This suggests that as many as one in every four UFO sighting reported are truly unexplained phenomenon. Whether the objects, lights, and sightings in the sky are evidence of extraterrestrial life-forms visiting earth, or they are an indication of some other yet-to-be-explained phenomenon, at least eighteen of the seventy-three reports from Montreal from 2016 appear to have enough substance to make even a skeptic look up to the skies and wonder.
Maud: The Willow Inn Ghost
Hudson, Quebec
Residents of Hudson, an off-island suburb to the west of Montreal, have all heard of Maud. She’s the ghost who haunts the iconic Willow Inn, a striking building first constructed in 1820 as a private home and later used as a general store before becoming a pub and inn. But who is Maud? Does she actually haunt the Willow Inn, as she’s been said to for so long, or is she just an urban legend conjured up to keep the tourists interested? Did Maud ever really exist at all?
The story begins in 1837. In Ghost Stories of Canada, John Robert Colombo reports that the inn was used as a meeting place for the Patriotes as they planned the Battle of Saint-Eustache, an important battle in the Lower Canada Rebellion (1837–1838) that would see the British defeat the rebels of Quebec. Maud, a servant girl loyal to the British, was caught eavesdropping on one of their meetings. As it was believed she couldn’t be trusted, the rebels murdered her and buried her body in the basement. But that was not the end of Maud.
For many years, guests of the Willow Inn have experienced strange phenomenon. According to the Hudson Historical Society, stacks of rocks are routinely discovered outside of Room 8, where the meeting of the Patriotes took place. Maud is heard singing in the hallways. Objects fall over, seemingly by themselves, and the basement door slams shut of its own accord — apparently as Maud returns to her body’s resting place. Some people have even said they’ve smelled Maud’s perfume. The yearly haunting tends to take place between Halloween and the end of November, right around the time Maud was allegedly killed.
Condemned by the British as rebels, celebrated by the French-Canadian population as heroes, the men hanged in 1839 for their activities in the 1837 Rebellion remain celebrated figures. In Pendaison de cinq Patriotes au Pied-du-Courant, they are commemorated by the French-Canadian artist Henri Julien.
Eerie stuff indeed, and certainly a compelling story, but is there any truth to it? A local historian named Rob Hodgson thinks not. In a 2017 Global News article, Hodgson claims there never was a servant girl named Maud, and that in fact the whole story was made up by the owners in the 1970s to attract some attention to their inn. The only Maud who ever lived or died at the Willow Inn was one Maud Leger, the mother of the owner who passed in 1960, more than a hundred years after the Patriotes lost the Battle of Saint-Eustache.
It should also be pointed out that the original Willow Inn burned down in a fire in 1989 and was rebuilt later that year in the exact same style, only larger. It went through extensive renovations from 2016 to 2017 under new ownership. Would a ghost continue to haunt a building just because it resembles the one she died in and sits on the same land? Or is it her grave she is tethered to, which possibly remained untouched by the flames?
The Willow Inn, as it looks today. The original structure burned down in 1989 and was rebuilt in the same style.
In an effort to put the questions surrounding the veracity of the Maud story to rest, a team of paranormal researchers led by Dan Ducheneaux did their own investigation of the Willow Inn in the summer of 2017. After spending two nights in the inn with all their gear, Ducheneaux and his team couldn’t definitively rule out a paranormal presence in the building. They reported to Global News that they had heard a child’s voice calling out “one.” There were no children staying at the inn at the time and the owner claimed it’s unlikely they could have heard voices from the street. Rather more alarming was the sound they heard of an old woman either laughing or crying at the very moment their heat sensors went off.
Ducheneaux was uneasy about being on the second floor for most of the night. He believes something is going on at the inn, be it the restless ghost of Maud roaming the halls, or another explanation.
Though hardly a ringing endorsement, this modern investigation will surely keep the story of Maud, the ghost of Willow Inn, alive. Real or imaginary, her ghostly presence will live on in Hudson and beyond for years to come.
Careful, This One Bites:
Wayne Clifford Boden, “The Vampire Rapist”
He didn’t look like a vampire. Wayne Clifford Boden was a charming twenty-three-year-old Montrealer with a boyish look and winning smile when he went on a killing spree beginning in the late 1960s. It ended with five young women raped, murdered, and bitten. That’s right, Boden, also known as the Vampire Rapist, had the bizarre modus operandi of biting his victims on their breasts, leaving behind dental evidence which eventually led to his arrest and conviction.
You might be tempted to dismiss Boden as a pop-culture fanatic, spurred on by the trend toward vampires on TV and the silver screen, and convinced by some inner madness to allow his bloody impulses free in real life. Remember, however, this was decades ago, long before Twilight, or The Vampire Diaries, or Interview with the Vampire. So, what was it that pushed Boden to not only murder, but deliver the dark kiss? Could it be that he was in fact a real-life vampire?
There is some debate as to which victim was Boden’s first. In The Serial Killer Files, Harold Schechter asserts that schoolteacher Norma Vaillancourt was the first to go, in July 1968. The twenty-one-year-old was raped and strangled to death in her apartment, with bite marks covering her breasts. The police found no sign of a struggle, either on the deceased’s body or in the apartment, implying that Vaillancourt had let her killer in. Oddly, the dead girl was found with a smile on her face.
Next to go, nearly a year later, was Shirley Audette, whose body was dumped behind an apartment complex downtown. Though she had been raped, strangled, and bitten on the breasts — exactly like Norma Vaillancourt — her body was fully clothed when found and there were no signs of a struggle.
In November of 1969, it happened again. Marielle Archambault, a young employee at a downtown jewellery shop, was found by her employer after she didn’t show up for work. She was in her apartment, dead, raped, and bitten. This time, however, it seemed some kind of struggle had occurred, as the apartment was a mess and Archambault’s clothes were ripped. Though such a fight might make one think Archambault had been attacked by a stranger, Schechter claims the police were led to believe otherwise when they found a crumpled photo of a good-looking young man at the scene. Archambault’s co-workers identified the man as Bill, a guy they’d seen the dead girl chatting with that very day.
Jean Way was almost saved. Her boyfriend came to pick her up for a date on the day she died. When she didn’t answer the door he left and returned an hour later, by which time the poor girl was dead. It’s believed Boden was in the apartment with Way when the boyfriend first came by and, alarmed by his knock on the door, fled the scene. This would explain the fact that Way’s body was left naked and her breasts were unmolested, unlike the other victims. She had been raped and strangled, though. Boden left before he could finish the job. One thing to note about Jean Way is that skin was found under her fingernails. She might not have won, but she fought back.
Perhaps intuiting that he wasn’t going to get away with it much longer in Montreal, Boden trekked across the country to Calgary to carry out his final murder on May