The Topcliff Mystery
by Christopher Dodd
Something about October, with its fallen leaves dancing in secret patterns and the promise of ghost stories, drew me from Creemore westward past Flesherton until I arrived at a lonely crossroads known as Topcliff. A series of strange events occurred there in 1894 that rivalled the best supernatural fiction and captured the fascination of Canadians.
School section (SS) No. 10 was a dilapidated, one-room schoolhouse. The teacher was Miss Annie McKechnie. She started in January with a wage of $50 a year and was described by a reporter as bright, handsome, and intelligent. McKechnie oversaw approximately 30 students, ages six to 14.
On Monday, May 21, McKechnie was at her desk. Her students were quietly engaged in their exercises when a low, sustained humming intruded. McKechnie ordered the children to stop their foolishness. Instead, the sound rose to a veritable roar – shocking the teacher and her pupils – and began moving around the room until it settled behind the wainscoting. McKechnie took a hammer, struck the wall, and demanded, “Come out of that.” Its muffled reply, “I will not,” startled them all. The humming and roaring sounds continued, making it impossible for McKechnie to conduct her lessons. At the end of the school day, students raced home with an exciting story to tell their families.
Tuesday morning, parents appeared at the Topcliff school with their children in tow. They had questions that McKechnie could not answer, so they waited to see what would happen. As she began teaching, the loud humming returned. The mystified parents could not determine the sound’s origin, so they summoned the school trustees: Mr. Hooper, Mr. McKinnon, and Mr. Hempstock.
The trustees arrived to hear a cacophony of humming, roaring, barking, and growling emanating from multiple locations simultaneously. At times, it resembled the moans of someone in pain. McKechnie and her students were sent over a distant hill—and the noises inside the building persisted. The trustees agreed they were not caused by wind and vibrations. Since teaching and learning were futile, they closed the school and sent everyone home.
On Monday, May 28, Inspector of Public Schools N.W. Campbell presented himself, confident he would get to the bottom of the nonsense. The school day commenced under his observation, and the hum announced itself like clockwork. McKechnie was dismissed, and the inspector took over. The children watched agog as the noises, louder than ever, steamrolled his efforts. Campbell, chagrined, realized he was dealing with something highly unusual.
He and 25 men rolled up their sleeves. The floorboards were pulled up, and the space below was examined. Dogs were sent under the school to ferret out anything that might be lurking there. Windows, doors, and stove pipes were tested for drafts, walls were examined for cracks, the loft was searched for owls, and the chimney was probed for bird and wasp nests. Nothing unusual was found.
By the end of the day, Campbell reached a reluctant conclusion: the sounds were not coming from the teacher, the students, or the building. Everyone inferred what he would not say out loud: they had a haunted schoolhouse on their hands. Our national newspaper at the time, The Globe, picked up the story and would update events across a dozen issues. For the next five months, SS No. 10 was the most famous schoolhouse in Canada. McKechnie and her students were moved to a decrepit farmhouse some distance away, where she taught undisturbed for two weeks. The abandoned school stood silent. Believing the phenomenon was over, McKechnie and the children were allowed back into SS No. 10 for the last week of school.
The humming and roaring immediately resumed. The teacher’s nerves reached the breaking point. She had been prominently featured in the newspapers and openly accused of ventriloquism. Although she could not afford to lose her pittance of an income, McKechnie offered her resignation. In a show of support, the school trustees announced they would not accept it.
On Thursday, June 28, the second-to-last day of school, Janet Fraser of Chapman’s Photography in Durham arrived at SS No. 10 with a camera. She asked the children and investigators if they would pose for pictures. After printing her photographs, Fraser noticed something unusual: in one of them, standing behind a boy, was the upper half of a face – that of a man with receding hair and close-set eyes. He was absent in the other photos, and Fraser was sure this person had not been present.
SS No. 10 attracted large crowds and amateur ghost-hunters throughout the summer. Visitors took pieces of the crumbling structure as souvenirs, accelerating its decay. Some locals would have preferred the school burned to the ground.
On Saturday, August 4, The Globe published Fraser’s photograph of the Topcliff school. A reporter spoke to McKechnie, who affirmed she had seen the mysterious face in the picture before – in a nightmare, where the man had dumped burning coals on her head.
Meanwhile, just east of SS No. 10, a new brick schoolhouse was being quickly built. Workers were interviewed and shared theories: an old man who died near the school had been buried late due to frozen ground, angering his spirit; a past murder on the site was the cause of the sounds. There were reports of a lady in white, seen nightly, drifting between the new and old schools. Hearing this story and demonstrating remarkable courage, McKechnie stayed at SS No. 10 as the sun went down. She watched and waited alone, intending to confront the apparition, but the lady in white never appeared.
By early September, the new SS No. 10 was finished and ready to receive its students. After deliberation, McKechnie decided she would not teach there. The trustees accepted her resignation this time, and another teacher took over. McKechnie travelled to Toronto, where she showcased her capable teaching skills and dependable character before returning home vindicated. The old SS No. 10 was dragged away and used as a farmer’s outbuilding until it collapsed and rotted into oblivion.
Standing in the dust of South Line Road, gazing at where the mystery occurred – a pasture for horses now – I pondered the story. Was it a hoax perpetrated by clever children? If so, how had they managed to fool so many adults? Was McKechnie to blame, or was she a victim? Is there a mundane solution?
As the October wind stirred a thousand leaves, a growing roar imposed its own question: did something genuinely paranormal occur here? One hundred and thirty years later, there is no answer.