There have been stories about the canals for as long as they have been canals, varying from unwanted babies being thrown away to jilted lovers leaping/being pushed to their deaths to whole families being forced into the waters and crushed by weighted barges.
Regardless of how true any of those were, it was clear as day that the canal through the city was haunted at every step and enough human bones had been found downstream at low tide to put all sorts of stories in people's heads. But all these years that was as clear as it got - stories and pub talk and nothing more concrete than old bones too worn and too scrambled to see a cause of death.
Then some fresh-faced councillor decided that the entire canal system needed to be drained, cleaned and repaired for the first time in its five hundred years of service. Honestly it was doomed from the start as workmen got into accident after accident, half formed figures wandered the worksites and tools flew out of their user's hands in plain daylight.
In the end the plans were abandoned before the first lock was done... the more water drained away, the louder and clearer the screams became until all the workers collapsed. They awoke after vividly dreaming the same dream of being tied to stones and thrown in as their loved ones and half the city called them a witch.
Unsurprisingly nobody wanted to pick up their tools and finish the job - better to let sleeping ghosts lie.
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