On the Trail of Ghosts, Goblins, and Things That Go Bump in the Night

“It seems that haunted walks are popular in Canada, too. I had never heard about that kind of thing before we went to the US two years ago. We saw many of them but never attended one. Perhaps French people are too rational”. This line in a letter from my long-time pen friend in Paris was a response to a clipping I had sent her of the Haunted Walk in Ottawa. Her comment got me to thinking of how to reply to her, as most North Americans are said to believe in ghosts and the supernatural. When I think of my Ottawa base, there are a fair number of “haunted” places here: the Ottawa Jail/Youth Hostel, Watsons’ Mill, Lisgar Collegiate and the Bytown Museum…. Mustn’t forget the Ottawa Haunting and Paranormal Group! So I did a little research…

Ghosts and other spooky things can now, mostly, be explained the more we study and understand the brain and how it functions. Science is one result of the Enlightenment. The Age of Enlightenment, as I understand it, was a development in 18th Century European philosophy and scholarship that advocated the thinking that natural phenomenon had rational explanations; it should be explored and questioned. Those questions needed to be answered, sensibly. However, as the British, Spanish and French settled North America, initially, in the 16th Century, they did not have the influence of the Enlightenment. Nor did they have the benefit of the Daily Telegraph’s article “Horrors of Hallowe’en are all in the mind” (30/10/2007), which gives plausible, scientific explanations for the paranormal. Perhaps a Celtic influence from Britain full of tales of ghouls and hobgoblins as well as ancient myths made the difference? I know someone who placed a “witch bottle” (trap bad influences) in his roof even now! But then why do the Francophone areas have some of the most famous ghost stories in Canada, like that of the witch Le Corriveau, Quebec City, the ghost of Father Renard of the Lac le Biche Mission, Alberta, and the cursed ring of Marguerite de Roberval of Quirpon, Newfoundland.

North America was a vast wilderness to the settlers arriving from the Old World. Imagine what it must have been like for these immigrants coming to a land of open spaces, of mountain ranges, of seemingly impenetrable forests. Definitely not a village in Sussex, Lower Saxony, or the Languedoc; these people faced harsh challenges in a new world so unlike what they knew, a world that must have seemed wild and uncontrollable at times. Odd things happened – still do. Naturally, they would have tried to come up with a reason for that sound, that fog, that glow… New traditions and old traditions each had their own explanations for phenomenon. Interacting with the aboriginal population also probably influenced their ways of thinking. That has not left Canada; after all, the 2010 Olympic mascots are from Native culture: the sea bear Miga, the guardian spirit Sumi, the sasquatch Quatchi and their sidekick the Vancouver Island marmot Mukmuk. Quite rightly so, the choice of these mascots echoes the land of the Pacific Northwest and the rich aboriginal culture of Canada as a whole. There is a tapestry of cultures that mingle in Canada; these immigrants, over the past 400 years, have brought their belief systems with them. For instance, there are the Irish bog hags and the Ukrainian vampires. (I’m starting to think I’ve watched far too many episodes of “Creepy Canada”.) Did this result in a giant melting pot of legends?