The Whaley House was the home to one of San Diego’s first residents. Thomas Whaley and family built and then inhabited this home, using it also as a General Store, the County Courthouse, and even rented the upper floor space to a theater troupe at one point. Misfortune met the family at every turn. Several deaths of their children, one by suicide, plagued this group.
I’m not going to give history of the house, as it is readily available ont ghe internet. It is registered as a Historical Landmark with the State of California, being one of two “officially” certified haunted locations (The other being the Winshester House in San Jose).
Dozens of T.V. shows ghost hunting reality T.V., and even Regis Philbin recorded ghostly sightings at the house. It is open for tours most days, and a fascinating bit of local history.
We have had several interactions at the house. My first visit was with my daughters and their friends from High School to see what it was all about. We canught a pretty good likeness of Thomas Whaley looking out from the kitchen window at us posing in front of the window.*
I returned with my wife Annamarie a few years later, and lo and behold, we saw the same image of Thomas at the same window, but in a different place. *
Each room in the house’s doorway is covered in plexiglass, so that you can see in but not actually enter and touch things. I’m sure the reflections off the plexiglass have accounted for about 98% of the ghostly images that people report.
To the general public the house is almost impossible to “Ghost Hunt”, as San Diego Avenue is a huge tourist attraction with many raucus restaurants, bars, shops and entertainment going on. Recording sound is near impossible, and visually, aside from the pictures I described we have not seen anythiong opout of the ordinary. We will continue to study this house and update with any new evidence.
I have attached a photo gallery of our many trips to the house.
* The original pictures taken are buried somewhere on my home server, I will update the site with them when i locate them. I have included them in the photo album, but those are copies previously posted to Facebook, and the degeneration makes it impossible to see the image we saw. – Stay tuned.
