Mysteries of Ontario

Mysteries of Ontario brings together, for the first time, some five hundred accounts of strange events and eerie experiences, each keyed to one of 250 places in the province. It turns out that, far from being a humdrum part of the planet in which to live and work, Ontario is a province that is alive with ghosts and spirits, mysterious disappearances, and peculiar happenings enough to make your hair stand on end, turn your blood cold, and send shivers up and down your spine!

John Robert Colombo has been collecting materials for this book since 1967. Even so, more than two years were devoted to researching, writing, copy-editing, and photo editing Mysteries of Ontario. The reader is invited to peruse the great historical mysteries that have moved Canadians in the past from LaSalle’s missing Griffon to the peculiar disappearance of Ambrose Small, from the spiritualistic legacy of the Fox Sisters of Consecon to the appearance in the 1990s of "ghost walks," "haunted hayrides," and "boo barns." This is a book that unites folklore and scholarship, the supernatural and the speculative, culture and mysticism, the occult and the peculiar, the psychical and the cultural, the human and the non-human.

John Robert Colombo is nationally known as the "Master Gatherer" for his many collections of Canadiana. He has written, compiled, or translated more than 120 books that are largely devoted to the lore and literature of Canada. Colombo has been dubbed "Canada's Mr. Mystery" for his works on ghosts, the paranormal, and the supernatural. He is an Esteemed Knight of Mark Twain and a member of the Order of Cyril and Methodius (first class). In May 1998, he was the recipient of an honorary D.Litt from York University, Toronto.