As the sun sets over Kingston, a mysterious transformation envelops the labyrinth of cobblestone streets and historic buildings. Shadows rise, casting an otherworldly glow on the enigmatic corridors and alleyways of the Limestone City.

Gathered in anticipation, a group of the curious assembles, ready to embark on The Haunted Walk of Kingston. A spectral figure, a spooky storyteller shrouded in a dark cloak, beckons them on, weaving tales of haunted hotels, hidden burial grounds, notorious grave robbings, and other eerie local hauntings.

The allure of ghost stories lies in the art of storytelling itself, believes Jax Harripersad, manager of The Haunted Walk in Kingston. But, she muses, the human fascination with ghost stories also shines a light on what makes us human.

“The Haunted Walk of Kingston features great performers sharing spooky stories that make your heart race and pump adrenaline,” says Jax. “But above all, ghost stories make us wonder what happens after this life.”

“What appeals to our visitors is that these stories are rooted in truth,” says Jax. “Before a story is included in the tour, Kingston Haunted Walk conducts thorough research to substantiate its origins, pouring over newspaper articles and other convincing documents at the city archives and local libraries and even interviewing people who have experienced the supernatural firsthand.”

It is a phantom ballet, a dance between the living and the departed, explains Jax. A canvas upon which The Haunted Walk paints its spectral narrative, shining a light on the shadowy, paranormal side of Kingston.

“All of our tour guides are fitted with a cloak and a lantern, and we ask them to wear all black – it cultivates that creepy, Grim Reaper vibe,” explains Jax. “Our goal at The Haunted Walk and our broader company, which is called Hidden InSite, is to show you the secrets of the city, often hidden in plain sight.”

The Haunted Walk offers several tours, including the original Haunted Walk, which uncovers the secrets of haunted hotels, hidden burial grounds, grave robbings, hangings at the old courthouse, and Kingston’s famous haunted courtyard.

The original Haunted Walk features one of Kingston’s most notorious ghost stories, that of Theresa Ignace Beam, murdered by her nephew John Napier in 1868. Theresa’s spirit haunts the dark pathway between Princess Street and King Street East leading to Rochleau Court, where she has been known to ask passersby to help her find her bones so that she might finally rest, her tragic tale resonating through time and unfolding like a haunting melody.

“Hauntings have also been reported at the Prince George Hotel, which ceased operation in 2004 and today houses The Haunted Walk, with apartments replacing the old hotel rooms,” continues Jax. “Paranormal activity seems to be focused around the third floor, and Room 304 in particular, with people bearing witness to the spectre of a shadowy woman drifting down the hallways, a ghostly child playing with toys, and strange things occurring, such as lights and radios turning on or off in the rooms, and doors locking, unlocking, or slamming shut.”

And yet, many of Kingston’s spooky secrets are hidden underneath the city, with many places scattered throughout the city that conceal unmarked graves. The most famous hidden burial ground in Kingston is known as Skeleton Park, originally the site of one of Kingston’s earliest and largest cemeteries.

“Skeleton Park has become notorious for hauntings in Kingston,” affirms Jax. “In the 1990s two students moved into a house quite close to the park. After dropping off her things at her new apartment, one of the students had to rush off to class right away. When she returned later that night, she found that she had to pass an old graveyard filled with a dense fog. She was certain it wasn’t there before and she wondered if she was lost, but eventually did find her apartment just a little way down the street.

“In the morning, she found the graveyard was gone, and there was a city park in its place. This had been her very first day in Kingston. And she had never heard of Skeleton Park.”

If the original Haunted Walk delivers excitement for thrill-seekers, visitors to Kingston can also opt for the Ghosts of Queen’s University, which recounts eerie tales of student grave robbers, professors reaching out from the beyond, heists gone wrong, and streets shrouded in mystery.

There is also an unforgettable tour of Fort Henry, Kingston’s famous 19th-century fortress, where expert storytellers share the tragic history that still haunts its grounds, sending shivers down the spine with its dark twists and turns.

On hiatus during the December holiday season, The Haunted Walk runs weekends from February and seven nights a week from May to September, also accepting requests for private tours. Tours of the Queen’s University campus resume in time for March break and for the Fort Henry tour when the fort opens in the spring. While tours are conceived to appeal to families, The Haunted Walk encourages parents to assess their child’s tolerance level for the spectral and spooky.

“We are proud to offer the original Haunted Walk in French,” underscores Jax. “Canada is a bilingual country and we have a high demand for our tours, particularly in summer, from French-speaking tourists. We want to reach the widest audience that we possibly can.

In the heart of Kingston, where shadows are entangled with the echoes of the past, The Haunted Walk weaves a tapestry of spooky tales, historical narratives, and spectral whispers. It invites the curious to explore the city’s enigmatic history and become part of the haunting symphony that resonates through time.

As the lanterns flicker and the tales weave through the streets, The Haunted Walk becomes an exploration of not just the paranormal but also a celebration of the city’s hidden gems, connecting the living – and the departed.

See all of Kingston’s spooky attractions. Book an overnight package.

View this story in French

The Military Communications and Electronics Museum

“A museum is a story,” says Annette Gillis, Curator at the Military Communications and Electronics Museum, a Kingston museum that specifically focuses on “the troops, the times and the technology.” These are honoured through carefully curated exhibits that educate and enlighten its visitors.

“You can read a story about World War Two – but reading does not provide the full picture. For example, our museum allows you to experience that history through objects – like Radio No. 33, also called the Maple Leaf radio, a set that weighs a hefty 630 lbs,” continues Annette. “Our museum allows you to experience that history through objects – like that radio. At the Military Communications and Electronics Museum, you get to see what soldiers wore and the equipment they used.”

“Obviously, we’re not on a battlefield, but the museum creates an experience, a snapshot that is worth a thousand words,” she explains.

At the Military Communications and Electronics Museum, the adventurous can step into the pages of Canadian history to discover the role that military communications and electronics have played in conflict and peacekeeping for more than a century.

Here, history comes to life.

“The history of Telecommunications is a major part of the story for the Military Communications and Electronics Branch,” begins Annette. “One of the most prominent exhibits at the museum is the JN-4 Canuck display, which showcases the ingenuity and progress of military communication technology over centuries.”

“Imagine it’s World War One and you’re trying to figure out: how can we communicate from the air to the ground, and send back information for reconnaissance? And due to the limited space in this airplane, you can either receive or you can send information. But then you see the scale of the JN-4 Canuck – and the scale of the radio, and you realize that it’s just so scary for a pilot and a passenger to share space with an engine and this radio.”

“It’s extraordinary – to showcase that scale to the visitor, and to realize that as early as 1915-16, we had the technology to gather reconnaissance from the air!” exclaims Annette.

The Military Communications and Electronics Museum is home to other celebrated and notorious communications technologies, including an Enigma Machine, cipher technology used by Nazi Germany during World War Two and Cold War-era equipment utilized by the Communication and Electronics Branch members active in NORAD’s underground fortresses.

Yet perhaps one of the museum’s most celebrated exhibits has little to do with communications and electronics, a testimonial to the impact of Canada on the world.

In the Vimy Memorial Room, the Military Communications and Electronics Museum houses Canada Bereft, the Grieving Lady and the Grieving Man, half-scale plaster models of an allegory of Canada’s immense sacrifice on European battlefields during World War One.

Created by famous Canadian sculptor Walter Seymour Allward, the figures of Canada Bereft guided the construction process of the Vimy Ridge Memorial in northern France, commemorating a battle considered to be a pivotal moment in Canada’s history as a young nation, a moment in time when the country emerged from Britain’s shadow.

“Canada Bereft is just breathtaking in the morning,” reflects Annette. “I love being here first thing in the morning when the sun casts light and shadow on her face framed by the ceramic poppies. To me, it’s one of the important displays that people must take in when they visit.”

The Military Communications and Electronics Museum doesn’t just show and tell – it also creates and curates experiences that challenge visitors to engage with history and explore their knowledge. Case in point: in partnership with Improbable Escapes, the museum has created Camp X and Spymaster, interactive games and mind puzzles that engage all five senses, plunging visitors into a world of intrigue, secrets, and coding, and turning them into wartime spies on a mission.

Camp X, explains Annette, was one of several dozen schools around the world that served the Special Operations Executive, located on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario between Whitby and Oshawa in Ontario and created by the British agency in 1940 to promote sabotage and subversion behind enemy lines during World War II.

The game Camp X calls on visitors to don a trench coat, the pockets of which are stuffed with puzzles – crosswords, encoding and decoding tasks – inviting these would-be spies to engage with the gallery exhibits dedicated to Camp X to decipher clues.

“And because spies are pretty cool, we developed a game that’s a little bit harder called Spymaster,” says Annette. “This is where you’re an agent and you have to figure out who is the double agent, the traitor, that has turned on you. Similar to Camp X, there are a whole bunch of different little games, puzzles and clues you have to figure out. And during this game you are timed. Whoever completes the game first wins – and both these games are available to French-speaking visitors!”

While the Military Communications and Electronics Museum houses many exhibits in both of Canada’s official languages, Annette underscores that translating English-language exhibits to French has been a progressive journey – but that it is one the Museum is committed to seeing to completion.

“Our visitor is our motivator,” explains Annette. “We welcome many French-speaking visitors and there are many serving and retired members of our Branch and our community who are Francophone. To not provide as many exhibits as possible in the French language would be leaving out a huge part of our community.”

Translation of exhibits, key materials and the Military Communications and Electronics Museum website has not been without its challenges – but also, explains Annette, a powerful catalyst for insightful and unexpected revelations on military parlance.

“The military has its own culture – they have their own unique vocabulary and sometimes, the same word for an object or a concept might be used in both English and French. In fact, retired Francophone soldiers often laugh about it, because we are trying to take these historical terms and properly translate them to French – and they tell us, “We never would have called it that.”

Ultimately, achieving full translation to French also means honouring Francophones who have served in the Communications and Electronics Branch over the course of Canadian history, believes Annette.

“When you think about Morse Code, Teletype, these are all special languages and it’s a field of work that attracted people who were adept with language,” says Annette. “When we’re trying to tell the story of the people who are part of the Communications and Electronics Branch, a lot of them are Francophones.”

A treasure trove of history, technology, and innovation, the museum’s story unfolds itself to the visitor, its carefully curated exhibits and experiences shining a light on stories of ingenuity and imagination from Canada’s military past.

“We are such a niche museum,” concludes Annette. “And yet our audience is vast and incredibly diverse. We see military history buffs. Art majors. Archeologists. Tech nerds. Young and old. They want to come see radars, phones, switchboards – the Enigma Machine used by the Germans to communicate through codes during World War Two. The JN-4 Canuck. Canada Bereft.”

“And it’s all because our museum breathes life into history.”

Learn about Kingston’s rich film history and the 2024 Kingston Canadian Film Festival.

To celebrate the upcoming 2024 edition of the Kingston Canadian Film Festival, we’re taking a look back at some of Kingston’s film landmarks and history. To explore Kingston’s film history further, take a free Creative Kingston film walking tour. These tours give insights into Kingston locations used in productions from Star Trek: Voyager to Murdoch Mysteries, share archival photos of historic film landmarks, and explore Kingston connections in the world of film.

The Screening Room was the site of the first Kingston Canadian Film Festival in 2001 and it will play a host once more for the 2024 festival. Kingston’s only independent movie theatre, The Screening Room offers a variety of new releases, cult classics, art-house films, and family-friendly movies on its three screens.

The Screening Room building at 120 Princess Street was originally the home of Steacy’s Department Store, which operated from 1903 to 1983.

Two blocks up Princess Street, Kingston Grand Theatre was originally the Grand Opera House, designed for live performances and built in 1901–02 on the site of an earlier opera house. But for several decades, The Grand operated as a movie theatre.

In 1928, The Grand featured Carry On Sergeant!, a silent World War One drama that was largely filmed at studios in Trenton as well as locations in Kingston including the Plaza Hotel (at Montreal and Queen Streets) and Canadian Locomotive Company (along the waterfront on Ontario Street between William and Gore streets). Carry On, Sergeant! was screened at the 2010 edition of KCFF.

The recently announced line-up for KCFF 2024 includes a number of premieres, including the world premiere of AJ Edmonds’ documentary Dark Highway and the Canadian premiere of Matt Finlin’s documentary The Movie Man. A number of this year’s films have Kingston connections, including Fitting In, a movie by Queen’s University film graduate Molly McGlynn.

The festival had so many great locally made submissions for its short film program, it is offering two events to highlight the best: LET’S GET LOCAL, on March 1 and The LOCAL MOTION, on March 3. Both events are held at the Kingston Grand Theatre.

In addition, the third annual Slaight Music Video Showcase returns as part of the festival. Ten new music videos will be premiered on March 2, representing the collaboration between Kingston musicians and filmmakers.

The 2024 Kingston Canadian Film Festival passes and tickets are now on sale.