duMaurier

On this date, we met in front of the lobby door and spoke with each other for a period before entering the theatre. All was fairly quiet when we first entered, however that changed.

We divided up into pairs on this occasion. I first noticed a maile entity at the back of the theatre in the last row of seats. I began writing down my impressions rather than talk to anyone firsthand in order not to influence anyone else's impression

Our resident male spirit repeatedly showed himself throughout the night. At one point earlier in the evening I caught him walking by the exit door on the second level at the north-east corner of the theatre. Another member of the team also caught this out of the corner of his eye. The next occasion in which the entity was spotted was when everyone had left the theatre area to go grab a coffee. The only members of the team remaining in the actual theatre where myself, Anita and Krystal. Anita saw a man, whom she assumed at first was Steve, enter the upper level, walk to the middle seat and sit down, however Steve had just left through a lower level door and did not re-enter the theatre until about 10 minutes later.

As we were packing up and getting ready to leave, A team member spotted a figure exiting a door on the third level balcony at the north-west corner of the theatre, thinking it to be another of the team, when he suddenly realized everyone was standing in front of him on the stage. He yelled out quickly and Krystal and Anita charged up to the third level to see if they could catch anything. As they opened the door to the balcony, neither one of them could go through immediately, feeling liked they were blocked. When they were finally able to go through the door comfortably, both felt as if something was not right and that they had run into something.

We also met up with another anomaly during the evening. This one however was female, as far as we could tell, and did happen to humour us by showering us in cold air while we were near her. At one point I sat in the next seat to where we thought she was sitting and immediately lost my breath and had to quickly remove myself. Almost all of us experienced the cold spot and at one point I could smell floral perfume (which no one was wearing). Although I was the only one who could smell it, I passed the information on to Sue, quietly out of earshot of everyone else, and then asked Anita to come up and give us her impression. She felt the woman had on "flowery perfume" but could not smell it, she just had that impression. Now did Anita actually pick up on the entity or did she pick up my thoughts? Sue continued to monitor the spot and did record a one degree difference in temperature. Although this is not terribly significant, we felt that the temperature fell much more than one degree. It felt more like ten degrees. She seemed to hang around seats B7 and C7. Unfortunately, again, we have no evidence or history to back up our experiences.

The duMaurier Theatre at Harbour Front (now called the Harbourfront Centre Theatre) was once an icehouse and went on to be used as a warehouse prior to being renovated and becoming a theatre in 1986. There have been many sightings at the theatre by both visitors and employees. The strange thing about the resident ghosts are that they appear to be very aware of their surroundings and navigate the theatre with ease. They seem to have no connection to the buildings prior uses when it was laid out differently.

At one point two maintenance people had an experience with a woman spectre. The male employee was busy mopping the floor backstage while the female employee was getting buckets of water. As she brought in the first bucket she noticed a woman standing behind her co-worker, watching him wash the floor. She didn't think much of it and stepped just outside the doorway to grab the second bucket of water. When she looked up after setting down the second bucket, she asked her co-worker where the woman went. Of course, he had no idea what she was talking about and said "what woman?". There was nowhere for this woman to go without passing the female employee or grabbing the attention of her co-worker.

In another instance a security guard entered the theatre area while making his rounds and discovered a woman sitting mid-theatre (around seat B/C 7), who looked up at him and asked "when does the show start?", at which time she simply disappeared. The man quit the next day.

Ian Harper greeted us in the lobby of the duMaurier Theatre at 8:00pm on Sunday evening. After gathering up equipment and settling away our coats etc. we proceeded on a guided tour wherein Ian and Bill (a co-worker at the theatre) filled us in on some of the experiences of the employees of the theatre and a bit of its history. Ian did take care however, to leave out some of his knowledge to see if we would provide any similar experiences and descriptions at the end of the evening.

We divided up into a few groups, making sure to separate the sensitives in the group, and began wandering around taking photos and getting a feel for the building. We took notes as to our reactions with respect to different areas of the theatre and continued on, finally being pulled back to the stage area itself. While here Bill and I found that a male entity that haunts this location graced us with his presence most of the evening. Not only could he be felt but we could literally see him and noted that he was enjoying himself following around one of the team members who was taking audio readings. Although he only seemed visible to Bill and myself, Anita could sense precisely where he was at all times and got a mental image of him which she relayed from her notebook when the evening was concluded. Her description did match what employees of the theatre have seen.

I'm afraid to say that the 'entity' had Bill and I in stitches laughing because of the way he was mocking Joe (who was graciated with the name 'Baitboy'). I don't believe I've ever laughed so hard at an investigation before.

Laughing aside, a few of the team did experience trouble breathing and tightness in their chests when standing in a particular spot in the theatre although at the time each investigator's experience was not known to the other. This makes for very good circumstantial evidence of a presence actually being there.

Two of the investigators spotted the same small ball of light zip across the stage at one point in the evening, giving credence to each other's sighting. We did manage to capture some anomalies in photos, however we do not expect you to rely on these as evidence. Although we are quite sure we have eliminated all plausible explanations for the anomalies, you just never know for sure with unfocused shots. In the same instance we have no proof to support what the sensitives (myself, Bill and Anita) felt. We will try to find some kind of evidence to support it, but in the meantime you may take it with a grain of salt. I can assure you that we are positive of what we felt and saw, but whether we were feeding each other's minds with specific images or actually picking up a spirit is totally unknown.