with the excuse of going to get more beer, but would then hide near the gatehouse, making ghostly noises in order to frighten one of their more jumpy friends.
Shortly after Kenny took off on his own, a ghostly moaning noise could be heard from the gatehouse. Laughing and figuring it for a joke, the friends headed over to greet their friend. The moaning transformed suddenly into the distinct words: “Come to me!” When they got to the gatehouse, they saw the padlock had been broken, and, annoyed their friend had engaged in vandalism, yelled out for him to knock it off and that the joke was over.
When they opened the door, they were shocked to find Kenny, barely lit by the dim light of the moon hanging in a noose, his face purple. The friends immediately rushed over and lifted his dangling legs, got him out of the noose and onto the ground.
He was gasping and barely able to speak, and they partially carried him from the grounds and took off in their car. Not much was spoken about that night or what really happened. The friends all went their separate ways, but Kenny and Mickey, who had been going together since Grade 10, ended up getting married.
It wasn’t until more than twenty years later, upon bumping into Mickey, that Howard learned the details of what Kenny had really been up to that night and how he’d found himself almost strangled in the noose.
Kenny had apparently forced the gatehouse door open and hid inside, making the noises to scare his friends. When he spotted the noose hanging there, he thought it would be more frightening, a better effect, if his friends saw him standing on a box with his head in the noose.
Pleased with his prank, and hearing the friends calling out for him to knock it off, Kenny stood with his head in the noose and prepared for their frightened arrival.
That’s when he saw a dark figure step out of the shadows, heard a voice say that if Kenny took his place in the noose, he could finally rest, and the box was kicked out from under him.
Seconds later, his friends appeared. It was Mickey who felt something nudge her in the dark and heard a loud, sweet female voice say “Go to him!” That’s when she rushed forward, the first to assist with getting Kenny down.
Mickey explained to Howard how she understood the ghost who pushed her forward was that of Mary Kathleen, the young woman William Black could not have. Like Black, she too was heartbroken for the rest of her days over the love she would never have.[6]
Howard explained to me that this published tale was just a story that came from “the Muse that floats above us all, occasionally dumping inspiration on our heads,” but that it was built upon true teenage experiences, particularly a girlfriend who refused to go any farther than the fence.
Rob’s wonderful tale reminds us of something the folks at Haunted Hamilton often express, particularly during their historic tours: most tales are creative and imaginary elements layered on top of a kernel of truth. The theatrical nature of sharing ghost stories brings with it this wonderful sense of combined curiosity, speculation, and fact.
But the spirits haunting this land belong not only to William Black.
In 1853 the property was purchased by George Browne Leith, and in 1855 he built the stately home — which included a large library, drawing room, dining room, and children’s room — as a summer villa. Several smaller attendant buildings, such as a carriage house and servants’ quarters, were also constructed on the property.[7]
Constructed of Gasport dolomite and limestone, the villa had a hip roof and French windows opening onto a large veranda.[8] Apart from the large, detailed diorama that stands as the centrepiece to the Hermitage and Gatehouse Museum and hints at the sheer magnitude of what once was, the ruins are all that are left of this once magnificent mansion.
That and perhaps yet another soul who could not bear to leave even after her death.
The youngest child of George Leith and his wife Eleanor Ferrier, Alma Dick-Lauder (1854–1942) purchased the property after her mother’s death. Alma was a bit of a loner, a writer with a penchant for the preservation of history with a focus on regional landmarks. She wrote articles for the Hamilton Spectator, which, ironically, focused on “delving among the ruins,” describing graveyards, mills, and churches that had been abandoned by time.[9]
In October 1934, a devastating fire destroyed most of her home. At the age of seventy-nine, she was not about to leave her home, even though very little of the building still stood. She erected a tent to live in the shadow of the standing stone structure. Eventually, a small home was built on that spot, and she remained there until she died in 1942 at the age of eighty-seven.
She had apparently wanted to be buried on the very grounds of the place she so loved, but she was buried in the St. John’s Anglican Church cemetery in Ancaster.[10] But that doesn’t seem to stop her from returning to the land and building she so cherished in life.
In Alma’s book Pen and Pencil Sketches of Wentworth Landmarks, published by The Spectator Printing Company, Ltd. in 1897, she writes that one “feels for houses that have known good days and handsome furniture, almost as if they felt their degradation themselves and shivered o’ nights in the cold and darkness.”[11]
Several times in the book she talks about waking the ghosts of old (of both people and animals), of being in old houses and having “ghosts seem to flit noiselessly”[12] before her, or, more poetically, describing a house as past the stage when even a friendly mouse would run over its old floor — and a ghost there might be, “perhaps in the winter dusk, coming from the radiant fire-lit drawing-room suddenly, a black, shadowless Pompey might be met climbing the stairs with noiseless feet, bearing an impalpable jug of hot water to a massa dead this fifty years and more!”[13]
One legend tells of an engineer, eager to study the remains of the building’s foundation, approaching the Hermitage in the middle of a bright day. However, instead of the ruins, he beheld a stately stone mansion drifting in and out of focus like some sort of mirage. As he approached even closer, the image faded, leaving the ruins, a mere shadow of the splendour that once stood there. Still unable to believe his eyes, he heard a sound behind him and turned. A few yards behind him stood an elderly woman, silently staring at him until she, too, vanished.
Given Alma’s affinity for old buildings and “delving among the ruins,” it is no wonder she couldn’t leave her residence when it burned down. Perhaps she chooses to stay there and offer a glimpse of it to strangers who might appreciate what she so loved.
I had been to the Hermitage before that moonless night I partook in the Ghost Walk — but in full light of day. Even in the heat of the afternoon sun, I could feel something special, something powerful about the place. Standing in the presence of what remains of a large and spectacular building can do that to a person.
But in the thick of night, listening to Ghost Guide George stand in what was once the summer kitchen of the home, recounting eerie tales, much colder shivers ran down my spine. Forget about the ghosts themselves. Just thinking about how the site has, over the years, attracted cultists, Satanists, and other practitioners of the dark arts — drawn by its sheer power, by the legend of ghosts that haunt it, to perform black magic sacrifices and rituals under the light
