The Midnight Hour: Canadian Accounts of Eerie Experiences

Joanne Wotypka is a sessional lecturer in the Religious Studies program
of the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Alberta.

The supernatural is indeed alive and well in Canada. The Midnight Hour
spans over 200 years, yet it seems that ghosts remain timeless: a
haunting in Halifax in the 1700s plays out much the same as a haunting
in present-day Ontario. The reports from those on the receiving end of
ghostly happenings are very matter-of-fact, and sometimes apologetic:
something happened, and here it is, but don’t make too much of it.
Much in the same way that we talk about the weather, discussion of
ghosts (in this collection, at least) is ever-present.

The strongest feature of this volume is its sense of immediacy. Colombo
now collects many of his stories via email, and this certainly gives the
book the appearance of being utterly and completely up-to-date. While
the validity of the submissions (no matter what their form) may be
questioned scientifically, this book is not meant to be an academic look
at ghosts, but rather what the subtitle claims: Canadian accounts of
eerie experiences.

Though Colombo never really delves into the issue (indeed, it was never
part of the scope of his work), one does wonder why it is that so many
Canadians continue to have what they feel is a supernatural experience.
Though a chapter devoted to “The Haunting Experience” attempts to
link beliefs about the supernatural with temporal lobe activity, the
upshot seems to be that the occult continues to defy scientific,
“rational” thinking.

Colombo has been a very prolific writer on the subject of the eerie
encounter. This book shows that both the interest in and the encounter
with the supernatural seem to be an almost everyday part of Canadian
life.