Good morning, friends and followers, and I hope it finds you in the mood for spooks! Negatrite opened this can of worms and C.W. scooped out a handful, so I’m diving in to get my share before they’re all gone! For those who don’t know, San Diego, the city on the southwestern corner of the USA and a stone’s throw from Mexico, has a rich Spanish and Mexican heritage that predates its “American” culture, whatever that means, and much of it involves haunted places.

San Diego was originally founded on a hill overlooking the San Diego River, now a mostly dry flood control channel. The city we know today was built several miles south of the old settlement, meaning the opportunity was presented and taken to do a great deal of preservation of the original site. Naturally, cemeteries abound, and stories of spooky encounters abound with them. Some of the old buildings harbor other-worldly residents as well.

The most famous is, of course, the Whaley House. A Greek revival residence, the Whaley House was constructed in 1857 by New York native Thomas Whaley. He and his wife Anna moved into the house in August of that year and almost immediately after taking

possession of their new home, the Whaleys reported heavy footsteps throughout the house which they believed to be the ghost of James “Yankee Jim” Robinson who had been hanged on the property for stealing a boat. In the 167 years since, sightings and “hearings” of supernatural entities have never let up. The house has been featured in several documentaries, and Regis Philbin, when he was a earning his stripes doing human interest stories around San Diego claimed to have felt a presence there during a short piece on the house. It may be the most haunted piece of real estate in California, rivaling the Winchester House in San Jose.

Another famous haunting is that of the world-renowned Hotel del Coronado, and its ghost has a name as well. Kate Morgan was an American housemaid in her twenties who checked into room 502 under the name Lottie A Bernard from Detroit. She was found five days later on an exterior staircase, dead of a gunshot wound to the head. The coroner found the cause to be suicide, but skeptics claim the bullet didn’t match the gun found in her hand.

To this day, Kate Morgan is thought by locals to haunt the hotel, and the hotel website has an entire page about her. Hotel del Coronado offers tours of Room 502, the room in which Kate stayed. Room 502 is the most requested room at the Hotel.

Some lesser-known sites are the Davis-Horton House, the oldest structure still standing in the modern city of San Diego. Its ghosts are said to be of the patients who died there during its ten years as a hospital. In the Horton Grand Hotel’s room 309, guests are treated to shaking beds, flickering lights, and loud footsteps during the night. Old Point Loma Lighthouse was constructed at the crest of the peninsula that shelters San Diego Bay. When constructed it was severely isolated and often shrouded in fog. It’s said that a chill of isolation can come over visitors exploring its rooms and tower. For the record, I grew up right down the road and have been there many times over the course of sixty years, and I’ve never felt it, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. “Lola” haunts room 10 of the Gold Rush Hotel in Julian, a tiny town in the local mountains that enjoyed a brief boom during the gold rush. Even the museum ship USS Midway is said to be haunted, and this by the curator himself. In fairness, if hauntings are real, any old ship that’s seen a lot of service is a likely candidate to host one.

And of course, no tour of spooky San Diego would be complete without a word about the Proctor Valley Monster. This is a cryptid linked to Proctor Valley Road, essentially an unlit farm road connecting the Eastlake community with Jamul. The creature is described as either a bigfoot-like hominid, or alternately a “disarranged cow-like” bovine. The monster has been the subject of a supernatural comic book series titled Proctor Valley Road, and the nearby Bonita Museum & Cultural Center claims to have an unknown humanoid footprint of a creature on display. Many locals cite this as concrete evidence.

Apparently, the legend began in 1947 with some middle-school boys who began spreading stories of a “monster.” This was farmland back then and it wouldn’t be unusual for children to encounter a decomposing carcass and mistake it, honestly or maliciously, for the work of a monster. Said monster has morphed into the culprit in one of the classic urban legend stories, that of the kids out necking. The boyfriend, for whatever reason, gets out of the car and doesn’t return. The girl gets out as the sun is coming up and finds his mangled corpse hanging in a nearby tree. My take on that is that it should be noted that every city, town, and village has a version of this story, and this wasn’t part of the PVM’s M.O., but was added to the monster’s story to give it a more chilling aspect, or perhaps to give the urban legend more credibility. Either way, though, who’s up for a midnight ride?

So this concludes my tour of some of San Diego’s more haunted places. What do you think? What are some of your local legends? Pull up a chair and join the discussion; it’s always dark in here!