their own stories had they not lived through them themselves.
“It’s been about six years now,” said Glass of the morning that gave him a story that still gave him goose bumps (I noticed) when he told it. “I was opening up the house one morning and walking up the stairs, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye something that looked like pants legs in between the rails. I cocked my head and looked up—and there was a man standing there. His hands were outstretched on the railing at the top, and he was staring straight at me. He had really distinctive eyes—if you look at the portrait of Thomas Whaley in the parlor, they were the same eyes … really piercing. Lillian Whaley used to call them the ‘Intelligent Whaley eyes’ [see whaleyhouse.org to find out more; Lillian’s papers are now available there]. He was just staring right at me. He startled me because no one was supposed to be there. He wore a wide-brimmed hat, but I couldn’t see the style of the hat because I just saw from underneath. He was shades of gray; I don’t remember if I could see through him or not. He had a look on his face like he was wondering about who I was and why I was there. And the next moment he was gone. Another thing I remember is that he was in his mid-twenties; not an older man like Thomas Whaley was when he died, but I always got the feeling it was Thomas Whaley.
“I always say hello to anyone who may be seeing or hearing me,” said Glass. “And every time I go up the stairs—every time—I always look to see if he’s there. All these years later, and I still look for him.”
Facility Manager Robert Daniel Wilson has worked at the house for three years and is a favorite of tourists because he seems to know everything about the property and the Whaley family.
“I always say that my experiences are very limited because I’m not very sensitive to the paranormal aspect of the house. I just get the basic things that someone would get if you’re in the right place at the right time,” says Wilson. “They’re [the ghosts] not evil, believe me—if people were getting hurt here, I wouldn’t be working here. The spirits here are intelligent, and I believe they know what’s going on here. For instance, Thomas Whaley knows that the money spent on tickets here helps keep the house in its present condition. He understands this because he used to do the same thing by renting out the rooms in his home.
“I was working here one Friday morning when a woman poked her head in and asked what the house was all about. I gave her a brief history. She spoke with a very thick French accent and was difficult to understand, but she told me she’d be back. She brought back eight foreign-exchange students, and in about thirty minutes her group was in the courtroom and they seemed to be having a good time touring the home. On her way out, she thanked me and told me she’d be back on Sunday with more students. I told her we’d look forward to seeing them.
“She was back on Sunday with more students, and they were in the courtroom and she kept asking the same question over and over again, but I couldn’t understand her. One of the other docents came in and we figured out she was asking if we could ‘do it again’ over and over. Well, we didn’t know what she was talking about. Then she looked back in the courtroom and smiled and nodded at us. Apparently, the last time she’d come in, the chandelier was swinging, and she thought we’d rigged something to do that. And when she looked back in the courtroom, the chandelier was swinging again—she thought we’d done it! She willed it to happen on her own. I like to think people have different levels of spiritual attractiveness; just like we’re attracted to people with similar interests, so are spirits. I think that would explain a lot.”
Carrie Higginson, former gift-shop manager, worked on the property for four years and recalled an incident similar to one described in the Creole Café chapter. “I was running in between the gift shop and the Whaley House porch, and on the far left side in between the first two pillars—when you’re facing the street—I slipped and my arms went up in the air and my feet went flying out from under me facing the avenue. I thought I was going to break my head on the bricks—I should have broken my head on the bricks because of the way I was landing. Instead, I brushed myself off and hoped that no one had seen me. The next day, my coworker pointed out I had a bruise on my arm that looked like a handprint—it was a right-hand imprint on my right arm, so I had a thumb-bruise outline going diagonally and four finger outlines on the outside of my arm. I thought the bruise was dirt; I poked it in a few places, but there was no pain whatsoever. It freaked me out, and I still don’t presume to know what happened.
“A lot of my coworkers will give personalities to the ghosts. I’m not quite ready to do that … well, except for the ones in the gift shop. I notice if I don’t say goodnight to Mrs. Verna, who was the previous occupant of the home [saved from the wrecking ball and moved to the Whaley Complex Community Park], I have problems with the lock. I mean, it’s the same lock—I use it every day, it’s the same rotation, and sometimes when I don’t say goodnight, it just clicks funny, and I’ll remember that I didn’t say good night. When I remember this and say, ‘Good night, Mrs. Verna,’ the lock is fine again.”
Corinne Lillian Whaley, the youngest child of Thomas and Anna Whaley, wrote about her memories of Old Town, and they were compiled into a book titled California’s Oldest Town (available at the Whaley House gift shop). She used Old Town’s plummet from the up-and-coming to the dilapidated place it became as a metaphor of her own mortality. The book is a wonderful collection of her memories growing up in the Whaley home, a definite must-read for anyone interested in what life once was in Old Town. Corinne Lillian was the last full-time resident of the home, living there alone with her memories that still echo through its hallways and stairwell.
The two old palm trees at the entrance of town stand like old and trusted sentinels, the only living witnesses of my own growth and fall. Never again shall the same happy-hearted people walk my streets and share the primitive pleasures of the olden time. I stand today a dilapidated monument of the past. I am, indeed, deserted.
—Corinne Lillian Whaley, Nov. 26, 1882
Spotlight On: What Are Ghosts?
Ghosts have always played a part in the world’s gestalt—cultures from all over the world have stories of spirits appearing throughout their mythologies, histories, and belief systems. From man’s earliest cave drawings, spiritlike entities have been illustrated giving messages or appearing from the sky. Why do ghosts appear at their own tragic accident scenes for an eternity to give warnings from beyond the grave? Why, when people least expect it, do spirits materialize and pass by unaware of their surroundings as though conducting everyday business … and then fade into a wall? Are they all here to finish off unfinished business? Or are we seeing something else?
What are ghosts? What if we’ve been trying to apply a single word—ghost—to time travelers, doppelgängers, people popping in and out of parallel universes, and even remote viewers? What if people die and just move on to another universe where they have the opportunity to touch our lives every once in a while? Brilliant minds such as Carl Jung and Thomas Edison believed that if we could just find the right way to think, dream, or build an amazing communication device we’d be able to touch the Other Side with ease. Jung kept a chair in his study for the spirit of his dead wife to sit in when she visited, had a weakness for séances, and claimed to have seen UFOs. He also believed in a dream tapestry where we all go at night and meet in our sleep—threads of our own dreams interwoven with others—group dreaming. Edison’s parents were Spiritualists and conducted séances in his boyhood home; he believed he could build a machine to contact the dead.
These men were the thinkers of their day—they allowed themselves to think out of the box and accept what they’d perhaps seen to influence the projects they chose to develop. They, like us, were seeking the truth and scientific verification. It wasn’t such a big deal back in the day for scientists to believe in life after death, or at least
