For Celina Myers, beach resorts and city jaunts don’t top her travel wish list. She prefers visiting 19th-century psychiatric hospitals, penitentiaries with histories of gruesome executions and creepy abandoned mansions. If it has a grisly past, Myers will be there.
And she considers her obsession inevitable. “I grew up in one of the most haunted houses in my town,” Myers nonchalantly says over the phone, like she’s describing growing up near a Starbucks. As Myers explains it, when she was a baby, her parents started noticing strange things happening in their Woodstock, Ont., home: the sounds of an antique music box, floating orbs and what looked like the figure of a girl. They later found out a young girl died of scarlet fever in a home previously located on the property.
Myers is better known as CelinaSpookyBoo to her millions of subscribers and followers on YouTube and TikTok, where she posts videos documenting her haunted adventures. She’s travelled across North America to tour dozens of sites – such as the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Tex., and the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia – rumoured to be home to spirits, demons and paranormal phenomena.
Haunted tourism enthusiast Celina Myers, right, and YouTuber Kris Collins visit the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia.Celina Myers/Supplied
Every October, hundreds of thousands of tourists – many in black cloaks and witch hats, fittingly – flock to Salem, Mass., to see the sites connected to the 1692 witch trials. But for some people, like Myers, spooky season lasts all year long. A niche industry of ghostly pursuits has picked up on this and been bolstered by the rise of true-crime podcasts and ghost-hunting TV shows.
Every big city in Canada has its own ghost tours, and American ghost towns are being reborn as tourist destinations for those seeking paranormal experiences. Historic hotels and Airbnbs across North America now offer specialized “paranormal packages,” such as the Elms Hotel & Spa in Missouri, which has been destroyed by fires twice since it opened in 1888, while others provide ghost-hunting equipment such as electromagnetic field meters, which are said to detect spirits.
The Elms Hotel & Spa in Missouri, which has been destroyed by fires twice since it opened in 1888.Greg Ceo/Supplied
The number of people visiting haunted attractions in the United States and Canada is growing, according to a 2023 report from the events company Passage, which found that around 33 per cent of 1,300 haunted attractions surveyed expected to see as many as five times more visitors this year compared with last.
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It’s no wonder, if you look at how many Canadians say they believe in ghosts. A 2021 Ipsos survey found that nearly half of Canadians think spirits and supernatural beings are real, while 20 per cent are unsure. That leaves around one in three as skeptics. The survey also found that 13 per cent of Canadians say they have stayed at a haunted hotel and another 21 per cent said they were eager to stay in one.
Myers believes one reason people are drawn to haunted locales is because it’s simply human nature to wonder what comes after death. “If there’s a ghost here, does that mean I’m going to see Grandmother again? Does that mean they still exist somewhere for me?” says Myers.
The other reason? The thrill of feeling positively freaked out.
“You get an adrenalin rush that is addictive,” says Myers. “You’re terrified, but you’re also like, ‘I want to do it again!’ ”
That rush is also what drives Rebecca Vona to seek out haunted hotels and other scary destinations. “I’ve loved watching horror movies since I was a kid, so it’s like an opportunity to put yourself in one of those haunted-house horror movies,” says Vona, who lives in Vaughan, Ont.
Vona has toured the Sorrel-Weed House in Savannah, Ga., which is said to be haunted by the original owner’s wife who died by suicide, and stayed overnight at Beck House in Penetanguishene, Ont., where Vona says she woke up to her boyfriend’s phone scanning radio stations on an app he hadn’t downloaded. Her bucket list includes the Stanley Hotel in Colorado, which was the inspiration for Stephen King’s novel The Shining, and the 18th-century farmhouse in Rhode Island that inspired The Conjuring.
Visiting haunted places is part of a larger trend of dark tourism, a phrase coined by professor John Lennon of Glasgow Caledonian University in Scotland in 1996, after researching why so many people felt compelled to visit the assassination sites of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
According to Lennon, our fascination with being in the presence of death is nothing new. “People used to go watch hangings in London in the 16th century. People watched the Battle of Waterloo from their carriages.”
A more recent phenomenon is the proliferation of commodifying macabre sites. For Lennon, this poses an ethical question. “If there was a recent murder of children in Central London and people are doing tours around that site, that would be problematic. But a Jack the Ripper tour is quite acceptable because that was long ago,” says Lennon. “Where does that threshold stop and start? Where’s the watershed between acceptability and unacceptability?”
Nadine Bailey considers this moral question when she’s guiding her ghost tours in Edmonton, which include stops at sites of tragic accidents, suicides and murders.
“The stories are always done with respect, especially when you’re talking about ghosts, hauntings and murders,” says Bailey, who started Edmonton Ghost Tours in 2007. “I don’t sensationalize things. Everything I do is researched, but it’s done in a way that makes it entertaining for everybody.”
All types of people join her tours: hardcore ghost-hunters who bring along EMF meters to detect otherworldly energy, history buffs and parents with babies in strollers. She gets her fair share of skeptics, too, but even they get something out of the experience, a notion Vona backs up. “People love to have a good scare,” says Vona. “And who doesn’t love a good ghost story?”
Myers, who has amassed millions of followers sharing her ghost-hunting travels, believes the popularity of haunted tourism is only going to rise. “It’s still kind of taboo” says Myers. “People don’t want to admit it, but I feel like becoming a weirdo – and admitting to being a weirdo – is kind of cool now.”
Spooky places to visit in Canada
Rebecca Vona at The Beck House, in Penetanguishene, Ont.Rebecca Vona/Supplied
The Beck House, Penetanguishene, Ont.
Formerly owned by a lumber baron, this red brick Victorian home in rural Ontario is said to possess paranormal activity and can be rented on Airbnb. “We’ve had hair pulling, lights turning on and off, and phantom sulphur smells,” says Myers, who has stayed at the home three times. Book an overnight stay on Airbnb.
Screaming Tunnel, Niagara Falls, Ont.
The Screaming Tunnel in Niagara on the Lake, Ont.John Twynam/iStockPhoto / Getty Images
According to old lore, a young girl was lit on fire and died in this 12-foot limestone tunnel in the 1900s. “They say if you light a match in the tunnel, she will blow it out and you will hear her scream,” says Myers. Located just off Warner Road in Niagara Falls.
Old Strathcona, Edmonton
Old Strathcona, in Edmonton.Supplied
This historical neighbourhood is home to several buildings, houses and shops that have reported hauntings. One of the stops is the old Princess Theatre, which some believe is haunted by a bride who was jilted at the altar. “After her fiancé left town and abandoned her, she was devastated. She went back to her rooming house above the Princess Theatre and hanged herself,” says Bailey. “Over the years, workers and patrons of the theatre say they see the apparition of the woman in white hovering around the projection room.” Visit the Princess Theatre and other sites in Old Strathcona with Edmonton Ghost Tours, which runs nightly tours to Nov. 8.
Fairmont Empress, Victoria
The Empress hotel in downtown Victoria.Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press
The iconic Empress hotel is said to be haunted by its architect, Francis Rattenbury, who left his wife for a younger woman, whom he then married. She later had an affair with their 18-year-old chauffeur. The chauffeur bludgeoned Rattenbury to death in 1935. Some hotel guests believe they’ve seen Rattenbury, in period clothes, roaming the staircase and lobby.
Fairmont Le Château Frontenac, Quebec City
Since the Château Frontenac opened in 1893, guests of the hotel have reported multiple ghostly sightings. One of the ghosts is of Louis de Buade, comte de Frontenac, the former governor-general of New France, whom the hotel is named after. It’s said that when he died, he wanted his heart sent in a box to his fiancée in Europe, but she was so devastated, she mailed it back. Guests now believe they’ve seen the count wandering through the hotel, in 17th-century garb, looking for his soulmate. To visit the Château Frontenac and other sites in Quebec City, book a tour through Ghost Tour of Quebec, which runs nightly tours in English until Nov. 4.