A while ago Reddit users, u/Yay2991 and u/firesidecanada asked r/AskACanadian the questions "What are some Canadian urban legends?" and "What are some Canadian legends near you?" And these creepy tales were too good not to share! So here are 15 of some of the most interesting ones:
1. "The Dungarvon Whooper is the only real ghost story I heard growing up. A lumber camp cook was supposedly murdered in a robbery back in the 1800s, and to this day if you're in the woods, you can hear his ghost hollering and wailing (whooping)."
— Reddit User
2. "Winnipeg has this fancy older hotel, the Fort Garry. One of the rooms is apparently haunted, it apparently attracts many people to stay there!"
— u/nx85
3. "'The Phantom Piper' of Kincardine — he sits up in the lighthouse and if you go out on the dock you can apparently hear his bagpipes in the summer."
4. "Ogopogo is quite similar to the Loch Ness Monster and lives in Okanagan Lake."
5. "There are people who think Gibraltar Point Lighthouse on Toronto island is haunted. It's the second oldest lighthouse in Canada and a keeper went missing 200 years ago."
6. "I've always been fascinated by the 'Tales of Oak Island'. Gold and unexplained objects were found on the island. Items that have no business being there. Templar artefacts, Shakespearean manuscripts and even Marie Antoinette's jewellery are said to be buried under the earth."
7. "There was an old abandoned house right on Hwy11 around Mattice between Hearst and Kapuskasing that was said to be haunted. People said they saw lights on sometimes driving by even though there was no hydro hooked up to it. Some said they even saw people in there."
8. "There's 'The Headless Nun of French Fort Cove'. The legend goes that the English captured an Acadian nun named Sister Marie and wanted to know where some treasures were located. The sister either refused or didn’t know, so they cut off her head and threw it into the water. Now it is said that her spirit guards the cove and haunts anyone who enters with ill intent to find and steal the treasure for themselves."
9. "I heard in Winnipeg in the summer, if you leave your car unlocked you'll come back to find a zucchini left in it."
10. "There is an abandoned subway station in Toronto. It is an actual place, and they even sometimes open it for visitors, but there are plenty of rumors around it."
11. "In Kingston, ON there's one story where a man murdered his wife and child with an axe. The woman’s ghost appeared to multiple individuals at a specific property over the following century, claiming that her corpse was in their basement. Despite years of multiple excavations of the building’s basement, nobody was ever able to find her. One day some construction workers were digging on the adjacent street and found an old doorframe; upon further investigation, it turns out the streets had shifted over time, and the skeletons of a woman and a child were found in a basement buried beneath the road."
12. "The Sasquatch was seen out by Harrison Hot Springs. There is an 8mm film of it."
13. "The Wendigo. It's a monster from First Nations folklore where if a human eats another human's flesh they transform into this creature. They have multiple stories about it. Also in Québec, we have a story about a creature like that in a lumber camp."
14. "There was a massive cemetery in Kingston that was poorly maintained, and eventually deteriorated to the point that it was considered fair game for development. It was divided up into city blocks, and while working on the basements many workers uncovered and moved a massive number of corpses. The cemetery was reduced in size by a considerable percentage and is now called 'Skeleton Park', while the neighbourhoods all around that area sit on top of hundreds, if not thousands, of corpses. Naturally, there are lots of ghost stories from these properties."
— Reddit User
15. "I had always heard the legend of a girl who drowned at Trow Bridge Falls whose spirit endlessly wanders the bridge where she died at night, and if you come across her she tries to scare you away from the area. My friends and I have always joked about ghosts and we decided to check it out. We reached halfway down the bridge before seeing at the other end of the bridge, a hazy-looking young girl wearing a white frilled bathing suit."
"She began to rush towards, us not moving her legs, and we all ran as fast as we could back to our vehicles. We have never been back there, and we no longer joke about the paranormal."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.