The Ghosts of the Whaley House

One two, three, three, two three one two three. Well, I was just talking because I was thought we were going to do it three times. Oh, let's try it again. Ready, can you hear me? One two one two, one three one two three. We're lagging, We're wagging. It would No, I don't think we're lagging. I think we don't know how to count. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna count the three and your markets I go, ready on your marks, gets set one, It doesn't. I don't think we're lagging. I just think we're idiots. Welcome to Scary Mystery Surprise, where we talk about scary things that surprised us around the Internet. I'm Edwin, I'm Michelle. It's funny. I mean, I guess you know. I told you we were doing a hotted house. So it's funny to me that I did the Winchester House and now I'm doing another hatted house that I can actually vouch for that it's haunted. I thought you were going to say that I can also ruin. No. Actually I tried to ruin this one, and I couldn't find any evidence. In fact, I only found more of people having like weird stories about it. So and The house I'm talking about is the Waley House in old town San Diegs, San Diego. Okay, I've seen it from the outside. I've only seen it from the outside. If you're familiar, the Whaley House has been on maybe every haunted show ever in the US. I think they call it like the most haunted place in California. And you can also get a group on and go there for fourteen dollars, So if you need to go there, it's only fourteen dollars with your group on in a old town San Diego. Not sponsored. But I really did try to, Like I was doing like the Winchester deep dive on this one, and I was like, I didn't find any weird stories that were like, oh this is fake, Like, oh this is a thing. It's pretty interesting. So and then plus the places have like stories that kill it normally, like because I think like if it's a tourist location, I think there's like generally there might be something that kills it, you know, like you can find some sort of history that kills it a little bit, and it's just like you know, Winchester people have done a lot of myth busting in there. Granted, Winchester I'm a little like, yeah, now there might be energy there because everybody believes it's haunted, it's not necessarily what they think it is, which I think is probably true with a lot of haunting with the Waaley House, though that looks creepy. People did die, there was weird shit that happened there, and let all get into But I want to start with my ghost story there because I actually had an experience there, oh wow, which is very weird the audience. I don't know if you guys have picked up on that. I was like a photographer for fifteen years, you know, I always had a camera with me. Yeah, shocker. I had another career before podcasting. So anyway, I used to work at Taco Bell. I mean I used to work at well in Celebrity Pizza. I don't know if I can say the restaurant without them suing me. But I've met a lot of celebrities because I worked at a pizza restaurant, and sometimes they wouldn't wash their hands in the back. Not the celebrities, the staff. So just FYI, oh all, uh, no one will ever know. It's not like Taco Bell. It's no surprise. Yeah, actually Taco Bell everybody washed their hands, but in celebrity pizza, nobody washes their hands. Well sorry, I'm just remembering them where Taco Bell employees peede on lettuce like anyone was on the news or whatever. No, it was something really disgusting. Oh that's so gross, something really disgusting. I remember the drive through that day. They were like, don't peel on my lettuce. So the audience may or may not know this, but I was a photographer and artist for about fifteen years, so I always had a camera with me, and I was visiting with my friend. Shout out Maggie Sar, who's an avid listener of the show and probably will be thrilled to have her day mentioned in the podcast. I'm Maggie. We were exploring old Town and decided to go to the Wailey House and I think this was in like two thousand and eight. We're there, so we went in. The docent who was working the front was dressed in period garb and like gave us descriptions of every room. And you go upstairs and there's bedrooms that are blocked off by so you can look in, but you can't go into them. And I'm like snapping pictures of everything, and you know, one room was clearly a little boys room and the other was a little girls room because there was like a doll on the bed. I like snap pictures of both, and I'm you know, you walk through the upstairs, there's a room that was a theater and a courtroom, which is kind of weird, Like it's a weird blend of things, especially when you go upstairs there's bedrooms and then you go into this courtroom theater. Everyone wants some in their house. Yeah, it just like again, it makes me think of Night Court for some reason. It's like you just like if you were like if you live there now, you'd just be like, oh cool, let's go play Night Court. Guys. It's like you asked for it. But how many how many court room theaters does it have? So the doesn't gave us the history of the room. And we went back downstairs, and you know, I'm just taking pictures And as we went back downstairs, my camera stopped working. And it's a digital camera, right, so they don't jam. And I wasn't out a battery, but the shutter wouldn't click down, Like the shutter on the top just wouldn't click down what I know, and it was so weird and so I look at it and the camera had scrolled back twenty images to that picture of the doll on the bed, and like it wouldn't take another picture, and it like just it's still very weird. I mean, like I like like just to have it go back to the doll on the bed, and you didn't do it on your own. I knew how to use a camera, you know, Like I preface this by saying I was a photographer, so I knew how to use a camera. And you know, I'm on vacation, I'm absolent mindedly taking photos. I'm not scrolling and looking at them, you know, like I'm not hitting the because like on a digital camera, you have to hit the button scroll back like manual. Like on this camera, you had to scroll back manually to get to there. And I did not do that, and it couldn't have done it on its own. Like that's like the weird thing either. It's like to the doll, to the doll. It just scrolled back to the doll. I told the dose it at the front door, and she was like, oh, yeah, that happens all the time. What they like have weird things happen with digital stuff all the time in that house. And I was just like, okay, like that, it's like a really tame sperience. It was weird. It was weird. What did the doll look like? It was like just like kind of like a rag doll. It wasn't like a porcelain doll or anything. It was kind of like fabric doll on a bed. No, And I was So that's the thing that gets me is that everybody's like, oh, digital's forever. Digital is not forever. Guys. You lose the camera, you lose the chip, you lose the computer. You never see those photos. I have no idea where those photos are, like when and where two thousand and eight photos are haunted enough that someone could just walk through and have an experience like that's pretty haunted. Agreed. In eighteen fifty seven, Thomas Wyley began construction on his home where he and his wife Anna would raise their children. Like many other structures built in the eighteen hundreds, the house was the site of several other businesses, including a granary, a courthouse, a school, a general store, and San Diego's first commercial theater. Five years before the home was built, Thomas Waley witnessed a public execution, the hanging of a thief named James Yankee Jim Robinson on that property. The property that Thomas Waley bought was originally San Diego's gallows for execution, and at one point it had also been a graveyard. Is it weird that I'm excited about finding something like that? But anyway, I just think it's funny that Thomas Wyley witnessed Yankee Jim's execution because Yankee Jim went on to be possibly the first ghost of the house. According to the Los Angeles Herald, he murdered and robbed men, specifically at the mining camps to take their gold. A jury ordered James hung by the neck for his larceny charges of stealing a boat. So he stole a boat. James delivered a farewell speech to the crowd who came to witness his hagging. James told the crowd he was a good man and had given the gold to the less fortunate. And then there's a quote from the Los Angeles Herald that says he swung back and forth like a pendulum until he strangled to death. The gallows that hung Yankee Jim were constructed on a parcel of land that had once been a graveyard. That same parcel of land that Thomas Whaley was like, I've got to build all my businesses and my family home on this piece of property. So yep, that one, that one, that one there, I'm sure it was cheap a graveyard. You know. It just also probably cursed his family too. Later, Lillian Whaley also pointed out that her father told her that Yankee Jim was hung where the location between the archways separating the parlor and the study is. So when you walk in to their house, her father like could point out, imagine that it's like here in this spot of my house, this word the gallows used to be. I don't know why, but I thought like the gallows were like out in the yard and in the house. Was like you'd think that, but no, he built the house on where he saw Yankee Jim five years earlier, stopped breathing because he was swinging like a pendulum and strangling to death. Because that just screams peaceful home. Maybe you're just so like you don't believe in ghosts that you just like this is I'll just get cheap land it's fine. Oh. Also for paranormal nerds, the Whaley House sits on underground water source, which is said to magnify paranormal activities. Yep, energies travel through water sources and through water to streams and rivers. Yeah, so just FYI, that's I love that a graveyard was built on their gallows for execution and now a house and it's built on just a natural magnifier for paranormal activity. So the house was actually haunted while the Whalies lived there by Yankee Jim. They think Thomas Whaley would hear footstep that couldn't have been made by his dainty wife or young children, which I just thought was funny. Dainty, dainty wife, her little teeny feet. He concluded that it was the spirit of Yankee Jim haunting the residence. And while living at the house, he had three children, and actually one of his children, Thomas Junior, died of scarlet fever at only eighteen months old. So stuff isn't going great at this residence, you know, like you just like, eh, weird noises. Our child died. And then after Thomas Junior died less than a year later, Thomas Seniors General Storberg down by Arson and that was part of the house. In eighteen fifty nine, the family attempted to start over and they moved to San Francisco. They kept the property, but they moved to San Francisco, living the life to the most honestly, yeah, the most expensive places in California, Santiago and San Francisco. It's true. I mean, look, living the life back when everything was five dollars, you know. So they moved to San Francisco. They had three more kids, George, Violet, Lillian, and then I wrote, I just can't imagine pooping out children like that, pooping out there's too many kids. I mean, that's like six kids. I think you needed them, you know, for like backups for the economy. And in eighteen sixty eight, the family decided to move back to San Diego after an earthquake at San Francisco. So they decided to move back to the old homestead and make a go of it again. And this is really random, but this is on the Whaleyhouse dot org website. Basically the second they moved back. The Whaley House Theater was established in eighteen sixty eight when a guy named Thomas Tanner the leader. There's a lot of Thomas's, so bear with me. This is a different Thomas. The leader of the Thomas Tanner Troop, rented the upstairs from Thomas Whaley and set up the audience chamberer. I think it's probably what you could still see today for weekly entertainments. His daughter, Sola dad was going to be his leading lady. Tanner and his company packed one hundred and fifty people in for the first performance, and sadly, the curtain came down on the Tanner Troop too soon when Tanner dropped dead backstage after a performance one night soon after its opening. All good sides that the house isn't cursed, right, Okay, that place is cursed. I mean it's just it's just weird. So anyway, that happened when they moved back. But years go, Vibe Violet Whaley is an adult. She's a young woman. She marries a man named George. I kept saying it Berto Lassie, but that is so that is such an American like flat in Berto Lassie, Bertelosi, George Bertelosi, George Bertolosi, Georgia Bertolosi and Italian. I think she married George Tolosie However, two weeks into the marriage, her new husband left her in the middle of the night, never to be heard from again. What a curse. It's a curse. It's a serious curse. She would later learn that Bertilosi had been a con artist who only married her in hopes of acquiring a dowry. So it's a huge fucking dick. Humiliated by the betrayal and the backlash it caused to her reputation, Violet sunk into a deep, deep depression. In eighteen eighty five, Thomas Waley found his daughter Violet lying in a pool of blood. She had shot herself with his handgun. She had borrowed the poem from Thomas Hood's book of prose, Bridge of Size, and she'd written the suicide note of mad from Life's History swift to Death's Mystery, glad to be hurled anywhere, anywhere, out of this world. After Violet's death, Thomas was like, let's not live here anymore. He moved everyone to a house in what is now downtown San Diego. So they stayed in town, but they didn't stay in the house. So they knew at this point that the house is cursed. I mean, also just the shock of Violet's death would be enough, Like forget all the other weird shit that happened to the house. You wouldn't want to stay in that house. Thomas Whaley died in eighteen ninety. The remaining members of the family seemed to feel called back to the house after his death, so Frank Wiley and Anna and I think Lilian all moved back in to the house, the Whaley House. After Thomas died, Frank Whaley actually turned the house into a museum. He restored it and turned the house into a museum in nineteen twelve. It was like a tourist attraction. And then by nineteen I think it was fourteen, Anna Whaley, Frank Whaley had died in the residence of Natural Causes, so he made it into a museum and then passed away. Why after all the tragedy, why would you unless that guy just wants to make a business and start his museum. Maybe, but like, why do you need to live there to do that, you know, like prove by this time there abe you know, at any time investing in real estate, I'm assuming they probably were fine. There's always money in the banana stand, you know, there's always no there was real money in the banana stand. That was real. It was in the wallpaper. But anyway, onto the hauntings. Visitors have reported seeing a ghostly apparition of a woman in the hallway, dressed in a white gown, staring mournfully out the window. Some people have reported feeling at overwhelmed sadness in her presence. It really seems like the whole family still haunts the home. People have reported seeing a man in a top hat and frock coat silently observing them as they tour the house. Some people claim to your voices echoing in the halls even though no one is present. People can hear Yankee Jim's footsteps and feel a tightness in their throat when they walk across that threshold that I talked about earlier between the you know, those two rooms. People say they hear Thomas Junior the baby. They of course, you hear a baby crying, of course they you know, people see Violet's ghosts wandering around. People smell Anna Whaley's perfume and Thomas Whaley's cigar smoke. But no one's ever felt like a menacing presence or anything evil in the house. It just seems like the family that haunts together stays together. Oh. I mean it sounded like so heartwarming and night and then just haunts together. And that's the Whaley house. I might have said Whyley sometimes, but I really meant Whaley, So we'll just edit it Whaley, Whaley, Whaley Whaley. I just love that the Whalley family seems to still be together. They're all going through their own shit, but they're doing it together, and that's what's important as a family. I think. So this episode turned out to be very family values family I would go wholesome. I don't know, wholesome, Yeah, wholesome. Once again, Anna pooped out a lot of children and with a lot of children, but then again, you know, three of them didn't make it past their parents, so I guess you know, that's fifty success rate better than some colleges out there. Anyway, what are we going to talk talk about next week, Edwin? I don't know. I think it'll be a surprise. Bye, guys. Why