Ghost stories of High Park in Toronto

Toronto’s High Park has a ghostly past with many stories told over the years.

The city’s largest public park has a long history.

People lived the in High Park area for thousands of years, according to High Park Nature’s online history. In the 1600s, a Haudenosaunee village known as Teiaiagon flourished on the edge of the Humber valley northwest of High Park where villagers cleared surrounding lands using fire and cultivated corn, beans and maize.

John and Jemima Howard, a couple from England, bought 165 rural acres from Lakeshore Road up to Bloor Street in 1836. they built a country home known as Colborne Lodge. The Howards’ property became the basis of High Park when they deeded most of it to the city in 1873.

Colborne Lodge is a museum today and the source of many ghost stories.

In 1969, a police officer was patrolling High Park when he saw a figure in the second-floor bedroom window of Colborne Lodge, according to several reports. He entered the house, went upstairs only to find the room empty.

The officer wasn’t alone. Other passersby have reported seeing the woman in the window and the museum staff have reported feeling a ghostly presence. Staff have felt cold spots in the home and heard wailing sounds.

Some people believe the presence is Jemima who suffered a painful death with breast cancer. Near the end of her life, she was reportedly locked in the second-floor bedroom as she was prescribed a heavy morphine-based pain medication.

She died in 1877 in the room and is buried a few steps away. There is a large cairn surrounded by an iron fence, which marks the gravesite of John and Jemima.

On the west side of the park, Grenadier Pond is the site of many ghost stories as well. The pond is believed to be named for the British Grenadiers who were stationed at Fort York in 1812, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia.

There are stories that a group of soldiers fell through the ice one winter but the Canadian Encyclopedia states these are untrue.

People skating on Grenadier Pond around 1913. Photo: Toronto Public Library

Nevertheless, the apparitions spotted on the pond are often men dressed in military uniform from that time period.

A Toronto Daily Star article from Apr. 22, 1903, documents the sighting of a man and a horse emerging from the pond. The story describes a giant man who was bloody and a horse that had steam belching from its nostrils.

A third area in the park for ghost sightings is near the streetcar loop at Howard Park Avenue and Parkside Drive.

An elderly man dressed in a three-quarter length trench coat and a black Derby hat has been seen near the streetcar loop. At least one report indicates the man was a ghost.

Lead photo of John and Jemima Howard’s tomb in 1956: Toronto Public Library