Ghosthunting Southern California. Sally Richards

      The Whaley House is incredibly loved by the community and honored for the pioneering family that once lived there—and it’s one of America’s most haunted buildings.

      ANYONE INTERESTED IN THE PARANORMAL has heard of the infamous Whaley House, one of the most visited of California’s historic houses. It’s also a home occupied by spirits—the entire Whaley family and their pets—seem to have made an appearance at one time or another. Built in 1857 for the sum of $10,000 in materials and labor, the wood-and-brick structure was extravagant for Thomas Whaley, a man with big dreams and modest means.

      The Whaley family became pioneers in the San Diego area. Born in New York City in 1823, the enterprising Thomas Whaley came to San Diego via San Francisco, where he had a storefront on Montgomery Street during the forty-niner Gold Rush days. His store was successful, perhaps too much so, as it burned down in what was suspected arson. This incident became typical of the Whaley family’s luck. Thomas Whaley was never a wealthy man for any period of time; his luck seemed to ebb and flow in between mysterious fires and family tragedies. His wife, Anna Eloise DeLaunay, bore him six children, none of whom carried the family name forward as Whaley probably envisioned they might when he made the harrowing sea journey to San Francisco.

      When Thomas and Anna arrived in Old Town, they found little societal infrastructure. The area was rough-and-tumble—actually, downright lawless—and so unlike San Francisco or New York City. Life on State Street was difficult at best, but they made a life worth living; existing journals and letters show their love for one another.

      The land where the Whaley House now stands, purchased for $1.50, was once where a gallows stood, its rope bringing swift justice to those criminals whose bodies were then buried on the same street just a few blocks away (see El Campo Santo chapter). Despite the hardships, the family seemed to thrive for years. Just as Whaley was gaining traction, his store was destroyed in a fire—again. Some say the work of an arsonist. In 1867, he moved the family back to San Francisco while he worked a lucrative job in Alaska and was able to support them in the lifestyle to which they’d grown accustomed.

      In 1869, Thomas Whaley leased several of the rooms of Whaley House and turned the unused space into revenue; the largest room of the home was converted into a county courtroom—it had also been a dairy, a Sunday school, a morgue, and a store. The rooms upstairs were converted into a theater. Later, the family was once again reunited in San Diego, and everything was going well for the family, but not for the town.

      There was much political upheaval in Old Town as its role as the county seat was ripped away. Soon it became just another colorful neighborhood in the weave of the county’s tapestry. Whaley became a shadow of the man who’d arrived in California to fulfill his destiny and take his place in history. Once known informally as the “Mayor of San Diego” and appointed president of the San Diego City Board of Trustees, he saw his life begin its downward spiral. In 1871, the county clerk rode to the Whaley home courthouse and forcibly took the city records that had been stored there.

      On January 5, 1882, Whaley’s daughters Violet and Anna Amelia had a wonderful double wedding; Anna Amelia married her first cousin, John T. Whaley, and Violet wedded George T. Bertolacci, whom she divorced a little more than a year later. Violet suffered a great deal of clinical depression before she took her own life in 1885 (see Creole Café chapter). With the death of their dear Violet and their son Thomas Jr., Thomas and Anna wanted to leave the home’s memories behind, so they moved to what is now downtown. Whaley became an employee of city government and retired in 1888 and passed away in his downtown home in 1890 at the age of sixty-seven. Anna Amelia Whaley passed away in Modesto in 1905.

      Thomas Whaley had rented out their home on San Diego Avenue, and it had fallen into great disrepair. In 1909, tourism took hold of San Diego as everyone readied for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona had planted a wildly romantic view of Southern California in the rest of the world’s imagination (see Rancho Camulos chapter). So people continued to come to Southern California and vacation up and down the coast. Thomas Whaley’s son Francis undertook making the home a tourist attraction; he posted signs outside promoting its history and entertained visitors with his guitar on the porch of his childhood home and charged a small fee for a tour. The Whaley matriarch, Anna, along with Corinne Lillian, Francis, and George, one again took up residence in the old Whaley House in 1912. In 1913, the family suffered the loss of Anna at age eighty. A year later, Francis Whaley passed away, followed by George Whaley in 1928. Corinne Lillian Whaley continued living in what must have been a house of spirits by then until her death in 1953.

      There’s not much about the Whaley family in today’s history books; even the family burial plot is not especially ornate or conspicuous (see Mount Hope chapter). If it were not for Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO) and the vision they had to preserve the home Whaley left behind, the family name might not be known at all today.

      New to the area in 2002, I took a tour of the Whaley House because of my own love for historic architecture. I was taking pictures with my cell phone from all angles, but stopped dead in my tracks as I looked at the digital photo I’d taken while shooting up the stairs. There, midway up the stairs, was the figure of a little boy in period clothing staring down at me. I looked at the picture, at the stairs, and back at the camera. I immediately went upstairs to search the rooms for the child who seemed to have disappeared the moment I took his picture. I found no one. I went downstairs and showed people the photo and asked them if they’d seen the child come down. There was quite a stir, and in all the excitement I’d forgotten to save the photo. During the time my phone was being passing around, the photo was deleted, but the memory of the child dressed in Victorian clothing sitting halfway up the stairs and looking quite forlorn was not.

      As I formed my Meetup group, Ghosts Happen, and brought them to the location (see Creole Café chapter), I began a rapport with the people responsible for raising the money to pay the bills every month. Each of them has their own stories of the home, not because they’re gullible people or because they’re prone to hallucinations, but because, I believe, the Whaleys have adopted them as family. The stories I hear are not scary or bloodcurdling; instead, they are rather caring.