LOCAL HAUNTS : Historian Collects Tales of Ghostly Visitations, Headless Highway Riders

They’ve appeared in the Old and New Testaments, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and the Odyssey. They’ve provided inspiration for Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe. They have even starred in box office hits, leaving a trail of wealthy screenwriters and film producers behind them.

But ghosts, some Ventura County residents believe, are more than just literary fodder or fare for a midnight yarn. Reports abound of haunting happenings throughout the county.

“Nobody really knows what a ghost is because they all behave in such different ways,” said Richard Senate, a historian at the Olivas Adobe in Ventura who has gained a reputation over the years as the county’s unofficial ghost hunter. “One ghost in Oxnard was nothing more than a pipe smell. Another would only sing nursery rhymes. There is one on Old Creek Road that is headless,” he said.

The products of overactive imaginations, hoaxes or hallucinations? Before you make up your mind, read the spirited accounts below.

Alice Doesn’t Work Here Anymore

At first, Julie Reisenhoover, a maid at the Bella Maggiore Inn in downtown Ventura, paid little attention to some of the odd happenings around the 32-room hotel, built in 1927.

Several times when she was vacuuming the upstairs hallway, Reisenhoover said, she looked up and saw a shadow moving down the hallway. She heard the sound of jangling keys. Doors opened and closed by themselves.

But it was Room 17 that finally persuaded Reisenhoover it hadn’t all been her imagination or someone playing tricks on her.

Although the deadbolts on the hotel room doors can only be turned from the inside, Reisenhoover and other maids said the deadbolt of Room 17 constantly locks itself when no guest is there. When the door is unlocked, they said, the scent of cheap rose perfume in the room is overpowering. Often, Reisenhoover added, someone’s head will have left an impression on the pillow, even if no guest has checked into the room.

Once, Reisenhoover said, she opened the door to Room 17 and heard a 1940s song playing on the radio--as well as on every other station she turned to.

“Alice, another maid, told me she saw a woman dancing on the stairs and then just disappear,” Reisenhoover said.

Several guests, according to Manager Tom Wood, also have noticed strange things at the hotel. “On one of our guest questionnaires, someone wrote that everything had been fine--except for the bar of soap that rose up and just flew through the air,” Wood said.

Last year, Senate and a 14-member ghost-hunting team--made up of laymen, psychics and psychologists--stayed overnight to investigate the hotel. Senate said they knew nothing of specific events that reportedly had gone on there.

During the evening, psychics--who were in different parts of the hotel--independently came up with what they said were at least two different ghosts. One was a hippie named Mark, who supposedly had died of an overdose in the 1960s. Another was a young child.

In a seance that night, another psychic claimed to connect with the spirit of a woman who had a long story to tell. She said her name was Sylvia Michaels and was a prostitute from Atlantic City. She had hanged herself in Room 17 or 18 in 1947. At the time of her death, she was 23 years old. She likes men visitors at the hotel best.

“I think the rose perfume is Sylvia,” Reisenhoover said. “And the 1940s music we hear, I think that’s her, too.”

Did the woman exist? Not according to local police, who have no record of a suicide at the hotel in 1947. Other local agencies also have no evidence of her existence.

“If the death did occur in Ventura County, we would have a certificate,” said Sid Durham of the county recorder’s office.

Wood, who went to law school before going into hotel management, said the lack of evidence doesn’t bother him. During the 1940s, he said, the hotel was a “working-class flophouse” that would have attracted people like Sylvia. In the 1960s, before it was shut down for nearly 15 years, Wood said the hotel was a “counterculture hangout” for guests like Mark.

Besides, Wood added: “Not having any information on Sylvia kind of fits. If there was a mystery surrounding her death, it all would go hand-in-hand with her spirit still being here.”

Meanwhile, ghostly stories at the hotel haven’t died. Last week, an out-of-town visitor came to the front desk to drop off his key. According to the desk clerk, he’d had a strange night and had awakened several times.

Each time, he said, his room had been filled with the sickly sweet fragrance of cheap rose perfume.

Chocolate Mousse on Rye?

The two-story, blue and white building at 211 Santa Clara Ave. in Ventura has been reincarnated many times. First it was a family home and later a series of restaurants that survived for various lengths of time. In its current life, it is the Seafood and Beverage Company, a warmly decorated restaurant that has a staircase leading to what once were small bedrooms facing north and south.

It is from one of those bedrooms, now filled with furnaces and located next to the restrooms, that ghostly tales emanate.

Waitresses and visitors tell of a female apparition in a misty, long gown who stands at the top of the stairs. Occasionally, they say, the sound of a rocking chair, creaking back and forth, has been heard upstairs.

Assistant Manager Marjo Randall is adamant about seeing a “gauzy” figure that disappears. One woman said a ghostly lady at the top of the stairs “motioned to her with her finger” and was gone the next instant, Randall said. “She swears it is true.”

Susan, a waitress who asked that her last name not be used, said she has talked with several former employees who experienced strange happenings at the restaurant. One former waitress told Susan “that when she put a food order into the computer for the cook, it would screw up and be something different when the cook got it.” Susan said she occasionally has the same problem with the computer. “The ghost is mischievous,” she said.

The source of the problem? Many locals say it is the spirit of a young, beautiful woman named Rosa, married at the turn of the century to a sailor. The sailor was gone at sea for several years, the story goes, during which time the woman had an affair and became pregnant. Scandalized, she confined herself to the upstairs bedroom until her ninth month. In despair, she hanged herself.

“The house wasn’t even there at the turn of the century,” said August Hahn of Camarillo, who grew up in the house. “My father built that house between 1910 and 1912, and I lived there until I got married. My mother lived there for another 10 years. You never know what happened after we left,” Hahn said, “but for the first 30 years, it was ghost-free.”

Senate doesn’t dispute that the folklore doesn’t fit the house’s history. “But that doesn’t mean there’s no ghost there,” he said. One couple who rented the house before it was a restaurant told Senate they saw a ghostly little girl in a nightgown. “It was not the story of the lady,” he said. “But there have been sightings there for years.”

Senate said the legend of Rosa didn’t begin until after the house was renovated as a restaurant. One possible explanation, he said, is that the history actually belonged to another house and became distorted over time.

On the way out of the restaurant, a recent visitor paused to examine a picture of a large white Victorian house hanging near the restaurant’s front door. Built in 1876, the house was torn down in the 1950s to make room for a parking lot.

“From what I understand,” Randall said, “it was right next door.”

Now That He’s Stopped Cheating, No One Will Play Cards With Him

One look at the Glen Tavern Inn in Santa Paula tells visitors the hotel is from a different era. Opened in 1911, the three-story, 30-room inn is paneled in dark wood and has the feel of an Old World luxury lodge. The hotel, which has had several owners over the years, is under new management.

But employees, guests and locals say there may be occupants at the hotel whose names aren’t in the guest register.

“Weird things happen here,” said Melena Vasquez, a front desk clerk. Guests sometimes get chills and come running down the stairs, scared. “It doesn’t happen to everyone,” she said. And these are people, she said, “who don’t know anything about the ghost.”

Employees over the years have reported strange occurrences. Senate, at the request of the hotel’s former manager, investigated the hotel in 1986, he said, and received more than 30 different ghostly accounts.

Among them were: A maid who claimed an earring was jerked out of her ear when no one was near her. A waitress who said silverware flew off the table while she was preparing the dining room for a meal. Another waitress who claimed she walked into the kitchen before closing time and saw a cook standing at the stove stirring a pot. When the waitress stepped closer, the cook vanished.

“One room upstairs, the maids wouldn’t go in by themselves,” said Debbie Christenson Senate, Richard Senate’s wife and once a bookkeeper at the hotel. “When they walked by the room, they’d hear crying, as if a woman were inside,” she said. When the maids opened the door, the crying stopped. When they closed it, she said, the crying began again.

Many ghost stories center around Room 307 of the hotel and a “dark figure” who walks up and down the hallways and stairs.

According to one professed psychic on the investigative team, the figure was that of a man who was a bit actor in a Hollywood movie filmed in the area during the 1920s. He was playing cards upstairs in Room 307. When he was discovered cheating, someone shot him.

“I think it’s all a lot of nonsense,” said the hotel’s current manager. “I have been in that room at all hours and I’ve never seen anything or heard anything.”

John Nichols, owner of a local bookstore and a Santa Paula resident for 15 years, said he never heard any Glen Tavern ghost stories until the inn got into financial trouble.

The former manager “did all kinds of things to promote it, like starting ‘Murder Mystery Weekends,’ ” he said. “You have to assume it was invented as a publicity stunt.”

Senate disagreed. The former manager “may have overdone it but she didn’t just concoct stories,” he said. “She also didn’t pay employees to tell me things. I talked with cooks, maids, waitresses and a lot of guests. They all had experiences there.”

But if the past owner welcomed curious inquiries, the current manager wants nothing to do with them.

This reporter, who requested to see Room 307, was not permitted upstairs.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere Around the County . . .

If you believe everything you hear, Ventura County is a lot more populated than census takers say. Below are a few of the places rumored to have ghosts:

* The Mission San Buenaventura is said to have a ghostly monk dressed in a gray robe who wanders outside the mission. (Franciscan monks gave up gray many decades ago and now opt for brown.) Because of some real or imagined sin in his life, locals say, the monk believes he cannot enter the house of God. Those claiming to have seen him report that he is smiling and appears compassionate.

* On Old Creek Road near Ojai, bikers have reported seeing a headless man on a 1940s motorcycle who roars up and down the road with them.

* Is the “dark lady” spotted occasionally in an upstairs window of the Olivas Adobe in Ventura really Teodora Olivas, the wife of the hacienda’s builder? Senora Olivas had 22 children, which would make most people seek a permanent escape. But legend has it that she hangs around the adobe looking for gold that bandits reportedly stole in 1855 and buried nearby.

* The Bard Mansion on the Navy base in Port Hueneme once was the three-story home of Thomas and Molly Bard. Today it’s the officers’ club, where lights turn on and off by themselves and screams--not belonging to any known officer--have been heard. Two apparitions, both out of standard uniform in ghostly looking dresses, also have been reported.

* The Stage Coach Inn in Thousand Oaks has long been held to be the home of a Basque sheepherder supposedly killed at the inn. Tales about footsteps and doors that lock by themselves have persisted over the years, even though the building has been restored several times, moved and charred by fire.

* Today, the Moorish-style structure on Poli Street in Ventura is an office building filled with law offices. But when it was built in 1902 by U.S. Sen. Thomas Bard for his brother, Dr. Cephas Bard, it was a hospital. Several lawyers and legal secretaries believe that the self-locking doors, window shades that go up and down and smells of ether and pipe tobacco belong to the spirit of Dr. Bard. He was the hospital’s first patient and died there four months after the hospital opened.

“We’ve had all kinds of things happen,” said Patt Barron, a legal secretary whose office is in what once was the hospital’s emergency room. To nonbelievers, Barron has a simple reply. “You and I don’t really have any idea how many people are in this room, do we?”