By Thomas Smith

Readers beware, you are in for a scare.

On Halloween night last week, paranormal investigator Ethan Towers led a group of people on an investigation to try and catch evidence of paranormal activity.

Towers, a Bancroft native has been investigating cryptids and paranormal occurrences and posting them to YouTube for over a year. With assistance from his collaborator Jacob Madden, the duo have travelled across the province while documenting their investigations. Madden works behind the camera and drives, while Towers conducts the investigation and edits the videos.

Madden and Towers’ parents were friends and the duo have been close since their childhood, growing up in the Bancroft area.

“I’ve always been interested in things that can’t be explained, cryptids, conspiracy theories and mysteries,” said Towers.

Towers says that growing up, he experienced some unusual paranormal phenomena towards him.

He was inspired to create his own paranormal themed content after watching the popular YouTube channel Sam and Colby. Sam and Colby explore strange, unusual, and abandoned places and also conduct their own paranormal investigations. Sam and Colby have been posting to YouTube regularly for 10 years and currently have 15 million subscribers.

“I saw that they were able to go to all these insane places to investigate and meet all the awesome people and have all this crazy equipment without having to have a tv show,” said Towers. “They were able to do it all through YouTube.”

Towers’ channel @EthanTowersYT is fast approaching 900 subscribers. He hopes that having public appearances like at the Dominion Hotel will allow for more investigations, interest from the public, and leads for investigations.

Using his hard-earned money to buy a camera and some paranormal investigative equipment, Towers dreams to make content creation his fulltime job.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else,” said Towers.

Towers’ investigations have taken him to contact the spirit of witches in Kingston, hunting for Bigfoot and skinwalkers in forests, and consulting spirits with oujija boards at home.

“I’m just trying to go and investigate everywhere I can without having to travel too far or breaking the bank because I don’t have the funds right now to travel farther away,” said Towers. “But I do love investing in these areas.”

Towers had learned of past paranormal investigations at Dominion Hotel. According to Towers, the Dominion hotel is famous as a haunted landmark in Ontario.

Towers had emailed Dominion Hotel owner Shawn Chamberlin about recording a video for his channel at the Dominion Hotel. In response, Chamberlin asked Towers if he would be interested in opening the event to the public, which he agreed to.

“I had seen there were investigations done there before and I thought it would be a very cool experience,” said Towers. “ I immediately took up that offer because it’s such a cool thing.”

For the paranormal investigation, Towers brought all your standard ghost hunting equipment including MAG lights, REM pods, emf readers, a dead bell, spirit box, and dowsing rods.

At the start of the Halloween investigation at the Hotel, Towers was already familiar with some hot spots in the hotel and the history of past owners, their names, and the names of their children who lived in the hotel.

To begin the paranormal investigation, guests were brought into room number four. People asked questions to get responses from both the flashlights, Rem pod, and dead bell. One participant, a seasoned ghost hunter, even brought his own vintage voice recorder to try and capture any breathing or voices.

Guests were then brought to room number one. After using the Rem pod and dead bell, the estes method was used.

The estes method involves using a spirit box and two people. One person is blindfolded and has their senses deprived except for their hearing. One person is asking questions with the other person listening for answers from the spirit box. The spirit box rapidly flips through radio channels which spirits can supposedly communicate with.

“They are just saying whatever they hear from the spirit box so when what they say lines up with the questions it’s pretty cool,” said Towers. “You basically are just turning someone into a tool for the spirits to talk through.”

Two participants were used for the estes method. During the sessions, words that stood out included ‘hell’, ‘devil’, and a response of ‘under’ after being asked if the spirit was 50 years old.

While one participant was sensory deprived, she said that she felt something sit beside her on the bed. At the same time, the REM pod was being triggered.

This investigation was Towers’ first time leading a public paranormal investigation. The investigation was recorded and will be posted as a two-part video on his YouTube channel.

After the public left, Towers says he and Madden continued to speak to the negative presence in room number one. The spirit they contacted indicated that they were brought in from a guest and decided to stay at the hotel to gain energy from its visitors.

After moving their investigation to the attic, the pair heard footsteps and a constant knocking. He says that other spirits wanted the negative entity to leave. Their private investigation will be posted as the part two on their YouTube channel.

Towers’ dream is to one day be able to visit Ed and Lorraine Warren’s Occult Museum.

While the museum is currently closed, comedian Matt Rife and ghost hunter Elton Castee purchased the home and its contents in 2025 and plan on reopening the museum to the public.

“It has hundreds of demonic and haunted items in it like the real Annabelle doll, the shadow doll and many many other famous items,” said Towers.

Out of all of his paranormal experience, Towers says that a visit to the King George Inn in Cobourg has been one of the most memorable.

Towers says that he could hear loud banging in the basement, where the original nurses office of the former jail used to be. He could also hear a door shut in the hallway. After checking to see if he had disturbed another guest, he could hear unexplainable footsteps rushing towards their door.

“It was pretty crazy, they also still had the solitary confinement door but it was sealed,” said Towers. “It couldn’t be opened from the inside or outside and when I was in front of it there was a knock on the door from the inside of it that was basically impossible to access.”

Towers is always on the lookout for interesting leads for things like paranormal activity, extraterrestrial sightings, or cryptids.

If anyone has a lead that you would like to see Towers investigate, please email him at ethan.towersyt@gmail.com.