The Haunted Glenerin Inn, Mississauga: The Man by the Great Hall Fire

The Glenerin Inn sits in a wooded ravine in Mississauga’s Erindale area, half an hour west of downtown Toronto, yet it feels like an English country house. It was built in the late 1920s as a summer estate for a wealthy Toronto lawyer and his family, who filled it with balls and holiday gatherings, and its life since then has taken in a wartime girls’ school, a company rest home, a religious order and a Jewish congregation before it became an inn in 1986.

The ghost story is a gentle one. Staff and guests have long described a man tending the fire in the great hall, who is gone when they look again, and a figure standing in a doorway. Local lore says he is the man who built the house. Here is the story, the real history behind it, and how to plan a stay.

The ghosts of Glenerin Inn and Spa

The man by the fire

The story most often told at the Glenerin is of a man seen tending the big fireplace in the great hall, adjusting the logs as a host would before guests arrive. When people look back, nobody is there. Staff and visitors have reported him over many years, and Mississauga’s local news site insauga lists the inn among the city’s most haunted houses for this reason.

Guests also describe the full figure of a man standing in a doorway before disappearing. A clairvoyant who visited is said to have confirmed a presence in the house, though that is the kind of claim you will have to weigh for yourself.

Who is he?

Local lore calls him Mr. Watson and says he is the man who built the estate, still entertaining in the house he designed for parties. Records show the builder was William Watson Evans, a Toronto lawyer and financier who appears as Watson Evans in many accounts, which explains the Mr. Watson of the ghost story.

Evans died of a heart attack around 1931, only a few years after the house was finished, and is said to have been buried nearby. His wife Mary and their children went on using the house for gatherings through the 1930s. It is easy to see why a story grew up about a host who never got to enjoy his house for long.

A house full of history

Believers sometimes point to the many lives the house has had: refugee schoolgirls during the war, convalescing workers afterward, then a religious order and a congregation. There are no stories of tragedy linked to those years, so the man by the fire remains the inn’s only well-known ghost.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The great hall fireplace: The heart of the haunting. It is a public space, so you can sit by the fire in the evening whether or not your room has its own.
• The main doorway: Where the figure of a man has been seen standing before vanishing.
• Rooms in the original mansion: Many guest rooms have stone fireplaces, exposed beams and 1940s stained glass. Ask for the main house for the most historic feel; no single room has its own ghost story.

History of Glenerin Inn and Spa

William Watson Evans, a Toronto lawyer and financier whose main home was in Rosedale, built Glenerin as a summer estate around 1927 to 1928. The Tudor-style mansion and its carriage house stood on roughly 80 to 85 acres in the Sawmill Creek valley, with streams, a duck pond, a lily pond and walking trails, and the family used it for Christmas, Easter and summer gatherings and society balls for their Toronto friends.

Evans died around 1931. His wife Mary, a Trinity College graduate, kept the house going through the 1930s. In 1940, when she was seriously ill, she offered it to St. Hilda’s, an English girls’ school whose junior pupils had been evacuated to Canada to escape the war. A house built for about a dozen people was prepared for 8 staff and 90 children. Mary Evans died in October 1940.

In 1945 the Robert Simpson Company, the Toronto department store, bought the estate as a rest and convalescent home for its employees, said to be the first of its kind run by a Canadian firm. Workers recovering from illness stayed on full pay, with nurses, tennis, lawn bowling and a spring-fed pond. A caretaker who started keeping bees there in 1943 to please the schoolgirls went on to run 500 hives.

Simpsons sold the estate in 1961 to the Basilian Fathers, a Catholic religious order, and it later served the Solel Jewish Congregation. In 1986 it was renovated and opened as the Glenerin Inn. Today it has 30 rooms and suites, a restaurant, a spa and event spaces, and it is a popular wedding venue.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Spend the evening in the great hall by the fire, where the ghost is most often reported.
• Ask for a room in the original mansion with a stone fireplace for the full country-house feel.
• Walk the grounds and the Sawmill Creek trails before dark; the ravine setting is a big part of the atmosphere.
• The inn is a busy wedding venue on summer weekends. A midweek or winter stay is quieter.
• Combine your stay with a night at the Fairmont Royal York in downtown Toronto, about half an hour east.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Fairmont Royal York, Toronto: the eighth-floor ghost of Toronto’s 1929 landmark
• The Walper Hotel, Kitchener: an 1893 hotel with a long list of ghost stories, an hour west
• Prince of Wales Hotel, Niagara-on-the-Lake: a Victorian hotel in one of Ontario’s most haunted towns
• Haunted hotels in Canada
• Haunted hotels in Ontario

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Glenerin Inn and Spa (official site)
• Visit Mississauga: Chapter 27, Glenerin Hall
• Heritage Mississauga: Erindale Heritage Tour (2021)
• insauga: 15 things you never knew about the Glenerin Inn
• insauga: The 5 most haunted houses in Mississauga

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