At night, when the University of Toronto is bathed deeply in shadow, Richard Fiennes-Clinton will show you the mark on the oak door, left 160 years ago by stonemason Paul Diabolos’s axe.

He’ll tell of another stonemason, Ivan Reznikoff, killed by Diabolos’s next blow.

He’ll show you the grimacing gargoyles Diabolos carved into the College wall, and tell you that Reznikoff’s spirit walked the campus, until his body was discovered in 1890.

But Fiennes-Clinton, owner of Muddy York Walking Tours, will cut some of that spookiness with a disclaimer.

“I do tell people that it’s a legend, it’s probably been embellished over the years,” he says.

The story of Diabolos and Reznikoff has been a beloved part of University College lore since the 1870s, when students began telling tales of a college ghost.

Paranormal sightings aside, the tale of Diabolos and Reznikoff has been presented as practically being historical fact for years.

University College features a colourful retelling of the story on its official website.

The tale was included (with qualifiers like “apparently” and “it was said”) in at least two modern histories of the University of Toronto, which drew their research from Studies in Student Life, a series of books about U of T published in the 1920s.

The story was recently shared on a Reddit page of “random Toronto facts most people wouldn’t know about.”

The University of Toronto referred questions about the historical background of Diabolos and Reznikoff to Fiennes-Clinton, who leads historical and “haunted” walking tours around the city, including U of T campus.

“There are some ghost stories in Toronto that have some eerie basis in fact, like we know in some cases a specific person died and it was in the newspapers at the time,” Fiennes-Clinton says.

This isn’t one of them.

The story goes that the Greek Diabolos and Russian Reznikoff were stonemasons, working on the construction of University College in the 1850s.

Diabolos was in love with Reznikoff’s fiancée and planned to steal her from him. He carved one hideous gargoyle, modeled after Reznikoff, into the College wall and another one, modeled after himself, looking on and laughing.

A jealous Reznikoff attacked Diabolos and was killed in the ensuing fight. Reznikoff’s body was hidden on campus, and found over 30 years later, after University College burned down in 1890.

Fiennes-Clinton says he has never seen any documentation to support the story of Reznikoff or Diabolos, or the discovery of a body on campus.

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“I always preface it with the fact that I doubt very highly you’re going to find employee records for the stone masons or anything like that,” Fiennes-Clinton says.

He stops short of telling his tours that no one ever found a body on campus.

“I don’t want to kill the mood,” he says.

In a search of newspaper archives from the 1890s, the Star found no mention of a body found at University College.

Nor could the Star find anyone with the names Reznikoff or Diabolos included in the census of 1851 or 1861, the years bracketing the period of the supposed murder.

There are some facts that can be substantiated. University College was built between 1856 and 1859, primarily by European workers.

On Feb. 14, 1890, the college caught fire when a kerosene lamp was knocked over.

Most of the original structure was destroyed, but the Croft Chapter House, the section of the building that includes the gargoyles and the “axe-marked” door, survived.

The scarcity of proven facts hasn’t dampened the University’s passion for Reznikoff and Diabolos.

There are two campus coffeehouses, Café Reznikoff and Diabolos Coffee Bar, named after the legend.

And, for generations, University College faculty members have kept a human skull, said to be Reznikoff’s.

“They’re very happy with their story,” says Fiennes-Clinton. “There are other sites in Toronto that have ghost stories attached to them and they don’t like people talking about it. But University College is one that has really completely embraced it.”

#RandomToronto is an occasional series fact-checking and exploring little-known stories about our city.