The Hermitage

Recently we took a trip to The Hermitage, in Ancaster, Ontario. For those of you that have never been, we suggest you go and take the trip there. To get to the Hermitage ruins, you have to walk a short trail through nature.

It's said that the ruins have been known to have spirits present at all times of the day and night, although the Hermitage is just a shell of the former building that was once there. The story behind the Hermitage is that there was a gentleman who had asked permission for a father's daughter in marriage and was deemed to be unsuitable for her, and had decided to kill himself out of distraught. Some stories say that he hanged himself on a tree and other stories say that he hanged himself in a stable.

Either way, something is quite creepy about this place, even in the middle of the day.

We were walking through the trail to get to the ruins of the house, and we found that some of our equipment started to go haywire. Once again, our meters went off the scale, and this time our digital tape recorder didn't act up (like it has on previous investigations, and then, of course, return to a normal state after we leave).

Of course we did our usual searches to make sure that we were not being influenced by power lines or other such anomalies, and none were to be found. We found that the greatest readings we received were right at the entrance gate to the ruins when we entered. When we left, we checked the same location and got zero readings. However, when we walked a little further up the road, we started to get some good readings again, which suggest that perhaps something was around us.

We attempted to communicate with the spirit, and were unable to capture anything on tape. We asked it a few questions (as we always do) and noticed that our meters would spike up and down, although we were static (not moving around). When we thanked the spirit for his time, the needle on our meters just dropped to zero, and we did not have any further readings.

Could it be perhaps that we had an encounter? Possibly. It's been said that there are quite a few spirits on the property itself. We'll be heading back shortly to do a follow up visit and confirm our findings, and of course, try to contact another spirit on the property.

Want to visit the Hermitage? It's located in Ancaster on Mineral Springs Rd. near Sulfur Springs Rd. We had to make a parking lot donation when we arrived which was about $5, but other than that, there are no additional fees.

It's Been A While, Part 3

Well, It's been quite a while, again, since the last update, and I think I'm beginning to sound a little like a broken record. Usually in the off-season when things tend to slow down a little in the ghost world, updates are a little less frequent.

But we are still going out and checking places out and seeing what's happening in places where there has been ghostly activities taking place, although not as often as we have jobs in the real world that we also need to attend to.

However, we are planning a couple of events for January and February, and one of them is going to be our Cemetary Visits. We'll be posting a list up here shortly with dates and times, and if you'd like to join us, you are more than welcome to. (Expect the list to be up by mid-December).

In the meantime, we'll be visiting different places across Ontario and letting you know what we find.

More Sightings.

We ran a tour on Hallowe'en night and had another possible encounter with a spirit. We were at one of our stops when we were telling the story about a spirit that has been known to live in a building, when lights would go on and off inside the building, despite the security alarm system being activated and the doors locked and the lights out.

Hallowe'en May Be Over...

Well folks, it was a great year for us at Brampton Ghosts, and we would like to thank each and every one of you for coming out and joining us on one of our ghost walks this year. We hope you enjoyed them just as much as we enjoyed providing them to you.

Now that the haunting season is passed, we'll be re-adjusting our ghost walks to a less frequent interval, and they will be by appointment only. So, if you're interested in a ghost walk, we can run one for you, but you have to contact us first and make arrangements.

Keep your eyes posted here - we're going to be having several events running over the winter season for you to participate in.

Busy, Busy, Busy!

We've been quite busy with our fall ghost walks, and have not had a chance to do a quick update to our website in a couple of weeks. For those of you that haven't booked your walks yet, we've added three extra tours this week. We've had a pretty good turnout this fall, and we wouldn't want you to miss out. Don't forget to book your tickets!

In part of tonights tour, our guests enjoyed a possible sighting of a spirit at one of our stops in Brampton. We tried to communicate with it, but it didn't want to talk with us or even visit with us further, so we left him alone. Our guests this evening were quite excited at seeing a possible spirit! (More of an update later on...)

Tickets are still $5.00 each, and our last ghost walk runs this Friday at 8:30 pm.

Downtown Ghost Walks Have Started!

The Downtown Brampton Ghost Walks have started! We are excited to let everyone know that our first ghost walk took place this evening and a good time was had by our participants.

Don't forget - ghost walks are first come, first served! So make sure you book your walk today!

All About Orbs.

Hey Folks. We got a couple of interesting pictures with some orbs on them from our trip to Fort Niagara. See them below.

Before you get to that, check out this information page on orbs and what they are. The nice folks at Shadowlands have put it together to give you an overview of what an orb is and what it means.

Can You See The Orbs?

Take a look in the upper left corner. See that white blotch?

(You may need to click on the picture to make it bigger!)

Take a look in the first window on the left, in the middle of the second half of the first window. See that white blotch?
(You may need to click on the picture to make it bigger!)

Please note that these photos are protected under copyright, and that they are (c) Brampton Ghosts 2008. Thank You.

Ghost Walks Start This Week!

Just a reminder - the ghost walks of Downtown Brampton start this week!

Our first tour is on Friday evening, and we're hoping to see you there!

To order tickets:

General Public: Email tickets@bramptonghosts.ca

Media Only: Email media@bramptonghosts.ca

To report a sighting or tell us a story:

Please email us at sightings@bramptonghosts.ca

The Bus Tour

As you know from reading our blog, we took a trip yesterday with Haunted Hamilton, who were running a bus tour to several locations in the Niagara Region and New York. All I have to say about this that if you get the chance - take the trip. It's worth it.

We visited many locations throughout our trip yesterday:

Niagara Falls Area:
- Customs House
- Screaming Tunnel
- Niagara on the Lake

New York:
- Fort Niagara

The trip was quite good. We started out at around 11:00am and headed off to our first location. I guess I should tell you about the people we met first...before I get into one of the stories.

Stephanie and Dan - These guys run Haunted Hamilton and organise bus tours all over the place. They are very knowledgeable about the Niagara area and provided some great commentaries.

George the Ghost Guide - A very nice man. Told us many stories and legends, while dressed in costume (he even wore a cape!), and kept us entertained throughout the trip.

HH Mom - HH Mom is Haunted Hamilton Mom - she's Stephanie's mother and made sure that we all behaved on the bus and on the tours of the locations we entered. She's quite a friendly person, and offered us all a hug if we needed one, if we got spooked out or somethin' like that. She also had an impressive collection of tools that she was selling, like crystals, rods and necklaces.

So ...back to the stories... we left Hamilton at around 11:00am, and headed off to the first location, Screaming Tunnel. The story behind the tunnel is that if you walk to the tunnel at midnight, alone, and light a match inside it, you can hear a girl screaming. Haunted Hamilton has an excellent writeup on the tunnel here. Believe it or not, it's actually a rite of passage for young people in the area to go into the Screaming Tunnel and hear the voice.

We left the Screaming Tunnel after a mini-lecture from George the Ghost Guy (GGG), about the tunnel and why it was built and the stories surrounding the tunnel itself. Then we were treated to a box lunch of a sandwich and several goodies in a treat bag.

Now, I'm not going to go into great detail about everything and everywhere that we visited, because I think it's important that if you want to have a true ghost experience that you need to go and check it out for yourself. They can be found at http://www.hauntedhamilton.com/. They run several events at this time of year including a Niagara on the Lake ghost walk (which is also very good!).

We'll have some photo's up shortly of our trip. We're not sure how many are going to turn out... once again our equipment started to act up, and we're beginning to think that when it does wierd things (like our cellphone batteries completely draining themselves in under an hour, and our EVP equipment constantly locking itself out and then unlocking itself again once we're away from a location) is a sign that there's some sort of interference. Could it be? Possibly. We'll never know for sure, but we're going back to double check the operating instructions to make sure we're not doing anything wrong.

Weekend Trip.

Tomorrow we'll be on a ghost investigation tour with a group based out of Hamilton. If you're on the bus, drop by and say hello to us!

We'll have a posting (and hopefully some pictures if our equipment doesn't go wonky on us) at some point on Sunday.

Creekside Location in Bramalea.

We returned to the creekside location in Bramalea this past week to do a second investigation. We believe that we may be on to something at this location.

As always, before starting an investigation, we look for items that may interfere with our equipment, such as power lines, or other objects. We found none.

We started up our equipment and our meter went off the scale as soon as it was turned on. We had really high, positive readings and attempted to communicate with the possible spirit that was visiting us.

Keeping our devices on, we asked the spirit to please step back and prove to us that our equipment was not malfunctioning, and then step forward once again. When we finished our request, the needle dropped to near zero, and then within a moment or two it restarted showing us a positive reading.

We checked through the newspaper archives and found two stories that could explain what is going on at this location. First story was a body that fell into the creek upstream several miles away and was washed downstream. This was the body of a young adult who eventually was found several miles from the location we were at. So it possibly could have been him.

Another more recent story involves a very tragic tale of a young child who drowned in the exact area during a major rainstorm. We believe that it could be him trying to communicate with us. (Please note that for obvious reasons, we won't go into much more detail than this, as it was a very shocking and upsetting event for the Bramalea community when it occurred. We're sure that you will understand that we wish to not upset the community or the families involved by re-posting events that may upset them.)

We will continue to examine this location on a regular basis and attempt to make further contact with either spirits that appear to be in the area. There is definitely something trying to communicate with us - we're just not sure what it is at this point.

Apologies again, for such late postings!

Our apologies again for such a long time between posts. We've been having some issues with our domain name as well as getting into the blogging system. (Ok, we sort of forgot our passwords and had to have them reset, but had to jump through about 2000 hoops to do so!).

So here's the good news. Tickets are now on sale for the Brampton Ghost Walks. You can email your ticket requests to: tickets@bramptonghosts.ca. If you are a member of the media, you can email media@bramptonghosts.ca.

Tickets are $5.00 each, all ages.

Please remember to tell us the following:
- Number of people that are coming with you (remember to include yourself!)
- Your contact information (like a phone number or email address)
- The date you would like to come on a tour (see the tour dates on the right hand side, you may need to scroll down).

Please note: Payment is made the night of your tour.

Please note that each tour is limited to a maximum of ten people. Tours are first come, first served, and once you make a booking, we'll give you all the info you need such as where the tour starts etc...

Also, please be reminded that the tour may not be suitable for children under the age of 5 years...it could be a little scary for them what we are discussing, so please, keep this in mind. The tour also runs rain or shine, and lasts on average between thirty and forty-five minutes.

We look forward to seeing you!

Brampton Ghost Walks.

As posted on the sidebar, our Brampton Ghost Walks are ready to start up once again in the fall.

Tickets go on sale for the Ghost Walks starting early September. All Ghost Walks start at 8:30 pm unless otherwise mentioned. Details on where to meet will be provided once we confirm your reservation.

• Walks are limited to ten people per walk, so please make your reservations early.
• Ghost Walks are $5 per person, all ages.
• Ghost walks operate rain or shine, so please dress for the weather.

This ghost walk deals with many different spirits that live or have been known to live in the Downtown Brampton area.

While this is a family event, and children are welcome, parents are advised that some of the content may be scary or disturbing to younger ears.

Our walks schedule is posted to the left of this message, you may need to scroll down a little bit to find the exact dates.

[Edit: The registration date for the walks has been moved to early-September...we're having a problem with our email addresses...apologies for the delay...]

Ghost Walks of Downtown Brampton

We will be holding ghost walks this fall in beautiful Downtown Brampton, starting in late September. Details will be posted shortly about the walks. Please check back regularly for more information.

Possible encounter with spirit(s) in Bramalea area.

It's been quite a while since our last post on here at BramptonGhosts.ca. We apologize for taking so long, but we've been quite busy following up on a couple of very interesting leads in the Bramalea area of Brampton.

At this time, we're investigating an area of Bramalea where we have had a positive reading of possible paranormal or spirit activity. Until we do some further research into the area, we won't be posting the location (just yet...but we will!).

This location went nuts on our detection equipment, causing it to spike and advise us that something was present. We did our search for power lines and other items that may cause a fluctuation or false readings and found nothing. We proceeded to try and speak to the possible spirit by asking it to take a step backwards so we could see the change in the detection equipment. As soon as we asked that, we found that the reading dropped dramatically, and upon asking it to come forward again, the readings went up.

More information will be posted shortly, after further investigation.

Humber Lakeshore, Building 25 (Bldg I)

This week's photo is of Building 25 (aka the I building) at the Humber Lakeshore. We visited this location recently, and found it to be of great interest. We actually may have caught something on camera at this location, and we are still reviewing the pictures taken to confirm if it indeed is something worthy of note.

We were wandering around the campus recently (on the outside, we don't go into buildings on private property unless expressly invited or given permission, or if permission is implied, such as a tourist attraction). We stopped at this building and found something of interest on the several hundred pictures we snapped on one window.

We took four pictures, which we will post shortly, that had the following:

Picture 1 - Nothing.
Picture 2 - Nothing, but a small yellow blur was observed.
Picture 3 - A small yellow blotch was observed in the middle of the picture
Picture 4 - Nothing.

Every picture was taken 1/4th of a second apart from each other using a Sony DSC-40 Digital Camera, 400 ISO, Ultra-Fine resolution, Burst Shot Mode.

The odd thing about this was that we were the only people in the area at the time of the photo being taken, there were no trucks, vehicles or other persons about and the building was completely locked up tight, with ominous warning signs to "keep out" due to hazardous conditions, with a big padlock on it.

Could this be something we caught on camera? Perhaps. We did notice however, that some of our other electronic equipment started to act up just shortly afterwards - for example our digital voice recorder locked up on us and we couldn't unlock it.

This definitely is a place that needs more reviewing. We will be returning at a later date for further investigation.

Equipment for Seeking Ghosts

Someone asked me the other day what type of equipment do we use to find the Ghosts that we talk about on our site.

We use standard everyday equipment: compass, videocamera, digital camera, voice recorder, and our eyes. Shortly we'll be expanding our equipment with more high tech goodies. One major thing that we like to do prior to visiting, is to learn as much about the site as possible.

For example, we have a site we like to visit, The Mimico Asylum for the Insane (now closed, and operating as a Humber College location). We'll read up on it as much as we can before going, so that we know where to find the ghosts or where to go where there have been recent sightings.

That said, we can't exactly trapse into this location. Humber College, it's been said, has not been very inviting to people looking for ghosts on their property and won't give people access to their buildings to look. We don't encourage breaking any laws to do this, so we prefer to stay on the outside of the building and doing our research from there. Not exactly the best place to do it, but we have had some success in locating some unsuual activities. So far we haven't had any problems with the Security there, and we don't want any either...so we do everything in the open so that if a camera sees us, they (Security) can see us and realise that we're not up to anything unusual.

Now, if you want to see the insides of this building, you can check this link here. There's only a couple here. The people that took these are called "Urban Explorers". Check out their site for more details.

Finally, it appears that the Whitby Psychiatric Hospital (old grounds) have finally been demolished with the exception of a couple of buildings. Take a look here for photos from the old hospital which was said to have been haunted by several spirits.

We never got a chance to investigate this location, however, after speaking with locals in the area, they have said that that place had more ghosts than you could shake a stick at. The UE site by far, has the best collection of pictures and documentation about the old buildings. There's no point in visiting this site - houses have been built on top of the old buildings now.

Cawthra Park, Round 2

We went for a visit to Cawthra Park again this weekend. We managed to actually get in behind the house, as there were no lawn parties, catillions or other festive events taking place - even the taxi school wasn't there!

We went around the back and started to look around. We didn't see very much. It's rumoured that the area behind the house where the renovations were made is where all the activity is. The only thing that we found remotely close to any spirits, was the tombstone for the dog that belonged to the Cawthra family. (You can find it on the rear side, west end. Be careful to not step on it).

Overall, I think we're going to not hit this place as much. The Humber Lakeshore Campus is way creepier and as far as we're aware, has more sightings than this place does. It's nice to come to Cawthra House for a visit, but don't expect to be entertained.

Another Weekend, Another Trip

It's a beautiful sunny weekend in the GTA, which means it's time for another road trip. Today we'll be in the Toronto area looking at a few places that have had some hauntings. We're just about to head out the door, and we'll have an update posted at some point this weekend.

Cawthra Estate - Mississauga

We've visited this place a couple of times, and to be honest, it doesn't really strike us as a place where unusual activity would take place on a regular basis. The two times we've been there, we've been thwarted by garden parties taking place, and have been "confined" to the front of the building, and not the rear, where the supposed activities are taking place. Perhaps in the next couple of visits, we'll be able to get around to the rear and investigate.

Our equipment did tend to go a little haywire both here and at the Lakeshore Humber Campus (below). Our voice recorder stopped working and our cameras lost a few pictures. Ghostly activity? Perhaps, but we cannot be sure. Oddly enough, they both worked perfectly fine in the car once we left the lots.

According to the City of Mississauga Website, the Cawthra Estate was built back in 1926. The website goes on to state: "This elegant house was once home to Grace Cawthra Elliot. Grace was a strong willed individual whose desire to preserve her strong family heritage led her to insist that her husband, Col. Harry McIntyre Elliot add the name Cawthra to his own. Her pride also led to the construction, in 1926, of "Cawthra Lotten Estate". The word "Lotten" is a reference to Lot #10. The Georgian-styled house was designed to reflect the Cawthra's British background. When Grace died in 1974, at the age of 96, she was without heirs and a will. The City of Mississauga purchased the Cawthra Elliot Estate and in 1992 completed a rehabilitation of the house."

Humber College, Lakeshore Campus

There has been plenty of discussion out there about the spirits that haunt the former Mimico Asylum for the Insane, which is now the Lakeshore Campus of Humber College. You may remember it more easily as the location for the Police Academy Series.

There has been many attempts by different groups to actually get into the old non-refurbished cottages, with no luck. From what we understand from others who have attempted to gain access, the College won't allow any access. Of course, this has not stopped "Urban Explorers" who have managed to gain access to the cottages still under construction.

We went for a visit recently to the cottages, which used to house patients in the when it was an asylum. It's said that there are many different spirits that still haunt the buildings. We took pictures of the buildings at about one-fourth of a second apart, and found nothing of true excitement, with the exception of one or two pictures which we are still analysing as a possible sighting. Pictures will be posted shortly, once we have analysed them a little more in detail.

One of the buildings that really gave us the creeps was this building:

There was something about this building that kept drawing me back to taking more pictures of it. I ended up taking about 200 pictures of it on different angles. It certainly gave me the creeps as I was so engrossed with it, that, and it felt as if someone was watching me, and it wasn't our team of ghost-hunters either. The hair on the back of my neck kept standing up when I walked around this building. There was just something about it. It doesn't appear that we have caught anything on digital film on this building, this time, but there was definitely something there watching us.

We moved on to one of the other cottages, and didn't really get the same 'feel' that was eminating from the building above.

If you don't believe that this place is as creepy as we're posting, maybe check out the entry belonging to the ParaResearchers of Ontario on the former hospital grounds.

There was another great website, called the Lakeshore Hospital Project, which seems to have gone offline. We can only hope it comes back online - it was a great resource.