UPDATE: Another note sent in by one of our readers...

The first time I personally heard someone's account of Dorothy was when an employee from an adjoining office tower came to the administrative offices and demanded that we take our ghost back. She insisted that strange things were happening in her office and that she didn't want Dorothy there anymore.

We all chuckled at this, not believing that it could possibly be true. However, many of us had second thoughts about this when a coworker experienced something unnerving one night. It was a Saturday and the Hall was closing. It was this employees responsibility to ensure that the Great Hall (the Bank of Montreal) was empty of visitors. As she was walking up the stairs a young boy was coming down. She asked him if there was anyone left up there and he said there was a woman walking into the vault wearing a long white dress.

The employee proceeded upstairs and was greeted with a blast of cold air but there wasn't a soul in sight.

Now, there are elevators that lead to the floor and the offices but they weren't working that day so the only way out was down the stairs that she had just come up.

She was extremely unsettled after that and for a long time refused to do the end of the day sweep.

Whether or not these accounts are true, it adds to the mystique of a building that many consider a shrine.

Update: November 13th, 2005: A reader sent in the following report...

Read your story on Dorothy the ghost and have an interesting update.

I was one of the last Bank of Montreal employees to have worked at the branch in the mid 80's. At that time it was being used as general office space for the computer architecture group of the bank.

I look back fondly on having had the opportunity to work in this building. It's not often that you get to work in a place where you can claim you couldn't get your project deliverable completed in time because "Dorothy" took it. Even better, everyone believes you! Dorothy's antics were very real to the team of approx. 40 people that had their office cubicles on the main banking level. Several of our team refused go to the basement coffee room (a spooky place more akin to the dungeon of a castle) and even more of the staff refused to stay past six in the evening when the real antics started. The stories were not widely circulated at the time as we also held on to the very real thought that speaking out would be a 'career limiting move'. They Dorothy stories were reserved for the Friday afternoon team get togethers. Now that I'm retired, I guess I can speak up.

Imagine leaving your desk to go two cubicles over to use the copy machine and coming back to find your desk in disarray, your coffee split and your filing cabinets locked. Hardly a prank, as there were only three people in the building and none close enough pull this off. Incidents like this occurred on a regular basis. Less frequently during the day, but with great regularity after 06:00 p.m. As you look to the west side of the banking hall and raise your eyes to the mezzanine level, the walkway in front of the second floor vault (we used it as a conference room) is where Dorothy was rumoured to have made her walks... we unfortunately did not see her. We have not heard the story of the shooting in the vault. Everyone subscribed to the story of Dorothy committing suicide in the third floor women's washrooms after being jilted by the manager who was her lover.

The reason that prompted me to write is that it's nearing Halloween and it brings back an amusing story from twenty years ago. Working late on Halloween night, three of us were about to make our nightly exit out the back entrance (west side of the building- exiting to Front Street). Talk of Halloween got the three of us onto the story of Dorothy. Before we knew it, we had talked ourselves into visiting the upper floors which were accessible by the back stairway but had not been used for many years. In fact, I had not really 'seen' these stairs even though I passed by them on a daily basis. Yet there they were, and we looked at them as if for the first time. As we started up, we couldn't help but feel as if we had been thrown into a 'scary movie'. The heavy wooden railing, squeaky wooden steps, deserted building, low lighting. Imagine 3 grown adults literally 'afraid' to go up the stairs. To add to this (whether it's our own anxieties or reality), the chill we so often felt in our down stairs cafeteria was suddenly multiplied by 10 as we proceeded up the wooden stair case. As with any good ghost story, the lights would not work. Upstairs, the dim light cast by the street lights enabled us to complete the tour of the unused managers residence and even get a close up look at the huge glass center ceiling fixture that overhangs the banking hall. We even found the washroom which we believed was the location of the suicide.

We saw nothing unusual but it's clear in our minds today that the tension and the chill that followed our 10 minute visit subsided the instant we got back down to the second floor.

There are many personal experiences with Dorothy that can be still be recounted by the AD&D employees of that time. None of us went to the building believing in ghosts and we all remain skeptical. I can't believe that so many could fall victim to group hypnosis or have fallen victim to a hoax. The team worked closely together before and after leaving the old branch but never experienced anything closely similar either before or after having worked at the branch. Something special is there.

As an added note, your site alludes to Dorothy having moved across to BCE place. The story I heard was that the parking elevator in the south east corner (no more that 100 feet from Dorothy's favourite second floor walkway) is where she has been sighted.

Our thank you to the reporter for sharing the above with us and our readers.

The above report was submitted to Sue Darroch, director of ParaResearchers for The Toronto Ghosts and Hauntings Research Society.