The Haunting of Clarke Mansion

There is a place at the intersection of sixteenth Thancastro Street in Oakland, California. At that very spot, overlooking a stretch of I ninet eighty, there stands three Victorian houses that were built in the nineteenth century. There used to be a fourth house. It may have been the reason behind one of the most haunting poltergeist stories I have ever heard. The San Francisco Chronicle featured stories from residents of those three remaining houses. In an article published on Halloween nineteen ninety seven, Cindy Chan was plagued by nightmares of a ghostly woman in her room. Tom Catchpoor had a cat who suddenly started acting possessed, drooling, behaving erradically, and eventually jumping off the balcony to its death. Ida Lewis had lived in her home since nineteen sixty three, but her story was actually inherited from her late mother, who lived in the missing Victorian house. This one had been demolished in the nineteen seventies to make room for the freeway. AIDA's mother claimed that the house was haunted. That house was known as a Clark Mansion. Some people, like Cindy, Tom and Ida have claimed that the intersection at sixteenth Dan Castro is haunted, but none of their stories compared to the events of April eighteen seventy four. For three nights, the mansion's residents, their friends, and strangers who had heard of the hauntings were mesmerized by the paranormal activity within the Clark Mansion. But then, just as quickly as it had been thrust into the public eye, the Clark family and their mansion disappeared back into obscurity. While researching this story, we found a pamphlet written by the owner of this mansion soon after the events unfolded, and his story has been studied and challenged. Today, I'm going to tell you about the terrifying poultergeist events at the Clark Mansion. My name is Edwin, and here is a horror story. The Clark Mansion was named after the owner, Thomas Brown o' clark. Thomas's legacy was a home that bore his name. When I try to find out more about him, I could only find information related to the Clark Mansion hauntings. That information was pretty sparse. What we do know is that Thomas had a wife and two children. We also know that Thomas believed in Ghosts. A few years after the Clark Mansion hauntings, he published this pamphlet I mentioned that supposedly contained the words of the late George Washington. The pamphlet is available through the Digital Library of Congress Archives and it reads as follows. The main contents of this pamphlet were written by Washington in eighteen sixty eight using the mediumship of Missus M. J. Up. It is my mission to give it to the world like its author, and needs no introduction. Every page bears the impress of him who in earth life was noted for truthfulness. It comes in good time as a message of love, teaching of the spirit in a spirit world as tangible realities and a God of love everywhere. In the introduction, Thomas also mentions a preface that he apparently requested Washington relay through Missus Southham Hendy ten years after the initial transmission. Anyways, after the events of April eighteen seventy four, Thomas wrote a pamphlet in which he gives his account of the hauntings. He refers to the hauntings as the Oakland Ghost. According to Thomas, the Oakland Ghost first appeared late at night on April twenty third, eighteen seventy four. At the time of the hauntings, a Clark family was leasing the nine room mansion to a Missus F and er sister, a mister O, and a mister B. Around eleven thirty that first night, a doorbell rang. Thomas had already turned in for the night, but he got out of bed to answer the door. There was no one outside, so he just returned to bed. The doorbell rang a second time, once again no one was there. This time. On the way back to his room, Thomas ran into mister B, who had also heard the ringing of the doorbell. The two men said good night and returned to the respected bedrooms. They hadn't separated long before there was a rattling coming from the dining room. Thomas and mister B reunited in the dining room to investigate. Just like with a doorbell, they found nothing, no one that could have been the source of the sound, but they did notice a couple of unusual things though, an unlocked the window and a chair lying in the middle of the parlor. The combined noise is had awoken the rest of the household, but eventually all the Clerk Mansion residents returned to their bedrooms, which is when another loud noise came from the parlor. Thomas got out of bed a third time. He was joined by mister O and B. Thomas's daughter, Helen or Nelly as he calls her in the pamphlet, also came down from her room. As she descended the stairs to join the other three, a basket full of three hundred dollars silver pots and silverware rose from the bureau at the top of the stairs, and it hurled itself toward her. Thankfully, Nellie was fine. Amazingly, so was a silver None of the pieces were damaged. After taking stock of the flying silver, the four of them heard a noise coming from mister O's room. He noticed that his watch was lying under a towel on a chair, even though he remembered leaving it in a waistcoat pocket on his bed. Thomas and mister B were initially skeptical, but their skepticism flew out the window, so to speak, when the watch soared from the chair and hit mister B. The three of them plus Nelly returned to the dining room to talk about what had just happened, and while sitting in the dining room, the group watched an oak chair rise about a foot off the ground and start spinning. The chair traveled about ten feet before landing. At this point, the leading theory was that the hauntings were a series of pranks by a higher power. Thomas was a Christian and his companions probably were two. He guessed that either God or the devil was behind the Oakland ghost. The next disturbance was a loud noise in the hall. All four of them followed the sound. They found a box containing twenty pounds of coal. The box had been sitting in the upper hall. The noise he had heard was a box being flung over the baluster of the main staircase. While they were in the hall staring at the box, the four witnessed an upholstered chair flied down the stairs from its normal resting place in the upper hall. Someone then went to wake up the other five residents, and everyone gathered in the dining room with the Oakland ghosts then manifested itself again. An oak chair rose and flew across the dining room, as if showing off in front of the entire household. The residents returned to the rooms after a period of calm, but as soon as everyone was back in their beds, the mansion began to shake, and from the rooms each clerk mansion residence turned knocking for several minutes. They briefly gathered in missus f and her sister's room before returning to bed. Once again. From their bedroom, Tomas and his wife heard something in the dining room. Thomas had committed to stay in his room for the rest of the night, but another sound from the parlor drew him from bed. Three chairs lay in the middle of the room, and furniture was overturned in the dining room too. Thomas declared, for the Oakland ghost's benefit that he wasn't going to put any of the furniture back. Apparently the spirit took that as a challenge. For the first night's grand fernale, the front door was wrenched off its hinges. Thomas given and he and some of the others worked together to put the door back. Afterwards, they went back to the rooms and were finally able to get to sleep, but it was now close to two in the morning. Thomas doesn't share much of the next day in his account. His next entry takes place in the evening of April twenty fourth, close to eight thirty that night, Nellie headed to bed. On her way to her room, an upholstered chair at the top of the stairs moved on its own to block her path. This at the household on Edge, the hauntings were starting hours earlier. While the rest of the Clark mansioned residents talked about what to do and how to endure another night with the Oakland Ghost, they heard a crash in the hall. They found that another chair from the upper hall had flung itself down the stairs without fear. Nellie stepped into mister O's near by a room where, if you remember, the Oakland Ghost had manifested the previous night in the form of a flying watch. She demanded that the furniture get its flying over with then and there. In response, chairs in the room started flying around in all directions. Thomas set out to contact a family friend who had visited earlier in the day. This friend asked Thomas to let him know if any more hauntings occurred in the night, and so he returned to the mansion with this friend plus four others who had tanked along. But to the guests disappointment, did a half hour passed without anything out of the ordinary happening. Then they heard rattling from the staircase. It was the upholstered chair it from its spot in the upper hall. For the second time that night, the group of six found another one of the chairs on the upper hall had been thrown over the ballusters hard enough to dent a wall on the lower level. After that, Thomas's guest left, signaling an end to the second night of hauntings. The next morning, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article about the Oakland Ghost. This article was actually where the term originated. Hundreds of readers flocked to the Clark Mansion in the hopes of witnessing the hauntings. The Chronicle reporter who wrote the article visited the mansion too. Thomas agreed to give him an interview, and throughout the day the Clark Mansion household hosted friends and acquaintances, some of whom were still around. At nine pm, when the final night of hauntings began, Thomas and his guests heard noises in the dining room. There they found Nelly and missus F's husband. The duo claimed the noises had come from below them. Next the upholstered chair from the upper hall repeated its performance from the previous night. Then the ringing of a bell could be heard throughout the mansion, followed by the clanging of another bell from the kitchen. The bell stopped, but the Oakland ghost was far from done. Two boxes, a chair, and a bag were thrown over the balusters from the upper hall. The noise coming from inside the mansion was loud enough to be heard by the lurkers outside, making them rowdier. The Clark Mansion was starting to feel more and more like a home invaded by powers beyond the residence control. The upholstered chair in the upper hall rose again. Thomas had enough of this particular chair's antics and put it in mister o'srum, which was closer to the top of the staircase. Some of the residents voiced concerned that the moving chair would free the bureau, which usually sat behind it, but Thomas ignored him. Sure enough, the bureau tumbled down the staircase, damaging the balusters. The bureau itself remained undamaged. Thomas relented and moved to the upholstered chair back to its spot in front of the bureau. The next series of phenomena seemed to be targeting mister Oh, the residents and their guests. Her noises from his room found several chairs lying haphazardly in the middle of the room. Later, a chair that mister O was sitting in started to rise with him still in it. After that, mister Otis haided to turn in for the night. However, around midnight, he came back out of his room, too nervous to sleep. At that point, the lurkers outside had gone home for the night, as had most of the guests inside, except for five who had requested to spend the night in the mansion. One of those five guests witnessed a ninety pound trunk hit the wall and whiz past him. Mister O said that the trunk was his, it had been inside his bedroom when he came back downstairs, and he had closed the door when he left. Mister b and Nelly confirmed that the door had been closed the whole time. Two of the five remaining visitors decided to leave after that. According to Thomas, none of the Clark mansioned residents were afraid of the phenomenon taking place in their home. Tired and annoyed, yes, but not afraid if anything about his story is made up, I would say it's this one that said if he was lying or stretching the truth. Thomas didn't dare to pretend that the last phenomenon of the night didn't scare him or anyone else. It was around one am and most of the residents had gone to bed. Thomas, his wife, and some of their guests were still awake, sitting in the dining room when all of a sudden, the entire mansion was filled with bright light. A woman's scream was heard from the hall, and Thomas's words, it sounded like quote the last wail of despair from the regions of Hell itself end quote. The Clark Mansion residents were left with this final impression of the three night haunting. Friends and strangers came back to the mansion the following night, hoping to see and hear more. Even a medium came and conducted a seance that lasted for hours, but it was no use. The Oakland ghost was gone. Reputable people started researching, and I have all that for you up next stay with me. The rest of Thomas's pamphlet addresses the skepticism surrounding the Clark mansion case. The case was thoroughly investigate by a committee made of three prominent local figures, University of California professor doctor Joseph Leecante, the First Congressional Church of Oakland's pastor Reverend J. K. McLean, and lawyer W. W. Crane. These men interviewed eyewitnesses and put together a three hundred and sixty page report of the hauntings. Thomas insisted that the report not be published. Apparently Lekante let Thomas have a final say on whether the report would go to print. Thomas didn't want it out there in the public eye because well, the report contradicted his account. The committee claimed that the hauntings were likely pulled off by one of the Borders, specifically mister b because he was often absent when the hauntings occurred. Thomas rejected this conclusion and accused the committee members of trying to prove this theory instead of actually listening to the eyewitness accounts. Of course, Thomas himself may have been biased in his tendency to believe in the supernatural. His common belief in the nineteenth century, supported by a popular religious and political movement called spiritualism. The movement itself started in the eighteen forties when sister Maggie and Kate Fox of Hydesville, New York, became famous for communicating with the dead. Spiritualism's main tenant was that our loved ones are still around in the form of ghosts. It was the birth of mediumship. The Fox sisters engage in physical mediumship, which means that they communicated through methods that were observable to others, like knockings and stuff like that. There is also mental mediumships, which refers to communication with the medium alone. Missus el Pam Hendy likely engaged in mental mediumship when the ghosts of George, Martha and Mary Washington communicated with her. Spiritualism was referred to as quote scientific religion, and seances were treated as empirical proof that ghosts were real. Some famous spiritualists were Victoria Woodhall, the first woman to run for the US presidency, and William Mumler, a photographer who famously photographed Mary Todd Lincoln with the faint visage of the late Abraham Lincoln standing behind her. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a spiritualist too. Spiritualism also gave rise to plenty of fake mediums, like in eighteen eighty eight, Maggie Fox herself confessed that she and her sister faked the knockings by cracking their knuckles and joints. The medium that conducted a seance in the Clark Mansion on April twenty sixth could have been a fake, yet Thomas readily admits that nothing came of that seance. The rest of the phenomena at the Clark Mansion occurred independently of a medium, a fake one or otherwise. Thomas and the other eyewitnesses could have been lying, but the committee didn't accuse the interviewees of lying. Their conclusions were that the residents and visitors of Clark Mansion did see the things they claimed to see. The question is in if the events really happened. It's how we're always looking for normal explanations first for every little thing that people were reporting. That's Lloyd Auerback, a parapsychologist and director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations. He was kind enough to share with us some insights about this case given what we know. One hundred and fifty years later, the TV shows Portray Ghost Hunting or this kind of investigation is a completely unscientific venture. Somebody were to actually look at the research that is conducted in the laboratory work, you would find that some of the most rigorous controlled experiments in all of science are conducted by folks in parapsychology, partly because we're paranoid of the skeptics. The nineties, Lloyd was approached by the San Francisco Chronicle about an article on the Clark mansion. He suggested that the open ghost might not have been a ghost at all, but a poultry guy. The term poulter guyst truly translates to the idea of a noisy ghost or mischievous ghost if you take the word literally. But that labeled us back to sixteenth century Germany at least, so it goes back quite a way. In the twentieth century, researchers including Nandor Fodor and later William Roll, actually figured out the model of what a poltergeist is. Again, it's purely physical activity in the case, not sightings of ghosts or anything else. And in those instances it tends to be what we call psychokinesis or mind over matter, coming from the unconscious mind of one of the inhabitants in the house, or somebody who's working in the environment, if it's a workplace for that sometimes stress and tens for certain people builds up enough where that becomes the release of that stress, as opposed to other things that people can do, you know, with their temper tantrums. Lloyd uses the term poultergeist agent to refer to the living person whose unconscious energy creates the phenomenon. This poltergeist theory accounts for the atypical nature of the Clark Mansion case. Many of the hauntings we cover on Horror Story aard tied to a death, a curse, or something similar. Thomas brought in his account that there hadn't been any reported murders in the mansion. He doesn't mention curses or anything else typical of a haunted house, but given what we know about his belief in the supernatural, it's safe to assume that Thomas would have looked into those possibilities too. The account of the female operation at the end of the three day haunting complicates Lloyd's poultrygeist theory. We had to look to whether or not that figure is interactive at all, or could have been a kind of an echo of someone who lived there in the past, you know, somebody who was there in the past, that she showed up at the end, almost signaling the very end of the phenomena, might make it kind of a psychic projection. My very first case was a poltergeist case, as it turned out, although there was a figure scene by a couple of members of the family, and it turned out that that was a psychological image relating to what caused the poltergeist event to begin with. That one of the other family members was picking up from the person who was actually hallucinating it, So it's almost a projection that they had. But you know, everybody has a little bit of psychic ability. In fact, the most common kind of paranormal experience people have when it comes to ghostly stuff is what haunting. They call it a residual haunting. On TV, it's been called place memory psychic imprints. It seems like people living in places leave emotions behind, We leave kind of recording in the environment, We leave information behind, and those of us who are alive we can pick it up. The apparition could have been a psychic projection as opposed to a Poulstergeist. A jarring detail of Thomas's account is a bright light before the appearance of the female apparition. It turns out that detail also lines up with ghost sightings. If they're experiencing the phenomena, It's possible that we may not, but if they're there, they may experience it while we're there, so we can do an observation of what's going on. It really makes it a lot easier for us to understand what's happening and if the phenomena is connected to them. So, for example, in a poltergeist case, if one of them is actually causing the phenomena or creating what's going on, sending them out of the house means nothing's going to happen, So you really want them present for that sort of thing. And if the ghost, for example, we've had, you know, there are cases where the apparition of the ghost that is seen is a relative, or it's someone connected to them who they knew, or somebody connecting to them in some way, shape or form, and having them around also really helps with that. Thomas's accounts of the Clark Mansion hauntings is invaluable to this case. Well. Like Lloyd said, it's hard to do more than theorize. When all of the eyewitnesses are dead and the mansion is no more, some residual energy might still linger at sixteenth and Astro. More than likely, the Oakland Ghost, whatever it was, is long gone. Up next, check out True Scary Story to hear true accounts from people just like us as they share their stories with us. You can find True Scary Story over on your podcast app to give us ideas for topics for horror story. Right in, I'll leave my contact information in the description of this episode. Don't forget to follow and subscribe and to get at free episodes. Scary Plus is waiting for you over at scaryplus dot com or on our Apple podcast channel. Thank you very much for listening. Let's yeah sooner.