All Saints Cathedral
Founder Rob Fader considers All Saints to be the place where he seriously became interested in ghosts. Grim Undertakings has been very fortunate in being allowed to revist this amazingly active location time and time again.
Opened September 3rd, 1910, The Cathedral Church of All Saints is one of only two cathedrals of its type in Canada. Although suffering damage, the cathedral survived the Halifax Explosion of 1917 and the Magazine Hill Explosion of 1945. John Plummer Derwent Llwyd was Dean from 1913-1933. On New Year's Day 1933 he was struck by a car. He suffered a broken leg and a few months later he died due to a blood clot which was caused by his accident.
Experiences
- Patrick Burgomaster, while practicing piano one night, was alone when footsteps crossed the old wooden floor towards him.
- The Sunday following Dean Llwyd's death, people attending church saw his ghost as it proceeded to climb the stairs to the pulpit as if to give a sermon.
- Dean Burgomaster saw Dean Llwyd's ghost on three separate occasions.
Once he caught a glimpse of him looking out from the doorway of the Columbarium.UPDATE We've since learned from Dr. Burchill, who used to be the organist at All Saints, that on this occasion it was actually him peering out of the columbarium! The other time he witnessed Dean Llwyd watching him from one of the intricately carved wooden furnishings at the front of the cathedral. They looked at each other until Dean Llwyd faded from view. At another time Dean Burgomaster saw the ghost of Dean Llwyd walk by him. - Once during a Sunday service, two large, brass collection plates shook in their holders as the hymn "Down Ampney, Come Down, O Love Divine" was played on the pipe organ. For some unknown reason this hymn seems to stir up unexplained activity when it is played. Dean Llwyd has also been seen coming out of the Vestry door in the past when this particular hymn was being played.
- Dean Llwyd has been seen on a number of occasions over the years by different people. It appears as if he is continuing to go about his priestly duties.
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Investigations
July 2, 2008
Lois Legge from the Chronicle Herald joined us for an overnight investigation of the All Saints Cathedral in Halifax. We added a link to the Chronicle Herald's website when the story was in the paper but thought it would also be a good idea to add a bit about the evening here too.
Except for a few odd knocks and bangs nothing else abnormal occurred during the night and nothing was documented on our equipment. There was also no odd flucuations within our environment.
Many thanks to Lois and the Chronicle Herald for the opportunity and we look forward to working with them in the future.
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July 21, 2007
We returned to the All Saints Cathedral for an overnight investigation and brought along Patricia Creighton as our guest. Patricia is the great-granddaughter of Dean Llwyd, and it was our hope that having her with us would cause the ghost of Dean Llwyd to stir.
Unfortunately, the ghost of Dean Llwyd didn’t manifest during the night. Alison once again played “Down Ampney, Come Down, O Love Divine” but to no avail. Some odd events did occur during the night though such as Tony noticing a grey, misty shape moving amongst the seats near the front alter. Also, Tony and Matt both saw some strange streaks and orbs of light which seemed to originate from the Columbarium. Noted also was our sensor light again failing as it had during the investigation of the Cricket on the Hearth.
No anomalies were caught in our pictures that night and there were no fluctuations in temperature or EMF readings. We also used baby powder on the floor and traced trigger objects but no unexplained data occurred with these tests.
Something peculiar was captured on video though. What appears to be "yes", in the form of an EVP, was caught at the same time, on two different video cameras, which were placed in two different areas of the Cathedral. This same EVP was not captured on our audio equipment though. Since nothing visually occurred, we extracted the EVP from the video to post as an audio file. As with all investigations we had a great time and learned a lot. Many thanks once again to the folks at the Cathedral who allowed us to have this overnight opportunity!
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March 9th, 2006
We were accompanied by Allison Leblanc, a journalism student, who was writing a feature story about us.
This was the most time we’ve ever had in the cathedral, so besides just letting our equipment run, we took the time to re-visit the tower and the basement; we ended up exploring the whole place. Nothing occurred during the investigation while we were in attendance and there were no fluctuations in environmental conditions recorded. However, for the last half hour of our visit we left the cathedral and waited in the adjoining breezeway. When the unmanned video tape was later reviewed, this commotion was quite remarkable. Additionally, we have two disembodied voices captured during our absence. Voice 1 Voice 2.
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September 2005
Rob contacted Dean Burgomaster and explained to him what we had done in 2002 and that we would like to research the cathedral’s haunting some more. The Dean was very kind and understanding and we met him and his colleagues on this particular night at the cathedral for our investigation. Nothing occurred in the cathedral during this time but it was excellent nonetheless and we enjoyed meeting and talking with everyone.
Besides a few orbs showing up in our pictures, Alison thought she saw something moving amongst the carved furnishings. At the time she was playing “Down Ampney, Come Down, O Love Devine” on the piano and this movement was enough to startle her causing her to abruptly stop playing the piano. We’re not sure if anything was there but it was creepy. No EVP occurred and no fluctuations were noted.
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August, 2002
Dean Burgomaster’s son, Patrick, took us on a midnight tour of the cathedral. We climbed the spiral tower and went into the basement and looked around and ended up leaving at 2 a.m. Nothing happened while we were there but we did have a good time and an interesting look around. There were no fluctuations recorded but some odd pictures were developed.
