We go from near the corner of Adelaide and Yonge in the early twentieth century about a mile to the north and west and back a few decades now to a tale that is more... speculative, shall we say? And that is ironic, because our next tale comes from a place that was created for the dissemination of knowledge, truth and facts. We are going to University College of the University of Toronto. It is time for our first real ghost story.
University College was one of the first buildings to be erected on the current UofT campus. Work began back in the 1850’s. Many of the workers and masons raising the building were recent immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. Among them, it is said were a pair of stone carvers named Reznikoff and Diabolos, and you can tell just from their names that this tale isn’t going to end well.
Diabolos was a young and handsome man from Corinth, and he was said to have carved many of the finer Gargoyles on the eastern wing of the college, which was destroyed by fire in the 1890’s. Reznikoff was a hideously ugly giant of a man from either Poland or Russia, depending on which version of the story you find, and he was said to drink deeply from his flask while he worked. His gargoyles, it is said, looked every bit as though they had been pounded out by a man who was every bit as hammered as they were. Diabolos is said to have modelled two gargoyles near the chimney of the croft house from his and Reznikoff’s faces- his face, on the right, laughing at the hideous Reznikoff.
Reznikoff had a fiancé, and they were saving up money to marry and set up a home of their own. Diabolos, however, also loved the same woman, and he convinced her to leave Reznikoff and come away with him instead. Also, he recommended that she should bring along all of Reznikoff’s money as well, which she happily agreed to.
When the giant Reznikoff found out about the plan, he was outraged. He confronted Diabolos at the worksite one evening, when all the other workers had already left. He chased Diabolos throughout the building, carrying a workman’s axe and swinging it wildly at the fleeing man. One swing of the axe struck one of the thick oak doors of the building, hacking a chunk out of the door, leaving a scar which is still seen to this day (picture). Diabolos fled up a tower, where he realized he was cornered. As he heard Reznikoff pounding up the stairs after him, he came up with a desperate plan. He hid behind the door to the room he was in, and when Reznikoff blundered through, he leapt on the giant from behind and stabbed him with his knife. Reznikoff fell to the floor, dead. Diabolos dragged the body down to the unfinished eastern wing of the building and hid it there. He then went to find his love, and together they fled the city, never to be seen again. Reznikoff’s body remained hidden for decades, until it was found in the rubble following the fire that destroyed the east wing in 1890. He was finally given a proper burial somewhere on the UofT grounds.
Now, as fun as this story is, it is also, to say the least, full of holes. To point out just one, if no one saw the fight between Reznikoff and Diabolos, and if Diabolos fled and was never seen again immediately following the fight, how does anyone know what happened that night? But still, there is that axe blow on the door, and the faculty of the college have a skull on display they say belonged to Reznikoff. And to this day, students at the college claim that on some nights they hear banging doors and creaking steps of someone racing up the tower that no one can explain.
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