Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.
The building operated as a high school until it was closed in 1982. Between 1987 and 1989, it became the temporary home for students of Dundas Central Public when their building was closed due to safety concerns. On November 5, 2007, Dundas District was closed, just a few months after it was deemed a historic site and was to be preserved.[6]
The boarded-up building at 397 King Street West currently sits unoccupied — at least by those among the living. As legend explains, there’s likely more than one restless spirit that occupies the spot.
Going back to December of 1934, you’ll see a shockingly tragic scene, one that a December 26 article in the Hamilton Spectator refers to as “the starkest tragedy that has ever darkened Hamilton’s Christmas.”
On a fateful Christmas Day in 1935, engineer Norman Devine pulled the CNR Holiday Special out of the Dundas Station and was heading eastbound toward Toronto for the holidays. On board were 365 passengers.
The train had been experiencing some minor mechanical problems, and with another train’s approach on the schedule, the Holiday Special was stopped and diverted to a side track about 190 metres east of Dundas Station. However, a series of human errors and failures to observe signals led to the forward brakeman, Edward Lynch, to not be aware that the train had been moved to a side track.
Shortly after, due to engine issues, Lynch was walking back to the station to call for a new locomotive when he spotted a light in the distance — CNR No. 16, the Maple Leaf Flyer, on its scheduled run from Detroit to Montreal. Sent into a panic, and thinking the Maple Leaf Flyer was going to crash into the Holiday Special, Lynch rushed to the switch, unlocked it, and threw it open. Believing he had just prevented a horrific crash, he had inadvertently done just the opposite.
The speeding train crashed into the Holiday Special, smashing the rear car almost completely, destroying half of the second car, and shooting the third car up on its end. The fourth car was also damaged from the impact. Splinters and screams shot into the air, the terrifying soundtrack of mayhem audible to people in the village below.
The lights on the passenger cars went out as passengers were flung forward from the impact, some of them tossed out into the winter night. Chaos ensued in the darkness as fire broke out on the demolished rear car. Passengers were trapped in various locations of the wreck, and for several hours nearby rescue workers who arrived at the scene and medical personnel who happened to be on the train set about tending to the injured. Due to the almost complete darkness, the rescue efforts went to those whose groans and screams of pain could be detected among the wreckage.[7]
Either side of the tracks was littered with injured people and dead bodies. In an article published in the Hamilton Spectator on December 31, 1993, Brian Henley wrote, “What followed was a hellish scene. Pandemonium broke out as surviving passengers crawled from the wreck, steam pipes burst scalding the trapped, and the right-of-way was littered with the bodies of the dead.”
Stan Nowak, president of Dundas Valley Historical Society, similarly describes it in a November 12, 2004, article published in the Ancaster News as a “grisly scene of horrible death and suffering,” with many passengers “trapped inside the twisted wreckage of the rear cars.”
Edward Lynch was arrested and charged with manslaughter for his involvement in the accident. In January of 1935, after a great deal of confusing and conflicting testimony, the jury found Mr. Lynch not guilty.[8]
During that fateful night, Hamilton’s old CNR passenger station on Stuart Street was used to hold and transfer patients to the hospital on Barton Street. An article in the Hamilton Spectator at the time described the site as resembling a clearing station behind the lines following an engagement in the First World War. Rumours continue to spread about the basement of the Dundas District School being used as a morgue to house the dead, despite assurances from groups such as the Dundas Historical Society that it is a myth.
Certainly, due to the chaos and confusion in the dark that night, some of the real facts might never be known, and it is entirely possible that, even for a limited time, the basement might have been used in this manner. But even if it was not, many experts in the field of supernatural investigation would agree that the proximity of the location might be enough for the intense experience of pain, suffering, and horror to leave an indelible psychic impression that continues to be felt at the location of the school.
Something, after all, has to explain why so many people have experienced strange and unexplainable events at that site. Something has to be behind the eerie noises, banging on lockers, and other poltergeist-like occurrences reported there.
An October 29, 2004, story in the Ancaster News by Erin Rankin entitled “Hair-Raising Local Legends Live On” spotlights strange things happening through an interview with Peter Greenberg, who was a principal at the school for five years.
Greenberg shared a story of when he came to work in the vacant school early one Saturday morning and the security guard warned him that someone might be inside, because the motion detector had gone off. The building was searched but nobody was found. Shortly after he had started working on some paperwork, he heard locker doors banging and clanging. Believing that vandals had indeed broken in, he called the police and immediately left the building.
When the police arrived, Greenberg went back into the building with one of the sergeants while the other officers waited outside. The thought was that the two men’s entrance would frighten the kids out of the building and the awaiting officers outside would catch them.
As Greenberg and the sergeant approached the third floor, they could hear a crashing noise echoing through the halls; it sounded as if things were being thrown around and glass was being smashed. But when they got to the third floor and opened the door, the noise suddenly stopped, nothing was out of place or damaged, and there was no sign of any mischievous kids on the premises.[9]
One wonders if the banging and crashing Greenberg and others have heard might have been audible psychic echoes of the tragic events that occurred on that fateful December night in 1934.
Greenberg also spoke about custodians at the school who told stories of having left work undone only to return some time later and discover it had been completed. He also shared the fact that most of the custodians refused to go to the third floor after dark.[10]
He was referring, of course, to the legends of a former custodian by the name of Russell and a bizarre promise or pact that was made.
In 1954 there was a group of five men who worked quite closely as custodians at the school and shared convictions about being hard-working and dedicated to their tasks. Russell was the name of the man mostly responsible for maintaining the third floor of the building. He took great pride in keeping fastidious care of the school and his area in particular — offering the service, cleanliness, and attention to detail that one might expect in the parliament buildings, a mansion, or a palace.[11]
Russell, however, was as known for his perfectionism and attention to detail as he was for his fondness of jokes and playing pranks on his fellow workers, and he developed quite the reputation to that end. It was Russell who suggested that he and the other four make a simple pact: whoever died first would keep up the fun by coming back to haunt the school and prove to the others that there was indeed life after death.[12]
As it turns out, Russell was the first of the group to die and to, naturally, have played the role as set forth in the pact.
In an article in the Hamilton Spectator in October 2006, Suzanne Bourret interviewed two custodians at the Dundas District Public School, Veronika Lessard and Tony Vermeer, who shared their experiences. They mentioned having the ominous feeling of being watched as well as having heard voices and seen strange shadows moving while working in the supposedly vacant building.
Lessard, who worked at the school for more than six years, shared the story of how one evening she had left a bucket of water on the third floor before heading down to the first floor to have supper with the