This year’s séance is fit for a 10th-anniversary celebration.
But this is Jaymes White’s ninth séance and he admitted sheepishly on the phone during a mid-September interview that the opportunity came knocking.
Hotel X Toronto contacted White and his team asking for them to use the Stanley Barracks for their next séance location.
“When I was a kid, I’ve heard so many ghost stories: thousands of people have died there,” White recalled, while actually at the Stanley Barracks. “I’ve wanted to do something there and it’s kind of a weird, cool thing that it actually worked out.”
As to whom or what séance attendees will be contacting depends on which entity slips between the walls.
There is Jenny, a young girl searching for her lost cat. Her father also searches for her within the building. A phantom cat has also been heard meowing.
And much like Edinburgh’s infamous vaults, darker entities lurk in the shadows, especially dark basements. Robert and David, a sort of William Burke and William Hare, are known for their scare tactics. It’s these two alleged spirits that White suspects will reach out and touch someone.
“They’re mean, they’re malicious,” he said. “They’re supposed to be the ones pushing all the other spirits away because they’re so bad. And there’s like so many people that died here.”
There’s even more about the location in Richard Palmisano’s Ghosts of the Canadian National Exhibition where he detailed a 13-month-long investigation into the various ghost stories on the CNE grounds.
The 18,000-square-foot Stanley Barracks has an extensive history and is the last building standing on a large campus.
“Honestly, you could have one floor and that would be enough,” White admitted. “Most of my séances are equipped to have one floor, and those are big. This is three times the size.”
From 1840-41, the British army’s 93rd Sutherland Highlanders used the location instead of Fort York. In 1893, the fort was officially renamed the Stanley Barracks, after Governor Frederick Lord Stanley. He’s also the man the Stanley Cup is named after. That’s key information for the future role the barracks would play.
Between 1914 and 1916, during the height of World War I, the Stanley Barracks was an internment compound for immigrants from Eastern European countries, like Ukraine, who were considered “enemy aliens”. From 1939 to 1945 the Canadian military inhabited the area for its troops. It also served as emergency public housing from 1946 to 1951 during the height of the polio epidemic. Various buildings were placed under quarantine.
Six of the seven original buildings of the New Fort were demolished in 1953. The Stanley Barracks has outlived its sister buildings and served other purposes. From 1955 to 1956, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame and the Hockey Hall of Fame called the barracks home. From 1959 to 2000, the Marine Museum of Upper Canada also called it home. The building received its municipal heritage status in 1973.
In 2018, Hotel X opened and among its architectural feats is a canopy that covers the unearthed foundation of the East Enlisted Men’s Barracks that was once there. The hotel is owned by the Library Hotel Collection, which has locations in New York and Budapest.
All that history, and all that potential for being a powder keg of emotional release, makes it one of White’s scariest locations for a séance.
“It definitely has a vibe. It has a dark vibe,” he said. “The funny thing is me and my tour guide, we’re walking when there’s light and all of us are like creeped out in here.
“We’re, ‘Oh my God, just wait till it’s nighttime when it’s actually dark’,” White added. “At nighttime, this would be its own world, its own darkness.”
Although the team’s focus is on this year’s event, White often jokes that he wants to retire the séance after 10 years. They’re going to have to go even bigger in 2025.
“It’s crazy that we’re even on a ninth séance (year). We’ve been doing it that long. That’s over 1,200 séances,” White said. “The Kingston Penn is what we were thinking (for the 10th). Going bigger.”
The Stanley Garrison Séance by Jaymes White runs from September 27 to November 30.
Photo courtesy Jaymes White.