Old Town’s ghostly legend
Few structures in San Diego are as historically important as the stately brick Whaley House, which has functioned as a granary, the county’s courthouse, the region’s first commercial theater and various businesses including a general store, ballroom, billiard hall, school and polling place since 1857.
According to the Travel Channel and Life Magazine this building is the number one most haunted house in the nation. The earliest documented ghost is Yankee Jim. In 1852 James Robinson was accused of trying to steal a boat, severely beaten, then hanged on this site. The gallows were too short for the lanky man, and it took 45 minutes for him to slowly strangle. Pioneer Thomas Whaley (HQ5) witnessed the event, but it did not dissuade him from buying the lot and building a family home. Soon after the couple and their children moved in, heavy footsteps were heard moving about the house. Some visitors have reportedly encountered Whaley himself. A former curator noted, “We had a little girl perhaps five or six years old who waved to a man she said was standing in the parlor. We couldn’t see him. But often children’s sensitivity is greater than an adult’s.”
Whaley may haunt the house because of a $385 debt left unpaid by the county. After a lengthy fight, in 1871 the records from the old courthouse were seized in the dead of night while Thomas was away on business. Officials broke in, pushed his wife Anna aside and loaded the records into a wagon. In 1964 TV personality Regis Philbin reported Anna’s specter after he noticed something “filmy white looking like an apparition” on the wall. The Whaleys’ daughter Violet also died here in 1885, reportedly by her own hand. Animal ghosts linger, too. One parapsychologist spotted a fox terrier with ears flapping running down the hallway. The Whaleys owned a terrier named Dolly Varden.
The haunted house sits quietly on San Diego Avenue at the corner of Harney Street. For more information visit whaleyhouse.org or call the museum shop at (619) 297-7511.