Haunted California, Fifth in a Series of "These Haunted States of America"

Everyone loves a good ghost story. That's what makes authors like Stephen King, Bentley Little and Robert R. McCammon so popular. California has a rich and varied history that lends itself well to hauntings. From the Spanish missions to Hollywood to the Gold Rush, the Pony Express and the Butterfield Stage Line from St. Louis to San Francisco, as well as such stories cities as Los Angeles and San Francisco and San Diego and a handful of ghost towns, it's no wonder that California is one of the most haunted states in the nation. Why, silent film actor Rudolph Valentino haunts four or five separate locations from Los Angeles to Hollywood to Beverly Hills HIMSELF!

We continue our tour of "These Haunted States of America" in California. "The Golden State" is home to 33,871,648 people, as well as the ghosts of Native Americans, Celebrities, Miners and one Great Dane. So, the next time you're in California, here are 30 haunted locations to visit.

1. ANZA BORREGO STATE PARK: Vallecito Station

Once a stop on the Butterfield State Line (which boasted to take passengers from St. Louis to San Francisco in less than twenty-four days), the adobe lodge is now the home to two Texans who killed each other in a gunfight. Also, a spectral white horse appears on moonlit nights, but perhaps most famous of all is the White Lady of Vallecito. It is believed that the White Lady is Eileen O'Connor who was on her way to marry a wealthy man in Sacramento. The trip, however, was too much for her, and she died at Vallecito. She was buried in her bridal gown in the small graveyard on the site. According to local legend, she is sometimes seen rising from her grave and floating next to the stage stop, as if waiting for the next coach to arrive. One man even claims to have received a shock when he touched the White Lady. A laughing cowboy has appeared in a camper's tent and when the foundations of the restrooms were being dug, workers were surprised to discover a woman's ghost hovering above them. Current custodians at the park track the mysterious movement of rocks at the site. Frequently, large rocks are found placed in tree branches or on the corners of picnic tables. No explanation has been given for the phenomenon.

2. BARSTOW: Calico Ghost Town

Tours though an underground mine and Iron Horse train rides to the Old Workings mine in the north are just some of the attractions in Calico, an 1880s silver mining town. The spirit of Wyatt Earp, who once lived here, is said to roam the old wooden sidewalks, and the ghost of a woman named Esmeralda haunts the old Playhouse. Calico is located off I-15 about ten miles northeast of Barstow.

3. BODIE: Bodie State Historic Park

In its heyday, in the late 1870s, Bodie was a booming mining town. It had a population of ten thousand and had seventy saloons, thirty mines, three breweries, three newspapers, a school and more than a handful of whorehouses. Now, however, the only residents left in Bodie are a handful of ghosts. A former Asian maid reportedly still walks the halls of the J.S. Cain House. Reportedly, she likes to sit on people's legs while they sleep and pin them down. In the upstairs window of the Dechambeau House, the ghost of the town busybody can still be seen peeking from the window on occasion. In the museum people have reported hearing a phantom player piano and disembodied voices have been heard in and around the Seiler House. An elderly woman still sits in her rocking chair in the Gregory House and a mother and her child haunt visitors to the Mendocini House. Guests to the Order of Odd Fellows building have heard the stomping of phantom feet on the floors. Around 4:00 P.M., in the Bodie Graveyard to the northwest of the town, a woman wearing a white dress and knitting has is often seen floating over a man's grave. Perhaps, though, the most famous ghost in the Bodie Graveyard is the "Angel of Bodie" who has been seen on numerous occasions by a variety of people. She is the spirit of a little girl who accidentally strayed too close behind a miner and was struck in the head with his pickax.

The abandoned mines in Bodie are also reported to be haunted. In 1902 a pack mule was killed by a mine car at the five-hundred-foot level in the Standard Mine. With its back broken, the miners shot the animal in pity and buried it in a depleted shaft. Soon, the sound of the dead mule's pack chains was being heard by miners and some were overwhelmed by the smell of fresh mule droppings, and yet others, working at the five-hundred-foot level, where the mule was killed - reported seeing the white animal's ghost and refused to work on that level. According to local legend, the mule still haunts the site of the Standard Mine. Also in the Standard Mine, rocks tossed down the Lent Shaft (which is 1,200-feet deep) are answered with the ghostly echo of "Hey, you!"

Lucky Boy Mine was one of the last places where gold was dug out at Bodie. It shut down after World War II and there were only six people left in the town. Shortly there after, in a drunken fight, one of the last remaining residents, by the name of Ed, shot his Native American wife with his shotgun. Her right breast was blown off by the shot and she later died in a hospital in Reno. Three of the remaining Bodie residents decided to mete out their own brand of justice against Ed. They tied him up, threw him in a local creek and kicked him in the head until he passed out and drowned. Two months later, the men started seeing the apparition of Ed's vengeful ghost, and three weeks after the first appearance, each of the vigilantes did under mysterious circumstances. One was found with a large gash in his head. Another had a hemorrhage that grossly inflated his head. The body of the third man ... was never found. Ed's ghost is still said to haunt the landscape surrounding Bodie.

Bodie is twenty-six miles southeast of Bridgeport. In Mono County, follow Highway 395 north and exit east on Highway 270, fifteen miles to the ghost town. A total of 168 structures remain standing, some dating back to 1849.

4. BRENTWOOD: Monroe House

Psychic Anton LaVey and Bob Slatzer, one of Marilyn Monroe's former husbands, claim that - on the eleventh anniversary of her death in 1973 - Marilyn's ghost appeared to them in front of the house where she died of a sleeping pill overdose on August 4, 1962. Even though she died that night in the ambulance, her body was returned to her bedroom in order to give Peter Lawford time to clean up any evidence of Monroe's affairs with the Kennedy family. Numerous psychics have claimed to have been able to contact Monroe, and all agree that she wants to send a specific message: she did not commit suicide, her death was an accidental overdose. But that's not all. According to Kenny Kingston, her psychic advisor, she contacted him while he was driving on the Pacific Palisades. She told Kingston in a psychic message that she would be reborn in December 1980 on the Isle of Capri as a boy. Also, according to a séance held in her bedroom in 1982, Monroe told those present that in a past life she had been an Aztec maiden who had been offered up as a sacrifice to the Aztec gods.

5. CALABASAS: Los Angeles Pet Cemetery

Many Hollywood pets are buried in this pet cemetery including Mary Pickford's dog, the Little Rascal's dog and Hopalong Cassidy's horse. However, the most famous ghost in this pet cemetery is Rudolph Valentino's Great Dane, Kabar. The dog passed away in 1929 and was buried here, but visitors to the cemetery report that the dog's playful phantom still haunts the area around his grave, panting and licking people who come close to his grave.

6. COLOMA: Vineyard House

In 1879, Robert Chalmers went mad. His mansion - Vineyard House - had just been completed, but he never really got to live in it. He became violent and for his own protection, as well as the protection of others, his wife Louise chained him in the basement. Robert Chalmers refused to eat and, eventually, starved to death. After Robert's death, the grapevines at the home withered away and Louise had to close the winery and turn the home into a boarding house in order to make money. Louise even went so far as to allow the basement - where her husband had been chained and died - to be rented for jail space and executions (by hanging) were performed on the front lawn. In 1913, Louise passed away and was buried next to Robert in the cemetery across from their home. Since that time, those who have owned the home have been so frightened by shining phantoms and the sounds chains rattling in the basement that they have all sold the house. In 1956, the home was turned into a hotel, but that did not stop the sightings. Guests and employees at Vineyard House have reported numerous poltergeist events; glasses move by themselves in the bar, and a Sacramento couple once left the hotel in the middle of the night, insisting they had heard someone being murdered in the next room. Sheriff's deputies, however, could find nothing wrong; recently, however, a guest reported seeing the spirit of a small boy being savagely beaten in Room 5 ... the same room that the Sacramento couple had reported hearing the bloodcurdling screaming.

7. HALF MOON BAY: Moss Beach Distillery

This old speakeasy is now haunted by the specter of a woman in a blue, soaked in blood. Employees and customers have witnessed her next to the piano, outside the women's bathroom or dancing in the deserted rooms. A boy once ran from the restrooms screaming that a lady covered in blood had touched him. In February 1992, two waitresses witnessed a barstool turn somersaults across the room. The bloody woman in blue has even been seen standing in the middle of Highway 1 which runs in front of the Moss Beach Distillery. Her ghost has been sighted at the restaurant at least once or twice every year for the last fifty years. "In August 1992, all the settings in the restaurant's automatic thermostat system were mysteriously changed. The complicated reprogramming would have taken most people three or four hours to perform. 'The company told me that there was no way to could have been done except manually,' owner John Barber related, 'but I had the only access key!'" Local legend holds that the ghost that troubles the Moss Beach Distillery is that of a young woman who was stabbed to death by a jealous lover in front of the restaurant over seventy years ago.

8. HOLLYWOOD: Hollywood Roosevelt

One of the most haunted locations in Hollywood, former guests at the Hollywood Roosevelt have never really left. Hotel employees report catching glimpses of some of the stars who once stayed at the Roosevelt in the hallway mirrors. Marilyn Monroe has been seen in the mirror that used to belong to her, which is on display in the foyer by the elevators. Montgomery Clift has been seen on the ninth floor of the hotel, pacing the hallways and sometimes, people have reported hearing him practicing his trumpet. The ghost of actress Carole Lombard has been seen in the suite that she once shared with Clark Gable on the top floor of the hotel.

9. HOLLYWOOD: Runyon Park

Behind the tennis court on this decrepit 148-acre estate is a pink concrete wall. On that wall is a piece of graffiti which reads "Welcome to Hell." You would be hard pressed to find a place where this epitaph would be more appropriate. The estate was originally built by singer John McCormack and later owned by Huntington Hartford (the A&P heir) and later still by Errol Flynn. However, in the 1960s, Runyon Park's most infamous residents moved in when the abandoned estate became home to Charles Manson and his "family." Today, a few brick foundations is all that stands on the site of the once glorious mansion, but neighbors say that on some summer nights, the old mansion still appears in all its glory complete with the sounds of a party and "multicolored lights" on the upper floors. In 1983, a malicious voice told psychic investigators on the property to "GET OUT!"

10. LAKE TAHOE: Emerald Bay

On the southwest shore of Lake Tahoe is Emerald Bay, and located in Emerald Bay is Fannette Island where the ghost of Dick Barter is still said to roam. By the mid-1800s, most of the land around Emerald Bay had been bought up by stagecoach magnate Ben Holladay. Dick Barter came to Lake Tahoe in 1863 to serve as Holladay's caretaker, and even though he was a sailor at heart, he soon took up the life of a hermit, only leaving Emerald Bay to buy whiskey and provisions on the South Shore of the lake. One night in January, Barter got caught in a winter storm and in order to survive the squall, tied himself to his boat. He did not make it home until the next morning, but by then it was too late for two of his toes, which had frozen. He amputated them himself when gangrene set in and kept them preserved in a jar to show people. After the storm, Barter dug a tomb and built a small chapel for himself on Fannette Island and let it be known that if he was ever found on his boat, drowned, he wanted to be buried on the island in the tomb he had made. Three years later, Barter's boat broke on the rocks at Rubicon Point. He and his boat sunk in 1,400 feet of water and he was never recovered. However, some say that Barter's ghost found its way back to Fannette Island and now haunts the tomb and chapel he built there.

11. LOMPOC: Mission La Purisima Concepcion

Fires, earthquakes, epidemics, floods, unsolved murders and Native American raids have beset this Franciscan mission, which was established in 1787, and so it is no wonder that a number of ghosts have been seen here. In the mid-1930s, phantom children - who had died and been buried under the church during an epidemic of smallpox - were seen by workers who were remodeling the mission. There have also been reports of a ghostly gardener who still cares for the grounds, and the kitchen is now home to the shade of Don Vicente, who was murdered there more than 150 years ago. Also, Mission La Purisima Concepcion is haunted by the restless spirit of Fray Mariano Payeras, but that is not very surprising: "For some strange reason, only the upper part of his body was interred in the church tomb here. The other half is buried sixty miles away in Mission Santa Barbara!"

12. LONG BEACH: Queen Mary Hotel

Commissioned in 1936 and after making over a thousand crossings of the Atlantic Ocean, the Queen Mary has now made her permanent home as a hotel docked at the Port of Long Beach. Guests, employees and paranormal investigators have reported strange noises, moving objects, phantom voices and ghostly appearances. Two women who drowned in the first-class pool can still be found there. One is reportedly dressed in 60s-era clothing and the other is dressed in clothing from the 1930s. The ghost of a little boy who fell overboard near the pool has been seen in the passageways near there. The Queens Salon, the old first-class lounge - is haunted by a woman in white.

Phantom children play in the forward storage room and pounding noises have been recorded in the bosun's locker. This area - near the bosun's locker - is where the Queen Mary's hull cut the British light cruiser Curacoa in half during World War II. More than 338 men died in the open waters of the Atlantic because the Queen Mary was not allowed to stop and rescue survivors due to her wartime orders as a troop transport. A woman who drowned in the tourist-class pool still haunts the location and Cabin B340 on the third-level is no longer rented out because of too many unexplained disturbances in the room in which a purser was murdered.

A cook was murdered in the kitchen during World War II, and poltergeist activity is now reported there. According to the story, the cook's food was so bad that the troops being carried to the European Front rioted. The violence soon got out of control and the cook, according to the story, was "stuffed inside an oven and burned to death." Guests have reported still hearing his dying screams.

Sixteen crew members, two GI's and thirty-one passengers have died on the ship so the ghosts that haunt the ship's morgue could be just about anyone. However, the most documented sighting is the ghost of John Peddler, an eighteen-year-old crewmember who was crushed to death while trying to slip through an automatic door (Hatchway Door No. 13) during a water tight drill in 1966. Senior Second Officer William Stark also haunts the Queen Mary after he was accidentally poisoned in 1949.

13. LOS ANGELES: Griffith Park

"This is what I hurl on your head," Dona Petranilla shouted at her dying uncle. "Your falsity shall be your ruin. Misfortune, crime, and death shall follow all who covet these remains." This curse was uttered over 150 years ago on the three-thousand acres that eventually became Griffith Park. Patranilla's uncle had given the land to a close friend and left the blind girl homeless. Soon after the young woman pronounced the curse, the probate judge died and the lawyer involved in the case was killed in a bar fight. Petty feuds soon tore the new owner's family apart and they ended up losing all their money. In 1884, a violent storm tore all the plants and vegetation from the land. During the storm, ranch hands reported seeing a "ghostly figure cursing the property and all who dwelt there." According to local legend, Griffith J. Griffith donated the land to Los Angeles just to be shut of it, though that did not help him escape the curse. A few years after disposing of the land, Griffith went insane and was sent to San Quentin for trying to kill his wife.

14. SACRAMENTO: Citrus Heights

The Tulelake Japanese Internment Camp was the sight of much suffering and heartache, and so it is no wonder that those emotions left behind a strong imprint on the land and now, the houses built on the site of the Camp's holding facility are haunted by the ghosts of those Japanese-Americans that were held at Tulelake during World War II. Reports of the despondent phantoms of the Japanese internees appearing in the rooms of these homes and even front yards have plagued the area for years

The forlorn ghosts of Japanese couples have appeared in the bedrooms, living rooms, garages, and even in the front yards of homes in the area.

15. SAN DIEGO: Hotel del Coronado

Kate Morgan married a gambler named Tom Morgan and together they moved west from Iowa. In late 1892, Tom wrote to Kate and told her he could no longer live with her. Kate was pregnant and sure that Tom would change his mind if he knew that they were going to have child. So, in November 1892, Kate went to the Hotel del Coronado, where her husband was playing cards, and checked into Room 302 under the name of Mrs. Lottie Anderson Barnard. However, Kate found Tom in the arms of another woman in the hotel's card room. Rather than confront him, she left and purchased a gun. On Thanksgiving Day, she sat alone in her room and put the gun to her head and pulled the trigger (though, in 1989, evidence was found that it was Tom who killed Kate and not suicide). Since that day, Kate's ghost - dressed in a black lace dress - has haunted the hotel. Today, Room 302 is kept vacant by the management and not rented out unless there is no other space in the hotel due to the high number of unusual disturbances reported there: unexplained cold spots, footsteps and "gurgling sounds" plague the room, now known as Room 3052. Also, there have been reports of "frightful apparitions" in Room 3052 as well as in the nearby rooms (Room 3502 and Room 3312). A recent paranormal investigation found more than thirty-seven "abnormalities" in such varying factors as temperature, magnetic and electronic emissions and the humidity in Room 3502.

16. SAN DIEGO: Whaley House

The Whaley House is recognized by California as an "official haunted house." Built in 1857, Thomas Whaley rented a portion of the house out to be used as the county courthouse and as a stockpile for the county records. However, this agreement (for which Whaley recieved $65.00 per month) ended up causing more problems for Whaley than it was worth. The house became the focal point of a power struggle between the residents of Old Town (where the Whaley House was located) and the "New Towners" who wanted to keep the court records in their area of town. This strife came to a head when one day a group of New Towners broke into Whaley's home when he was away, intimidated Whaley's family and stole the court records.

When the county bought and began to restore the house nearly one hundred years later, odd events began to happen in the mansion. Ghosts that walked the second floor, windows that opened by themselves and alarms that were set off for no reason were reported by those working on the restoration project. Cold sport, strange lights and unexplained noises plague the Whaley House and visitors to the historic home have reported seeing the ghosts of the Thomas Whaley and his wife Anna Eloise in the hallways and on the staircases. Others have reported seeing the phantom of the Whaley's dog and his children (including a son who died at seventeen months). The ghost of a neighbor girl, Annabelle Washburn, has also been seen in the kitchen where she died of a crushed trachea after having run into a clothesline. The ghost of a woman seen in the kitchen, the ghost of a woman witnessed in the old courtroom and a man in pantaloons and a frock coat seen at the top of the stairs have also been reported. Paranormal investigators in the home have made recordings of disembodied voices on various occassions.

The ghostly spectre of a man hanging in one of the home's doorways has been reported seen by several people and is believed to be the ghost of "Yankee Jim" Robinson. Robinson was caught trying to steal a pilot boat in 1852, tried in the Whaley House courtroom and sentenced to death. He was hanged on the gallows built on the grounds, but the noose did not break his neck and he hung for nearly fifteen minutes, "cursing and screaming" until he finally died.

The house has been scheduled for demolition on numerous occassions but has been saved and now is open as a historic site.

17. SAN FRANCISCO: Alcatraz

The Miwok Tribe living in the Bay Area believed that evil spirits inhabited the island that sat in the middle of the San Francisco Bay and never set foot on there. In 1912, however, the U.S. Army had built "the largest reinforced concrete structure in the world." It was a fortress which would later become home ot some of the nation's most infamous and most dangerous criminals. In 1963, the island fell under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service (NPS) and now, the only inmates of "The Rock" are the ghosts of its former inmates. Screams, crying and the sounds of inmates striking the bars of their cells can be heard in Cell Block B and in the "dungeon area" near Cell Block A. Psychic Sylvia Brown was asked to come to the prison by the NPS when the paranormal turmoil in Cell Block C became too much for officials to ignore. Brown reportedly made contact with a man who called himself "Butcher," and who fought her attempts to bring peace to his turbulant soul. Prison records show that a mob hit man Abie "The Butcher" Maldowitz, was murdered by another prisoner in Cell Block C's laundry room. Four cells in Cell Block D are believed to still have the spirits of their formerly incarcerated residents. Voices have been heard in Cells 11, 12 and 13 and even through the hot summers, Cell 14-D is ice-cold and visitors have even been overwhelmed by the emotion that is stored in the cell. Cell 14-D is where Rufus McCain was locked in "solitary" for more than three years. A banjo can sometimes be heard in the shower room where Al Capone often practiced.

18. SAN FRANCISCO: Embarcadero

A Norwegian vessel, the Squando, was the site of a brutal and infamous murder while docked at the Embarcadero in 1890. An affair was discovered by the captain between his wife and his first mate. When confronted, the captain's wife consented to getting the first mate drunk and then hold him down while her husband beheaded him with an ax. His body was later found floating in the Bay and the captain and his wife ran. As soon as the Squando left port, odd things started happening. The new captain was murdered in a mutiny and the next two captains were found dead (murdered) in their cabin, and the ship soon gauned a reputation for being haunted. When the ship was docked in New Brunswick in 1893, the entire crew fled the ship and the ship's reputation soon made finding a new crew out of the question. Two watchmen, hired to guard the ship by the Norwegian Consul, left their posts on their their firts night after, according to their report, "encountering a grotesque headless apparition in the passageway leading to the captain's cabin." Over the next weeks, six more watchmen hired by the Norwegian Consul fled and soon no one would set foot on the vessel. The owners of the Squando were unable to find a crew to sail her and eventually had to raze the ship for salvage to recoup their losses. However, according to local legend, soon after the ship was demolished, the Squando was again sighted in dense fog in the waters off the Embarcadero.

19. SAN FRANCISCO: Golden Gate Bridge

One of the most infamous places in the nation for suicides, over one thousand people have lept to their deaths from this American icon. "A psychologist who studied the phenomenon said, 'There is an indecipherable aspect of this bridge that draws people, something we may never understand.'" The clipper ship Tennessee has been sighted in the fog under the bridge where it sank over a century ago. The Tennessee, its decks deserted, is visible for only minutes before disappearing again into the fog. In November 1942, the Tennessee was sighted by the USS Kennison alongside the destroyer, even though the Tennessee did not appear on the Kennison's radar.

20. SAN FRANCISCO: Mammie Pleasant's Ghost

The malevolent spirit of voodoo priestess Mary "Mammie" Pleasant is said to still haunt a copse of eucalyptus trees on the corner of Octavia and Bush Streets in San Francisco. "Mammie" Pleasant came to the City by the Bay in 1848 and soon became a celebrity, performing voodoo rituals among the city's black population in exchange for information about the households in which her clients worked as servants. Before long, she was hosting "wild voodoo parties" inviting both her black clients and their white employers. Mammie had control over an investment banker named Thomas Bell in whose name she put her entire fortune and with whom she arranged a marriage with one of her blackmail victims. Mammie, Thomas and his wife lived together in a mansion and became rich practicing voodoo among San Francisco's wealthy. On October 16, 1892, an 86-year-old Mammie killed Thomas in an argument over money, though she was never prosecuted for his murder. However, the outcome was that Thomas's wife inherited all of the money and property the three had amassed. Mammie was left penniless and homeless and took up hiding in the eucalyptus trees in front of her former mansion, "cursing and spitting angrily, trying to make the magic work one more time." The house burned down in the 1920s and a hospital now sits on the spot where the house was, though the copse of eucalyptus trees is still there, complete with Mammie's venegeful shade.

21. SAN JOSE: Winchester House

While she was living in New Haven, Connecticut, Sarah Winchester's husband (of Winchester rifle fame) and only child passed away. Distraught, she contacted Boston medium Adam Coons in order to speak with her loved ones again. During the séance, Sarah's husband petitioned Sarah to "build a house for all of the spirits of people killed by the rifle that bears the Winchester name." Travelling west, she found an eight-room farmhouse being constructed on forty acres in California's Santa Clara Valley which she immediately bought. For the next thirty eight years, work on the house continued twnety-four hours a day. Eventually, Sarah Winchester spent six million dollars on the building of the Winchester House, which finished with 700 rooms, 950 doors and 10,000 windows. In the middle of it all was the Blue Room, a special room Sarah had built so she could hold séances where she reportedly recieved instructions for building from the spirit world. A large bell in the bell tower rang every night at Midnight, 1:00 A.M. and 2:00 A.M. to summon the spirits. In the house, Sarah instructed the workmen to build a number of "blind passageways" and much of the construction was based on the number thirteen in order to deter evil spirits from entering the house. According to the stories, Sarah slept in a different bedroom every night in order to keep ahead of the evil spirits, though when the 1906 Earthquake struck, leveling the upper stories of the home, she was convinced that they had finally found her. After the earthquake, only 160 of the original 700 rooms wer left and she "boarded up the bedroom where she had slept that night." The spirits were always welcome in Sarah's home and she held lavish banquets with solid-gold place settings where the only guests were herself and the invisible spirits. She rarely had "actual" guests in the house and even turned away such luminaries as President Theodore Roosevelt and Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. Harry Houdini was one of the rare guests that she actually had in the home, though he never spoke of his experience at the Winchester House. In September 1922, Sarah passed away and left implicit instructions that "the ghosts continue to be welcomed and provided for." The house has been open for tours since 1923 and several famous psychics have made contact with the spirit world here. There have been reports of organ music, doors slamming and disembodied voices. There is even a file of testimonies by witnesses of paranormal events in the house kept on file by the management.

22. SAN LUIS REY: Mission San Luis Rey de Franco

Founded in 1798 and confiscated by Spanish soldiers in 1835 the padres who ran Mission San Luis Rey de Franco were forced to leave. Some believe that the spirits of the padres are still trying to reclaim the mission that they lost.

23. SAN MIGUEL: Mission San Miguel

John Reed purchased Mission San Miguel from the Mexican government and turned it into an inn. It thrived and Reed "used to brag about a treasure in gold he had stashed on the property." This reached the ears of a gang of English pirates who raided the Mission San Miguel one night in 1848. They did not find any gold and so in their anger they slaughtered the Reed family and the inn's guests, strewing the remains of the thirteen bodies in the courtyard of the mission. The bodies were buried in a mass grave behind the mission's chapel and now the mutilated phantoms of the thirteen victims are still seen wandering the grounds of Mission San Miguel.

24. SANTA CRUZ: Red, White, and Blue Beach

The ghost of an old sea captain - dressed in a raincoat and cap - haunts this campground and popular nudist beach on the Pacific coast. He is usually seen in the vicinity of a wooden house on the beach, wandering in and out of the building and strolling the campground. According to local legend, when he gets angry "pictures and knickknacks fly through the house." Red, White, and Blue Beach is located six miles north of Santa Cruz on Highway 1. Turn toward the ocean at the red, white, and blue mailbox.

25. SANTA YNEZ: Solvang Road

A ghostly stagecoach driven by a man in a black stovepipe hat and drawn by four black horses haunts the legends of both the Native Americans and settlers in the Santa Ynez area. Starting in the late 1980s the phantom stage was reported along the Solvang Road by drivers, usually emerging from a dark cloud. "One couple even reported seeing lanterns on the sides of the coach, which illuminated an old woman sitting inside."

26. SONOMA: Jack London State Park

The shade of Jack London (as well as some of the characters from his novels) is said to haunt the ruins of "Wolf House," the dream home he was building in the woods in Sonoma before it burned down.

27. SUNNYVALE: Toys 'R' Us

When employees started finding toys and books scattered through the aisles of this toy store, they thought it was a practical joke. However, when they started hearing disembodied voices and being touched by "phantom hands" the management began to investigate. They discovered that customers to the store had also been reporting strange occurrences: faucets that turned themselves on and off, and customers being touched by phantom hands. Some employees refused to go into certain areas alone; they reported toys flying off the shelves at them. Management brought in psychic Sylvia Brown to investigate and she reportedly made contact with the ghost of Johnny Johnson, a former hand on the ranch that used to be located on the site of the store. Brown learned that he was called "Crazy Johnny" by the other ranch hands and that he was mentally impaired. He bled to death in 1884 when he struck his leg with an ax while he was chopping wood near a well on the property. Records show that the well still exists beneath the store at a location specified by Johnny's ghost.

28. SUTTER CREEK: Sutter Creek Inn

When Jane Way bought this 100-year-old home in 1966 there was no way she could know that it came with its own ghost. The ghost was later identified as State Senator Edward Voorhies who lived in the home in the 1880s. According to reports, the Senator's daughter once appeared in the lounge in front of a number of guests, politely curtsied and disappeared. Of an even stranger sort of apparition was "the spectral flasher, who appeared in broad daylight in the lobby and promptly dropped his pants in front of a group of elderly ladies."

29. TULELAKE: Captain Jack's Stronghold

In 1872, a band of fifty Native American warriors under the command of Chief "Captain Jack" began the Modoc War at the Lava Beds National Monument Park. Captain Jack's warriors held out against an overwhelming number of U.S. army troops for nearly six months. When they finally had to surrender, the tribe was sent to a reservation in the Oklahoma Territory and Captain Jack was hanged. However, according to the legend, before the tribe was sent to the reservation, they cursed the land. To this day, the curse "keeps the white man away" from the area. It is reported that those who try to visit Captain Jack's Stronghold are straded when the engines of their cars unexpectedly stop working.

30. YORBA LINDA: Richard Nixon Library

Former President Richard M. Nixon has returned from beyond the grave to haunt the living. His spirit has been witnessed entering the Nixon Birthplace House and there are reports of a "luminous green mist" that sometimes hangs over the President's grave. There have been reports of strange "tapping" noises in the Watergate Display Room and according to the curators, the machines that play the infamous Watergate tapes "mysteriously malfunction."

Up Next on our Haunted Road Trip across America: "Haunted Colorado, Sixth in a Series of 'These Haunted States of America': 10 Haunted Places to Visit during Your Next Trip to Colorado."