October 19, 2011
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1 I picked up a book a couple of years ago at Barnes and Noble. It was called Haunts of San Jose by an unknown author named David Lee.
2 I remember looking at the cover, turning it over, looking at the back cover, and noticing that the air-brushed picture on the back was taken going down Quimby Road, right when the city appears.
3 I also recall instantly opening the book, and finding a black-and-white picture of the same area, a two-page spread. I used to go up Quimby routinely when I needed to get away from YB on my prep period. I’d stop at Jamba Juice, and then go up a ways just to get away from the madness of school. I still occasionally do that, since the Chill is located on Quimby Road.
4 It was around this time of the year, when I go into my annual ghost unit, that I spotted the book at B and N. I thumbed through the book astounded at how many places in San Jose are purportedly haunted. The book had great pictures and some interesting places, many of which came up in discussions with students over the years.
5 Unfortunately, Lee is a complete amateur, and the writing pretty poor. It was a huge disappointment, and I recall setting the book aside and not purchasing it because of poor reasearch, misspelled words, and really lousy journalistic pursuit.
6 I also recall getting home and then asking myself, “Why didn’t you buy it anyway, you imbecile? A great many ghost books are poorly written and lousily researched. But this is the only book on the planet that has local stories catalogued.”
7 I think it was because of the poor research, which often was some guy he talked to for around a minute, or something he had just heard of.
8 I wound up buying it and keeping it around when I would be bored. Yesterday I decided to bring it to school, almost as a lark, because it had SO many locally famous places in it.
9 The places mentioned were like a Who’s-Who, or more a Where’s-Where of places we all know: The Winchester Mystery House, quite naturally, including a WAY creepy transparent picture of Sarah Winchester; The HP Pavilion, where animals purportedly haunt the place and where the ghost of a girl has been seen floating outside; Happy Hollow (Lee spells it “Happy Hallow”, to give you an idea of his editing prowess); Chuck-E-Cheese, which includes the VERY consistent story of a little girl who fell from the third floor and who haunts the former King Norman’s Toy Store to this day; O’ Conner hospital, a place that used to be a sanitarium; Quimby Road, including a midnight jogger who appears a glowing figure and then just as suddenly disappears; Independence High School Theater, with a wonderful interview with Pam Melvin, and tons more.
10 I’ll throw a few more out there, almost too many to comprehend, but you get the idea. Besides the famous Winchester Mystery House, the Chuck-E-Cheese story remains the most consistent.
11 He also mentions Yerba Buena High School, but not the Theatre (I refused ever to go overly public with the Heidi stories. I never wanted that to become a circus, so I remained the sole scribe to that one.) Interestingly, he said that the stables behind the school were haunted. The students at the school know that place as The Creek. Some ghost purportedly haunts that area, but I don’t remember ever hearing that one.
12 What struck me was the lady he interviewed for that story was a gal named Heida. I must confess that one did jump off the page at me.
13 He also brought in an entire piece about Grant Park on Mt. Hamilton Road, where the Class of ’05 (the Class I advised) had our Senior Breakfast in the Fall of 2004. It has an interesting history of family disputes, of madness and murders, and of other strange goings on, many of which I never knew. I assume those stories had some substance and some research, but Lee wrote the book with no citations of any sort.
14 He did mention a worker named Ray Castilla who saw a couple of ghosts smoking. The author informed Mr. Castilla that ghosts do smoke tobacco.
15
16 I was telling my class some of these stories, and paused on that one.
17 I raised one eyebrow and mused, “Hey, it ain’t gonna kill ya!”
18 The students laughed politely.
19 Castilla also told him how one evening he looked east from the Ranch House and saw an orchard appear, one that had been there in the distant past.
20 Left out of the story amazingly were any stories about the albinos that supposedly haunt Alum Rock Park, or the haunted house on San Felipe Road.
21 Also left out was the haunting of Marsh Road, which has a tragic story that happened years ago of a girl getting raped and killed, her body being left by the small bridge. It is said that if you go up there at night, and you turn around and look in your rear view mirror, you will see her.
22 It has also been said that electronic devises will fail, and that a guy in a white truck will chase you away. Some say he has a rifle.
23 I never encouraged the Marsh Road story, because I worried that the guy in the truck might be some redneck who wouldn’t think twice of firing a gun at trespassers. I always laid off that story because of that.
24 I often wondered if that was the source of the albino stories.
25 The book mentions a few other places: Faber’s Cyclery, Mission Ale House, Notre Dame High School, San Jose State, Valley Medical, Valley Fair, and the Improv, among other places.
26 It’s just so frustrating, because you end up seeing the book as a vanity-press type, written poorly and researched horribly.
27 I know more about a lot of those tales just by having had students repeat them over the years, along with other urban legends mixed in. A lot of stories are just tales we all told as kids, the couple who went up to Alum Rock Park to make-out when the car runs out of gas, for example. The boyfriend always tells his girlfriend he will try to get some help, and locks her in the car. When he doesn’t return, she gets scared.
28 She then hears scratching on the roof of the car, or raindrops, and gets more scared.
29 Of course, the police show up, flashlights and radios and all, and tell the girl to walk straight to the police car without looking back. But she wants to know where her boyfriend is.
30 She suddenly turns, and sees her boyfriend hanging uside down from a tree, his fingers either scraping the top of the car, or his fingers cut off and blood dripping on the roof.
31 Urban legends.
32 My students quite naturally liked the stories that were closer to home, the scariest being the Quimby Road jogger. One girl raised her hand, claiming she had been out with friends at 11:59 and that the jogger glowingly appeared, and just as swiftly disappeared.
33 Another student showed me a cellular phone picture of his sister and boyfriend embracing in front of a campfire in Yosemite. He kept asking, “Do you see it?”
34 I absolutely saw nothing until he pointed to an area in the lower left-hand corner of the photograph.
35 When I tilted the phone slightly, I saw a faint, ghostly figure of a little girl appear. It was clearly a little girl and not smoke or clouds. The lines clearly defined a human form.
36 I asked him to sent it to me on School Loop. So far he hasn’t.
37 It is Homecoming Week at our school. And yes, they also call it a spirit week, similar to YB’s. Interestingly, our Homecoming is this Friday night. It’s always fun to talk about ghosts during “Spirit” Week.
38 We play YB.
39 So fun stuff coming up, I imagine.
40 Meanwhile, I might take a second look at that book. It’s a shame it is so shabbily researched, because it truly does have moments, and as of right now, it is the only book that I know of that is solely about local haunted places.
41 I’m tempted to look the author up and do some deeper research, or at least interview him. I am curious about our local hauntings.
42 Although I don’t believe in ghosts (I tell my students that I’ll believe in ghosts when one walks up to me and gives me a hundred-dollar bill!) I would still be WAY reluctant to go out researching and hunting.
43 So I have this strange sort of struggle. I declare I don’t believe in ghosts, but do I really want to travel around to all of these places and get some serious research done?
44 Nope. So what am I afraid of if I don’t believe in ghosts?
45 Ghosts.
46 Peace.
~H~
Room at Grant Ranch, San Jose, CA. Is this
room haunted? It could very well be according to
amateur author David Lee.
