History

Tunnels, abandoned old buildings, notices forbidding entrance, gothic revival architecture, incurable cases, and even the name itself, "psychiatric hospital/asylum", are enough to encourage a spread of rumours and urban legends.

Much nonsense has been attributed to the "ghosts" of the former Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital, so if you visited this web site in order to find a collection of spooky stories, you are about to be rather disappointed. Supernatural phenomena attributed to the grounds of the hospital do not hold any historical or social relevance whatsoever, aside from the entertainment value derived from them. The mostly forgotten lives led by the former patients, both still living and dead, are far more important than some strange appearances allegedly inhabiting the asylum grounds.

When I first started researching the history of the hospital, I quickly found that the information available on the Internet dealt exclusively with the supposed haunting of the institution. If you type the phrase "Lakeshore Psychiatric Hospital" as a query into a search engine such as Google, usually the first web site that appears in the search results is that of the Toronto Ghost and Hauntings Research Society.  

It is not known when the former hospital site gained its infamous reputation. One former employee who worked at Lakeshore in the mid-seventies stated that it was not known as being haunted by the outside community at that time. "It is obvious that a number of people died there," he said. "But a lot of people die in general hospitals as well, and these don't have the reputation for being haunted." It is therefore mostly likely that "ghosts" started to appear after the closure, when the buildings stood empty and, being easily susceptible to vandalism and homeless encampment, they began to deteriorate. Indeed, if the grounds are one of the "busiest haunts" in the entire city of Toronto, neither the patients nor the staff reported any strange sightings during the time, when the hospital was still operating.

It is likely that some rumours started to spread during the filming of the Police Academy, which started in 1983. Reportedly, the crew noticed that hospital's beds, furniture, and medical equipment were not removed right away after the closure, and perhaps some speculations arose on their part, since seeing an abandoned asylum, nearly intact, is able to lead to rather creative outbursts of imagination.

A former Humber College student has suggested that many patients became homeless after the closing of the hospital and that they took refuge in the abandoned cottages. While there is no factual evidence to support this, it is possible due to the fact that many homeless persons inhabited the old buildings and some of them therefore could have once been patients at Lakeshore.

It had also argued by some that the hospital had little contact with the community, but it does not appear to be true. For example, one source mentions that patients were sometimes invited by the locals to the nearby New Toronto Hotel. Indeed, lack of interaction between the asylum and the nearby neighbourhood would help to explain why the present-day Lakeshore community knows so little about the hospital. The lack of valid information has certainly helped to spread the various stories of tortures and experiments being done to the patients. It is known that lobotomy and electroconvulsive shock therapy were a form of

treatment in the hospital, along with restrains (today, however, some of these doubtful psychiatric treatments are still used). Furthermore, the open grounds of the hospital were restricted to the staff, patients, and visitors, but officially closed to the public until 1974, although the local residents used the grounds informally as a park.

However, one rumour is particularly interesting because it is at least partially supported by historical evidence. The story says that some of the patients committed suicide by deliberately drowning in the lake. In fact, a local newspaper, the Advertiser, reported in May, 1972, that two female patients, Martha Morais and Nadia Machialovich, were found floating in the lake, and their death was ruled a suicide. However, it is not known why they decided to take their lives. But, at the same time, this perhaps should not be that surprising in the first place: Lakeshore Psychiatric specialized in the treatment of suicidal patients suffering from depression and bipolar disorder and the lake was nearby.