Mackenzie House (lost televised exorcism of historical Canadian building; 1960)

The Mackenzie House.

Status: Lost

The Mackenzie House is a historical building and museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The house was owned by William Lyon Mackenzie, the city's first mayor from 1859 - 1861 when he was found dead in his house. While the house has been drawn by historians, its also drawn supernatural fans to the many urban legends from the house, one being a televised exorcism days before the house was donated to the City of Toronto.

Background

The Mackenzie House has always had urban legend surrounding the house being "haunted". One well-known story is about one of the caretaker, Mrs.Edmund. According to Danelle Urquuhart, a program officer at the house, Mrs. Edmund one night claimed that she was awoken by a soft touch on the shoulder. When she woke up, she saw a lady bending over her, looking into her face before vanishing. A few weeks later, Edmund claims it happened again, but this time the lady drew back her hand and slapped her in the face before vanishing.

Other people who have worked or used to work at the Mackenzie House has said that they never experienced anything paranormal but have heard stories of hearing footsteps on the creaking stairs or the spontaneous playing of the piano in the parlour. These stories inspired the Toronto Telegram newspaper to broadcast an exorcism on television in 1960.

The Televised Exorcism

Prior to the Mackenzie House being turned over to the City of Toronto to be used as a museum/heritage site - an "exorcism" of the house was filmed by CBC and shown on TV in June 1960. The footage reportedly was of Toronto Telegram reporter Aubrey Wice with the Archdeacon from the Church of Holy Trinity, John Walker going through the house and "exorcising" any spirits. When the property was given to the City of Toronto, there was a bequest for inventory of all the artifacts that were in the house at that time and at the bottom of this list were the words, ‘One ghost, exorcised'. Many thought after the broadcast that this was all to drum up publicity for the new museum acquired by the city. The Toronto Star then made a newspaper throwing shade at the Toronto Telegram for creating all of this ghost fervour.

According to Urquhart, the broadcast really drew more attention to fans of supernatural phenomena, and there has never been anything odd reported after that exorcism.

Availability

As of today, no footage of the broadcast has resurfaced online with the CBC archive only posting fragments whenever they want to.

External Links

• Interesting Moments in Toronto History's Twitter thread explaining the lost broadcast.