The Black Vault - Serving up spirits at the Frog & Firkin

Ever been to the Frog & Firkin pub, on the west side of Yonge St., just north of Sheppard Ave., and got the feeling that you were not alone?

And no, we’re not talking about the crowd or the atmosphere, but something a little more eerie, even haunting.

About 20 years ago, a pub opened up, called the Victoria and Albert. It was about three doors north of the old funeral and about four doors from the old Dempsey’s hardware store — a landmark in the area, it had stood on the same site for well over 100 years. When the V&A changed hands, it became the Frog & Firkin around 1994 and many are convinced that something’s amiss at the old pub.

At least that’s what they’ll have you believe if you go to the Toronto Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society website (www.torontoghosts.org). There you will find many extraordinary tales, some even involving the Frog and Firkin.

"I had a strong interest in ufology of all things up until high school then we moved into a house where there was a lot of stuff happening that I couldn’t quite explain. So I started reading and reading and reading and reading and really started studying to try and sort of explain what had happened and what was going on in this house I used to live in . . . from there I had this interest," says Matthew Didier who founded the Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society (GHRS) in 1997. "It was always a side interest, it was never anything in the forefront and my friends knew about it. Every Halloween my friends would come up to me for years and say ‘oh you got a good ghost stories, so tell us a good ghost story.’ In ’97 I had sort of run through the gamut so I went online to find more stories on the World Wide Web and I typed in Canada ghosts and the only thing that came up were three sites."

That’s when Didier, a computer technician by trade, decided to create his own website that was and still "is dedicated to collecting, compiling and researching reportedly true cases of hauntings and ghosts in the City of Toronto and across Ontario." Since that time the GHRS has spread with chapters in Salt Lake City, Virginia, Nevada, the U.K., Western New York, California, Quebec, Manitoba, B.C. and soon out in New Brunswick.

"We are a part-time ‘labour of love’ and completely non-profit. All of our ‘staff’ are part-time so please forgive delays in responding to requests and questions," the website says. "The Toronto Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society is always looking for stories, legends and true cases of the supernatural (pertaining to ghosts and hauntings), so please e-mail them to us."

"It started off as it was just going to be more or less a resource for people to go and read stories, but then more and more people wanted information, like ‘what I am experiencing, is it uncommon?’ that kind of thing. So we did start keeping a thorough database of all the submissions that we got," says Didier.

His own account can be found on the website talking how after moving to East York from North York at age 15, the home he lived in led him on this strange journey. Strange phenomenon, such as all of the books on a bottom bookshelf in his new bedroom falling to the floor one by one, occurred and actually increased after the sudden death of his father, who passed away of a heart attack in the master bedroom. Power tools would be heard, but upon investigation would be found simply lying idle, the sound stopping abruptly when someone entered the workshop. Then there was the instance where he and a friend were "sneaking a smoke" (having a cigarette) in his second-floor bedroom.

"Paranoid of being discovered by my mother, we had the windows open in the bedroom but the door to the hall firmly closed," Didier wrote. "As we watched, the doorknob turned, the door opened a crack and then swung open full force but did not hit the wall behind it. It then closed about half way, opened wide again, slammed shut and was pulled firmly closed so that the doorknob and lock latched. The one problem with this door issue was that there was no one near the door and no one else was inside the house at the time."

For Didier this has become a full-time hobby. There are about 30 people working with him in the GTA, all of which help him with research and actual on-site investigations.

Being a ghost researcher is part and parcel being an historian, engineer, architect and psychologist. Didier and his group will do as much research as they can, hoping to account for the phenomenon as it relates to the building. Being something of an expert in each of the above-mentioned fields can help either explain what is happening in the house if it’s determined not to be "supernatural."

"Because we’re not psychical, at least not initially . . . we tend to go in looking for either capturing anomalous phenomenon with our own equipment being night-vision camcorders, still cameras — 35 millimetre and digital — as well as tape recorders," says Didier, whose group probably conducts about three investigations a month. "We’re more interested in either capturing something that could be qualified as anomalous or assigning natural causation to the phenomenon."

Contrary to what some people think, Didier and his group are not a bunch of quacks running around dressed as the Ghostbusters. The idea is to try and give piece of mind to occupants of potentially haunted dwellings wanting to find out what’s making those bumps and noises in the middle of the night, or why an elderly lady in a Victorian-era wedding gown only appears at certain times of the day.

Didier and his group take a scientific approach to their work, but refuse to explain what is exactly causing the phenomenon — that there is indeed something odd, but that it is "unexplained," is the common line. Simply put, whether it’s the spirits caught between dimensions, the undead hanging around the ethereal world because of some deep desire to right a wrong they committed while alive, aliens readying for an invasion or pyschokinetic energy, that’s a matter for someone else to determine.

"It’s not a mindset that we have to find something, but at least we have to give it a try," Didier says. "A witness has come forward or a story is in the mix, where people do believe these things are happening. In my eyes it’s part of our job to at least go and try and understand what the witness is telling us. It’s not our job to debunk them or change anybody’s mind, but it is our job to do our best to research and investigate the claim. If it leads to nothing, it leads to nothing. If we can come back and say ‘well, we found something, but we can’t explain it,’ again the more the better. But if we come back and say ‘well, we found something and I’m afraid we can explain it,’ we do that to."

"Unfortunately no one knows what a ghost is and we don’t pretend that we have the answers. So I’m not going to go in and say ‘yes, it’s a spirit of the dead,’ because I don’t know. It could be, maybe, I don’t know," he says.

"The problem, in a way, is the word ‘ghost’ just gets used as a wonderful, convenient, overlay for all types of various phenomenon."

As for the Fox & Firkin, there are several accounts of a ghostly presence downstairs in the offices and bathrooms of the pub.

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