In the summer of 2002, the folks at Haunted Hamilton conducted an investigation of the Tivoli Theatre. Their psychics went into the building without being told any of the alleged history of the ghosts. Immediately drawn to the statue and the vent, they placed their hands on the wall and said it housed an important document.
Shortly after a side wall collapsed in upon itself in 2004, leaving a gaping hole on the south side of the building, city contractors assessed the structure as unstable. The City of Hamilton billed owner Sam Sniderman $300,000 for the cost of the demolition.
Legends suggest that the distressed spirit of a young boy lurks near the statue of Caesar on the south side of the auditorium.
Courtesy of Stephanie Lechniak.
In 2006 the Canadian Ballet Youth Ensemble bought the building from Sniderman for either one or two dollars, depending on which newspaper report you read. And in the summer of 2010, Gina Gintili and Belma Diamante began trying to raise five million dollars in order to restore the theatre building into a dance, arts, and culture centre. Under a campaign called “Toonies for Tivoli,” they hope to build those funds two dollars at a time. They champion the Tivoli as a magic spot, larger than the real estate and a symbol of our city’s soul.
Those who have experienced the unexplained occurrences at the Tivoli would, of course, also suggest that there is more than magic here — and that if the legendary building known as the Tivoli rises again, so, too, will the ghosts that continue to tread the boards there.
Chapter Seventeen
Gus's Ghost Story
The following is an article that appeared in the August 16, 1902, issue of the Hamilton Herald. Brother’s Robert B. and John M. Harris established the newspaper in August 1889, and it became Hamilton’s first one-cent newspaper, making Hamilton into a three-newspaper town. The Hamilton Spectator, started in 1846, and the Hamilton Times, 1859, were the other two papers at the time — the only remaining daily newspaper today is the Spectator. The Herald lasted until 1936; the Times until 1920.
Interestingly, parts of the story, namely the pulling of bedclothes, appeared in other accounts of ghostly occurrences reported by both men and women. What I couldn’t determine is if these other tales were related to this original haunting experience that Nelson reports.
His Weird Experience with Tricky Spook
The House Is Said to Be Haunted
Whether or not you believe in the truth of the following story, told by Gus Nelson, of this town, it is certain that the teller of the story is convinced of its truth. As he told it to a small group of friends one evening this week, he had not fully recovered from the nerve-shaking effects of his experience. He said:
“On the night of Wednesday, August 6, I went to bed in my boarding house on Park Street about half-past ten. Not being tired or sleepy, I lay for some time in deep thought. Suddenly, I was disturbed by a curious, weird sound, as if made by the rattling of chains or someone trying to open the door. This noise increased, and was followed by a louder sound, as of someone hitting the head of an empty barrel with a mallet. Being slightly alarmed, I sat up in bed and called out, ‘Get to the dickens out of this,’ though I could see nothing. Presently, as if by magic, a light appeared in the hallway, which just as suddenly disappeared again. Then I felt something pulling at the bed clothes. Reaching under the bed I seized a slipper and fired it at the apparition. Scarcely had I lain down again before the clothes again moved. I grasped them tightly, but the ghost also pulled. For a time it was difficult to tell which would gain the mastery. Again the light appeared and the pulling ceased. For a long time I lay in a state of bewilderment and great fatigue. I fell asleep. I awoke, with a feeling of nervousness, about 4:30 a.m. I looked, and there was the light again. It came and went at intervals, positively without human agency. Upon recovering myself sufficiently afterwards, I found a pair of old socks on top of my head and the bed clothes lying in the center of the room on the floor.”
In the group of persons to whom Gus told his story was Night Watchman Jamieson, who is well known to be an authority on ghosts and several other important matters. Mr. Jamieson exhibited no surprise over the story. The house, he said, had been haunted for some time, that condition having been brought about by the fact that a man had hung himself there some seven years ago. Ever since then the apparition of a man had occasionally been seen walking about at midnight sometimes with a small electric light in one hand and sometimes pounding on an empty barrel with a drumstick. One night, says Jamieson, a policeman saw the apparition. He immediately fainted and was restored to consciousness by Jamieson himself. The next night the policeman was not on that beat, and it was reported that he was sick.
Gus Nelson says that a young man who had slept there before he came said the bed actually walked over to the door, and that such things as Gus described were of common occurrence. To say that, Gus, who was [illegible] frightened is but mildly expressing it, and money could not induce him to return to his boarding house, as he is quite positive that it was a ghost he saw. No one can make him believe different. A certain gentleman to whom Gus was relating his experience, says that he had often been visited by ghosts, and that the only way to get rid of them was to stand a bottle of whisky and a glass in front of the bed. They would then take a drink and depart without touching the bed clothes. This is about the best remedy I have ever heard of to banish ghosts, and if any ever bother me I think I shall take this means of disposing them.[1]
Chapter Eighteen
The Tombstone Ghost
On an otherwise typical Sunday night in June 1971, around the time that Ontario Place opened in Toronto, Federal Express was founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, and The Ed Sullivan Show made its last broadcast on CBS-TV, Norm and Sherrie Bilotti encountered something dark and mysterious in their home — a far more memorable event for them.
Norm Bilotti was startled out of a peaceful midsummer night’s dream by the shrill screams of his wife, Sherrie. When his eyes shot open, he immediately spied what was causing Sherrie’s sudden bout of night terrors: a faceless female shape cloaked in a long flowing gown was hovering just a few feet above their bed. They were both frozen in fear, staring at the figure before them and trying to determine exactly what it was.
Norm vocalized his query, asking his wife what the hell it was as he sat up in the bed. Almost as if in reaction to his voice and motion, the shape slowly moved to the foot of the bed. He was able to estimate her height as approximately six feet before it retreated from the bed and toward the wall. It seemed to grow smaller, then completely vanished.
Not believing his eyes, Norm leapt from the bed, ran to the light switch, and lit up the room. There was nothing by the wall where the figure had disappeared. He moved to other rooms of the house, switching on lights as he went. Again, there was nothing. He continued to check the rest of their ground-floor apartment as well as the yard outside and could find no indication that anyone had entered their apartment.
However this intruder had entered their home, she certainly hadn’t come in through a door or window.
Sherrie explained to her husband that she had felt something behind her, looking at her, and when she opened her eyes, she spotted the figure hovering above her head — that is when she started screaming in terror.
Norm did not believe in ghosts. He admitted that if it had been either of them alone who had seen the spectre, they could have easily passed it off as something they had imagined, or perhaps a brief moment of hysterical insanity. But the fact that they both saw it made them all the more curious.
Ever the scientific mind, not willing to entertain the notion of ghosts, Norm stated that he wanted to see it again in order to understand what it really was. Sherrie, on the other hand, had trouble sleeping without leaving some sort of light on; a habit she continued for a good three weeks after this event.
Twenty-eight days after their