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home > articles > The Spirits of Parry Sound
The
Spirits of Parry Sound
Georgian Bay. I can't imagine anything more beautiful. Sitting on the deck of a friend's cottage in Parry Sound. I can see tiny islands of multi-coloured rock and majestic pine trees dotting the clear blue water, and I know there is no where else I'd rather be. The air is fresh, the sky is blue, the trees are so tall they're intimidating. No wonder real estate property goes for such a high price up here! But there's something else. Something mystical... magical... or possibly just unsettling. On the drive into Parry Island where our friend's cottage rests, we passed a cemetary which would have given anyone the willies. There was no sign marking the cemetary, and there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the burials. The burials themselves were obviously made above ground (given the mounds of dirt infront of the decrepit takes)., and then the greatest mystery of all: those graves that did have a "proper" stone marker belonged to kids, up to age 25, buried within the last 30 years. My husband and I decided to stop for some pictures of the site, and get a "feel" for what was behind these mysteries. The air was so thick with humidity that it may as well have been raining, which is certainly what the darkening sky was threatening to do. What better weather for a ghost hunt?
Now anyone more educated than us would have recognized what the site was: an Indian reserve cemetary. No wonder we felt that we weren't supposed to be there! We're just just lucky that we had stuck to the outskirts and didn't actually tread on sacred ground. Left with an undying feeling that we were "not alone", I was in my glory! What a perfect set up for the next day's activity: the ghost tour of Parry Sound with Terry Boyle. I had first heard about this tour at the July Haunted Hamilton Monthly Meeting, where Mr. Boyle was the guest speaker. "Come and see me, if you are ever in Parry Sound," he had invited us all. I was happy to oblige! On Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., my three friends and I met Mr. Boyle at the Town Dock for what turned out to be a private tour. Not that his tours are unpopular by any means, but in the 40 degree heat, we were the only group ghost crazy enough to volunteer for a two hour walking tour under the scorching sun. I introduced myself as a proud member of Haunted Hamilton, and so Mr. Boyle happily proceeded with a more ghostly-inclined version of his historical tour. We began at the mouth of the Seguin River, under the train trestle that looms above what looked to be shallow rapids. Here we received a number of tales about deaths in this very spot, which of course, is rumoured to be haunted. I won't give away the whole story because this tour is a must see, but let's just say that the town undertaker's family lost one son to the mouth of the Seguin, which in and of itself is sort of creepy. More deaths here, mostly children, were accidental. Jumping off the train trestle into a not so deep "deep spot" in the water, playing chicken with the trains, the sudden breaking of the local dam... as which our Desjardins Canal, this little spot of geography seems to have a thing against the people who invade it's space. Death at the mouth of the Seguin is certainly nothing new. The entire region of Georgian Bay was settled thousands of years ago by the Ojibwe and Odawa tribes. When eventually the Iroquios and Huron tribes moved into the Parry Sound region, there were so many massacres that the Huron numbers dwindled from an estimated 20,000 to a mere 400, most of whom fled to Montreal. In the later 1800's, the government forced the Ojibwe peoples onto Parry Island, where they were promised one English pound per tribe member, literally for the rest of eternity. To this day, Parry Island is a reserve, and it's members receive $2.60 when they birth a new member into the community. Well this makes sense now, why there is an old reserve cemetary en route to my friend's cottage! Parry Island is rumoured to be a mystical place, with a 30-40 food water snake residing in one of it's interior lakes. Apparently all of the islanders know about this snake, know where to find it, and just leave it to roam it's waters. The native name for the island is "Wasauksing", which means "Bright Light". If you can make it out to Parry Sound, be sure to visit the island and experience its energy, but be respectful of the land... it is still sacred.
At the top of the hill and around the corner sits the old Moore house, reputedly one of the most haunted houses in Parry Sound. The son of the Moore's went to war and never returned... yet more than a few passerby have seen his wraith sitting on the front porch. The owners of the home will tell you that once a month the furniture rearranges itself in one of the upper rooms. Directly across the road from the Moore house is a slightly declining field leading to the train tracks (this is the entrance to the train trestle mentioned earlier). At the bottom of the path and just off to the right is an energy vortex, opening onto an Indian village. Read more about this in Terry Boyle's books! Although I did not fall through into the vortex, I could feel and hear a woman running past me, from the Moore house, screaming and crying. Was this Mrs. Moore, after receiving the news about her son? From here we moved to the Jailer's house, located directly in front of the prison. If this place doesn't give you the chills, nothing will. Mr. Boyle has a number of stories involving an angry spirit in the Jailer's house, and will show you where the hangings and burials of convicts took place, right outside the Jailer's windows. Placing our hands on the prison wall, all of us felt the energy radiating from the bricks. Anger, misery, grief, dementia... stand well back if you don't want to be affected.
In the late 1800's and early 1900's, rich American tourists would take steam ships into Parry Sound in search of "real Indians". When they were anchored in the harbour, the rich men would toss gold coins into the water and watch the younger boys dive for them. One such coin was recently retrieved from the waterbed, valued at more than one million dollars. You would think that with this knowledge, anyone with a SCUBA license would be diving there daily to get their hands on a coin. But there is a problem. In earlier days, there were mills surrounding the harbour, and pictures of those times show a surface of floating logs where we now see sail boats. The coins are trapped under these pine logs at the bottom of the harbour, which cannot be removed... because there is a bed of oil being held down by the layer of wood. To release the logs in order to get to the millions of dollars in gold at the bottom of the harbour would spell ecological disaster for Georgian Bay. At least greed has still not overcome conscience in this part of the world. We finished our tour at Mr. Boyle's car, where he showed us his series of books on Haunted and Historical Ontario, which of course we may purchase if we like. I left for my own car with copies of Haunted Ontario and Haunted Ontario 2, and an excitement that would stay with me to this day. There are others out there who revel in the mysteries of our older towns, and I had just met one of them. Mr. Boyle is full of information and entertainment, and well worth the trip to Parry Sound.
If you get the chance to drive up north this summer, and I highly recommend that you do, be sure to stop in and see Mr. Boyle at his office at the Town Harbour, and book a tour if you can. Go to Parry Island and see the Wasauksing cemetary (from the road, I'd suggest), and the old Ghost Town. Pick up a copy of his books before you go to learn of haunted hotels in the area, complete with room numbers to reserve for a guaranteed bad night's sleep. And if you happen upon Mr. Boyle's little friend, the spirit of a native boy, please tell him that MoonWind says hello. And on the night breeze I drift, waiting for the darkness to call me back to the lands where I feel at home, at peace... click here to read Kate's bio
Terry Boyle's
Historical Haunted Walking Tours
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We
wandered for about 10 minutes, snapping shots, both of us growing increasingly
uneasy. We could both feel those "invisible eyes of paranoia"
following us through the site, but the sudden crazed barking of two
hounds (one black, and one white, wouldn't you know) was what finally
forced us back into the safety of our car. We never looked back. And
yes, there literally was dust kicking up behind our wheels as we got
the heck outta Dodge... you know them country roads.
After
a fascinating history of the beginnings of the town, complete with photos
and depictions of the town founders and Treaty Days, we set out to Belvedere
Hill. This is a street lined with mansions of every size, home to the
town's original high society. Many homes have been restored to their
original beauty, a happy site to the eyes of a proud member of a historical
society! There seems to be a ghost story associated with every house
on this hill, none malevolent but all very intriguing. There is even
an allusion to a very prominent Canadian family having ties to one of
these homes... but you'll have to take the our to get more details.
It seems a little contrary that hovering above these beautiful homes,
I picked up on a very dark shadow. Unable to put my finger on it (my
fears were not quite confirmed by Mr. Boyle, but they were not dowsed
either), I walked steadily on, sensing spirit energy at every turn,
mingling with this inexplicable darkness. My imagination, or had something
rather large and almost evil been brewed in this part of town? A mystery
that would not be solved today.
As
we head back down to the town docks (have two hours gone by already?),
Mr. Boyle shares one more interesting story with us, of a more historical
nature. On November 22, 1879, a ship went down in the town harbour after
a woman's prophetic dream was ignored. 22 people lost their lives in
those waters, and their bodies were never found. Imagine the riches
buried at the bottom of the harbour. But that is not nearly the end
of the story of buried treasure in the Parry Sound Harbour.
We
passed the Wasauksing cemetary on our way back to the cottage, and stopped
on Old Track Road to check out a bonafide ghost town that Mr. Boyle
had informed us about (another must see!) and it was with great sadness
that I packed my bags to head back home. I love Hamilton, but now I
love Parry Sound, too.