The Whaley House

In honor of Halloween being right around the corner, Rick and I decided to do some fun activities to get us in the spirit. We had to start our evening with going to the pumpkin patch. After enjoying some cotton candy and finding the perfect pumpkin friends to take home we headed to Old Town to go to the Whaley House.

The Whaley House is a popular tourist attraction and happens to be a recognized haunted house. We paid for our tickets for our guided tour and headed in with our group. The tour itself was cool, the guides were in period clothing and told us the stories of the Whaley family and their house, they also told us about some of the sightings and experiences people have had there.

Mr. Whaley purchased the house in the late 1800's despite the fact that the property was once used as a gallows. They say that the house itself is haunted by one of the men that was hung at the gallows (Mr. Whaley was present for the hanging). The man was 6ft tall, which is very tall for back then, they didn't account for his extreme height when setting up the gallows and he suffocated for 6 minutes. They say his footsteps are heard roaming the halls upstairs. We were also told the tragic stories of some of the Whaley Family, including the death of their grandaughter who ingested an arsenic "cake" that was meant to help with the ant problem when she was 3, and the story of Violet Whaley (a daughter of the family) who commited suicide. Despite all the tragedy surrounding the family and the house, it also had a lot of other history for San Diego county as well. It held a court house, a general store, and a theater upstairs that some how managed to seat 150 people!

It was an interesting experience for sure, and was something that I was always too scared to do. The tour really wasn't all that scary, largely in part to the fact that we were in a good size group, and had tour guides. However I definitely wouldn't want to be in that place under any other circumstances.


The Parlor Room, which has the couch that Violet Whaley died on after Mr. Whaley discovered that she shot herself in the chest outside and carried her inside to that couch.


The Court Room, which is where the gallows used to be. This room was also used as a morgue. Notice the strange "lines" above the chair-- that is exactly the type of thing that they have on their display board of photos taken inside the house.