style="font-size:15px;"> Of Notepads, Haunted Houses, and Thresholds to the Unknown
From the moment we stepped through the threshold, we knew our lives had changed forever; we entered the Bellevue Mansion as kids, merely nineteen and twenty-one years old, yet emerged over a decade later as grown adults, in our thirties, still fascinated with the unusual and things that go bump in the night. That beautiful, sunny day in September of 2000 was a special moment in time — a day when we learned how to appreciate history and the abundance of it right here in our own backyard.
Now, twelve years later, we fondly remember back to when we first began Haunted Hamilton. The Bellevue Mansion was our inspiration at a time when our eyes were closed to the world of the paranormal. I was attending a new media design school in Toronto, and Daniel was working the daily grind at a computer company as an IT analyst.
Our weekdays were pretty hectic, and one early Saturday morning we decided to go to some garage sales. Oddly enough, we had found ourselves at an old funeral home in downtown Hamilton that was having a community sale in the parking lot outside. And there it was ... an old, beaten-up Ouija board from the 1980s. We dusted it off and asked, “How much?” The old man at the table was eager to give it to us for only fifty cents, so we happily paid and left with what that we thought was only a cheap board game.
Several weeks later, we finally pulled the board out and gave it a whirl, but we were both unsure how to use it. The only experience I had was as a little girl, playing with my girlfriends at a birthday party. So when Daniel and I first placed our fingertips on the planchette, we weren’t sure what to expect.
After some jokes and silly comments, the board started to work! The planchette started pointing to letters and numbers not making any sense at all, until it began to spell out, U R A HAPPY COUPLE. At that moment, I began to cry, and Daniel just looked at me in shock. We both had a strong trust in each other, enough to know it wasn’t a joke and that neither of us had spelled it out intentionally.
A few months later, we decided to step it up a notch. We rested a microcassette recorder (yes, it was that long ago — before there were these fancy digital ones!) on the table beside the board and started to communicate. Our first question was, “Is there a spirit present?” and the planchette pointed to the word YES. It was an all-around successful session, so we closed it off by saying goodbye to the spirit, then sat back and rewound the tape.
There it was ... something that opened our eyes and solidified our view of the paranormal. It was a life-changing moment. After we had asked if there was a spirit present, we clearly heard a voice responding back into the microphone, loudly whispering yes-s-s. From that moment on, we were hooked. We were hooked, intrigued by the strange, the unusual, and most of all, by ghosts and spirits on the other side.
And this is what eventually led us to the “murder house” in Hamilton, where our story truly begins, standing at the precipice of this enormous, empty edifice known as Bellevue, with the sun peering through the cracks in the plywood that blocked the windows. It was almost beckoning, welcoming us to enter; we both felt a strong sense of purpose just being there.
With my dad’s trusty 35mm camera around my neck and several rolls of film on hand, we ventured into the Bellevue Mansion. Along with a historical write-up, the photos I snapped would become the very first article on our newly designed website, which we called Haunted Hamilton.
Strangely enough, here I am countless years later, looking for a notepad to write my thoughts down for this foreword, when I find an old, dusty notebook in my cabinet. I start to flip through the pages and realize it is our very first notebook, where we penned our dreams, hopes, game plans, and ideas for Haunted Hamilton. The interesting part? Not much has changed. Even when we were kids, we were still passionate about the wondrous history of our city. It was over a decade ago when we wrote about the need for restoration, preservation, and educating Hamiltonians (and tourists alike) about this unique city of ours — the Ambitious City, as it was often referred to as over a hundred years ago.
This old notebook couldn’t have been found at a more perfect time. Reading through the pages reminded me of just how far we have come and in what ways, how we still feel so compelled to share Hamilton’s unique stories and tales with everyone.
From the Dark Lady, who famously haunts the old Custom House on Stuart Street, to the legend of William Black, the lonely coachman whose spirit still wanders the woods at the Hermitage Ruins in Ancaster, Hamilton is alive with ghosts from the past. A decade’s worth of research isn’t enough. There is still a world of stories, legends, and folklore waiting to be told. This book is your ultimate guide to uncover the unique and historically haunted treasures in our city: read through it, learn, explore, and get up close and personal with the ghosts of Haunted Hamilton.
Stephanie Lechniak,
Founding Partner of Haunted Hamilton Ghost Walks & Events
Acknowledgements
I owe an extreme gratitude to Daniel Cumerlato and Stephanie Lechniak, who generously spent many hours sharing fascinating tales of Hamilton’s history and ghosts with me.
I am also indebted to the wonderful staff of the Terryberry and Central Branches of the Hamilton Public Library, who were extremely supportive and helpful in aiding me in my research needs; in particular, Laura Lamb, Margaret Houghton, and Robert Oldham.
I would also like to thank all of the good folks at Dundurn who had a hand in producing this book, especially Beth Bruder for believing in the project from the beginning, Michael Carroll and Shannon Whibbs for the ongoing support, and my editor, Matt Baker, for polishing, guidance, and endless patience.
And, as always, my gratitude goes out to Francine and Alexander, who forgave my repeated absences while I was doing research or had sequestered myself in the den for countless hours, working on this book.
Introduction
I’ve always been afraid of the monster under my bed, of the ever-growing shadows that begin to stretch and creep across the room, ever-larger as the sun begins its descent in the western sky. Ever since I was a young boy, I’ve darted up the basement stairs, just in case the creature that lives behind the furnace decides to come out and get me, and I’ve closed the closet door that final crack so the ghost that lives inside can’t get out.
One of my favourite things about being a Cub Scout was going on the camping trips and listening to ghost stories in front of the fire well into the wee hours of the morning. I was held in rapt fascination, getting a chill from hearing “true tales” shared by fellow scouts and scout leaders. Sleep deprivation was simply an added benefit: the less sleep you got, the more your mind began to create monsters out of the shadows and turn every strange noise into some sort of otherworldly creature or horrifying night stalker.
Despite how those nights of stories held my interest, history lessons never really captured my heart or my imagination. Perhaps it had something to do with the manner it was being taught to me; or maybe my young mind was simply closed to how something occurring in the past could be interesting or relevant to me in the present.
Nonetheless, it was about eight years ago that my love for ghost stories and my previous aversion to history collided, offering me a wonderfully serendipitous moment of revelation. My wife Francine and I were back in Ottawa, visiting old friends and some of our favourite haunts (we had moved to Hamilton in 1997 but had met in Ottawa, where I’d lived since 1988 when I moved there to attend Carleton University). After a wonderful dinner at D’Arcy McGee’s on Sparks Street, just outside the pub we joined a “Haunted Walk” group that took us on a tour behind Parliament
