Visitors from as far as Kincardine and Buffalo, N.Y., followed a lantern-carrying guide through Old Town on Halloween night this year to hear ghost stories about what some believe to be Canada’s most haunted town.
Shirley Stark, who has worked 13 years at Ghost Walks’ Queen Street shop, said October is the company’s busiest time of year. More than 200 people joined the walks every Friday and Saturday night in October, she said.
Stark said Ghost Walks didn’t come up with the reputation. She first heard it from a group of Irish seniors whose cross-Canada tour book called Niagara-on-the-Lake the most haunted town in the country.
Since then, more and more visitors have repeated the claim to her.
“It wasn’t us that made that up,” she said. “I don’t know how they determine that, whether it goes per household or per square foot.”
Stark believes the haunted reputation traces back to the town’s first settlers, who lost everything twice. They were Loyalists who sided with Britain in the American Revolution and fled their homes in what is now the United States, she said.
American troops who had occupied the town burned all but three of its buildings when they left on Dec. 10, 1813, according to the U.S. National Park Service.
“Some of the people who originally built it were still alive and still had to rebuild it,” Stark said.
Battles at Queenston Heights in 1812 and Fort George in 1813, both inside today’s town limits, killed more than 150 soldiers. Many of the stories guides tell on the walks come from that war.
Several guides led groups through Old Town on Halloween night. One guide, who goes by “The Black Widow,” stopped her group at the Olde Angel Inn, where she told the legend of Capt. Colin Swayze, a British officer said to have died in 1813 when American soldiers bayoneted the cellar barrel where he hid.
The guide said the captain’s ghost would frighten guests for two weeks at a time, then go quiet for months. The inn’s owner eventually noticed the frights began each time the British flag outside went out for dry cleaning, which took two weeks. The inn now keeps two flags so one is always flying — the guide said the captain has been calmer since.
Guests often report drinks flying off tables at the inn, including a beer on Oct. 30, Stark said.
Stark once wondered whether a British spirit was picking on American beer, so she started tracking which drinks went over. The first drink to go flying after that was a glass of local wine, and the next was a glass of water.
In late October, a honeymooner who described herself as sensitive to spirits found the Prince of Wales Hotel too eerie to sleep in, staff said. The couple had booked three nights there but moved to another hotel.
“I’ve never ever heard of anything bad happening to anybody,” Stark said.
Guests and employees often stop by the Queen Street shop to describe strange things that happened to them in town. Some bring photos they say show ghosts.
Stark said she doesn’t want a town this historic to be known only for its ghosts.
“They want to hear about the real people behind it all,” she said.
The Royal George Theatre, one of the walk’s haunted stops, was demolished this summer to make way for a new theatre set to open in fall 2028.
“It’s a travesty,” Stark said. “We’ll never see it again.”
Guides now explain the history of the prior building next to the construction site for tourists who never saw the old theatre.
The 90-minute walks will continue every night until Nov. 7, then on Fridays and Saturdays through December.
