Some Exhibition Visitors Never Leave

The Toronto Sun ran an interesting story yesterday. The Canadian National Exhibition's (CNE) guide, Steve Collie, says that some visitors to the exhibit never leave.

Strange noises and apparitions are seen - and heard - in Exhibition Place, says archivist Linda Cobon. "Most are in the archives," at the General Services building.

This exhibit is filled with mementos, photos, record books, documents, models, posters and diaries. There have been many odd sights and sounds reported by security staff, and by archivists as well.

Most reports of odd happenings do occur at night. They include:

* Footsteps.

* Faint echoes of girlish giggles.

* A strange, dark spectre dubbed "the Man in Black".

* Sounds of a "party, men and women talking, glasses clinking", Cobon reports.

* A perpetual night watchman, who goes about checking doors and clinking his keys. Film archivist Christina Stewart saw him on her first day and later recognized him from a file photo. "I think he was welcoming me," she said.

* Two security officers reported two soldiers who vanished before them.

* Voices in the horticulture building, which was used as a temporary morgue in 1949 when 119 victims died on the SS Noronic liner that burned and sank at the Toronto Ferry Docks.

Canadian author John Robert Colombo will deliver talks there on Tornoto and Canadian hauntings August 27th and September 3rd.