And these are ones who don’t pay for tuition or occupy a solid space — at least not for long.
The building used to be home to the Wentworth County Courthouse, and, over the years, many people have reported hearing, seeing, and feeling strange things in the area where some jail cells still remain. Some claim, working in the building after hours, that they have had the uncanny feeling of being watched and even caught glimpses of shadowy figures out of the corner of their eyes, down a corridor that they raced toward only to find empty.
Others claim to have heard voices coming from adjacent vacant rooms while working on a Saturday, a time when most of the building is completely unoccupied.
When wondering about the possibility of ghosts, and the fact that the building used to be a courthouse and jail, one wonders if perhaps executions might have taken place there, offering some sort of reason behind the strange noises and frightening shadows.
But the closest historical records come to supporting such a theory would be the public executions which took place back in the 1890s at gallows facing Jackson Street at the rear of 50 Main Street West. Is it close enough for the misguided spirits to continue to linger and make their presence felt? You might just ask one of the employees of the Downtown Centre at McMaster who has experienced the unexplainable sights and sounds.
So far we’ve taken a bit of a stroll around the periphery, through history related to McMaster and to one of the “outpost” locations — but what about the main campus itself? Sure, McMaster residence life can lay claim to having a part in inspiring Animal House director Ivan Reitman, but might it also lay claim to inspiring tales from the shadows?
Well, there’s always Anthony B. Percy, the resident ghost at Wallingford Hall.
This ghost tale has its start in 1934. Back then, there were two residences on campus. Edwards Hall, an all-male dorm, and Wallingford Hall, for females. Anthony Percy and Mary Baxter had the chance, through various social activities between the two residences, to get to know each other and become friends. They would spend leisurely afternoons in the Wallingford Tea Room or the Gentleman’s Waiting Area (two of the only places males were allowed to venture in the all-female building).
University Hall at McMaster boasts a Collegiate Gothic design with unique carved mouldings in the entranceways.
Courtesy of Peter Rainford.
As time passed, Mary became rather fond of Anthony. She found herself slowly and inevitably falling in love with him. This love mutated rather quickly into an obsession. As their moments of spending long segments of time started to fade away, and Anthony would engage in activities with other people, Mary found herself seeking him out. No matter where he went on campus, she was often not far behind, attempting to keep him in her sights. She was even occasionally spotted outside his room at night, quietly standing and simply looking in his window at him while he studied.
Anthony, however, was oblivious to Mary’s feelings for him. To him, she was a friend, someone whom he enjoyed spending time with. And unbeknownst to Mary, Anthony’s heart had already begun the process of belonging completely to another woman. It thus came as quite the shock to Mary when she found out that the love of her life had become engaged to another woman.
Shortly after she found this out, Mary requested a meeting with him in the Wallingford Tea Room, the place where they’d spend so many lovely and contented afternoons together, and where Mary had slowly fallen in love with this man of her dreams, this man who had betrayed her and broken her heart.
When Anthony arrived, Mary confessed her true feelings to him as well as her anger at his betrayal. Their conversation devolved rather quickly into a heated argument. The argument apparently ended with the sound of a loud thud coming from the tea room. A few minutes later, by the time someone entered the room to investigate the noise and the abruptly ended argument, the room was empty.
Anthony’s body was found stuffed in the dumbwaiter, and Mary was nowhere to be found.[8] To this day, the whereabouts of Mary Baxter is a complete mystery; however, if you ask certain people who have stayed in Wallingford Hall, they might tell you they know exactly where Anthony B. Percy is.
He is still there. Ironically, a man who was never allowed to venture far into Wallingford Hall now haunts the building for the rest of eternity.
Over the years, various stories have been shared regarding strange incidents that are sometimes attributed to the ghost of Anthony. Closed windows are found propped open, shower curtains have been pulled back and forth, lights are said to turn on and off by themselves, and, occasionally, a low and quiet weeping can be heard echoing off the washroom walls when there is nobody inside.
Of course, the tales of Mary Baxter and Anthony B. Percy might just be a story born of an evening of high spirits, with one or more residents wanting to create a tale to put a fun scare into the other people there. And this story might just be one of those fictions passed down through many generations of Wallingford Hall residents.
However, if you’re one of the students living in the old building and you experience the strange sensation of a blanket being pulled off, a shadow flitting past, or the odd sounds of crying from a vacant adjacent room, it might be a little harder, in the chill of the moment, to chalk it all up to an old myth that grew out of hand.
Chapter Sixteen
The Tivoli Theatre
One would well expect a theatre to be filled with the voices of actors, the patter of footsteps treading the boards of the stage, and fantastical images inspired by the imagination of playwrights and directors. But the old Tivoli Theatre in Hamilton offered those things even when supposedly quiet and between performances, sending a quick shiver of fright up the spines of employees and actors who worked there.
Many looked at the remains of the Tivoli Theatre building as a forgotten ruin of an era long past. The 750-seat auditorium still stands vacant, but in 2004, when a portion of the south wall facing James Street North (the area containing the lobby, office space, washrooms, props room and storage space) began to collapse, it was deemed unsafe, and the demolition of that entire section began.
The Tivoli was built in three sections; the first section was constructed in 1875. The section that used to front James Street North was built with a carriage factory on the upper floors and retail shops at street level. The architecture of the building has been described as a Second Empire style, boasting a steeply pitched mansard roof with dormers, bracketed cornices, and rich classical detailing.
For almost one hundred years, the Tivoli Theatre buildings were the centre for entertainment in the city of Hamilton.
Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.
The carriage factory closed in 1881 and the building remained vacant until 1907, when the theatre community in Hamilton began to rise. The factory was converted to a theatre with about two hundred seats, and Hamilton city records reveal that in 1908 a theatre known as the Wonderland opened on the site at the rear of the factory building, showing live vaudeville acts. In 1909 it was renamed the Colonial and in 1913 the name changed once more to The Princess at about the same time it began showing motion pictures.[1]
A theatre magnate of the 1900s named Ambrose Small owned the Tivoli (The Princess at that point) along with several other theatres in Southern Ontario. In 1919 he signed a contract selling all of his theatres — The Tivoli in Hamilton, The Grand in London, and The Grand in Toronto — for a couple million dollars. But on the fateful and sunny afternoon of Friday, December 19, Small walked away from a pleasant meeting with his lawyer FWM Flock on the corner of Adelaide and Yonge in Toronto and was never seen again.[2],[3]
Small’s disappearance became one of the most captivating and enduring mysteries of the time. He was not only a theatre mogul but also a ruthless businessman, a gambler, and an adulterous rogue. He openly hated children,