Peter Sacco - Niagaras Most Haunted: Legends and Myths

Title Page

NIAGARAS MOST HAUNTED

LEGENDS AND MYTHS

Peter Andrew Sacco

Publisher Information

Touched by Grace

Published in 2012 by

Andrews UK Limited

www.andrewsuk.com

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published, and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The characters and situations in this book are entirely imaginary and bear no relation to any real person or actual happening.

Copyright Peter Sacco

The right of Peter Sacco to be identified as author of this book has been asserted in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the people who love to keep a good ghost story alive and who pass it down the line for the next generation of folks to enjoy and to be spooked.

I would also like to dedicate this book to a dear friend, Janet Kennedy who left this world several years ago. She was a tremendous inspiration to me, as was one who loved a good story that had anything to do with hauntings.

Acknowledgements

A lot of time, energy and creativity went into the making of this book which would not have been possible without all the help and ideas given to me by the following persons, and they all truly deserve a heartfelt special thanks:

Jim Diodati (Mayor of Niagara Falls); Barry Sharpe (Mayor of Welland); Doug Martin (Mayor of Fort Erie); Vance Badawey (Mayor of Port Colborne); Kim Craitor (MPP Niagara Falls); Jim Hill and the Niagara Parks Commission; Wendy Canavan (Economic Development Officer/Niagara Falls); Donald Combe (Author/Cemetery Historian); Barry Williams (Angel Inn); Rick Jorgensen (Brockamour Manor); Rob Winninger (Balls Falls); Sylvia Beben (Assistant Museum Director/Jordan); Daniel Cumerlato (Museum of the Paranormal); Kyle Upton (Friends of Fort George); Kevin Smith (Lighthouse Restaurant); Sybille and Margaret Neimann; Peter Ling (Angel Inn); June Spear (Doll Museum Curator); Frank Bertuola (Niagaras Most Haunted TV series); Richard Ewtuchovich (Producer Cogeco TV); Daniel Rodrique (Producer of the TV series The Veterans); Jack Custers (Manager Cogeco TV); Andrew Porteus (Niagara Falls Public Library); Clark Burnat (Niagara Falls Historical Museum); Erica Benedikty Cogeco TV Producer); Stan Mallow; Ray Faucher; Julie Russell; David Buck Rodgers; Father Stan Makacinas (Director-Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre); Belinda Anderson (Mount Carmel Spiritual Centre); Luana Monteleone; Mary-lee Sampson.

Forward

I could think of few better locations to write a book of ghost stories about than Niagara Falls. Beyond the wax museums, souvenir shops and the infamous falls themselves, lies for me another world; one hidden in the backstreets and the shadows, perpetually locked in history and inhabited by the wandering souls and lingering images of events past. Niagara Falls has always given me that delicious mix of excitement and foreboding, from stories I heard as a young boy about daredevils in barrels and on high wires in the mist to the hypnotic lights and make believe chambers of horror up and down Clifton Hill at night. Peter Sacco has compiled a collection of stories that will take you down these backstreets and into the shadows, places alive with their own cast of colourful characters and strange twists of fate. Enjoy your stay. You may never look at Niagara Falls the same way again.

Gordons Haunted Story...

The Sound Shop In the seventies--before the Spoons were formed, Sandy and I played in a band called Impulse. We rehearsed in the basement of an old music store I worked at in Burlington called the Sound Shop. We had our equipment set up in a little room in the furthest reaches of the basement, which meant walking through a dark maze of storage shelves and stacked boxes. Usually we practiced there as a band but, one quiet Sunday, when the store was closed, I decided to go there alone. I let myself in the back door, disarmed the alarm system and made my way down the narrow back stairs into the old basement. Id never felt comfortable down there even when the store was open, let alone when the shop was locked up tight and dark upstairs. Never the less, I followed the twists and turns that eventually led to our room, flipped on the lights and powered up my amplifier. Soon I had my guitar plugged in and cranked to levels I would never get away with at home. I warmed up and then began running through the songs we usually rehearsed as a band. As is not unusual for a musician, I gradually lost myself in the moment, caught up in my playing and the all encompassing music. And then, all of a sudden, the sound of a whole band was blaring around me. Keyboards, bass guitar, vocals, drums. In fact, when I froze and stopped dead in the middle of the song, the last thing I heard was the long decay of a cymbal crash, like the climax at the end of a huge symphonic crescendo. As if on cue, the music abruptly cut off and faded into a giant, invisible hall around me. I stood gripped with a strange fear, the sudden silence deafening, unable to move, knowing I needed to get out of that basement as quickly as possible. I felt cold and hollow and surrounded by something unseen, but absolutely and terribly real. I slowly put down my guitar, turned off my amplifier and made my way back out through the basement, a painfully slow escape that seemed to take an eternity. It felt as if the whole building was in on the nasty and not so funny joke. Finally reaching the back door and daylight, I raced home on my bike and never went there alone again. Wherever the music had come from...my own imagination or from some other place altogether...I never wanted to be in the presence of those unearthly musicians again.

~Gordon Deppe

Leader singer of Canadas celebrated rock band The Spoons

Introduction

Do you believe in ghosts?

I cant begin to imagine how many times I have been asked this question. Ten years ago I hosted Haunted Niagara, the TV show and did much of the research in the subject matter which we covered in the one hour episode. Much to my surprise and those involved in the project, the interest and excitement generated by the TV was phenomenal. There was so much interest in the show that we decided to do a sequel a couple of years later. The sequel didnt generate as much of a stir, but all the same it had its fair share of viewers.

Not long afterwards, I was approached by a producer/director of a larger Canadian company which specializes in documentaries, they wanted to re-create the first show on a larger scale. We did it and we added lots of new footage, sites to visit and a plethora of special effects. When that show premiered viewers were once again fascinated by the haunted places in the Niagara Region. People were truly intrigued by things that go bump in the night!

Over the years I have dissociated myself from these types of shows and forums that discussing the paranormal. I find there are some individuals who take this stuff too seriously and want answers. You can only imagine some of the requests I have had, from visiting their haunted houses and being a Fox Mulder (see X-Files TV show) to investigate paranormal activities, to spending the night in some garage because someone believed they had bought a house whose foundation contained dead bodies encased in concrete. For the record, I did neither. Okay, I confess. I did go to two suspected haunted places as a favor to friends who claimed the places were haunted. I saw no ghosts. I heard nothing go thump. The scariest thing I did encounter was one of the home owners had irritable bowel syndrome and they created their own ghastly ghosts, all of which made my hair stand on end and made me gag. Needless to say, that was the end of my career as a paranormal investigator.