Ghosts

Undead or unexplained? Photos, books on the paranormal at U of T's Fisher Library

ullahnor — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 23:01:35 +0000

Undead or unexplained? Photos, books on the paranormal at U of T's Fisher Library

ullahnor Thu, 01/12/2017 - 18:01

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Fisher Library’s collection of paranormal literature explores everything from spirit photography to seances (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

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Romi Levine

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City & Culture

Ghosts

Fisher Library

U of T

Literature

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While modern science helps us understand the world around us, it’s the unexplained that really captures our imagination.

University of Toronto’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is celebrating our fascination with otherworldly beings in an exhibit called “Investigating the Paranormal,” on display until the end of January.

Curated by Fisher librarian Chris Young and archivist Natalya Rattan, the display draws from a collection of more than 1,500 items from the 18th century until today. The collection was donated by U of T alumnus Adam Crabtree, a former Catholic priest who has been interested for awhile in paranormal experiences.

The collection, which also available online, includes illustrated books, fictional pieces, journals and important literature pertaining to psychical research, which is the study of the paranormal.

This first edition of Puysegur’s work, is signed by the author. It’s of the most valuable books in the collection (photo by Romi Levine)

Crabtree was a Benedictine monk but decided to leave the monastery while studying philosophy at U of T.

After finishing his studies, he became a psychotherapist and began to explore paranormal phenomenon.

“I used hypnosis or trance states to make the work more effective in exploring the inner life of my clients, and in the process, I became very interested in understanding how hypnosis came to be and how the unusual things that were being revealed about the unconscious life of human beings came to light,” he says.

Crabtree’s collection includes books about the paranormal with interesting illustrated bindings (photo by Romi Levine)

Crabtree was attracted to the works of psychical research’s forefathers – Franz Anton Mesmer and his pupil Marquis de Puysegur.

“Puyesgur explored how people talked and what view of the world they had when they were in a mesmerized state,” says Crabtree.

This is the first illustration of a séance from the 18th century. It may even depict Mesmer himself (third from left). Patients are grasping iron rods protruding from the water. They applied them to ailing body parts, to transfer therapeutic magnetism to their bodies (photo by Romi Levine)

Though psychical research is considered a fringe science today, that wasn’t always the case, says Young.

“When it was starting off in the 19th century, people used contemporary scientific methods for it,” he says. “The problem at the time was there wasn’t enough evidential proof that these paranormal activities were actually happening. That’s why it never took hold as a scientific discipline along the lines of chemistry, biology.”

Mainstream fascination in the paranormal also began in the 1800s with social events meant to conjure spirits such as seances and table turning.

Spiritualist events like table turning were popular in the 19th century (photo by Romi Levine)

“Table turning is a type of a seance. Allegedly spirits are communicating with you, but somebody was probably turning it with their foot – who knows? It’s kind of like a ouija board,” says Rattan.

Early photographers also claimed to have captured paranormal phenomenon – a trend explored in the Fisher exhibit.

Ectoplasm is a substance that is said to be visible on mediums when photographed (photo by Romi Levine)

“Photography was fairly new and involved a lot of chemicals to be able to reproduce the photographs,” says Young. “So people would take photographs, and there would be this mirror image of a face or other types of lighting that had been captured and people couldn’t explain it.”

Rattan adds that people at the time thought the likenesses that appeared were people that had died who were important to them.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a member of the Society for Psychical Research (photo by Romi Levine)

Psychical research was so popular in the 19th century that well-known figures like Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle embraced it.

The topic may not be as readily embraced today, but Crabtree’s collection is beginning to spark interest: U of T scholars and even an American PhD student have looked into it.

Can you see the ghostly faces in this photo? Spirits are alleged to have been captured on camera (photo by Romi Levine)

Are there ghosts at U of T? Maybe...

lavende4 — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 15:29:20 +0000

Are there ghosts at U of T? Maybe...

lavende4 Mon, 10/31/2016 - 11:29

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University College at night: just one of six buildings at U of T that might be haunted (Photo by Christopher Dew)

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It's Halloween, and ghosts, ghouls, zombies and other supernatural creatures will be roaming through the streets of Toronto – and, legend has it – some of the buildings at the University of Toronto.

Are there ghosts at U of T? Read on and judge for yourself.

And, if you're really brave, you can take a walking tour of haunted places at U of T through Muddy York walking tours.

The Ghost of UC Quad

Legend has it that two of the stonemasons that worked on the construction of University College – Ivan Reznikoff and Paul Diablos – got into a murderous fight over a woman, which ended with Diablos stabbing Reznikoff and then hiding his body somewhere on site. Two years later, much of University College burned in the Great Fire, but workers digging through the rubble discovered something strange: inside a ventilation shaft a skeleton wearing a belt with a buckle stamped with the stonemason’s emblem. It’s said the ghost of Reznikoff still roams the UC quad at night.

The spirit that saved a life at Hart House

Working late one winter night, Hart House Theatre manager Paul Templin decided to sleep in his office and asked the security guards not to wake him. Sometime during the night, the door swung open and hit his cot. The door was glass-paned, so he could see there was someone standing behind it. The room was filling with smoke – the result of an electrical fire – so Templin quickly left and gathered with Hart House’s overnight staff on the sidewalk outside. He asked if anyone had been to his office; no one had. Templin credits the ghostly apparition for saving his life.

The mad woman of Christie Mansion

The large house at the northeast corner of Wellesley Street and Queen’s Park Circle that belongs to Regis College is said to have been home to a man who trapped a woman in a windowless room there. Eventually the woman went mad from the solitude and hanged herself. Decades later, rumours persist that a woman entering the room alone late at night will find that the door suddenly swings shut behind her and refuses to open. To escape, she must pound on the heavy door until her rescuer is able to easily open it from the other side.

Things that go bump in the night at Massey College

For the 18 years he was master at Massey College, Robertson Davies captivated the crowd at the annual Christmas party with spectral stories of his own invention. He sometimes told his fellow faculty members that, given his druthers, he’d haunt the college himself one day. Davies may have gotten his wish. Students past and present whisper of inexplicable phenomena within Massey’s walls that began the day that Davies did (or didn’t) leave us – wraithlike figures that disappear into thin air, objects that mysteriously move or show up in unlikely locations, and thuds and crashes coming from empty rooms.

The mysterious electrical engineer

As a first-year engineering student, Leo Comitale was working with a peer on an electronics assignment in an old lab in the Wallberg Building. They were stumped when they noticed a man standing nearby they didn’t recognize. “He asked us what was wrong, and we told him we didn’t know. We had built the circuit exactly as described but it was not behaving as expected,” says Comitale. The mysterious man told the students to double-check their wires. When they did, they found one was broken. They replaced it and completed the assignment. When they turned to thank the man, he was no longer there. “No one else could remember seeing anyone who matched his description. Neither of us saw this man again during our time at the university,” says Comitale.

Eerie lights at Laidlaw Library

In the 1980s, students held a regular pub night on Saturdays in the basement of Laidlaw Library. One evening at about 1:30 a.m., the overnight watchman, Barry Breen, noticed that the library was in complete darkness; the pub night had ended. At 4 a.m., he looked up from a book, and was alarmed to see that all three floors of the library were lit-up. He called U of T police and advised them that a break-in was in progress. Two officers arrived within minutes and searched the library for half an hour. Neither of the library’s two entrances showed any signs of forced entry. Breen wondered if the librarian had set the light-timer incorrectly. The officers agreed that it was a plausible theory, except that the library was not equipped with a light-timer.

This story originally appeared in U of T Magazine