I’ve been to the Whaley house once… It’s in Old Town. It’s pretty weird. You can sometimes smell the Lady’s Lavendar Perfum. For that, they could have just put some spray in the vents or something. But I do believe there is something going on there because when you go upstairs into the old thearter for the little briefing you can feel presure on your chest and it gets hard to breath. Someone actually had a red mark around their neck. What made it scarey is they believe that before the house was built people were hung on a tree that would have been in the same spot as the stair way. While I was there, a little girl was looking in one of the rooms and than just started screaming and crying and her parents had to take her out of the house. They also said that some celeb stayed the night there once and never wanted to go back… It’s a bit pricey considering how small the house is and the tour is kind of short, but what you feel and experience is definitely worth the money!

we actually went to the whaley house yesterday. it was my third time going and the other two times i didnt see anything, this time when me and my friend were in the court room and we heard the man who got hung in the backyard’s heavy boot footsteps. no one was in the room at the time except for us. later my friends camera went retarded and then later when i was looking in the living room about to leave i closed my eyes and pictured a terrior dog, i also heard it panting and its nails tapping the wood floors, there was nothing there. to my suprise the family had a terrior in the house..

My family and I went to the Whaley House last year. I was in the courtroom taking pictures when my camera started making a weird noise. I look down at my camera screen to see what was wrong with it and a small red ball of light appeared on the screen. It started getting bigger and bigger, then it disappeared. I couldn’t take anymore pictures after that. It was as if my camera just frozed up, and it was a brand new camera! As soon as we left the Whaley House, I decided to check my camera and see what was wrong with it, it started working fine after I changed the batteries. It was strange, I had put in new batteries in the camera just before we went on the tour of the house, within minutes of entering the house, the camera battery was drained. Just recently, I found out that if there is a ghost around, it can drain the batteries in order to try to manefest itself. I’ve not had anything wrong with my camera since then. All the pictures I took afterward came out fine, the pictures I took at the Whaley’s House was very blurry. Next time, I’m going to bring my video camera!

So I have been to the Whaley House quite a few times me and my friends used to go into the garden at the back of the house at night and one night I had my sister visting and I started to smell this wierd musky floral perfume smell…. We walked down to the old graveyard and I smelt it there as well… A couple days later I went to Church to the historic church down the street from the Whaley house and the smell came again I dont know if something followed me or what but I know this house it truely haunted….

My family and I visited this house. We are from Florida and while in town decided to visit it after reading about it. I did not believe it was haunted. Still not sure that it is. All I know is that I got the weirdest feeling when I walked through the dining room. I felt like I needed to get out of there right away. I refused to walk back through it again. I too smelled lavender but thought nothing of it, thought maybe it was something on the tour. My kids thought it was cool though!

Thomas Whaley came to California in 1849 during the Gold Rush. He left New York City, the place of his birth, on January 1, 1849, on the Sutton and arrived 204 days later in San Francisco. He set up a store with George Wardle on Montgomery Street where he sold hardware and woodwork from his family’s New York business, Whaley & Pye, and offered mining equipment and utensils on consignment.This young entrepreneur, born on October 5, 1823, came from a Scots-Irish family, which immigrated to Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1722. His great-grandfather, Alexander Whaley, a gunsmith, participated in the Boston Tea Party and the Revolutionary War where he provided flintlock muskets for soldiers and the use of his house on Long Island by General George Washington. Thomas’ father, Thomas Whaley, carried on the family gunsmith business, and served in the New York Militia during the War of 1812. He married Rachel Pye, whose father, William, manufactured locks in Brooklyn.

Whaley’s business acumen, acquired in part from his education at the Washington Institute, proved beneficial in San Francisco. He was so successful that he was able to establish his own store on Montgomery Street, erect a two-story residence near the bay, and rent out Wardle’s edifice. After an arson-set fir destroyed his buildings on Montgomery Street in May 1851, he relocated to Old Town San Diego upon the advice of Lewis Franklin, a merchant who operated stores in San Francisco and Old Town. Whaley set up various businesses with Franklin, Ephraim Morse, Francis Hinton, and even his brother, Henry, and amassed enough money to return to New York to marry his sweetheart, Anna Eloise DeLaunay, the daughter of French-born parents, on May 14, 1853.

Upon the couple’s return to San Diego, Whaley entered various business general store partnerships, most of which lasted less than a year. He purchased this property in September 1855, which had been the site of the hanging of the infamous Yankee Jim Robinson in August of 1852. He first built a single-story granary for 300,000 to 400,000 pounds of grain in May 1856, with bricks manufactured in his brickyard on Conde Street. The adjacent two-story $10,000 Greek Revival style brick residence, designed by Whaley, commenced construction in September 1856 and was finished in 1857. The home, acclaimed as the “finest new brick block in Southern California” by the San Diego Herald, contained mahogany and rosewood furniture, damask drapes, and Brussels carpets.

In August 1857, Whaley established his general store in this residence, and solicited cash customers only. As this location proved too far from the center of the small community, he relocated his business in a frame building on the Plaza, which he rented.

By 1858, Thomas and Anna Whaley had produced three children: Francis Hinton (named for a business partner), Thomas (who died at just 18 months), and Anna Amelia. In August 1858, another arson-set fire destroyed Whaley’s business on the Plaza. Despondent over this loss and the death of Thomas earlier that year, the family moved to San Francisco.

In San Francisco, Whaley worked as an U.S. Army Commissary Storekeeper. Three more children, George Hays Ringgold (named for a business partner), Violet Eloise, and Corinne Lillian, were born. In 1867, Thomas Whaley assisted in the American takeover of Alaska, where he established stores at Sitka, helped set up an American base, and served as councilman. Anna and the family, during this time, remained in San Francisco.

After a major earthquake in May 1868, the Whaley couple and their five children returned to the brick house in San Diego, out of which Whaley & Crosthwaite ran a general store. From October 1868 to January 1869, the Tanner Troupe Theatre operated out of the front upstairs bedroom. The San Diego County Courthouse utilized the former granary in August 1869 and rented three upstairs rooms for records storage. After the establishment of New Town San Diego by Alonzo Horton in 1868, the town focus changed to present day downtown San Diego. During a March 1871 raid, courthouse documents were removed from the Whaley House and taken to Horton’s Hall on 6th and F in San Diego. After the County’s exit, Whaley connected the former granary and courtroom to the residence, changed windows and doors, and altered the front portico.

From 1874 to 1879, Thomas Whaley returned to New York, supposedly to settle his father’s estate (his father died in 1832), and then journeyed to San Francisco seeking employment, which eluded him. During this time the Whaley family in San Diego lived in dire straits and was dependent upon Francis Whaley for support.

On January 5, 1882, Violet Whaley and Anna Amelia Whaley married in Old San Diego, probably in this house. Anna married her first cousin, John T. Whaley, and Violet wed George T. Bertolacci, which proved unbearable. After a divorce, which caused Violet tremendous humiliation in 1884 and a period of great depression monitored by the local physician, she committed suicide at the home by shooting herself through the heart on August 18, 1885.

After this tragic event, Thomas Whaley built a single-story frame home for his family at 933 State Street in downtown San Diego. Attempting to capitalize on the boom in that area, he maintained a real estate office at 5th and G in the First National Bank Building, with various partners. After retirement from business in 1888 due to ill health, he died at the State Street address on December 14, 1890.

The Whaley House on San Diego Avenue remained vacant and fell into disrepair until late 1909 when Francis Whaley returned to the old brick and undertook the restoration of the building which greatly improved its appearance. Rehabilitated at the same time as the Estudillo House on the Plaza (which became publicized as Ramonaâs Marriage Place), and the establishment of the San Diego Electric Railway down San Diego Avenue, Francis utilized the family home as a residence and a tourist attraction where he posted signs outside promoting its historicity and entertained visitors with his guitar.

Anna, Thomas’ widow, Lillian (Corinne), then assistant at the Public Library, Francis, and George, a musician, all lived in the old dwelling in 1912. On February 24, 1913, Anna died in the house. Francis passed away in the home on November 19, 1914. Lillian continued residency in the structure until her death in 1953. Because she had spent the better part of the first half of the twentieth century in the house alone, it had fallen once again into a terrible state of disrepair.

I visited this house a few years ago on a vacation with friends. Originally I am from the Tracy, CA area so I have been to the Banta Inn on many occassions. The Banta Inn was freaky, but going to the Whaley house scared the crud out of me. There was a point when we had walked into a room when I suddenly got very cold. It freaked me out so bad that I hurried on to my friends and tried not to observe anything at all after that. I believe myself to be a rational person, but the feeling I had at the Whaley house completley scared me. Its a great place to go see.

Is there anyone here who lives in a house they feel may be haunted? Do you wake up in the middle of the night feeling like you are being watched? We want to hear from you!! A major production company in the Los Angeles area is looking to document your story and help find answers!! This is not Ghost Hunters…It is a new show that will be on Network TV. Great opportunity to get answers from amazing experts in the field. Families will be compensated if they are chosen!! Hurry we need to hear from you ASAP!!!

AHMAGOSH!
dudee, this is soooo scary!
like i am really into all the historic sary stuff, && i am only 13! but woah! thats crasy scary!
but aha,
there was this guy who posted this thingy in like 2006 and was like im buried benath the bottom of the whaley house…from 1886 n if you read this your gunna die! aha well seriously man wow! who does that? && im sorry they made laptops back in 1886! aha!
anyways yeah that house sounds sooooo scary!
i wanna go

It’s sites like these (filled with so much misinformation and unresearched “facts”) that give paranormal investigation a bad reputation. I did, however, find it rather amusing that the copyright notice at the bottom of this page says “The Dumb Network.” What an appropriate name!

My name is Kyo and I have lived in San Diego all my life, but have never been to Whaley House until a few days ago. My cousin came to visit me from Palm Springs. She wanted to check out Whaley House so I said ok sure. When we got there it was closed for the day. As i stood on the porch I started to feel dizzy then I slowly walked alone the porch and when I reached the window on the left side of the door I noticed a man looking out at me, I stood there looking at the man he looked sad like he didn’t want to be there. Then my cousin called out to me so I turned to leave when I stepped off the porch, the feeling of dizzyness left me when i turned to look back at the man he was gone.

I went on a tour and it was a very interesting old house with a lot of history. I did not see or feel anything out of the ordinary but I did smell what seemed to be cigar smoke or a pipe in one of the rooms. This can easily be explained because several of the windows were open and there’s a shop that sells tobacco products down the street. A person could have been smoking a cigar walking down the street with the smell wafting into the room with the help of a light breeze.

I believe the Whaley house in haunted

I am gonna go see it in 1 month! I am so excited but kinda freaked out. I LOVE haunted things. I was staying at this campsit place at the beach and i went up froent to look a brochures and i saw HAUNTED THINGS IN SANDIEGO! I took it home and looked at it and we decied that we will go next time we go to the beach! I hope it is good and i hope i will see ghosts! OHHH I AM SCARED!

Love,
Miley (Not miley cyrus!:))

ive been down to this house a couple times its ina really weird lit area. Well it was like 1 AM or something and we went around the back and it appeared like someone was dangling around the stairs.

Through the front window you could see a blue glow of a shadow of a person like a small boy. there are odors outside. this place definately has something to it.

I have been to the Whaley house 3 times. But only once have I ever had a supernatural experience. I was standing in the doorway to the parlor and something was pushing me out of the house. Also My sister has seen the little dog in one of the children’s bedrooms.

the children did not die of that stuff such as axes drop on their heads and the closet door thing they died of cutting their heads on a sharp clothes line and falling in a ditch and hitting their neck on a sharp stick

I went on the house and cemetery tour the night of October 31, 1999. I died there that night. I look forward to your joining me.

this house scares the **** out of me i am never going to that house ever again, the first time i went there i passed out, thats all i have to say!

this house scares the **** out of me i am never going to that house ever again, the first time i went there i passed out, thats all i have to say!