Mackenzie House, Toronto – “One Ghost” in the Inventory

When

since 1956 date reconstructed from later accounts · first known record: 1960

Where

Mackenzie House, 82 Bond Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Verdict

Disputed

In the last home of Toronto's first mayor, caretakers heard footsteps and a piano – and the 1960 inventory reportedly ended with the words “One ghost.”

What happened

The row house on Bond Street was built in 1858; from 1859 to 1861 it was home to William Lyon Mackenzie – radical journalist, leader of the 1837 rebellion and Toronto's first mayor – who died there in 1861. His wife, Isabel, died twelve years later. In 1956 caretakers Charles Edmunds and his wife moved in. Soon they were hearing footsteps on the wooden stairs when no one else was in the house, and Mrs. Edmunds said she had seen a short man in a frock coat and a woman with long dark hair – a description said to match the Mackenzies. She claimed the woman had bent over her bed at night and, on another occasion, slapped her face. The caretakers' son and daughter-in-law were woken by piano music from the parlour. Their successors, the Dobbans, moved out after a few months. In 1960 the house was donated to the city, and the inventory is said to have ended with the words “One ghost.” An archdeacon from Holy Trinity Church blessed the house, and a kind of exorcism was filmed for television. Later caretakers told of taps turning themselves on and of the printing press starting up on its own at night.

Witnesses

Caretakers Charles Edmunds and his wife (from 1956) and Mr. and Mrs. Dobban (1960), whose accounts appeared in the Toronto Telegram in 1960; later caretaker Winifred McGlary (1966) and cleaner Simone Daviaux (1973).

Explanations and hypotheses

The historical facts – the house, Mackenzie, his death in 1861 and the donation to the city in 1960 – are certain. But the ghost stories only appeared once the house became a museum in need of visitors, as its own staff point out. Current custodians and guides say they have never experienced anything unusual and put the stories down to imagination. Footsteps in an old row house are easily blamed on neighbouring buildings, pipes and shifting timber. Even so, the house has become one of Toronto's best-known “haunted” places.

Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.

Sources

More: Wikipedia (en)