Haunted Hike - Entrances - an unusual guided tour of St. John's, Newfoundland

Six years ago, Dale Jarvis, a connoisseur of the paranormal inaugurated a summer-night Haunted Hike tour of downtown St. John's, Newfoundland. Appealing to visitors and residents alike, it has become a popular fixture in the summer entertainment calendar, running five nights a week from early June to mid-September.

Starting from the steps of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist (the one who lost his head, of course), in black cloak and tricorn hat, the Reverend Wykham Jarvis leads his flock up and down scenic streets and haunted sites of old St. John's. His lugubrious anecdotes encompass episodes eerie, gruesome, and whimsical--poltergeists and restless spirits, hauntings and tokens, suicides and executions, murders punished and unpunished and revenants stretching back as far as 1745.

The 75-minute ramble winds behind the Masonic Temple, along Willicott's Lane to much-haunted Victoria Street, then on to the Courthouse steps for public hangings, past the Duke of Duckworth to the site of the former Simpson's Tavern for murder most foul, travelling by way of the Star of the Sea Hall (formerly the city morgue) to the green behind the Sergeants' Memorial, over to the Presbyterian Kirk, and finally returning to the Cathedral steps for the closing peroration.

With a dignified--not to say grave--demeanour, Jarvis's delivery is compelling, lightened by occasional macabre jokes and quips, and marked by firm audience control, fixing any potentially unruly client with a corrective glare or a twitch of his death's-head staff.

Such has been the success of the enterprise that the original Haunted Hike (Ghosties and Ghouls) is now complemented by the brand-new Sinners and Spirits. The escort of the latter is gruffer and rougher than his ecclesiastical counterpart. In pea jacket and flat cap, Steve O'Connell represents Clar Quinlan, a gravelly voiced corner boy. With hands deep in pockets, he bustles around sites of downtown debauchery, malfeasance, and mayhem -- with dire warnings to look about you and take care.

Clar's narrative takes in fatal duels, hanged highwaymen, punishments for loose women, a dismembered corpse, and, behind the Rectory, the site of the old, red-painted whipping post, where brutal punishment was doled out by the British garrison.

In any well-appointed port city, you might expect to encounter drowned sailors returning to claim their brides and you would not be surprised to learn of corpses preserved in rum for transportation back to the old country. And, after tales of the ghostly crying of dead infants on Queen's Road and the murder of Chinese laundry workers in 1922, you can finish the hike in a haunted pub on George Street, raising your pint to the quick and the dead.

In both versions of the Haunted Hike, the storytelling is highly entertaining and the guided perambulation provides a welcome opportunity for newcomers to discover and for livyers to rediscover the unexpected green spots, forgotten alleys, and secret crannies hidden in the heart of the oldest city in North America.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Performing Arts and Entertainment in Canada
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group