Ok.

It’s like that.

You’re alone in an office space that can hold 6 working stations at its core as well as 2 counter stations at one end of it. You’re waiting for customers to come an pay. It’s the dead time of the morning after the first big rush and the start of the 2nd. All the court clerks whose desks are in this office are still in their respective court room. You can’t get the stupid little radio to work properly so you’ve turned it off. It’s quiet but you can still hear the little buzz from the constant activity of people rushing around the hallways in the distance…

Then, out of nowhere, you start hearing a noise like someone knocking INSIDE the wall by the window. You quickly turn to make sure you are in fact alone and that no one has returned without you noticing… Nope. You are alone. Looking straight at the wall and hearing the knocking. Freaky. Then it stops.

During lunch time, you mention to one of you co-worker from your regular work office about it and she tells you about this ghost that is supposedly haunting Old City Hall… You do a quick search online and find this site and read about the one that is supposedly active in the building you work at:

Built in the late 1890s, and once the head seat of the Municipality of Toronto and County of York, this building now serves the city as its municipal courts. The city’s departments were moved to the modern buildings just west of this ornate building with (for Toronto,) rather unique architecture.

What’s in this old building that interests us? Easy! Stories reverberate of all types of different ghostly activity. The rear staircase has a poltergeist that seems to enjoy tugging at judges’ robes as well as walking up and down the stairs where its footsteps can still be heard.

The cellars acted at one time as a holding centre for prisoners and the moans of the incarcerated have been heard as well. The Northwest attic is also a spot where a presence is felt, but no one is quite sure what it is.

Courtroom 33 is said to be haunted by the spirits of the last men condemned to hang in Canada. This is where the spirits are said to be the strongest and it is almost a tradition for someone in the press to attempt to spend the night on Halloween. In John Robert Colombo’s book Haunted Toronto, he tells of a pair of stout reporters that almost managed to spend the night but gave in by 4am. The reporters told of “cool fogs” and weird noises that left them, at times, glued to the floor.

The old cellars they mention in the article is EXACTLY where the counter you are working at this week is located. It’s an old vault… So you are scared but amused that it actually might have been a ghost you heard.

You forget all about it until today when the whole thing happens again.

Freak!

You are once again alone in the office but this time there is a long line up of customers. You are totally distracted by this noise IN the wall and can’t concentrate on all the complaining in front of you by the whining crowd… Every time you print a receipt you keep your eyes in the direction of the noise… knock knock knock… silence… knock knock… silence… knock knock knock… You’re half excited and half nervous that something might pop out of the wall to tell you to stop sassing back at the crowd that sasses you all day long… You sort of think it might be fun if this ghost was to go and scare the shit out of them so you can have somewhat of a break…

And then the noise of a metal shovel scraping bricks happens. You freeze. You actually stop what you are doing to go see what is going on.. You can’t see anything but there is definitely something weird in the corner of the room…

As you get closer, the noise stops. Still, you walk all the way to the window to see if maybe someone isn’t outside, working with a shovel… You don’t see anyone.

Then it happens again…

Loudly…

You look down and notice this crazy ass old time radiator hidden under a shelf… The noise is coming from there…

So much for your ghost… but in the end you’re glad to know you won’t have to bring Pull-Ups or Depends with you next time you have to come and spend the week at Old City Hall.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 06:06 and is filed under Yup - I hate it. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.