Haliburton Forest’s Thomas McCay stands at the gravesite of two young girls – sisters who died from diphtheria on consecutive days in 1889.
He is not in a graveyard, but the ghost town of Kennaway, a settlement that existed in what is today, Haliburton Forest, near Harcourt.
He is with members of the Ghost Hunters of the Grand River, a show that airs on APTN, as well as a crew associated with Sasquatch University, who track evidence of Bigfoot. It’s all part of new episodes on season three of Sasquatch University, now airing on Wild TV+.
“You see a place like this and it’s inherently spooky,” McCay says of the graves and the abandoned village, a result of the collapsed white pine industry and missing out on railways and highways.
The ghost and sasquatch hunters recently visited the Forest, camping out in search of paranormal and Bigfoot activity. They finished over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Ryan Willis of Sasquatch University said the ghost hunters brought their paranormal communications equipment. He added the crew recorded the entire stay and went back and listened to see if they had picked up disembodied voices.
“We had some voices come through the spirit box,” Willis said. “A voice said ‘let them breathe’.” Diphtheria affects breathing. “It was really creepy.”
Willis said the recorders picked up some Bigfoot evidence, too.
“We managed to get a very definitive tree knock on the recorder and audio of a really loud bang. It sounds like something throwing a log almost.” It’s believed Bigfoot communicates through tree knocking.
“It was just a good investigation all around and big thanks to Haliburton Forest for having us up.”
On Oct. 11, the Sasquatch team did a reveal for Tegan Legge, general manager, tourism and recreation at the Forest.
Legge said she didn’t think the ghost town of Kennaway was well known to most people, although “any ghost hunters would; anybody that’s really into the history of our County would. I didn’t really know about it until (Haliburton Forest) bought the property.”
Legge said she interviewed Willis for a job and that was when they first connected. “During the interview, he had kind of pitched ‘I do this Sasquatch University show; I think it would be really cool to do it in Haliburton Forest’.”
It piqued Legge’s curiousity. “I was a bit of a Sasquatch, alien encounters kind of nerd when I was a kid and into early adulthood.” She said she is a believer in the paranormal.
Willis reached out in the spring about a mashup with the ghost hunters and Sasquatch University. Legge said she had the perfect place for them. She thought of the ghost town of Kennaway and reached out to McCay, who was open to taking the crews there.
Legge said she was really excited to hear their findings. “It did not disappoint. I definitely had goosebumps from the voices they revealed to me and the knock. All those memories of all that reading and shows I’ve watched in the past came back to me. I had tears in my eyes and goosebumps and thought this is just crazy, but cool.”
Legge said working with the ghost and Bigfoot hunters was a really fun experience “I hope and anticipate they will be back.”
