The Hymns of the Hobgoblin: A Forgotten Tale from Fort Niagara

The Hymns of the Hobgoblin: A Forgotten Tale from Fort Niagara

Long before electric lights lined the shores of Lake Ontario—before Canada glowed across the water—Old Fort Niagara stood as a cold, stone guardian at the mouth of the river, braced against war, winter, and whispers.

One such whisper, half-remembered and passed down like smoke in the wind, tells of a soldier named John Carroll, confined in 1804 to a solitary cell deep within the fort.

No one remembers exactly why Carroll was imprisoned—desertion, insubordination, or maybe just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But what happened to him in that cell would become one of the strangest stories ever tied to Fort Niagara’s long and haunted history.

According to legend, Carroll wasn’t alone.

A Voice in the Dark

They say that in the dead of night, from the damp and crumbling walls of his cell, Carroll began to hear whispers—not the groaning wood of old architecture, but words. Clear. Purposeful. Ancient.

At first, he thought madness had found him, as it often did among prisoners left too long with their own thoughts. But soon, a form took shape in the darkness—small, gnarled, with eyes that flickered like candle flames.

A hobgoblin, he called it later. Or perhaps a demon. It wasn’t there to harm him—not directly. Instead, it spoke to him. It gave him music.

When Carroll was finally released weeks later, half-starved and shaking, he emerged from the fort with a series of hymns—haunting, melodic pieces unlike anything heard in the military chapels of the time. He claimed he hadn’t written them. The entity had dictated them to him in full.

Legacy or Lunacy?

Carroll’s compositions were passed around briefly, performed once or twice by curious chaplains, but soon disappeared into obscurity. Some said the music was too strange, with harmonies that unsettled the soul.

Others believed Carroll had simply cracked under the pressure of isolation.

But to those who worked the fort in the years that followed, especially the guards stationed near the old cells, something remained: the sensation of a presence, a flicker of music with no source, and the unshakable feeling that Carroll had brought something back with him—or left something behind.

Old Fort Niagara has seen centuries of battle, betrayal, and brutal winters.

But sometimes, its quietest stories—the ones about things that whisper instead of roar—linger the longest.

Even now, staff and visitors sometimes report chills near the dungeon, flickering lights, or low, unplaceable murmurs in the stone corridors.

Is it just the echo of history—or something more?

Join us this Halloween for our Haunted Niagara Tour and hear the legend of the Demon in the Hole—right where it all began.

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Image of the old French Castle at Fort Niagara.