Field guide to local ghosts — the most haunted places in Hamilton
With Halloween coming up this Sunday, I figure it's a good time brush up on some tales of iconic ghosts that have reportedly haunted the Hammer over the years.
You never know, one might show up at your door and it's helpful to be able to tell the difference between a genuine apparition and a white sheet-covered kid who's only in it for the candy.
Ghosts are not something I claim expertise in. I've never seen or talked to one. But, I figure a city with as many skeletons in its closet as Hamilton is bound to have a few.
So, I reached out to the area's foremost afterlife adventurers, Stephanie Dumbreck of Haunted Hamilton" and Daniel Cumerlato of Ghost Walks."
Back in 1999, they became business partners doing paranormal investigations and ghostly expeditions of various kinds. They married in 2005, but six years later went their separate ways.
Dumbreck says her passion for ghosts started with an interest in local history, something she picked up from her dad, Stephen Lechniak.
When I delved deeper into the stories, I began to wonder whether some of the people who built the city might still be here. Maybe they never wanted to leave Hamilton, so they are still here in spirit form," she says.
Cumerlato says he has a fondness for history as well. I'm personally a fan of stories in general. So, when I hear a really robust ghost story, I really enjoy it."
Dumbreck's popular ghost tours and events have been on hold since COVID-19 began. Cumerlato still runs tours in Hamilton and Niagara, but not nearly as often as he did before the pandemic. Neither is planning a Halloween event.
I talked to each of them, did a little research on my own, and put together a list of Hamilton's top five haunted places. Think of it as a local field guide to the greatest of the great beyond. And, of course, take it with a grain of salt.
Custom House
Both Dumbreck and Cumerlato say the 1850s-built Hamilton Custom House on Stuart Street is by far the most haunted building in the city. It's a focal point of ghostly energy, and you could pretty well guarantee that something strange would happen when we brought ghost tours there." Cumerlato says.
The building, which is currently used as the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre, is especially significant for Dumbreck because the one and only time I saw a ghost, an actual apparition, was at the Custom House on Halloween in 2007."
She was in a room by herself, during a ghost tour, when she says she heard footsteps, but no one was there. Then, she suddenly saw a woman in a dark dress seated in a row of chairs.
She was sitting upright, her arms crossed, and she was staring at me. But then, in a blink of an eye, she was gone. I've had a lot of strange experiences with Haunted Hamilton over the years but that one really stuck."
She figures the spirit was the so-called Dark Lady" (also known as the Woman in Black") who many others have claimed to have seen. She was allegedly murdered in the 1800s by a sea captain. They met and became lovers on a ship. Upon arrival in Hamilton, she wanted to continue the relationship. But he didn't, because he was married.
He killed her to try to keep the affair a secret, and he hid the body behind walls in the basement of the Custom House. Of course, no physical evidence of a homicide has ever been found. All that supports the story is a poem from the late 1800s by a Hamilton poet named Alexander Wingfield that describes what supposedly happened.
Hermitage
In the 1830s, a coachman named William Black was secretly courting a young woman named Angelica Diamante, who lived at the Hermitage estate in Ancaster with her uncle and aunt. Black gathered enough courage to ask the uncle, Otto Ives, for Angelica's hand in marriage.
But Ives said such a union would never take place because of Black's lower social class. This left him heartbroken, and Black hanged himself. Ives came upon the body and buried it on the Hermitage grounds himself. They say, in death, Black still searches the property for the woman he loved in life. And cries of sorrow are often heard.
Tivoli Theatre
Twenty years ago, before the 2004 partial collapse at the Tivoli Theatre on James Street North, people who worked in the building would frequently see a man wandering around with a bowler hat, a big moustache, and a certain ghostliness about him. Around that time, someone discovered a steamer trunk with a name tag that said, A. Small." Eventually, someone dug out a picture of an Ontario theatre magnate named Ambrose Small who disappeared in 1919. The photo, from nearly a century before, looked astonishingly like the mysterious Tivoli wanderer.
Auchmar
Auchmar House at Fennell Avenue West and West 5th Street was built in the 1850s by Isaac Buchanan and is often used for film shoots today. But sometimes crews are surprised by what they find, reporting the sounds of strange footsteps and fleeting glimpses of a little girl. Cumerlato says in one case someone heard the whispered words play with me," but there was no one around.
Battlefield House
Dumbreck says Battlefield House in Stoney Creek has a lot of ghostly energy because of all the sudden deaths from the 1813 Battle of Stoney Creek that took place nearby. But there have also been reports that Mary Gage - from the family that owned the house in the late 1700s - occasionally returns. She is said to haunt the house. They say that she messes with electrical devices in the house. Things fail when they shouldn't," says Cumerlato. One time, he says, through a camera monitor set up for a film shoot, a crew member saw a woman's face on a windowpane that quickly disappeared. It was only visible on the monitor, but unfortunately the image was not recorded.