During the great clearout of my guest room I uncovered piles upon piles of old pamphlets, booklets and newspapers that I had allowed to accumulate (and gather dust and cobwebs). One of them was a brochure from the 2009 Canadian National Exhibition on an exhibit about the alleged hauntings of the grounds. I always enjoyed going to the CNE with my mother and checking out the annual display regularly put on by the CNE & Exhibition Place Archives. I have such a love for the CNE and its history that the first thing we did was go to the Direct Energy Centre (what the building was called then) and head to the historical display. After I reread this brochure I decided to explore the topic further and discovered the library had the book Ghosts of the Canadian National Exhibition by Richard Palmisano.
That I am a skeptic of all things paranormal does not mean that I find ghostly phenomena uninteresting. I like a good ghost story and can find myself so absorbed in such stories that I am afraid to walk around in the dark in my own house. In these spectral investigative reports, however, I was more inclined to emit bored sighs and hope that the next page I turned would be the end of the chapter.
Palmisano and his team explored almost all the buildings of the CNE at night, and brought audio and video surveillance equipment to try to capture anything they might hear or see. I found their interpretations of electronic voice phenomena (EVP) to be the most unconvincing. I have seen similar investigations on TV where EVP appear on audio playback. The apparent ghostly vocals sound nothing like what the investigators interpret them to be. It is the same as attempting to decipher alleged backwards-masked messages on LP records. “Turn me on, dead man” is not what is being said by playing “Revolution 9” backwards, nor in my opinion is any alleged spirit voice calling out specific names or demanding that the investigators leave. I would love to hear the playback of these EVP to see if I could hear what the investigators were hearing.
The investigations were presented in clumsy chapter titles preceded by an ordinal spelled out in full, such as “Twenty-First Investigation / General Services Building / November 2010 / Paul, Peter, Michele, Amanda K., Amanda J., Darrin, Alex, Linda, Christina, and Me”. The group was allowed inside by staff or security and then set up their equipment. As they explored the buildings they would experience sudden cold temperatures, nausea, suffocating surroundings, and see shadows, sudden lights and apparitions of people who may have occupied these buildings many decades ago. Dialogue was attempted with the spirit beings and the names “Jenny” and “Danny” turned up often, as well as the informal affirmative “Yeah”, which I doubt would have been used by adults who may have crossed over into the spirit world over 150 years ago.
I didn’t find this an entertaining read and it took me a long six days to get through its 250 pages, which is a sign that I only read it during breakfast since I had no desire to read it at any other time of day.