A hair-raising walk in haunted Toronto

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An incredible fireball lit up the pre-dawn skies on Dec. 24, 1863. So forceful was the blast of the exploding boiler at the Gooderham and Worts distillery in Toronto’s east end, The Globe reported that not only were chunks of metal “thrown 50 yards away,” but also “stones, weighing from 50 to 100 pounds, were hurled high in the air.” Stones, it should be added, that had previously made up the building’s castle-like walls.

One “unfortunate man,” John Kingston, found “lying amidst the debris” was “so mangled, spattered and disfigured” that he was “scarcely recognizable.” When his wife and sister took their first look at the remains, “their wild shrieks of horror and grief, and their looks of agony and despair, were enough to make strong men weep.”

Whew!

I am standing close to the spot in which Mr. Kingston met his end. Thankfully, I am comforted by many things: the lack of boilers that can explode, since Toronto’s Distillery District has not produced alcohol since 1990; unlike in 1863 there is an abundance of electric lighting; my much braver wife, Shauntelle, is at my side along with our fearless, ghost-sniffing half-Chihuahua Bella; and even if Mr. Kingston’s icy finger was to tickle the back of a living neck, there are 10 other people on The Haunted Walk that he can choose.

I will say that earlier, when our tour began, I had not been thinking of icy fingers reaching up from beyond the grave. Meeting at the Distillery’s main gates (55 Mill St.) on an abnormally warm October evening, the air ringing with the laughter of patio-diners and Justin Timberlake’s SexyBack, it was hard to get in the mood. Add to that the part of Sarah’s speech (our guide) about logistics, traffic and uneven pavement, and I was preparing for an absence of eidolism.

But the Distillery’s architecture has powers of its own.

A National Historic Site and a completely intact Victorian industrial property with cobblestone streets, cupolaed buildings, nooks and alleyways, it feels more like a Dickensian village – a village Jack the Ripper would have felt quite at home in. Built before the automobile, it has a human scale and an intimacy that, I believe, touches one’s soul in a different way than, say, a 1920s street, such as the Danforth (where I live), ever could. At night, and with ghost stories, it all combines to activate the reptilian part of the brain.

Especially when Sarah tells us about the swinging chandelier in the building that is now home to Balzac’s Coffee.

Here, and in many of the other businesses, such as Brick Street Bakery, employees often feel they are being watched. Some have even reported witnessing a man in “old fashioned clothing” peering through the windows – especially in the early morning as they are preparing for their business day – as if he were supervising them. Many believe this to be the distraught spirit of James Worts (born 1792), the brother-in-law and business partner of William Gooderham, who died by suicide on the property in 1834 just weeks after his wife died during childbirth.

The chandelier, which Sarah tells us was seen by employees “violently swinging, Phantom of the Opera style” for more than 10 minutes may, however, have been pushed by a ghostly, still-unidentified woman who is sometimes seen on the staircase (or she helped Mr. Worts push it).

In Tank House Lane – so named because of the low-rise warehouse buildings where whisky was aged in tanks – our little group learns of the district’s resident poltergeist. Early tenant Mill Street Brewery, which arrived in 2002, would set up tents for private events (before the condominium towers arrived). During one such event, staff returned after a break to find all of the rented chairs stacked on top of one another. Further down the lane at Pure Spirits Oyster House, a staff member similarly found a tower of plates; thinking it was a practical joke, she reset them, properly, only to find a few minutes later that “the ghost” had stacked them vertically again.

There is also haunted furniture. Tenants, when they move in, are encouraged to select historical items – whether an old pump or a piece of cabinetry – from the collection of odds and ends that were left behind in 1990. At Wildly Delicious (11 Tank House Lane), the owners chose a display cabinet to place in their store, only to find that it enjoys playing knock-knock jokes on them. Staff have reported hearing three knocks coming from the cabinet’s left side and, on a few occasions, when a staff member has knocked back, they’ve gotten more knocks in response. Although the shop was closed, we were able to see the haunted cabinet through the window (my wife, a vintage furniture retailer, really enjoyed this one).

At DECIEM, the Abnormal Beauty Company (18 Distillery Lane), Bella’s ears spring up (and the ears of the other dog on the walk, Circe) as Sarah tells us of staff stories about one-foot-high, grey, white, or black streaks moving across the floor and the sounds of meowing. “Yes, ghost cats are a thing,” she says as she posits that this building might have been used for grain storage and, where there is grain, there is vermin, and, in the 1800s, the best pest control method was a phalanx of tabbies.

The Haunted Walk of the Distillery District is good, clean fun. It’s informative both architecturally and supernaturally, and a great way to, er, kill 75 minutes … while giving the hairs on the back of one’s neck a good workout, right before Hallowe’en.