Haunted Hamilton - The Ghosts of Dundurn Castle and Other Steeltown Shivers

Ontario is rich in ghost towns, communities that were once thriving but which have been reduced to mere shadows of their former selves. Nine villages -- including silver camps, fishing ports, crossroads hamlets, and farming settlements -- come alive on the pages of this book. The term 'ghost town' invariably conjures up images of fog-shrouded cemeteries, buildings with sinister visages, and of course, restless spirits of the dead. While often this is merely our imagination at play, in some cases, these ghost towns are indeed said to be haunted.

Watch out! Here comes another mammoth book to thrill you and chill you and to frighten you to within an inch of your life! It comes bumping out of the night ... from John Robert Colombo, the master of the macabre! This new compendium delivers excitement and delight to everyone who finds the unknown and the inexplicable fascinating, baffling, and frightening.

The Big Book of Canadian Hauntings offers readers true, first-person accounts of the appearances (and the disappearances!) of ghosts and spirits as well as considerations and discussions of their effects on observers. Some told-as-true tales are reprinted from newspapers and periodicals of the past, but the majority of the stories, which come from every region in Canada, are based on eyewitness reports of the present that are appearing here for the first time and are based on the compiler's ongoing research.

So whether you believe in ghosts, spirits, spooks, spectres, or poltergeists, or not, after reading these narratives contributed by Canadians from all walks of life, you definitely won't be indifferent to them.

Here are over 40 scary, hair-raising, and frightening stories of the supernatural and the paranormal. These are first-person narratives that are unexplained and possibly inexplicable. All of them have been reported to John Robert Colombo, Canada's Master Gatherer of the Arcane, by men and women from various parts of the country, and they're published here in the words of the informants themselves, the witnesses to these wonders.

Here, you will have the opportunity to read about:

• A woman from Ottawa who is visited nightly by her dead husband.
• A man from Quebec who is haunted by visions of the past.
• The couple from Regina, Saskatchewan, who commune with spirits through a Ouija board.
• The woman from Newcastle, Ontario, who finds the house of her dreams with a terrible secret.

It is to testify to a future existence for animals and to create a wider interest in it that I have undertaken to compile this book; and my object, I think, can best be achieved in my own way, the way of the investigator of haunted places. The mere fact that there are manifestations of "dead" people (pardon the paradox) proves some kind of life after death for human beings; and happily the same proof is available with regard a future life for animals; indeed there are as many animal phantasms as human--perhaps more; hence, if the human being lives again, so do his dumb friends.

Near-death experiences, or NDEs, are controversial. Thousands of people have had them, but many in the scientific community have argued that they are impossible. Dr. Eben Alexander was one of those people.

A highly trained neurosurgeon who had operated on thousands of brains in the course of his career, Alexander knew that what people of faith call the “soul” is really a product of brain chemistry. NDEs, he would have been the first to explain, might feel real to the people having them, but in truth they are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress.

Then came the day when Dr. Alexander’s own brain was attacked by an extremely rare illness. The part of the brain that controls thought and emotion—and in essence makes us human— shut down completely. For seven days Alexander lay in a hospital bed in a deep coma. Then, as his doctors weighed the possibility of stopping treatment, Alexander’s eyes popped open. He had come back.

Alexander’s recovery is by all accounts a medical miracle. But the real miracle of his story lies elsewhere. While his body lay in coma, Alexander journeyed beyond this world and encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of super-physical existence. There he met, and spoke with, the Divine source of the universe itself.

This story sounds like the wild and wonderful imaginings of a skilled fantasy writer. But it is not fantasy. Before Alexander underwent his journey, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. That difficulty with belief created an empty space that no professional triumph could erase. Today he is a doctor who believes that true health can be achieved only when we realize that God and the soul are real and that death is not the end of personal existence but only a transition.