San Diego Vacation Part 2: Ghosts of Old Town

By: Teri Bermudez

     Old Town San Diego encompasses not only the original plaza area, but also the numerous streets surrounding the plaza. On one of these streets is the famous Whaley House. The Whaley House was built in 1857 by Thomas Whaley, great-grandson of Alexander Whaley, a gunsmith who participated in the Boston Tea Party. Since the opening of the house, as a museum, in 1960 weird things have been going on. Many visitors and workers have reported seeing ghosts. These reports have given the house the prestige as being the most haunted house in America. Knowing these legends, we decided, after wandering around Old Town's plaza, to head down the street and see if we could catch one of these residents in action.
     The tour of the Whaley House begins in the gift shop next door. Every imaginable ghost related book and device can be purchased there. Once we purchased our pricey tickets we headed into the house. The downstairs contains, not only living quarters, but a court house and general store. We felt no other worldly presence.

That's me with Andrew in the court house.

     Upstairs are bedrooms and a theater. Again, none of us felt a presence. I felt jipped. It wasn't until I got home and was looking at my photos that I noticed something. Check it out.

Thomas and Anna's Master Bedroom

If you look closely at the seat (right on the wicker) you can see someone sitting there. It is really creepy. But, as I said, it wasn't until much later that this appeared to me, so I was a little bummed and hungry when we exited the house. Hunger won over.

     One thing Old Town San Diego isn't short on is restaurants. We chose Cafe Coyote, a Mexican restaurant with women making authentic tortillas out front. The food was scrumptious. After filling our bellies, we decided to wander around and check out some of the many, many gift shops and curiosities. 

     Due to the lack of ghostly apparitions at the Whaley House, we chose for our final stop of the day: El Campo Santo Cemetery. Many of the tombstones were for the people we had been hearing about all day. While being quite interesting, we again didn't see anything out of the ordinary.