Haunts of a National Historic Site

In a community famed for its history, Fort George National Historic Site stands apart as perhaps the best-known and most visited. It’s a treasure. But what is less well known is that the fort’s palisades and earthen parapets contain more than just historical re-enactors and recreated buildings. Echoes of the souls of men, women and even children who resided here two centuries past linger within these walls. There are so many restless spirits that Fort George is considered one of the most haunted places in Canada and its ghost tours a perennial favorite among tourists.

“There’s an unusual amount of ghostly activity in the fort, “says Kyle Upton of Ghost Tours of Fort George, which for the past two decades has been entertaining tourists with lantern-lit forays into the darkened fort. “Powerful, emotional experiences happened here—including fighting and devastation during the War of 1812—and that taints the area, staining the earth with that psychic residue.”

“There are spectral horses, a door that appears at night but doesn’t exist during the light of day, shadowy soldiers,

By Andrew Hind

and an ethereal cat,” says Upton. “The fort is awash in spectral energy.”

Turn down the lights and read on as we meet some of those spirits who are tethered to Fort George for eternity.

Sarah Ann

The ghost of Sarah Ann, a young girl, is the most active and precocious of the spirits at Fort George.

Over the years, Sarah Ann has been seen numerous times. Like a typical child, she’s cheerful, mischievous, innocent, and eternally playful. She’ll engage in games of peek-a-boo, hiding under beds and behind pillars, and giggling quietly to herself. Sometimes Sarah Ann will playfully tug on someone’s clothes and then run away so that the victim of the prank only sees a momentary glimpse of a bare-footed girl with shoulder-length curly blonde hair and a flowing white dress before she disappears. High-pitched giggling is frequently heard in the barracks, where Sarah Ann seems to spend most of her afterlife hours.

Upton believes he encountered Sarah Ann himself one rain-soaked night. He and his tour were in the subterranean tunnel located at the back of the fort. “I remember looking over everyone’s head and seeing the small figure of a girl silhouetted just outside the tunnel entrance,” he recalls. “Occasionally the sky would be lit up by lightning and the tunnel entrance illuminated with a flash of white and I could see that there was nobody there. But as soon as the lightning flash had faded, she would reappear in the gloom.”

It’s now well-established that a little soul lingers in Fort George. But just who is this child, and how did she come about haunting a place associated with soldiers and war?

A tombstone in St. Mark’s Cemetery may provide the answers. There, under the canopy of ageless trees, stands a tombstone to Sarah Ann Tracey, a child who was only seven years old when she died in 1840. She lived at Fort George with her mother, Hannah, and father, Thomas, the troop sergeant major with the King’s Dragoon Guards. Sadly, the manner of Sarah Ann’s death and details of her life are unknown; the parish death records for 1840 have been lost and there is no record of her parents in the parish marriage, baptismal, or death records.

The coincidence between the historical Sarah Ann and the spectral girl at Fort George are too eerie to ignore. Many people familiar with the story, Kyle Upton among them, have no doubt that these two children are one and the same.

Restless Officers

Wealthy, well-bred junior officers would have resided within the Officers’ Quarters (more senior officers assigned to Fort George would have been able to afford their own homes within town). Accommodations were quite luxurious, as befitting their status Instead of the spartan furnishings found in the enlisted men’s barracks, you find plush feather beds, fine furniture, and luxuries the average soldier could only dream of.

For some souls, it seems that the comforts continue to appeal even after their mortal bodies have been laid to rest.

Apparitions and bizarre phenomenon are frequently reported within the building. Voices whisper in the ear, spectral hands shove the living, and cold blue spheres hang in the air. Long dead officers are seen, going about the routines of their previous lives. Sometimes these men are wispy figures, transparent and foggy, sometimes they wash the room with a pale glow, and at other times they seem flesh and blood, as real as you or I.

Many times, staff and visitors alike have reported hearing the haunting beautiful sounds of the piano forte playing by itself and witnessing keys moving as if by graceful invisible fingers, and more than one person has heard a late-night party in progress within the Officer’s Quarters - music and singing, the sounds of heels clicking on wood as women are twirled by suitors, and the hum of conversation.

A common phenomenon involves the canopy-draped bed. Staff members entering in the morning often find the blanket and mattress indented with a man-shape, as if someone had been sleeping on it not long before. The perplexed staff member tightens the springs, fluffs the bolster, turns over the mattress, and finally, tucks and smooths the sheets and blankets. Its picture perfect, just as a 19th century military man would have left it. Staff will recheck the bed at the end of the day, ensuring its ready for the morrow. By the following morning the dent has inevitably returned.

“The sagging bed is a real mystery because it looks just like someone has been lying on top, although anyone entering the building would set off the alarm,” says Ron Dale, retired from Parks Canada. “The only explanation that most come up with is that the ghost a former British officer has decided to rest his head on this bed, leaving his mark behind for staff to discover.”

An Army of Ghosts

There are many, many more spirits at Fort George – a veritable battalion of the undead. Most are harmless, even playful. There are even one or two, so the stories go, that are malevolent, sipping of the fear they induce like we would savour a fine wine.

That’s what makes evenings with Ghost Tours of Fort George so engaging. The guides have an endless array of stories to shares, and one never knows if a ghost will make a spine-tingling appearance.

Ghost Tours of Fort George admin@niagaraghosts.com • niagaraghosts.com

Fort George National Historic Site

51 Queen’s Parade, NOTL • pc.gc.ca/fortgeorge

Further Reading

Ghosts of Niagara-on-the-Lake

by Andrew Hind and Maria Da Silva (Dundurn)

Niagara’s Ghosts 2 by Kyle Upton