Have you ever heard a noise you can’t explain? Or caught something out of the corner of your eye, only to turn and see nothing there? You may be shocked to find that ghost stories in Newmarket have strong historical significance and there have been enough sightings to challenge your doubts about spirits walking among us.
Every town has its myths and legends — stories passed down generation to generation — but where do they come from? Do they have factual origins or are made up? Evidence in these upcoming stories suggests the former, according to area historians and paranormal experts.
Lynda Quirino, a paranormal investigator and founder of the Georgina Paranormal Society, has been tackling ghost investigations for 41 years. She said she experienced various ghostly encounters as a child and began researching them as she got older.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on up here in the northern area of York Region,” said Quirino matter-of-factly. Her ongoing project is Newmarket's Old Town Hall, where there is a lot of "activity" in the historic building, she added.
Sometimes pairing her investigations with ghost tours, she has spent a lot of time in the basement of the building because of the level of activity.
The Old Town Hall on Botsford Street was once a courthouse, with prison cells in the basement that were converted to offices after renovation.
“We recorded some voices on our spirit boxes and found multiple spikes on our electro-magnetic field detectors,” Quirino said.
On the stage of the main auditorium, she has captured strange movement and energy using the Xbox Kinect, which is a motion sensing device used for the popular Microsoft gaming console.
She mentioned a smell of oranges in the auditorium, which another investigator also brought up in their stories.
Local historian and NewmarketToday columnist Richard MacLeod, well known by his "History Hound" moniker, is member of the Newmarket Historical Society, and local genealogy enthusiast. He has researched many paranormal investigations over the years and finds the historical ties to them fascinating.
“I’m interested in ghost stories with a grain of truth of them, stories which seem to be the continuation of the history of the buildings they’re found in,” he said.
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Regarding the lingering smell of oranges in Old Town Hall, it was a common ritual many years ago to bring bowls of orange rye into spaces to give them a pleasant smell, he said. It's hard to quantify how the smell remained, even after the building renovations. Some suggest it’s the spirit of the man who used to lay out the bowls of fruit in formerr town hall, primarily because he was hit by a vehicle after leaving work one day and likely keeps coming back to finish the job.
An apparition that stands out to MacLeod are the sightings of Pickering College’s Grey Lady. He claims there is sufficient evidence that something out of the ordinary has been going on in the building for generations, all consistent with the same anomaly. The earliest sighting is in the 1920s, in a staff and student body photo taken outside the building, which shows a lady in a grey outfit standing in one of the windows.
There have been numerous reports of that same ghostly lady roaming the halls of the school over the years, some saying she was looking for her shoes. Investigators suggest this woman is a nurse who worked at the school many years ago.
“My thoughts are that she pre-existed the Newmarket build,” MacLeod said, as the original Pickering College was destroyed by fire in its original location in Pickering, before relocating to Newmarket, and some deaths were reported after the incident. However, it’s not confirmed who the victims were, he added. Nevertheless, the Grey Lady is one of the most popular and intriguing stories people want to hear while on a ghost tour in Newmarket.
Local writer Andrew Hind, who has a strong interest in the paranormal, has authored 10 collections of spooky stories, some of which take place at the Elman W. Campbell Museum on Main Street Newmarket. Former curator Beth Sinyard had an encounter after the museum had closed one night. She was standing in the upstairs washroom with the door open when she saw dark form glide past, he wrote.
The figure was too quick in its movements and too indistinct in its form to make out any specific details. It was just a dark shape, a supposed;y human-shaped shadow, and made absolutely no noise as it passed. Nonetheless, Sinyard was certain she had seen something.
Sinyard took it upon herself to do some research to try to ascertain the identity of the ghost. She believes he was an employee when the building was a registry office who had a brisk walk and dressed conservatively in grey and navy, and who came to a tragic ending, though not, thankfully, in the building.
These stories are just some of the spooky, eerie tales, floating around Newmarket over the years. Whether you’re a believer or not, it’s evident that some things just can’t be explained.
