My house in Fresno, California

I bought a house about three years ago - a nice, if rather weird, house that had previously been used as a hospice and elder care facility. When the realtor showed it to us, she notified us, as required by state law, that people had died in the house. This didn’t particularly bother me - interacting with human remains is something that I have done routinely throughout my education and career, so if I was worried about being haunted or cursed I am likely way past the point of no return. Also, I have been present in hospice facilities during the death of family members, and that experience, while never pleasant, was also never traumatic. So, that people died under hospice care in my House was fine, and it lowered the cost because other potential buyers were actively avoiding the house.

Most of the peculiarities of the house were weird architectural elements added to help it better serve as a care facility - things such as a sun room added on behind the living room (so that you have windows looking out of one room, into another room), or an entire bathroom being converted to one giant shower. Other oddities were more just strange things that we discovered: a photo of an old man over the door to the garage, a stack of mirrors in one of the closets, a lock on the master bathroom that allowed you to lock someone in but not lock anyone out, weird acoustics that make it sound like people are talking in one room when they are in another, etc.

After we had been there for a few months, my wife told me that our daughter would come into our bedroom at night, stand at the foot of the bed and stare at us. And my wife brought this up a few times, saying that it was ongoing. Now, most nights I was asleep and wouldn’t have noticed a thing, but other nights I was having trouble with insomnia and was awake, and I know that my daughter didn’t enter our room.

Around the same time, my daughter told me that, at night, the wooden supports in the house walls would whisper to her. They would say "we are your friends, and we love you."

About a year after that, I fell asleep on the couch in the living room, and woke briefly to the sound of someone walking in the kitchen (adjacent to the living room). The house is 60 years old and many rooms, including the kitchen, have squeaky floorboards with distinctive sounds, and this was the sound of an adult. Anyway, when I asked my wife the next day why she hadn’t woken me up to head to bed when she was in the kitchen, she told me that she had not been in the kitchen.

More recently, my daughter has begun complaining of having “bad thoughts” about creepy entities when she is in bed at night, and about two weeks ago, she called me in after I had put her to bed. When I got to her room, she told me that she had seen a shadowy figure come in through the exterior wall, cross over her bed, and enter her closet. She has also said that she is afraid of the "shadows with white teeth" that she sometimes sees at night.

Commentary: Now, I don’t believe in ghosts, or anything supernatural for that matter. I think that what I experienced was likely just a mix of normal hallucinations while sleepy (everyone gets them, it’s normal and explains many ghost stories), and my daughter is a six year old who is beginning to understand and cope with the concept of death, and her reaction has been to occasionally freak out and over-interpret things (we played the Oregon Trail board game recently, and while she has always been a gracious loser, drawing the “you have died of dysentery” card freaked her out) - add to that the fact that her bedroom window faces the street and that odd shadows are common when cars drive by. Even the thing about the supports in the walls talking to her started as a joke between her and I when her mother was having to spend time in the hospital for eye surgery (I started talking about the beams talking because I thought she'd find it funny, and she did, and it helped distract her away from worrying about her mom).

But, still, explainable or not, and I do feel that it is very explainable, it’s pretty creepy.

Hauntings at Fresno State

Fresno State, located near the center of California in the large agricultural area known as the San Joaquin Valley, is, of course, said to be haunted.

Let's start with the music building....

Music students report hearing strange, unexplained noises at night in the music building's practice rooms. Some reports are more specific and describe voices and whistling when the building is empty save for the person hearing the noises.

A plaque dedicated to the memory of journalism professor Roger Tatarian sits right outside of McKee Fisk Hall.  At least one person reports that automated doors to the building opening and closing when he greeted the plaque by saying "hello Roger."

Anatomy classes held in McLane Hall involve cadavers*.  Although no ghost stories are associated with the room in which they are kept, the cold, morgue-like feeling is commented on in the stories that I found.

Commentary:  As I have noted on other entries, the folks from Hometown Tales used to like to point out that every college is said to be haunted, because it's a way for the boys and the girls to interact.  California State University Fresno (AKA Fresno State) is no different.

I am just disappointed that the ghost stories at Fresno State are so lame.

A few thoughts:

An ex-girlfriend of mine was a student at Oberlin College's conservatory of music, and she told me that stories much like the music building stories at Fresno State were also common at Oberlin.  Similarly, when I was a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, I heard a few of the undergrad music majors telling similar stories there.  I wonder if, rather like theaters, music practice rooms have a reputation for hauntings, or if it is just that people are isolated in these rooms listening intently and hearing normal sounds that they wouldn't normally notice.

The story linked to in the Sources section has a sentence which paraphrases as "some of the rooms have tools not normal for an educational facility: cadavers!" which, really, leads me wonder whether this person has ever considered how anatomy is taught.  Cadavers are fairly common on university campuses.  Also, are people genuinely surprised to discover that a room that houses cadavers would have a "cold, morgue-like" feeling?  What else would it be like?

The sources to which I link bring up the murder of Tracy Leroy Nute by former professor Maz Bernard Franc...even though the murder happened off-campus and no ghost stories are associated with it. I don't get why the murder is brought up.  I mean, it was a disturbing, grisly event that occurred and which had a loose connection to the campus...but there is nothing allegedly supernatural about it, it's just disturbing.  And given that the victim's family still lives in the area, it seems callous to use it for cheap Halloween thrills in the student newspaper when it's not even really connected to the alleged point of the article.

Sources:  College Newspaper, Weird Fresno (mostly a re-print of the newspaper article), Los Angeles Times

Del Rey Cemetery, Sanger, CA

Del Rey Cemetery, also known simply as Sanger Cemetery, is the final resting place for the good people of Sanger, California, in southern Fresno County.  

Local lore holds that whispering can be heard when nobody is present, and a strange moaning sound has been reported.   Many visitors have also reported cold spots, which may move.

Stories hold that one of the tombstones glows at night, though what this signifies is unknown.

Commentary:  This is, in most respects, a fairly standard haunted cemetery story.  The whispered voices, the shadow figures, etc.

One feature that is odd, though, is the glowing tombstone.  This is an interesting claim that shows up in a few different haunted cemetery stories throughout the U.S., most notably in Benton Kentucky and in Springtown Texas.  In many cases, it has been found that the tombstone is reflecting light from passing cars or a nearby stable source (such as a house, streetlight, etc.).  In other cases the tombstone is rumored to be somewhere, but the specific tombstone is never mentioned in any of the stories, leading would-be witnesses to wander the cemetery trying to find it. 

Although the folklore of the glowing tombstone seems to be more common in the American south and midwest, this is a good example of it from California.

I recently visited the cemetery, and the photos included on this page are from my visit.

Sources:  The Illustrious Internet, The Illustrious Internet, Weird Fresno

Meux Home, Fresno, CA

Updated 4-30-2011, photos added



Victorian mansions-turned-museums are common enough in California's Central Valley. My own old stomping grounds in Modesto had the McHenry Mansion, and Fresno has the Meux Home. It is a beautiful Victorian building, open for public tours and surrounded by a scenic garden.

Unlike the McHenry mansion, however, the Meux home is said to be haunted. Symptoms of the haunting include the sounds of children laughing in the upstairs of the home, even when it is known to be empty; strange knocking sounds and general noise are said to have been reported by people in the house after-hours; claims that objects (including fixed objects such as door knobs) have gone missing or been moved after everyone had left for the night abound in local folklore; and there are stories that a fuzzy, but clearly human apparition has been seen looking out the windows at passers-by. Although there are numerous claims about the activities of the ghosts, there is little information regarding their origins.



One local, but completely untrue, story holds that the ghosts are the spirit of slaves kept in the house prior to the civil war. The claim is that their cruel masters treated them horribly, and that their restless spirits continue to haunt the mansion, making mischief and frightening whoever they can.

The museum management does not publicly acknowledge the hauntings, and at least one local enthusiast claims to have been given the brush-off when he asked for a chance to investigate. Though, to be fair, there are enough strange people with an interest in ghosts that anyone running such an establishment has good reason to be wary of people asking to investigate.



Commentary: One of the things that fascinates me about this story is that it illustrates how distanced from reality the local folklore can become when describing the past.

The house was built between 1888 and 1889 by one Dr. Thomas Richard Meux, a physician and former Confederate soldier who came out west int he decades following the American Civil War. Dr. Meux died in 1929 (at the age of 91, quite old now, especially old in the early 20th century), leaving the house to his daughter, who lived there until her death in 1970. The house subsequently was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and became a museum dedicated to illustrating 19th century life in California. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. While there was, no doubt, much drama and excitement in the lives of the people who lived in the house, it wasn't the stuff normally associated with ghost stories.



So, of course, people began to make things up. One popular story holds that the house was built in the 1820s and that the homeowners had numerous slaves. They were, of course, very cruel masters, and the ghost stories are attributed to the restless spirits of the slaves. There are a few problems with the story though, notably that Fresno didn't exist until the 1860s, California was never a slave state, and the house wasn't built until 60-70 years after the slavery story claims. The fact that Dr. Meux served in the Confederate army may be the source for this story.

So, I am torn. As a ghost story/folklore enthusiast, I love the fact that the story has changed for the sake of drama and to place it within a broader tradition of folkloric versions of American history. As someone who is trained and works professionally in historic preservation, this sort of fast-and-loose-with-facts history annoys me.

Sources: Local Folklore, Published Book, Weird Fresno, Meux Home Website

Wolfe House/Andleberry Estate, Clovis, CA

Edited 1-15-2011: Photos Added



Now known alternately as the Wolfe House, Andleberry Estate, and the Clovis Sanitarium, this large, imposing house sits on Clovis Avenue in the city of Clovis, near Fresno, California. Built in the first half of the 20th century, the house is said to have served as a private home for two different owners, an insane asylum, and a convalescent hospital before finally closing. It was bought by Todd Wolfe, who decided to use the creepy old building as a Halloween "Haunted House" attraction. He created a new name and implied fictional history for the house, and i became "Andleberry Estate" founded in 1871.

Local lore, and Wolfe's own stories, hold that he got a real haunted house and not just a Halloween attraction.



Talking to locals indicates that this place was rumored to be haunted before it was even abandoned. After it was abandoned, stories about mysterious lights being seen in the windows, screams heard coming from the house, and just general creepy feelings when passing the house began to proliferate. One of my coworkers has even said that, during the 90s, his father would tell him ghost stories about the house every time that they drove past it. Local legend holds that it was used as a sanitarium, that it housed over 100 people at a time in bad conditions, and that there were thousands of deaths at the house. It is also claimed that, when used as a convalescent hospital, it was known for neglect and mistreatment of patients. Needless to say, rumors abound that the doctors working in the sanitarium would use patients as experimental subjects, causing them misery.

Since the house was bought by Wolfe, more stories have come out. People who have stayed in the house overnight on Wolfe's invitation (usually members of various ghost hunting groups, though national television shows have also filmed here) report hearing loud banging noises throughout the night, drafts of cold air moving through the house, the sounds of footsteps in rooms where nobody is present, having clothing tugged on by unseen forces, and hearing conversations taking place in empty rooms. Some who have stayed in the house report that doorknobs can be heard turning on doors which no longer have knobs, that clanging noises can be heard, that doors open and objects move of their own accord, and that tape recorders pick up ghostly voices that seem to interact with the conversations of the living also recorded on tape. The basement is cold, even in Fresno County's very hot summers*. Lights have been seen moving in the basement. Many of Wolfe's guests report feelings of dread, emotional (and in one case even physical) pressure, and general unease. Some visitors have even reported bringing a guest home with them - a male presence that is manifest as the smell of cigar smoke and low voices and laughing, a presence that the people had to return to the house to be rid of.



Three particular rooms are said to be the most haunted. In one, called Mary's room, if a chair is moved it is said that the chair will move back. Another, called the Red Room, is said to be the site of numerous ghostly sounds, all of them related to a busy hospital ward. The third, called George's room, is said to be special, but none of the web sites that I have found tell you anything specific about it.

The house is easily accessible, though it is on private property and therefore shouldn't be approached without the owner's permission. If the stories that I have heard from friends and coworkers are any indication, it is now firmly ensconced in the folklore of the Fresno area.




*Okay, I just have to say that this is not all that weird, and the people who comment on it are generally from outside of the San Joaquin Valley area. As someone who, for professional reasons, spends alot of time in holes in the ground, I can say with some authority that the sub-surface of the San Joaquin Valley is typically cooler than the surface during the summers. In fact, there's a popular Fresno attraction - the Underground Gardens - which was constructed for this very reason.


Commentary: Someone on another entry thanked me for my "investigation." While I appreciated the thanks (it's fun, but not always easy, to put these entries together), I have to admit that I am not an investigator. How can you tell that I am not an investigator? Easy, I have not gone down to the Fresno County Assessor's Office to look up the ownership history of this parcel of land, nor have I gone to the local historical society for information on the medical history of Clovis. Of course, neither have most of the self-proclaimed investigators, which is how you know that you should take their conclusions with a heaping spoonful of salt. Doing this sort of background research is a long, often tough, and typically tedious process. I don't do it because I have a job, a partner, and other hobbies, but it's okay in my case because I don't call myself an investigator, I'm just a guy who tells the stories and doesn't claim any special knowledge. If you are going to call yourself an investigator and claim some sort of objective backing for your claims, then you have a responsibility to do this sort of basic background research. Unfortunately, most self-styled paranormal investigators don't, opting instead to swallow urban legends regarding the history of a property in place of doing basic research.

One thing that became very clear as I began to do Internet research on this house is that there is very little about it online that has not been directly influenced by the current owner, Todd Wolfe. As I read what accounts I could find, I have to admit that I began to develop a very real admiration for Mr. Wolfe - this guy is smart, a good showman, and likely a clever business man. Sounds like a really cool guy, and I'd love to meet him. However, when you start learning about his operation, it puts most of what is readily available about this house into doubt.

According to most reports, Wolfe works with the various ghost hunter groups in order to try to piece together the history of the house. The history that has been developed by these folks indicates that the house was built in the 1920s by an Italian immigrant who was in a competition with his brothers regarding who could build the most impressive house. From there it was sold to a family who lived in it until they sold it to a couple who developed it into a sanitarium. The sanitarium is said to have been a horrific place, with thousands of deaths over its functioning years. From there, it became a convalescent hospital, which was rife with troubles from neglect and mistreatment of patients.

Now, don't misunderstand me. For all that I know, this history could be absolutely true. the problem is that it has been put together by people who are looking for a reason to think that this place is haunted, and as a result it is likely that the people cobbling it together selected the more sensationalist information that they received without necessarily scrutinizing it for accuracy. This is pretty common in the paranormal investigator circles, where distorted death figures, local folklore, and urban legend are often accepted without the investigators doing even the most basic of research at the local Assessor's office, county courthouse, library, or historical society - all of which have documents that could confirm or discredit many of the claims. The ghost hunters understandably want to find ghosts, and in my experience tend only to be willing to go so far in trying to vest the information that they gather, so only the easiest to dismiss tends to get dropped, and even widely disproven information gets propagated (). Todd Wolfe has used this land as a haunted house attraction, has offered tours for a fee, and has made public his intention to develop the property into a "haunted hotel" to lure paranormal tourism to Clovis.

So, in the end, it's possible that the history of the property available on line is accurate, at least in the broad strokes, but it was put together by individuals with a definite interest in finding the place to be as sensationalistic and spooky as possible. That the "insane asylum" angle gets played up more than the time that the house was used as, well, a house is no surprise then. Nor is it a surprise that Mr. Wolfe apparently puts his gifts as a showman to work when allowing various ghost hunter groups to take night time tours of the house. One account by a member of a group invited by Wolfe describes the evening in detail. While the author of the account seemed ready to take everything at face value, a few things should be noted:

1. The Assistant. Mr. Wolfe provided an assistant to stay with the tour group. On the whole, this is pretty normal, for liability reasons if nothing else. However, the author of the essay says that the assistant was there in case "anyone was injured or had an emergency." B-movie fans may remember this sort of ploy from the opening of The Screaming Skull. Start the creepy evening off with something that is made to sound ominous and scary. A good way to set the psychology of the tour group, and the term for this sort of thing is "ballyhoo." It's cool, it's fun, it sets the scene.

2. The News Media. In this case Wolfe had arranged for the ghost hunters to meet and be interviewed by members of the press. The result, as the writer of the piece notes, is that everyone felt special. Of course, underlying that is that everyone felt special because they were there to find ghosts, which adds pressure to them to find said ghosts. It gets publicity for the house, and gives the people intending to investigate a push to reach a particular conclusion.

On other occasions, the people brought their own television shows (such as the cable show Ghost Hunters) and had their own reasons for acting to the cameras.

3. Placement of props/creepy atmosphere. Halloween haunted house props were left up in some rooms, taken down in others, preventing anyone from getting used to them. The basic effect of this is likely to be that they remain a little disorienting, and one isn't sure what to make of a room that does have them or a room that doesn't have them - which room is special?

4. Verification of the Real. At the end of the tour, Mr, Wolfe allowed members of the group to go into a room where records pertaining to the house were kept. While these records had little to do with the house's alleged hauntings, they did allow the members of the groups to get a feeling of the antiquity of the house, and for the stories related to the house to seem grounded in reality.

Yeah, no pressure at all from the props.

Okay, biasing or not, the props are pretty damn cool.

Read the entry to see how effective this was. While the author was certainly inclined to see ghosts from the get-go, he began to interpret everything as ghosts: drafts (not uncommon in old houses, even with windows and doors shut) were thought to be not only ghosts but specifically the ghost of a child, all strange sounds (even those that one would expect in an old house) were interpreted as supernatural, and every light-reflecting mote of dust (likely the actual cause of these particular "orbs") was interpreted as a spirit photo.

Mr. Wolfe is, to his credit, very open about his ongoing business interest in the house, and is not trying to hide it while the mythology is being spread. He may not admit to the showmanship, but he doesn't appear to be trying to hide that either. This allows those of us who want to look past the hype to see that there's something more at work than a simple quest for the truth. There is business to be done here. Hell, the description of the "most haunted" rooms (George's Room, Mary's Room, and the Red Room) are even geared towards renting these out as rooms when the hotel is operating.

Is there something truly spooky happening here? I don't know. Certainly some of the stories pre-date the use of this place as a haunted business. But there is reason to be doubtful of the accuracy of the reports coming out of this place. Is this a cool place that deserves some attention from ghost story collectors and enthusiasts? Oh, it most definitely is. If and when Wolfe opens his hotel, I intend to book a room for a night.

Oh, and there's a YouTube channel dedicated to this place. check it out.

Special Videos:

Because I love my readers, here's some special videos. I love how the first video uses music in an attempt to make the most boring or silly of images seem scary.







Sources: Ghost Map, AP Investigations, Internet, Internet, The Illustrious Internet, Internet

The Hound Outside The Door

A friend has provided the following story:

"When I was a kid, probably eight or nine, I woke up one night and heard a sound outside my door. I got up and walked toward the door, opening it slowly, and when it was just cracked open, less than an inch, I heard a sound like a large dog snorting. I slammed the door shut, and held it there, hearing the creature move around outside the door. Once I was sure it was gone, I went back to bed."

Commentary: A lage number of stories start with the teller explaining that they had just woken up before the events unfold. This is unfortunate, as these stories don't tell you much or provide anything particularly new. There are a number of different plausible explanations for these events, ranging from the person having a particularly lucid dream but never being awake to the person being partially awake and mobile and yet still dreaming, all of which explain the events perfectly well. It's worth noting that, after the horrifying event took place, the teller usually reports that they went right back to sleep, which I, for one, wouldn't do if I had just lived through a disturbing event, but would do if I had simply dreamt it.

And, for the record, I have had some very weird, creepy experiences that I perceieved ot be occuring immediately after I woke up, including seeing a spectral platoon of WWI-era dougboys, and seeing my girlfriend intone strange and unfamiliar words in a voice filled with deep menace. However, in each of those cases, during each of which I believed myself to be awake and have my wits about me, but I decided to do a bit of follow-up investigation after the fact and determined that, in each case, it wasn't a ghostly experience, but simply my sleepy brain doing its own magic. So, for anyone who wishes to know, yes I have had this kind of experience, it has happened to me.

While these "I just woke up" stories are themselves not particularly interesting, what is interesting is how important they can become to the teller. When you suggest a plausible explanation that is natural (such as that it was a dream) you can expect to be greeted with a very hostile reaction - usually having the person shout some variation on "I know what I saw!" or "I wasn't asleep!" Why is it that these types of events become so important to the people who perceived them? I don't know, but THAT is what is interesting about them to my mind.