Hello and welcome back to the Most Amazing Top 10. I am your host, Rebecca Felgate and
today we’re talking all about my adopted home….Toronto, the North, the 6ix…home
of the Toronto Blue Jays, The Maple Leafs, the CN Tower, Smokes Poutine, The Wkend, Drake
….Champagne Papi himself. Not only is Toronto the home of all these gems, it is also home
to a wealth of urban legends. Stay tuned as I bring you the Top 10 Toronto Urban Legends!
Before we roll into this, I want to hear what city you are from and whether or not your
home has some creepy legends? Also, If you wanna hit that thumbs up button, we would
really enjoy that. If you want to connect with me on social media, my links are in the
description box! N
10 - The Ghost of Old Finch Road – Ah, the Old Finch Road. This road divides
residential Scarborough and the forest…already spooky and is located very near the Toronto
Zoo. According to frequenters of the road, a girl named Sue or Susie died near a bridge
on the Old Finch Road on her birthday. People often go to the stretch and sing Happy Birthday
in order to provoke the ghost of Susie, who is said to cry or shriek when she hears the
song. The legend is supported by local graffiti in the area; the words happy birthday is spray
painted on a rock nearby. Local newspapers don’t seem to reflect any girl named Susie
being killed on her birthday in the area, but the location has been a hot spot for crime
over the years. Despite the lack of archive evidence, anyone who frequents the area will
tell you about the crazy moans and screams they hear along the road at night…however
there may be a pretty normal explanation – the proximity to the zoo. When agitated, the fowl
have been known to admit foul noises! Is the ghost of Susie just a particularly angry peacock?
Toronto has its very own Nessie at number 9 Serpent of Lake Ontario
Is there a snake in the lake?! Possibly, according to legend anyway! Back when Toronto was called
York and Canada wasn’t yet called Canada, settlers noticed something going on in Lake
Ontario. Sure enough, they consulted the Seneca and legend told of a huge beast called Gaasyendietha
that was said to live in the depths of the lake. According to the Seneca, the serpent
could shoot fire from its mouth. As the 1800s progressed and the city that would eventually
become Toronto developed, more reports of a huge 30ft snake in the lake kept surfacing.
It seems old snakey in the Lakey liked to swim, too. He was also spotted in Kingston,
Ontario leading to the popular legends of Kingstie. Many cryptozoologists think the
lake monster could be some sort of relict Plesiosaur, a large, long-necked marine reptile.
The last time someone spotted Gaasyendietha was in the late 1960s.
8 Whale Bones – The Whale Bones of Lake Ontario have caused
a lot of mystery and debate. Basically, in 1987, construction on the Harbourfront Streetcar
terminal began and 11 thousand-year-old whale vertebrae were unearthed. This led many to
consider the possibility that whales had swum in Lake Ontario, although geologists, zoologists
and scientists alike don’t think that that happened. If they didn’t though, how did
the bones come to be in an area by the lake? Some think they came from an old exhibited
whale carcass at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel. When the whale became too degraded, portions
were disposed of in the lake. DNA testing on the bone may lend credence to this theory
– the bone turned out to be just a few hundred years old, not thousands. Its placement in
the lake, however, is still up for debate and a cause of great mystery.
7 - Ghosts of Casa Loma – Ahh, ghosts love haunting a castle, don’t
they! Casa Loma is a relatively new castle, built in 1914 as a gothic revival mansion
by Sir Henry Pellatt. The castle-style mansion is said to be haunted by a number of ghosts
– firstly by Mr. and Mrs. Pellatt, the original owners who were turned out when they could
no longer afford the upkeep. The most sighted ghost, however is a lady in white, who has
been spotted all over the building. The White Lady is someone we believe to be a maid who
worked in the castle in its early days of operation, around the time when Toronto was
plagued with influenza that killed 60 thousand people. Casa Loma is frequently visited by
ghost tourists and puts on a banging Halloween spooky house event.
6 - The Tunnel Monster of Cabbagetown- Cabbagetown is a pretty cool area slightly
east of downtown Toronto. You can get a good curry near Cabbagetown…although there might
be more to this neighborhood of the six than meets the eye. In March 1979, 51-year-old
Ernest was looking for his lost cat along with his Parliament st neighborhood. His search
led him to a tunnel opening. As he wigged in the tunnel, flashlight in hand, he saw
something that truly tested his beliefs. His light illuminated a fury, money like creature
with orangey red eyes and large teeth. He described the thing as being three feet tall
and with the ability to speak. The creature hissed and told him to go away before it ran
off down the tunnel. Ernest then spoke to a journalist at the Sun and said the entrance
of the tunnel was a sewage system that runs under the subway. Being a big local news publication,
a lot of people read the article and were intrigued by the sound of the tunnel monster,
with many people going out to look for it. Despite the coverage, nobody has managed to
spot the creature. That being said, the description of the Cabbagetown monster is similar to that
of the memegwesi, small water spirits according to Algonquian mythology…. Could Ernst have
been seeing one of those critters? And do they live in the sewers of the city?
5 - Toronto Aerial Jellyfish There might be something going on in the skies
of Toronto. In 2012, Atmospheric Jellyfish were spotted hovering over the city. Atmospheric
jellyfish are UFO sensation and have been spotted before in China, the Netherlands and
Norway, and recently in Toronto, Canada. An eyewitness reported the sighting. They said:
This thing came down from above the clouds, slowly descending for about a minute before
I began filming. The details are sketchy, unlike Canada’s best documented UFO sighting
over a lake in Nova Scotia in the 1960s.
4 - The Cookie Ghost of Christie Mansion The Christie Family were well known in Toronto,
with Christie street named after biscuit maker William Mellis Christie, a self-made entrepreneur
who revolutionized the Canadian biscuit industry. When he died, he left his cookie business
and his assets to his son, who took up residence in the family mansion, the Christie Manson
near Queens Park. It seems that Christie Jnr, Robert Christie, had a mistress as well as
a wife and he had her hauled up in a secret room of his mansion. Room 29, according to
legend. She had a butler and a maid to bring her food and tidy up after her, and Robert
would come to her at night, where they would carry out their affair in private. Eventually,
his interest in the woman started to wane and she could no longer stand being held prisoner.
She hung herself using bed sheets and her body was secretly removed and buried in Queens
Park. Legend has it, her spirit stayed in room 29, and if anyone finds themselves alone
in the room at night, the door swings shut and lock itself and you can’t get out…just
like she couldn’t get out when Robert left her. They say you will be stuck there all
night until morning.
3 – The Ghoul of Gibraltar Point Lighthouse OOhhh I love this lighthouse on the Island!
The Toronto Island is pretty much my favorite thing about the city – Danny and I went
with a bunch of our friends recently and he badly burnt his nose…so the legends about
needing sun lotion when you’re a pale white Irishman are true. Are the legends of the
Gibraltar Point Lighthouse true, though? The lighthouse on the Island is one of the oldest
buildings in Toronto and the second oldest lighthouse in Canada. It was built in 1808
and guided ships into the Toronto Harbour on Lake Ontario. The story goes that a lighthouse
watchman was murdered there and his ghost haunts the tower to this day. The first keeper,
Rademuller disappeared in January 1815, with local legend saying that he was murdered by
sailors who cut up his body and buried it around the island. Later lighthouse keeper,
George Durnan, was said to have dug up his jawbone. The lost spirit of Rademuller is
said to roam the island but is most commonly haunting the tower.
2 - Tim Horton's Spiking Their Coffee Tims is a Canadian institution, despite no
longer being a Canadian owned company. Everyone I know goes to Tim Hortons regularly, and
we all agree it isn’t even the greatest coffee… but something keeps us coming back.
Well, Urban legend has it that good old Tim is spiking his coffee with nicotine to make
it more addictive. Some say the brew is mixed with the drug, others say the cups are sprayed
with it, so that is why nothing shows up when the coffee is tested from the source. The
classic story seems to go that American hops over the border to the friendly great white
north, stay with relatives and adopts their habit of having a Tim Horton’s every day.
When they get back to the states, they have a blood test and it reveals there is a significant
amount of nicotine in their blood. The urban legend became so popular that Tim Hortons
even released a statement to say There is, in fact, nothing added to our coffee. We believe
that our guests are addicted to consistency. Hhiiii doubt that one somewhat! Either way,
our mate Michael Mcrudden loves a good Tim Hortons.
Finally, coming into number one, we have one of the most famous Toronto Stories! The Leaping
Lawyer – The Leaping Lawyer of the TD Tower in Toronto’s
financial district has gone down as something as a morbid legend. Little did Garry Hoy know
when he plunged to his death from the 24th story of the tower, that he would win a slew
of posthumous awards and accolades. The legend goes that a crazy banker accidentally fell
to his death from the tower whilst playing a practical joke on a group of students…
and actually, this is pretty accurate. Hoy was a senior partner at Holden Day Wilson
firm and he loved a good laugh. His party piece was testing the strength of skyscraper
windows and one day, when a group of articling students was in the building, he hauled himself
at a 24th-floor glass window to prove how strong the glass was. The first time he played
his party trick, he was fine…. But the second time, well…he was less fine….he fell to
his death as the glass smashed. His death has gone down in history and was included
in the TV series, 1000 ways to die.
Okay, before I go, I just want to read some comments from a recent video I did about the
Top 10 Scary Deep Web Stories.
Our top comment was from Viking Foxy – They said: DONT GO LOOKING IN THE DARK WEB PLEASE
I WARNED YOU!!!?
BlueberriPieSquid said: I kinda believe the whole Mariana's trench thing. I don't really
believe the Atlantis thing would be actually true and real, but maybe somebody thought
it was bc they were crazy and wrote it down?? lmao?
I got a really sweet comment from one of our subscribers – so I just wanted to shout
them out…. Kitty Kay Said: Rebecca, I would just like you to know that you always make
my life a lot better every time you host an episode. Thank you so much for everything
you do. (Even though some of your videos scare me sometimes lol.)?
So there we have it!