Beyond its wine, agriculture and natural beauty, Niagara-on-the-Lake has a darker side.
The Friends of Fort George explore the town’s relationship with fear and death through ghost tours at the historic fort.
Kyle Upton, a ghost tour guide, began leading the walks in 1994.
Of all the places he has explored for paranormal activity at the fort, Upton said he feels the strongest connection to the soldiers’ barracks.
“They say that history is something you don’t get until you’ve lived some of it,” Upton said.
The barracks give visitors a chance to connect with the happiness, sadness and suffering experienced on the grounds.
“When they come in, it clicks and they look around the room and they go ‘This was a home,’’ Upton said.
“Every name that is on those bunks from 200 years ago had that commonality of human experience.”
Some of those souls from centuries ago still make appearances during the tours.
Peter Mitchell led Sunday night’s group. Since starting work at the fort in the 1980s, Mitchell has had his own paranormal experiences and heard plenty of stories from others.
One recurring story involves six-year-old Sarah Ann Taylor.
During the tours’ first year, a woman who claimed to be psychic told Mitchell about a little girl with shoulder-length blonde hair wearing a chemise.
“The little girl walked down those stairs, sat for a spell on the stairs and then watched the group, then continued to come down the stairs and took up a position beside the guide,” he said.
The woman said the girl’s name was Sarah Ann. Later, a ghost tour group exploring St. Mark’s graveyard earlier in its trip discovered a tombstone bearing the name “Sarah Ann Taylor.”
The group told the Friends of Fort George that the headstone identified her as the daughter of Troop Sgt.-Maj. Tracy of the King’s Dragoon Guards.
Over the next few years, Sarah Ann’s description came up repeatedly.
“People kept asking, ‘Well, who’s that little girl walking down the pathway there without shoes? Where are her parents? Who’s the little girl over by the cottage? Who’s the little girl over by the officer’s quarters?’” Mitchell said.
Sarah Ann appeared again during Sunday’s tour.
Lynn Pearson of Port Robinson said she was familiar with the paranormal, having lived in a 172-year-old house for quite some time.
At the end of Sunday’s tour, Pearson approached Mitchell to tell him she had seen Sarah Ann.
“She just kept kind of peering around — I could see her between the pickets,” she said.
Pearson said the experience was pleasant and did not particularly unsettle her, as she had encountered spirits before.
“The gentleman who built our house, he used to be in our house when we first moved in,” she said. “We would hear him, you know, walking on the porch. He was smoking cigars.”
Pearson said the smell of cigars disappeared after she asked the spirit to stop smoking.
The ghost tours at Fort George are sold out for the Halloween season, but return in the spring and summer.
