My friend Anne Marie recently went to the Whaley House Museum in San Diego and caught an orb (the most simple form a ghost can take) in one of her photos looking down the main stairway.  |
| The orb is at the bottom of the stairway |
Whaleyhouse.org said the earliest documented ghost at the Whaley House is "Yankee
Jim." James (aka Santiago) Robinson was convicted of attempted grand
larceny in San Diego in 1852, and hanged on a gallows off the back of a
wagon on the site where the house now stands. Heavy footsteps were heard
moving about the house. Whaley described them as sounding as though
they were made by the boots of a large man.Then there's the ghost of Mr. Whaley: Many visitors to the house have reported encountering Thomas Whaley himself. .
- The website says: The specter of Anna Whaley has also been reported, usually in the downstairs rooms or in the garden. In 1964, Mrs. Whaley's floating, drifting spirit appeared to [television personality Regis] Philbin.Other visitors have described seeing or sensing the presence of a woman in the courtroom. The site also says there's a ghost of a young girl and a spotted dog. There's a LOT going on in there!!!
 |
| Yankee Jim's Grave |
Anne Marie said: Violet
committed suicide in the “privy” (a.k.a. outhouse) after her husband,
whose intent was to marry her and then run away with the money she’d
inherit, left her. He bailed on her and never got the money. She’d been
prone to depression, and of course at that time, with no true
understanding of depression, and then this having happened to her, and
she was in her early 20’s (when a lot of mental illness decides to
emerge), she took her father’s gone, went out into the “privy” and shot
herself. So tragic!
I
stood over Yankee Jim’s grave and asked him to show himself to me
there. He didn't. I don’t think he was the orb in the house. The
archway that you see in the salon is the spot where he was hanged. The
thing about Yankee Jim was that he was 6’3” or so, and the gallows were
not set up for such a tall man, so when the bottom was released to hang
him, his neck never broke, and he hung there for about 40 minutes or so,
strangling to death.
My
gut instinct tells me that the orbs were women of the house. Possibly
Violet, Anna, or someone else. The feeling I get when I look at these
are not one of fear or happiness or really anything. They’re just kind
of there. Not good, not bad… just there. Like maybe a mother and 2
daughters??? Not sure.
The
courtroom gave me some pretty significant feelings. The feeling within the courtroom was not a
happy feeling. It’s hard to describe – it was like a feeling of
severity and harshness. Justice may have been carried out, but not
always, and I don’t think people’s outcomes there were necessarily fair.
The feeling was “stern” if
that makes any sense.
For more information: http://whaleyhouse.org/hauntedfolklore.htm
