first experience of sound from the spirit world came in the mid-1990s, when I made a conscious choice to leave southern Ontario and move north to a secluded home in nature. Here I felt that I could be more aware and listen to the sounds of other kingdoms. One morning I awakened to the sound of music. My first thought was that someone had turned the radio on, although this was never a common practice. Then I tuned into the sound. Truly, the best way to describe it was ‘heavenly.’ Although it was faint it seemed to be coming from the second floor of the house. No one lived in that part of our home. The music was like a chorus of instruments and then it vanished. It may have lasted five or ten minutes.
“I still hear it periodically, always in the early morning hours; sometimes someone else might hear it. It stopped for a period when we were doing construction but last year it returned. It seems as though the music comes in late evening or early morning. Spiritualists believe this musical manifestation highlights the vivid and glowing life around you.
“My personal feelings about our old home are that the McBrien family were attached to this magnificent home and to the high spiritual energy. The crossed ley lines made interdimensional activity a much greater possibility.”
Today the home is in private hands. It once again houses an extended family and is yet again the home of “spirits” — the new owners have a minister among them.
The University of Toronto
~ Toronto ~
In the Norman Archway of University College lovers meet in the twilight. In that darkened passageway to Croft Chapter House they share their fiery passion. No notice is taken of the place itself, of the axe-carved doorway. In another time a star-crossed lover wielded his axe at a different pair of lovers. He might still be lurking there.
The downtown University of Toronto campus is haunted by more than one lost soul. Among the ghosts who haunt the campus is a sentinel who keeps the light on in the Soldiers’ Tower. Since the 1930s, when a workman fell to his death from the tower, a light has been reported in one of the windows of the Memorial Room. Glenn Oldford, a student and tour guide, pointed out, “Security guards working here feel very uncomfortable. One guard heard someone sneeze, but no one was around. An old man has also been seen in the main hall of Hart House.” Some people believe the man could be the caretaker Robert Beard, who spent his life working at the university.
However, the strangest tale of all emerges from the grisly murder at University College in September 1858. In 1857–58 talented European stone masons sculpted gargoyles, cloisters, balustrades, and buttresses on the exterior of the building. These Gothic Revival architectural trimmings highlight the mysterious. You might think that at any given moment one of these gargoyles could move — so many eyes watching from above. A life force stares hauntingly from each stone creation.
Paul Diabolos, a young Greek, and Ivan Reznikoff, an older burly Russian, were two of the stonemasons who worked on University College. Ivan was deeply in love with a young woman named Susie. Her father, a British upper-class businessman, disapproved of their union. The lovers kept their affair a secret. They planned to marry when the college was complete.
Ivan had forsaken his cherished vodka for many months to save for his married life with Susie. They had accumulated $500 in her bank account. But something was not quite right. Ivan brooded darkly over Susie’s lack of commitment. He had witnessed Paul and Susie exchanging “looks.” Was there something there? Rage and jealousy began to build inside him.
A close friend of Ivan’s urged him to leave Susie and find a good Russian wife. He invited Ivan to meet him at dusk by the bench near the maple tree across from Croft Chapter House.
Ivan met his friend. James Louden describes what happened next in his book Studies of Student Life (1928): “We’ll hide inside the little corridor close to that gargoyle where you worked today. See that bench that leans against the trunk? T’is vacant now, but watch it closely, and thou shalt see two lovers sit there arm in arm, as the shadows grow more dense beneath the friendly maple tree.”
As the moon rose two figures did appear, Susie and Paul. They were entangled in each other’s arms — and in a web of deceit. Ivan watched and fumed with rage.
Susie thought she heard something. She and Paul went to investigate, arm and arm, toward the archway. Paul struck a match. Although Ivan and his friend hid in the shadows, Paul had seen Ivan. He decided to play to Ivan’s anger.
The next day the two men worked apart. But it was only a matter of time before things would come to a head. At the end of the workday Ivan waited by the bench. Hearing a laugh he spun about to find Paul leaning on the parapet, taunting Ivan from the corridor. Paul had a dagger. Ivan grabbed the axe on the bench and charged the archway. Unable to draw his dagger in time, Paul shielded himself from Ivan’s attack. Paul narrowly escaped the blow of the axe, which struck the door. The blows rained upon the door and the frame. Paul escaped through the door as the axe struck deep, becoming embedded in the oak.
Paul flew down the hallway and up the stairs, through a swinging door of glass, and then he slipped. Ivan was upon him. Again Paul narrowly avoided calamity and was off again, up more stairs. James Louden adds, “At the top of this narrow flight of steps there is a sudden turn toward the east and half a dozen steps lead to the upper landing from which the main steps of the tower ascend. At the angle of the western wall, just at the top, Diabolos, with dagger upright in his hand, waits for his foe.”
As Ivan approached, Paul leapt out and his dagger found its mark. With a groan, Ivan dropped dead to the floor.
Paul knew what to do. Beyond the tower door lay the ideal resting place for Ivan. The well beneath the tower steps would make the perfect grave. He would never be found! Paul dragged the body inside and with the aid of a match he peered into the darkness of the well below. He threw Ivan head first down the twenty-metre (sixty-foot) well. Paul took the axe from the front door. With Ivan gone, Paul and Susie eloped out west, taking Ivan’s savings with them. Ivan would never be heard from again.
Or would he?
Ivan’s restless spirit was first seen on the campus in 1866.
In 1890 fire struck University College. In the ashes the skeletal remains of Ivan Reznikoff were discovered. Glenn Oldford tells me, “A chaplain gave Ivan a proper burial in the courtyard of the building. He was buried under a tree.”
Somehow, in 1980 Humphrey Milnes, a professor of German, was photographed displaying a human skull, reportedly that of Ivan Reznikoff. As recently at 1996 the skull was reported to still be on display in the principal’s office. When was Ivan’s head found?
John Louden wrote about a man named John Smith who saw and communicated with the spirit of Ivan. “John is always hazy on the point and remembers nothing except that the ghost intended to put in an appearance every Hallowe’en, or Valentine’s Day, he was not sure which. John Smith also has a very vivid description of Reznikoff pounding the table, until the glasses jumped, when he was questioned, in a moment of inadvertence, about the teaching of Greek in the college.” Obviously, Ivan was still touchy about a little Greek!
Allen Aylesworth, a former student at the university, later a member of the House of Commons and Senate, encountered Ivan while walking across the campus. He recalled seeing a thickset figure of a man. In the course of the meeting Allen, not thinking him to be anything other than human, invited him back to his student quarters. There they sat by a fire as Ivan told him of his love for Susie and of his death at the hand of Paul Diabolos. He also told Allen about the two faces he and Diabolos carved. He said that his gargoyle was a grotesque face and that Diabolos had carved a smiling one. Ivan said that Diabolos had pointed out that
