Gibraltar Point Lighthouse

On the western end of the Toronto Islands, now set back about 100 metres from the shore as the lake has shifted, stands a pale stone tower begun in 1808, when Toronto was still the small garrison town of York. First lit in 1809 and raised to its present height in 1832, the Gibraltar Point Lighthouse is the oldest surviving lighthouse on the Great Lakes and one of the oldest buildings in the city. It guided ships into the harbour until it was decommissioned in the 1950s.

Its first keeper was John Paul Radelmüller (the name is spelled many ways), a German-born former servant to two British royal dukes who had come to Upper Canada in 1804. On 2 January 1815, in the last weeks of the War of 1812, he was killed. Two soldiers of the Glengarry Light Infantry from the garrison at York, John Henry and John Blueman, were tried for his murder on 31 March 1815 and acquitted; no one was ever convicted.

The legend grew in the retelling. The version most Torontonians know comes from John Ross Robertson’s Landmarks of Toronto (1908), based on the family tradition of a later keeper, George Durnan: soldiers came to the lighthouse for liquor, fought with the keeper when he refused them more, killed him on the stairs, cut up his body and hid the pieces. In 1893 Durnan reportedly dug up fragments of a coffin and a jawbone near the tower, and it was assumed they were Radelmüller’s. Ever since, his ghost has been said to climb the stairs at night, and visitors claim to hear footsteps or see a light or figure in the lantern room.

Historian Eamonn O’Keeffe’s 2015 research checked the story against the York Gazette, court records, estate files and British army pay lists. He confirmed the killing and the trial and identified the accused, but found no contemporary evidence that the body was dismembered or hidden – the language of the records implies it was recovered – and he thought the tale of beer smuggled from New York implausible in wartime, suggesting instead that the keeper may have sold home-distilled liquor to the garrison. The bones of 1893 have never been linked to him.

City of Toronto staff who look after the islands report steady interest from paranormal groups, but no one has produced evidence of a haunting; one parks supervisor told the Toronto Star in 2018 that if there is a spirit, it is a very well-behaved one. The real case – a respected keeper killed in a wartime garrison town, his killers never punished – is the more haunting story.

Footsteps on the spiral stairs, a light or misty figure seen in the lantern room, and a sense of being watched around the base of the tower at night. Reports come from islanders, visitors and ghost-hunting groups and are anecdotal.

The spiral stairs and the lantern room at the top, and the clearing around the tower near the former keeper’s cottage. Stories say activity is strongest on foggy nights.

The murdered keeper is often called Toronto’s oldest ghost story and features in city ghost walks, local history books and every Halloween round-up of Toronto hauntings. The lighthouse opens for Doors Open Toronto and occasional special events.