Historic Chapters at Runnymede Theatre in Toronto
The Runnymede Theatre, located at Bloor and Runnymede was built in 1927 as a vaudeville theatre (vaudeville- theatrical genre: musicians, actors, circus acts, live animals, freak shows, magicians). It was the first of its kind in Toronto. The theatre seated 1400 guests and was ment to give the audience an exotic experience. The ceiling was painted blue with overhanging white clouds, airplanes, and stars. The walls were lined with murals giving the effect of sitting in a courtyard. It was during this time, the theatre's 'hey- day', that tragedy hit. It is rumoured that a young girl was intentially murdered on the stage of the theatre. The cause of death was a sandbag that was dropped from the ceiling of the stage causing her instant death. It is also rumoured that her body was kept in the basement a little after the tragedy occurred. None of this has been proven to be true. There are no records indicating the death of anybody at the theatre. However, there have been sightings and there have been sounds of a little girl around the stage and basement of the building. Most of these unexplainable things occur during the night and early morning hours. I just looked up on the net of "stories" from previous workers who have worked at the location before it was a Chapters, when it was a Famous Players theatre.
One of the famous player ppl claims to have felt movement, felt a change in temperature in the basement. however I'm more familiar with the Chapters storied. One of the workers claims to have been pushed when stackin books on the shelves. A manager claims he heard a little girl crying from the corner of the stage and to have seen a fague figure stretching out its arms in the distance while he was working in the basement. Customers claim they have seen books falling off the book shelves (but to their benefit, helping them find the books they couldn't on their own).
My encounter was today. I never worked around the stage before so I never understood what the big fuss was about. The whole store is so pleasant and it is so warm and inviting. But when you're on that stage alone, the whole store is facing and watching you. The stage is cold, very long and very poorly lit. Occassionally the lights flicker. When I was shelving the books on the stage (I was there half of my shift, from 5am to 7:30am), a coworker decided to come visit me. We were in mid conversation when we heard a high pitched female laugh. It wasn't a giggle. It was a "ha-ha" and it seemed like it was very close to us. We stopped talking and she asked me if I heard it.. to which I answered yes. We were the only ones in the stage/fiction area. After analyzing the other sounds of coworkers who were scattered around the store, we couldn't find anything that matched what we heard. The other sounds had echos, were mummbles. What we heard did not. We dismissed the idea of a ghost because we came to the conclusion that our manager has the same laugh and she must have been laughing loudly. After that it was difficult to work on that stage. the ceiling is so high and I just imagined where the sandbags must have been lol. You also can't help feeling that someone is looking through the gaps between the bookshelves opposite of you. Very. Eeery.
Aneways, after the shift ended I asked the cashiers where the manager was because I had to pick up my shift. They said she wasn't in today...
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