the Whaley House.”
It was at that point I realized I hadn’t tried to identify the spirit I’d seen. Although it had been a while, I had taken down some notes that night in my journal. I went back and looked at the notes and dug around on the Internet to find pictures of Thomas Whaley. In the end, I decided the man I saw might not have been Thomas Whaley. My apparition was a tall guy, his boots were on long legs. He was also dressed more in the style of Doc Holliday, with a duster, boots, button-up shirt, and one of those old riverboat-gambler kind of hats popular in the mid-1800s. His face was also broader, with a full salt-and-pepper beard, and he had stunning blue eyes.
Julie Kitterman, a sales associate at Four Winds, has also experienced a number of things at the store. “We had an antique chief’s rug,” says Kitterman. “The rug seemed angry about being here, and people would come up and make comments to us about it not having good energy. There was also this bin of things in that room, and to get the container out the door you’d have to hold it way up—and we would have seen someone do that. But, one day it was just gone.”
Kitterman is used to smelling the cigar and the sweet perfume wafting through the store, but she also remembers a mobile, but centralized, foul-smelling odor that came and hung out in the store for a while. The store has a lot of sage in case a room needs to be “cleansed” of negative energy that comes to visit every once in a great while; the spirit energy attached to the smell finally left after they burned enough sage, and the spirit probably realized the losing battle it was waging against the store’s usual good cheer and positive environment. There is a lot of spirit activity in this store as many of the store’s more precious artifacts are vintage Native American art; one can literally pick up a piece of vintage art and feel the decades it has lived and the artisan’s energy first put into it.
“There used to be a stand out front, and the woman’s daughter used to run it—she was a teenager,” says Kitterman. “One day she came in and told us a little boy had come out of the store who was about seven. He was dressed in period clothing, and he talked to her for a little bit and told her his name was Sebastian, and then he just disappeared. Sometimes when I lock up at night, the light in the bathroom will go on and I’ll have to go back in and turn it off. One night that happened, and I went to open the door to turn off the light, and all of a sudden it felt like someone was keeping it from opening from the other side. Then the pressure from the other side let up, and I turned off the light and locked up.”
Carol DiBene, owner of Four Winds, began collecting Native American art in preparation for opening the store in 1992 with her husband, who had reconnected with his heritage at the Round Valley Reservation (Wailaki tribe), where his mother lived. DiBene’s love and knowledge of Native American arts continued to grow, and she knew she could do better than the shows she’d been doing—it was time to open a store. Her store has become one of the most stable and well-known stores in the Old Town community; you’ll often see people from all over the country shopping there and arranging to ship their items home.
“In the other building I would close up and hear someone come up, and I’d go to open the door—and there would be no one there,” says DiBene. “We’d also get a lot of cigar and sweet-smelling violet-like smells. There was a man who came in and filmed, and he captured seventeen different entities on his computer—and all of these different voices. People come in and sometimes I’ll mention Mr. Whaley to them, and then all of a sudden it will begin smelling like cigars, or sometimes lavender. They come and go as they want, but we’re not frightened of the spirits. It feels like we’re being watched over and protected by Mr. Whaley because we’re women; we’re good with having him—them—here. They’re not harming anyone—and this was their home first.”
CHAPTER 2
Creole Café
OLD TOWN SAN DIEGO
The dining room for the Creole Café (the main office and kitchen is in the next building to the right) is one of the oldest buildings in San Diego—and apparently has become some kind of vortex for paranormal activity.
WHEN ANNA AND CHARLES WHALEY decided to put down roots in what would become the heart of Old Town San Diego, it seems there was a plan to bring a bit of Louisiana to Southern California. Anna Whaley, of French descent, planted the majestic pepper trees outside her house in 1856. Her trees, and other New Orleans touches, were recognized by Mark Bihm more than 150 years later, drawing him to the next stage in his career. He was intrigued by the blind real estate ad that read “Deli in a parklike setting,” describing the historic building that shares the Whaley House courtyard.
“I wanted to open a restaurant, and I didn’t want to see concrete or cars,” Bihm says. He immediately came out to look at the property and fell in love with it; the place reminded him of his homeland—his family has been in Louisiana since 1750. “The New Orleans style of the Whaley House [see Whaley House chapter], the gas lamps, the pepper trees—it was kismet.” And the rest is history.
Bihm’s San Diego Creole Café is part of the historic courtyard that Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO) created from the buildings saved from demolition and painstakingly restored to preserve San Diego’s early history. The adopted buildings are now part of the family surrounding the historic Whaley House. What Bihm didn’t realize, but now knows very well, is that he was moving into one of America’s most haunted locations.
“I was raised a hard-shell Southern Baptist; my family wanted me to have the calling,” says Bihm, a Southern gentleman to the core. Instead of the ministry, Bihm went into corporate restaurant management, which eventually led him west to Baghdad by the Bay’s classic San Franciscan venue on Fisherman’s Wharf—and finally to San Diego, where he had fond memories of family vacations and the city’s Wild West history.
So what does Bihm say about ghosts? “I know the Bible, and it’s a good archetype for living, sure, but I’ve always wondered what the nuts and bolts of the afterlife are. Certainly using the scientific methods we have today we can perhaps find out more than we thought was possible about the afterlife. I think it would be good for our society to know … to be able to integrate this into our culture for a better outcome. Maybe knowing would give us hope.”
Mark Bihm (left) and Humberto Villegas in front of the Creole Café, sitting at their Día de los Muertos altar
Bihm and his life and business partner, Humberto Villegas, have both experienced many paranormal events in the buildings that house the Creole Café, moved from what was one of the oldest areas of San Diego called New Town, which is now part of San Diego’s downtown area. The two wooden structures with false facades definitely have a feeling about them, and many customers comment about their own experiences there.
Villegas has experienced the feeling of being watched. When they first moved into the building, he would sense someone walking up the path and into the building, but when he’d turn around there would be no one there.
“We’ve been here for eight years,” says Villegas. “Once, I was wiping down a table for the next guests when a woman here with another woman and a child said, ‘Is this building haunted? I definitely get the feeling there is someone else sitting here at our table.’ And that’s how it is for many people who come here. We get comments like that from tourists who don’t know the history of the Whaley House.”
One morning Bihm found himself in a not-so-typical paranormal event for Old Town. As we sat on the porch, he said,
