Some of the best ghost stories from Southern Ontario
CBC Windsor's Afternoon Drive host Bob Steele spent a week ghost hunting, so to speak.
The radio host tracked down four of the best ghost story tellers from Windsor, Sarnia, Chatham and London.
We've put them together, all in one place at cbc.ca/windsor.
We start in Windsor and Essex County.
That's where Rob Tymec gives ghost tours in Windsor's west-end Olde Sandwich Towne and south of the city in Amherstburg.
Sandwich Towne is one of the region's oldest settlements.
“Your star in the Sandwich Towne region is Mackenzie Hall itself,” Tymec said.
It served as a courthouse, prison and place of execution.
Tymec claims the hall is populated with many ghosts.
"There is one ghost nicknamed the “Dragging Ghost,” that allegedly “drags” items around the hall,” Tymec said.
The most famous haunt in Amherstburg is the former Old Bullock Tavern now known as Artisans’ Grill.
It was a bar with apartments atop, all owned by George Bullock.
The story goes that Bullock’s oldest daughter was assaulted by a tenant, who was hung within “a matter of days,” Tymec said.
The tenant was wrongfully hanged. A man on his death bed admitted to the crime.
The hanged man now haunts the apartments, including a man who yells in an apartment living room, the story goes.
Click here to hear more details and more stories from Sandwich, Amherstburg and Texas Side Road.
Footsteps and rattling chains in Sarnia
Tony Frangis is a Sarnia film maker who produced and directed a documentary called Ghosts of Sarnia. The film examined legends surrounding some places rumoured to be haunted.
Frangis spent the majority of time ghost hunting in Sarnia’s downtown.
Some of the hottest spots include the Imperial Theatre and the Lawrence House. Conversations and footsteps on the catwalk and in costume room are common, Frangis said.
Frangis said he heard the steps and chains rattling while filming the documentary.
At the Lawrence, the hauntings are more subtle, such as furniture moving or names being muttered to the employees.
The legend says the former maid of the house still lives there today.
Click here to hear more details and accounts of “spectres” from the two locations.
Hair pulling and nodding spirits in Chatham
Sheila Gibbs is taking people on “cemetery strolls” at the Maple Leaf- St. Anthony’s Cemetery in Chatham-Kent.
Tours there come alive, with re-enactments of historic personalities and events, including a 1939 murder case.
Gibbs alleges spirits have been known to watch the re-enactments are known to react to the presentations.
Meanwhile, employees at a medical centre report spirits blowing on their necks, pulling their hair and untying their shoes at the site of an explosion at a mill.
Click here to hear more details about the tour and accounts of other hauntings in Chatham-Kent.
A wild elevator ride in London
The tour ends at Aeolian Hall in London.
Clark Bryan is the executive director of Aeolian Hall, and started his job there as someone who didn't believe in the supernatural.
Three months into the job, a group came by and told him they'd cleared the hall of ghosts.
It wasn't long after that Bryan noticed the elevator would run all on its own, figures could be seen in dimly lit corners and musicians would be playing and all of a sudden stop. Musicians said it was like "one of them was being placed in a bubble and they couldn't communicate with the other band members."
Bryan said musicians were "freaking out" and that some refuse to play at the hall to this day.
Click here to hear more descriptions of the figures seen in Aeolian Hall.
