This story began in 1905 in the City of Ottawa. In a field just south of the downtown district a massive new building was constructed to mark Canada’s coming of age as a modern, scientific nation. They called the building The Victoria Memorial Museum, now home to the Canadian Museum of Nature.
The Museum was founded on the work of Montreal-born geologist William Logan, the first Director of the Geological Survey of Canada in 1842. During his lengthy career he was responsible for sending parties across Canada, collecting plants, rocks, minerals, and Native artifacts. No one at the time expressed much understanding or concern for the sacredness of these objects and the life force they carried. Few believed in these powers and they did not understand how to honour them. It was all done for the field of scientific enquiry.
Logan’s growing collection was originally housed in Montreal and after his death in 1881 the 2,000 boxes and barrels of specimens were crated and sent to Ottawa. For several years they were housed in a squalid old hotel in the By Ward Market. The Victoria Memorial Museum Building gave the collection a new home, or so it was believed.
David Ewart, the Dominion’s Chief Architect and designer of the building, was drawn to European architectural history and created a structure that was characterized as “free Gothic,” “Tudor Gothic” or “Scottish baronial.” Ewart commenced to create a fantasy of towers, crenellations, arched windows, trefoils, and false buttresses using local sandstone. The building was completed by 1910 at a cost of $950,000.
Geologists scrambled to fill the empty halls and exhibits were prepared. By 1912 the museum was stocked with minerals, bird and fossil specimens, and Native artifacts.
One tourist at the time described the museum as “an impressive pile of masonry.” The building weighed 30,000 tonnes (65,000 tons). Soon this weight presented a problem, as the structure had been erected on unstable clay. The ground began to sink beneath the building, the ceilings and walls cracked, floors heaved, and the great tower began to tilt. In 1915 the problem was solved by removing the upper three storeys of the tower.
In 1927 the name changed to The National Museum of Canada. Over the years the museum was divided into Natural History, Human History, and Science and Technology. By 1968 many of these branches became separate institutions housed in their own buildings. In 1988 the Victoria Memorial Museum Building became the exclusive home of the National Museum of Natural Sciences — now the Canadian Museum of Nature.
The museum building also shared quarters for a time with the government of Canada. After the burning of the Parliament buildings on the night of February 3, 1916, the House of Commons and the Senate assembled in this building until November 1, 1919.
When Sir Wilfrid Laurier died in 1919 his body lay in state in the Museum’s Auditorium for three days. His was the only body ever to be laid out here — did his spirit stay behind?
No one is sure how long the museum has been haunted. Perhaps it began when the artifacts were first disturbed or after they were put on display in the museum. Certainly a mysterious energy did and does exist in various parts of the building. This mysterious force is seen and witnessed by the individuals working in the building. It follows people down halls, shadows them, and oppresses them. Sometimes it takes shape and can be seen.
For the sake of privacy and at her request for anonymity, we will call our source “Mary.”
Mary has worked at the museum since 1981. In her early years there she heard other employees talk about the hauntings. They would speak of lights going on and off, of doors opening and closing on their own, and of fire alarms sounding on the fourth floor. It was all just nonsense to her.
The museum, at that time, was divided into two different themes. The west side of the building was used for an exhibit of Native artifacts with historical displays on floors one, two, and three, and a folklore exhibit located on the fourth floor. The east side of the building was for science exhibits. Mary told me that most of the unexplained activity was experienced on the west side of the building at that time. At night the cleaners working in the building would find that their vacuum cleaners had been mysteriously unplugged. The elevators in the building would travel from floor to floor on their own. A person entering the elevator would press the button for the floor they wanted and find that the elevator simply ignored this command and continued on its own up to another floor. Employees would experience varying degrees of temperature in certain areas of the building; they would find the atmosphere to be either too hot or too cold. Yet the climatic controls showed the temperature to be at a normal setting. Others would smell an odd odour, like rubber burning, in the west end of the third floor.
Mary’s own experience of alarms sounding, of disembodied conversations and eerie energy started in 1983. There were no logical explanations to be had.
She described the first floor exhibits as ones pertaining to the beginnings of life. They explained and illustrated the work of archeologists, the “dig.” Methods of artifact recovery were presented as well as many different relics.
The second floor displayed the history and life of the Inuit and many other Native nations. She recalled displays including a teepee, ceremonial masks behind glass, hunting tools, medicine bags, rattles, bearclaw necklaces, pipes, and sticks with bird heads on the ends of them. Mary always felt uncomfortable when she walked past these exhibits. Something didn’t feel right! Could it be this non-material energy — the power of life that is in each object — is that what she felt? Spirits were here, still connected to their medicines — medicines locked up and on display. Totem poles and beaded clothing once worn by Native peoples were located on the third floor. A folklore display was located at the far west end of the fourth floor, which was a split-level floor. Some of the articles were described by Mary, “We had an old Ouija board, books, candles, ladders, suitcases, and an open umbrella on display. One section of the display looked like an attic.” She never liked spending time alone in this exhibit. It made her feel very uneasy.
Mary had an extraordinary experience in 1984. “It was five minutes to ten in the morning. I was on the fourth floor in the folklore exhibition area. The museum opens at ten o’clock. After having heard alarms go off in the building and seeing other strange events, I was getting a little paranoid. I said to myself, ‘It’s okay; the museum is not really haunted.’
“Suddenly I felt someone following me, someone trying to scare me! This feeling grew and grew and I decided to stop in front of a mirror. I thought I might be able to catch a glimpse of the ‘spirit.’ There was no one else in this part of the building at the time. There I was standing about four feet away from the mirror when a human figure appeared between me and the mirror. I could see the outline of the head, shoulders, and arms that seemed to be part of the same body. The shape was that of a large, tall man. He was enshrouded in greyish fog and was therefore quite fuzzy. My body went cold. Then the spirit approached me. I was rendered completely immobile; not to mention the terror that passed through me when the figure moved right through me. As soon as the ‘spirit’ entered my body I felt extremely hot. I just watched this form walk through the right side of my body. I remember moving my head around and watching it move a couple of feet beyond me before it disappeared. I just stood there in shock! I didn’t know where to go. I eventually ran down the ramp and out of the room. I found a security guard and asked if he had seen anyone leave the floor. He hadn’t.”
Who was this spirit? Maybe the spirit was in some way connected to an object on display in the folklore exhibit. The Ouija board was the first thing to come to my mind. Had someone used this board improperly? Were they unable to create closure? Do people know how to use these things appropriately?
Mary is not the only employee who has seen a ghostly form appear in the building. She recalled another worker who has since passed away. “She would talk to me about a spirit who appeared on the third floor in the west wing, by the Native exhibits. She used to say he was a young Native