Is the Haunted Walk Of Ottawa actually scary?

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Caroline, a Haunted Walk of Ottawa guide, poses near Sparks Street. Photo by TONY CALDWELL /POSTMEDIAArticle content

Dealing with weather-related setbacks is nothing new for Shackleton, who was a Queen’s University student when he started offering guided historical walks in 1996, initially in downtown Kingston. The company expanded to Ottawa in 1996 and to Toronto in 2012.

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When I asked if he was a theatre kid growing up, he laughed. “I think I was more of a history kid, and I had to learn about the dramatic, theatrical part of things,” he said, adding that most of his staff had some acting experience.

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Our guide was no exception. She did a great job of projecting her voice over the sounds of the city, which that night included sirens, motorcycles, trucks, bicycle bells and other traffic noise, and she never failed to engage the audience of seven. To the delight of the young lad from South Africa, the stories were rich with creepy details and delivered with suspense.

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“Okay, now I’m terrified,” the pint-sized horror fan declared with glee.

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After pausing for a postcard-perfect photo of the Château Laurier and a fascinating tidbit about its connection to the Titanic, we strolled along the Rideau Canal, glancing back for another ideal sunset photo, the golden glow framed by the curve of Sappers Bridge. To round out the peaceful scene, a mama goose calmly eyeballed us from her nest in a planter box alongside the National Arts Centre’s elegant, canal-side restaurant.

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Historically, the picture was much different 200 years ago. We learned the Rideau Canal was a brutal construction project that claimed scores of victims. If it wasn’t the cold, swampiness or the mosquitoes that aggravated workers, it was malaria. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of workers died during its construction, and many of them would have been laid to rest along the Canal, far from their homelands and loved ones.

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While the tour my friend and I joined was billed as the “Original” haunted walk, it was actually a descendant of the original. For almost three decades, the Haunted Walk showcased Ottawa’s old jail on Nicholas Street, showing off the cramped prison cells to thousands of people each year.

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But two years ago, the management of the jail, which runs it as a youth hostel, opted to use the cells to accommodate visitors in keeping with its prime mandate. The last Haunted Walk at the jail took place at Halloween in 2023.

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The loss of their main stage, so to speak, at the same time as they were recovering from the pandemic disruptions prompted a flurry of creativity from Shackleton and his team in coming up with a new original tour to anchor their lineup.

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While they were at it, they developed an entire series of tours, including ghost walks at the ByTown Museum, an indoor Secrets of the Château Laurier tour at the castle-like Fairmont hotel property, a quirky and light-hearted Hidden Ottawa tour and paranormal investigations at the Billings Estate Museum, to name a few of the offerings.