G is for ghost
Would you believe it if someone told you that your campus is haunted?
After once being home to many psychiatric patients, Humber’s Lakeshore campus has long been rumoured to be home to restless spirits.
Building G, one of the campuses Edwardian-era “cottages,” is, in particular, home to some peculiar activity (or so go the stories).
According to the Toronto Ghost and Hauntings Research Society, a security guard who worked on the campus thought he saw movement behind one of the windows after walking by one of the buildings that he had locked earlier. If there were anyone inside, the motion sensors installed in the building would have been tripped off. After turning off the alarm systems, he entered the building. Just before switching on the lights there was a loud noise that sounded something like a “whack”. The lights came on and the security guard noted a plastic garbage can lid spinning around and around as if someone had hit it hard.
A construction worker also claimed to have an unexplained experience while working in the tunnel system. He has said that he has seen a woman walking through the tunnels as well as heard eerie noises coming from areas that were empty.
Built in the 1880s, the former psychiatric hospital was known as the Mimico Insane Asylum, which offered Canada’s first “cottage-system” style of housing for its patients. It wasn’t until the late 1900s that the asylum had been shut down, restored and acquired by Humber College.
It took many years to renovate the buildings, even till today the tunnels that were used to get from one building to another stay closed to the public. Building G also remains the last untouched structure, with its interior having no updated renovations causing mold and asbestos; the building has been locked up so no one can enter.
Who knows why Building G has never been revamped since its early birth, but Humber Lakeshore has finally decided to restore the last remaining structure of its historic past. The building will house an incubator for entrepreneurship and innovation and will incur a complete interior renovation expected to be completed in early 2016.
Every year on Halloween the campus embraces its storied past and offers a tour on the campus grounds. While educating people on the history behind the construction of the buildings and witnessing firsthand the extensive tunnel system, this will be your only opportunity within the year to experience the haunted Mimico Asylum that once was.
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