The gates of Lower Fort Garry close to day visitors in the late afternoon, but on Friday and Saturday nights in October they swing open again for a different kind of crowd. Lanterns and flashlights flicker along the gravel paths, costumed guides lead small groups between the limestone buildings, and the stories that get told are not the tidy ones printed on the interpretive panels.
The Ghost Walking Tours, run by the Friends of Lower Fort Garry, take visitors on a 90-minute walk through what the organizers unapologetically call Manitoba's most haunted fort. The tour is built around the unsettling history of the site: accounts of murder, heavy drinking, and suicide, drawn from the records and recollections of the people who once worked and lived inside these walls. Guides lead groups into the fort's historic buildings, and the tour is frank about its content. It is not recommended for children under 10.
That the fort has nearly two centuries of material to draw on is the whole point. Lower Fort Garry was built in 1830 by the Hudson's Bay Company on the west bank of the Red River, about 20 miles north of the original Fort Garry in what is now Winnipeg. It served as a supply and distribution hub for the company's Northern Department and grew into an important centre of transportation and industry in the Red River Settlement. Unlike its namesake to the south, which was repeatedly rebuilt after floods and fires, the lower fort's stone walls survived largely intact, which is why it is often described as the oldest intact stone fur trading post in North America.
The site's significance reaches well beyond the fur trade. In 1871, Lower Fort Garry hosted the signing of the first of the Numbered Treaties, Treaty No. 1, between the Crown and First Nations of the region. Parks Canada today notes that the fort stands on Treaty No. 1 territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Nehiyawak, Ininiwak, Anisininewuk, Dakota Oyate, and Denesuline, and the homeland of the Red River Métis. The fort was designated a National Historic Site in 1950 and is now operated as a living museum, with costumed interpreters demonstrating daily life from the 19th century during the regular season.
It is that long, layered past that gives the ghost tours their raw material. A fur trade post on a river settlement was not a gentle place. The fort's warehouses and workshops drew a rotating population of company servants, labourers, and travellers, and the historical record preserves episodes of violence, addiction, and despair that sit awkwardly beside the orderly rows of barrels and bales in the museum displays. The Friends of Lower Fort Garry lean into that discomfort rather than smoothing it over. Their tours promise that guests will not be touched, but may be startled, and they warn that there may be spirits and spooks around the site.
The Friends are a volunteer, non-profit association created to support the Lower Fort Garry National Historic Site. Beyond the ghost tours, the group runs the Stone Fort Trading Company gift shop, an Adventurer's Day Camp for children, and a calendar of seasonal events, with proceeds going back into programming and site enhancements. The ghost tours have become one of their signature offerings, a way to bring people onto the grounds after the regular season winds down and to introduce a side of the fort's history that daytime visitors rarely hear.
Practical details matter for anyone planning to go. The walk covers about 90 minutes of standing and walking on a gravel path that includes stairs and minor hills, so comfortable shoes are essential, and the event runs outdoors in whatever weather October delivers. Organizers say tours run rain, snow, or moonlight unless conditions turn severe, and that cancellations are announced by email and on the group's social media. Flashlights are allowed but are meant to stay off unless there is an emergency. Visitors with mobility concerns are asked to contact the organizers in advance so they can recommend a route with fewer stairs. Tickets are required and must be purchased in advance; there are no refunds, though a ticket can be transferred to another person with at least 48 hours' notice.
For the 2026 season, Parks Canada lists the Ghost Walking Tours running from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. on their scheduled nights at the fort, at 5925 Highway 9 in the Rural Municipality of St. Andrews, roughly half an hour north of Winnipeg. The tours recur on Friday and Saturday evenings through October, with the October 16 date falling on a Friday. Specific tour start times within that window, and the exact ticket price for the season, are set by the Friends and are best confirmed through their ticketing page before making the drive.
What the evening offers, in the end, is a chance to stand inside buildings that have been standing since 1830, after the day's crowds have gone, and to hear the parts of the story that the fort's orderly daytime version tends to leave out. Whether or not anything supernatural shows up, the setting does most of the work: stone walls, river fog, and a century and a half of things that were never fully explained.