Tonight J., P., and I went on one of the Haunted Hikes. They're tours of macabre sites in St. John's that were the scene of actual horrors as well as others that are just supernatural in nature. Fun stuff - and creepy tonight in the pouring rain.
Set to a haunting old folk song...
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Mobile pics, sorry.
The tour starts beside the Anglican Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, on top of a small park that was the city's first official, consecrated cemetery in 1699. Between 5,000-7,000 bodies were buried there.
A retaining wall was constructed to stop the constant erosion that led to human bones appearing on Duckworth Street below.
The Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador's current building is the fourth on that site. It's where many of the city's executed were hung, and it's also where the whirlygig was used to punish prostitutes. They were crammed into a small cage and spun around until they vomited AND shit themselves to the delight of onlookers. It was occasionally fatal.
Willicott's Lane was the site of some of the city's more notorious murders, including a new bride who was killed and dismembered by her husband, her body stuffed into a crate, covered in pitch, and walled within one of the nearby homes.
The Sergeant's Memorial was where one of the many stocks and whipping posts throughout the city were located. This particular one was the scene of one of the more notorious incidents: A young, female Catholic servant was strapped to a cannon and whipped a few days before Christmas. Because she wouldn't confess abusing her Anglican, wealthy mistress (she hadn't), cold water was poured on her back until it froze, and she was whipped until it shattered and tore chunks of her back away. Then they dressed her, and did it again. Then she was thrown into a snow bank and the soldiers at the Garrison warned anyone who helped her (in what was then an overwhelmingly Catholic city) would be likewise punished. One family, under threat of having their home burned down, did eventually lead her inside - but she still died of her injuries.
Farther up the hill is where one of the city's most shameful incidents took place. A Chinese man shot and killed four other Chinese people at a laundry. The bodies were put on display in a Water Street shop window as a curiosity.
Through the back lanes where the city's most famous supernatural (and therefore probably untrue) story takes place. A man who promised his bride he'd come for her whether he returned from sea or ended up Heaven or hell. She was found in her bed drowned surrounded by shells and seaweed months after he'd died at sea.
Queen Street, where the old, mummified bodies of two babies were found in 1957 in a house that, before that - and without reason - was widely considered haunted.
And ending back the Anglican Cathedral again.
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She broke down after Ayreonaut got out of the restaurant. I stayed behind a few seconds just to tell her to call on the rest of us if she needs anything and she couldn't even talk. 
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