Posted by JohnS on 8/28/2005, 12:12 am, in reply to "sightings"
During the 1970s and 1980s I ran one of this country's longest continual haunting investigations at Whaley House with June Reading. We used an innovative protocol to capture guest experiences, validate them and cross interrogate them. The biggest challenge was that most guests were tourists, not from the San Diego area, and generally were ignorant of the house history back them. Absent the Internet and the 1001 TV shows where you're nobody if you don't mention Whaley House, there just wasn't that much information sharing about the hauntings. This was good for us as investigators. We were able to catalog about 100 distinct experiences guests and staff had in the house during the period, about 1 a month on average. These fell into a few general categories, some of which were (and are today) known publicly, others were never revealed in any way and were used as 'controls'. We found there were statistically the same distribution of reports of hauntings of the 'public' variety as of the 'control' variety. This led us to believe that something was being experienced. We had rigorous albeit silent controls on the docents. They knew there was something going on but only June Reading knew the details - she was the sole interface to myself during the period. From this data I can say with confidence that not only was Whaley House haunted during that period but that it was haunted even before any restoration took place. What is not well known is that the Whaley family began experiencing haunting effects in the house as did others about the time of Thomas Whaley's death. This is not revealed to my best knowledge, in any authoritative book on the topic of the Whaley House hauntings. Only a careful reading of the now misplaced Whaley journals will reveal this. I personally found this the most interesting aspect of the investigation. So in a long-winded answer to your question, Yes records were kept, and in the latter part of the 20th century detailed records were again kept. I also know that June Reading kept her own diary of house activity. I doubt that diary exists today.
Message Thread:
« Back to thread