Dan Ducheneaux has a business that keeps him busy during the week in Maxville Ontario. But on weekends, he has a hobby that keeps him up at night.
“Some people have called us ghost busters,” Ducheneaux said. “But I would consider myself a paranormal researcher more than a ghost buster. It’s because we take more of a scientific approach to the paranormal.”
So when Ducheneaux heard about the ghost at the old Willow Place Inn in Hudson, Que., he knew he had to see it for himself.
The haunted story dates back to 1837, when a servant girl named Maude was supposedly murdered in the Willow Inn.
Ducheneaux says she was murdered because she overheard the Patriots plotting against the Loyalists during the American Revolution. As the legend goes, her body was then buried in the basement of the inn.
“This whole thing is rather intriguing. But I find it rather amusing actually,” said Patricia Wenzel, the new owner of the Willow Inn.
She welcomed Ducheneaux and his team of paranormal investigators to see what they could find.
Wenzel says she does not necessarily believe there is something paranormal inhabiting her inn.
“I don’t think it detracts from the Willow. It is a business that’s existed since 1820, there has to be some history there,” Wenzel said.
READ MORE: Hudson’s iconic Willow Inn has new owners, plans to reopen
According to Hudson-based historian Rod Hodgson, the haunted tales are just stories. He says the story of Maud the Chambermaid is a fabrication worked up by new owners of the inn back in the 1970s to help drum up business.
“They just wanted to have an interesting situation with an old building, with an English-style pub, with a ghost.”
Hodgson did say that there was a chambermaid who ratted out the Patriots but that her name was Mary Kirkbright – and she was never killed.
He does say that another Maud was associated with the Inn: “Maude Leger, she was born in the late 1800s, died here, in the building around 1960.”
Ducheneaux claims to have heard of yet another Maude – the story goes that three people died in a boat collision a long time ago, and that one of the boats involved in the crash was christened Maude.
Hodgson corroborates the story, saying the steamer did exist and it belonged to the Ottawa River Navigation Company, whose owner was R.W Shepard, who lived down the road from the Willow Inn.
Ducheneux still doesn’t have the answer of which Maude haunts the Willow Inn, or if its haunted at all.
He said it will take a week to analyse all the data his team collected.
In the meantime, Wenzel says she’ll wait for the answers and will keep an open mind.
“Who knows what they’ll find?”
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