.

One of the beautiful trails through Mount Royal

We climbed Mount Royal to enjoy the view of the city, and learned that this "City of the Dead overlooking the City of the Living" (source: Montreal.org) is considered one of the most haunted places in the city.  Mount Royal is a breath-taking mountain park that is also the location of the largest intact burial ground in North America if you combine the four cemeteries.  The people of the First Nations also buried their dead on the mountain, so it's a very old burial site.

We also walked through Old Port and along St. Catherine Street, and our final stop was Hurley's Irish Pub.  The pub is situated in a former tenement building in what was once the slums, which dates back to 1865.  Dangerous conditions and crowding were problems, and over the years, many fires broke out and trapped tenants inside.  Many sightings of "The Burning Lady" have been reported, but all we encountered was very cool old architecture, great food, and a fun atmosphere.  A wonderful way to cap off a long day!

Tired and sweaty!

More photos I took as I snuck around the quiet parts of Hurley's!

For more posts on haunted places I've visited, check out:

Historic Mt. Washington Hotel, NH

The Old Jail in Barnstable Village, MA

Historic Buildings of Barnstable Village, MA

The Dakota Building in NYC, NY

The Catacombs beneath Paris, France

The Abandoned Glendale TB Hospital, MD


And if you enjoy spooky ghost mysteries, try one of my books!  My latest is The Haunting of Hillwood Farm...and most reviewers advise reading it during the daylight hours!

We earned out poutine and beers!