Posted by John S on 9/3/2005, 6:13 pm, in reply to "Re: sightings" Regarding the Whaley papers, believe me you are not the only one interested. I have no clue who has them. I would only hope they were transferred years ago when the current caretakers took over the collection. My greater fear is that one or more members of the Whaley family may have confiscated them. They do contain some rather private if not historically interesting bits. June Reading, original curator of Whaley House, did use quite a bit of the information in her later books she wrote about the Whaley history. So perhaps the best way to find the information is to read them absent any other access to the papers.
You're asking some excellent questions. As to why I have not yet published, the sheer volume of the data is amazing. For various reasons, I have not yet published my findings regarding Whaley House.
--Previous Message--
: John,
:
: Are these findings to ever be published? Is
: this something you are considering? Can you
: tell us more about the control phenomena?
: Since this seems to no longer be an ongoing
: investigation, I think the public would
: appreciate the information. And how is it
: really that the Whaley papers are
: 'misplaced'? I find this hard to believe.
: Someone has them, hasn't this itself been
: investigated fully? Surely there are plenty
: of places to start looking, people to ask.
: Shouldn't the Whaley house have them, or the
: County? How could they get lost?
:
: --Previous Message--
: 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.
:
:
:
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