Undead Ist List: The Haunting of Mac House

By Alison

Our spooky week of pre-Halloween frights is wrapping up, but not before we tell you about the most haunted house in Canada (so says the Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society – the italics are theirs). Mackenzie House is that cute little building tucked away on Bond St. that is the historic home of Hogtown’s first mayor, and much beloved rabble-rouser, William Lyon Mackenzie. Nothing too terribly gruesome happened in the house – Mackenzie died here, but of natural causes. Still, rumours of hauntings abound, and the house actually lists in its inventory “One Ghost (exorcised)”. Our favourite master researcher Ann related the following creepy story about a caretaker who worked at the museum back in the eighties when the security system left something to be desired so that caretaker had to spend the night:
“The caretaker was sleeping in bed one night when she suddenly woke, feeling cold. Hovering over her, just inches from her face, was a pale woman in the night cap, who was staring at her with burning hostility. They caretaker was terrified but found she was frozen in place, as you sometimes are when you wake from a dream and are lying on your back, awake, but still heavy with sleep,your body not fully caught up with your brain. Anyway, she couldn’t move a muscle. The floating woman stared at the caretaker furiously for a full minute then reached down and pinched her, hard, on the shoulder. The pain of it shocked her out of her immobility and she screamed and curled into a ball. When she woke up, the woman was gone, but she never slept in that bed again and left the job soon afterward.”
Reports of Mackenzie’s famous paper press spontaneously whirring to life are also common, and we hear that the ghosts seem a little obsessed with the plumbing and toilets often flush spontaneously. Scary.