Haunted Grounds:
Ghosts of Duggan House
McGill University
Duggan House is haunted.
Located on McTavish Street, the gothic mansion was built in 1861 as a family home for Orrin S. Wood, one of the pioneers of the telegraph industry in Canada and president of the Montreal Telegraph Company. The home passed through the hands of many prominent families over the years, owned at one time by Matthew Hamilton Gault, MP and founder of Sun Life Financial, as well as George Herrick Duggan, a prominent engineer who gave the property to McGill University after his death in 1946. It is still owned by McGill to this day.
The paranormal phenomena experienced in Duggan House is well-known to faculty and students. There’s the story of the graduate student who saw a female ghost in nineteenth-century dress coming down the stairs while she was in a meeting with her professor in the foyer, an experience that horrified her so much that she hyperventilated. Others have heard footsteps echoing through the halls, and found objects mysteriously moved or missing. It’s rumoured that the Faculty of Commerce vacated the building in 1977 because students were uncomfortable with the paranormal activity going on in the place.
So, who exactly is haunting Duggan House?
If you’ve already read the chapter “The Tobogganing Ghost of Simon McTavish,” you might be surprised to learn that anyone would be silly enough to build on the land where McTavish’s castle once stood, but that’s exactly what happened. Duggan House sits on that land, and was actually built with stones from the demolished castle, leading some to suggest that it might be McTavish himself who is haunting the building. But then, McTavish isn’t a woman.…
Duggan House, built in 1861, is now owned by McGill University.
Another creepy theory has to do with Purvis Hall, another McGill campus building. Apparently, in the 1940s, when students were either lazier or more sensitive to the cold, a tunnel was built to connect the Purvis and Duggan buildings so students could travel easily between the two. In itself, this fact is alarming enough. That tunnel, if it’s still accessible, could be letting all kinds of riff-raff into Duggan House, and seems like a pretty serious security issue. But it gets better. Purvis Hall is also believed to be haunted — by its namesake, Arthur B. Purvis. So, possible murderers and thieves aside, the tunnel may also be in use by the ghost of Arthur B. Purvis, intent on haunting any building he can get into.
But the Purvis Hall ghost isn’t female either, is he?
There is one woman who lived in Duggan House who is a likely candidate for the female ghost spotted by the graduate student. Elizabeth Joanna Bourne, wife of Matthew Hamilton Gault, birthed a total of sixteen children, five of whom died in infancy. When the last baby perished it’s said the poor lady went somewhat mad. She passed away in 1908. Does she haunt the building still? Could be, but it’s difficult to be sure. When you’re on haunted grounds, there are just too many ghosts to choose from.
The Echo of Footsteps
Trafalgar Tower, Westmount
Have you heard the story about the strange old hermit who used to live in the ruins of Trafalgar Tower? Legend has it that his ghost, forever tied to the location of the now-lost structure, still creeps about the grounds there. If you listen carefully, you might still hear his footsteps echoing down the empty street …
These words, shared in whispers, are the type of story still told about a building that long ago ceased to be a part of the Montreal landscape. Of course, tales of an old hermit who lived in the abandoned tower are just one of the legends shared about this historical locale.
Trafalgar Tower was built after John Ogilvy, a British loyalist, purchased a large expanse of land where General Amherst’s troops had camped in October of 1760 before taking Montreal from the French settlers. A hexagon-shaped Gothic-style structure, the stone tower was built by James Gillespie.
Shortly after Ogilvy’s death in 1819, the tower began to wear away due to the weather, but that didn’t stop a number of spectral beings from taking up residence there.
In 1880, a couple was visiting the tower one winter morning when the man peered curiously through one of the tower windows. No sooner had he lifted himself up to look inside than he heard the distinct sound of approaching footsteps. His wife, hearing them as well, suggested that he get down from the window lest he be called out for trespassing. As the sound of the footsteps grew closer, the man turned to greet the visitor. Not only was there nobody there, but the snow itself was completely undisturbed in the direction they had sworn the footsteps were coming from.
An archivist named Dr. Massicotte also claimed to have had a very similar experience in the winter of 1925. He heard the mysterious disembodied footsteps, but saw no one and also swore there was no evidence of footsteps in the surrounding snow.
A theory posited by Donovan King on Haunted Montreal about the mystery of the footsteps relates to the location of the tower on a perch in the valley. It is possible, he speculates, that the geography of the landscape would have produced an eerie echo that might explain the recurrence of the footsteps tale by visitors.
Whether or not that explains the sound of the footsteps, there are other incidents that are not so easy to explain. One involves an old tollgate keeper by the name of Quinn who followed one of his cows toward the tower after the beast had wandered off in the middle of a moonlit night. When Quinn arrived at the tower he spotted not only his cow, standing at the foot of the haunted summer house, but something that took his breath away: a vision of a beautiful woman standing in one of the windows and looking out.
“I was transfixed to the spot and could not take my eyes off the vision,” Quinn said. “She was in white with her hands clasped, as if in prayer, looking upwards. I remember falling down on my knees and crossing myself, and I remember nothing more.”
Who was this spectre? She could have been the ghost of one of the many who were buried in the Trafalgar Mount Cemetery, which was founded on sixteen acres of Ogilvy’s farmland in 1848. The cemetery advertised Trafalgar Tower as a beautiful part of the landscape that would make a luxurious resting spot for the remainder of eternity. There are, after all, many interred there whose spirits may wander the ground.
King mentions another possible spectral inhabitant. Railroad engineer W.R. Casey, who died of tuberculosis in Trafalgar Cottage and whose body was buried near the ascent to Trafalgar Tower, under the shade of nearby trees, may have found peace there — or not. Could Casey be one of the ghosts who haunts those grounds? Could it be the ghost of the hermit from local lore? And who was the woman who appeared in the vision shared by gatekeeper Quinn?
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Trafalgar House, built in 1848, still stands on Côte-des-Neiges Road. But the last evidence of the tower before it crumbled comes from a letter written in 1946, in which a Montreal schoolteacher by the name of Martha Brown mentions that one of her students took a snapshot of the remains of Trafalgar Tower in 1937. “As you pass from Côte-des-Neiges along the Boulevard,” she writes, “Belvedere Ave. is on the right, and the Tower used to be easily seen on the elevation just above the Boulevard.”
Local citizens continue to share tales of echoing of footsteps in the area. A teenage girl from the neighbourhood often heard the sound of invisible footsteps echoing down the deserted street in the early morning hours or near sunset.
Even though Trafalgar Tower no longer stands, the eerie tales surrounding it, as well as the accompanying mystery