Benjamin Bandosz

 
Toronto Haunting

You really don’t know if you’re being haunted until you stare a ghost straight in the face. Everything becomes pretty clear at that point. Beforehand, it’s just a series of weird coincidences, shadows stalking you while you run errands, and faint footsteps waking you up at 3:33am on still December nights. These experiences are usually discarded as hallucinations, and quickly forgotten as you trudge to work the next day. You’re not quite sure how long these weird things have been happening. Maybe they started when you first moved to the city, or when your medication ran out. It could have been when you moved into the house on Wychwood and your roommates insisted on holding a séance. But when a ghost stares at you, and you see through its paleness, everything becomes quite clear.

But Toronto is not a city of ghosts. It’s too young and gawky. In Prague, you often see Rabbi Loew’s golem peering at you over tall brick walls during late-night walks; in Rome, you see Julius’s blood trickling down the street while you regret an overpriced lunch downtown; in Mexico City, usually around Coyoacán, you see La Llorona leaning through taxi windows, directing cabbies to free parking spaces. But Toronto, other than hosting some unceremonious run-ins with Wendigos in rural Huron-Wendat territory, is way too self-conscious to let its ghosts wander around. Its streets shuttle people from place to place so quickly that most folks don’t even remember one another, let alone ghosts. The older Victorian buildings scattered throughout downtown are covered in the shade of the countless, sprouting condos that obscure the alleged ghosts and phantoms. I guess that’s why it’s so easy to forget such uncanny experiences even exist, you’re lost in the city’s pubescence. You can feel pretty alone and awkward in Toronto, but not haunted.

My first run-in with the city’s ghosts was through a medium. Her name was Ula, and she would float in and out of different community events and functions I would frequent. Eventually, she recognized me and introduced herself at an art show. We exchanged a couple shaky lines that could pass for a movie script. As far as mediums go, I found her quite agreeable, and a little infuriating because she had a hard time differentiating between the living and the dead. Her pale skin, complacent expressions, and radiating orange hair cast her in a phantasmal aura; to round off the cliché, she worked part-time in an occult shop.

Since we ran in the same circles outside of work, we ended up organizing some events and projects together. We often scheduled to meet Saturday mornings at a local cafe, and she would routinely miss these meetings. I arrived hours before the usual clientele showed up, occupied a large corner table, and had a small breakfast with coffee. Around noon, hazy droves of jean-jackets, sneakers, and beanies would trudge into the cafe for their Saturday morning coffee. They often grimaced and mumbled to themselves as I excused myself politely.

“Sorry, I’m waiting for someone. We’ll be using this table and chair for our meeting. Sorry…”

After two more hours of waiting, I was all alone at the same table. When packing up, I avoided making eye contact with the sets of horn-rimmed glasses that flashed with anger. When Ula did happen to arrive, and vindicate me and the table, she always explained that there was some trouble, spiritual or otherwise, that kept her occupied—and so often did the two overlap that it was difficult to know whether it was a demon or a flat tire that caused her delay, or if one had anything to do with the other.

She usually described how these drug-induced, sleep-depriving spiritual encounters overwhelmed her. She explained to me how dabbling in too many spells warded off her lovers, and instead would summon stubbly old men who stalked her online and worshipped her ghost-like skin and well-defined figure. Ouija boards also caused problems for her—don’t ever summon someone or something you’re not ready for! I didn’t take her warnings seriously, and I soon found out how invasive and impolite ghosts can be.

“Have you read Jung’s Red Book?” she asked me flatly. “You have to read it. We should watch that movie about him sometime. What was it again? A Dangerous Method?” I nodded.

The difference between a medium and a ghost, as well as witch and a medium, can be difficult to establish. I began to see Ula sporadically throughout the city, and more rarely at our usual meetings. It was around this time that I began to see different apparitions, who all bore the same features, but whose differences kept me in a state of paranoia and disbelief. Every time, it became more difficult to distinguish between Ula, witches, and the ghosts of Toronto since my magicking is by no means advanced. In fact, I may be a bit too focused on cryptozoology. I’ll effectively distinguish between a Goatman, a Wendigo, and a Skinwalker, but cannot guarantee a successful smudging or incantation when left on my own. So when I ran into more extra-dimensional entities, it became more difficult to know if it was Ula running errands, a witch whispering to her familiar, or a ghost phasing through a crowd. What was, what wasn’t, and what could be, seemed blurry.

I was working long hours as a clerk. I spent my mornings and afternoons in a heavy haze shuffling between bus stations and subway stations, where I had my first encounter with the extra-dimensional. There were a few reoccurring characters with whom I developed a wordless familiarity during my commutes, but the rest of the faces and bodies I saw on the subway began to double with others I had seen earlier in the day or week. Rush hour and the faulty air-conditioning on the TTC often cause nausea. Commuters build a passive solidarity through the dizzying ennui. Some train cars become steam rooms in August, the humid vapours accented by piquant body odours. Needless to say, this collective discomfort, along with the heat-induced vertigo, made it difficult to see clearly. But I’m quite certain I saw some figures phase through the train cars and station walls.

My first lucid run-in with a ghost was at the Museum subway station in downtown Toronto. I had migrated from my office in Mimico to the university campus downtown. My friends and I were working late in the graduate student offices of some nondescript graduate department—they called it la cueva. It was getting late, and most of us had inhaled the same recycled air for many hours. A friend of mine lived in my neighbourhood, so we decided to catch a train together. We were having an idle conversation as we descended the stairs down the subway platform.

“Yeah, taking the shuttle bus to Mississauga every week to teach sucks, forty minutes there and forty minutes back— and that’s not even in traffic! Oh, God, the traffic!”

Her gesticulations were hushed as a black figure glided along the platform toward us. Without moving its limbs, it simply slid without making a sound. It, or rather she, was adorned in a black-laced gown, and her eyes were dim. As we descended the final stair, she began to climb them in a silence that mirrored my muted shock. My friend’s words became muffled, as my body began to seize internally. The acid in my stomach froze and my organs contracted. My chest was hollow. In my panic attack, I did not catch a glimpse of the figure’s face, save for a pair of familiar glasses that glazed her dim eyes. By now, my friend’s voice was distant. I tried to figure out what I had just seen. My stomach acids only began to thaw halfway down the platform.

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