Living With the Past : Learning the fate of a home’s former residents can somethimes haunt the new owners.

Think back on all the ghost stories you have heard. The common denominator is that almost all are cobwebbed with history--wan women in Edwardian dress, gnarled gentlemen in frock coats.

At some point in the future we should be hearing about spooks in Spandex, no?

Since violent death and ghosts are linked in the collective psyche like kids and candy, like the pit and the pendulum, we visited homes where recent slayings happened in search of emergent legends.

“A violent crime generally increases the chances of a house being haunted,” said Richard Senate, Ventura author of three books on ghosts here and in other parts of Southern California. “I’d say that in about 60% of the haunting cases there was some kind of violent act in the place, a negative energy.”

That’s not to say 60% of violent deaths result in hauntings. Most people who live in houses where violent deaths recently occurred report nothing out of the ordinary.

Alma Carrillo just moved to the Flory Avenue address in Moorpark, where James Linkenauger beat his wife to death early this year.

“The landlord said she had some problem with the previous tenants,” Carrillo said. “I thought maybe they tore up the place or something. Afterward she told me, she said she thought that I knew. I was kind of scared when I found out, but I thought, why worry?”

Lesley Fleming and Russell Robson weren’t worried when they moved into the Simi Valley condominium where William and Sean Boehmer died.

William Boehmer shot and killed his 11-year-old son in 1991 as the boy lay sleeping. Boehmer then turned the gun on himself. A videotaped suicide message showed that he was upset over health and financial problems.

“When they first told me that somebody died here, I thought ‘big deal,’ ” Fleming said. “People die all the time.”

But Fleming, a casual believer in New Age philosophy and the metaphysical, said she began to feel that she was sharing her apartment with more than one roommate.

“It’s not thick with energy, but there is definitely a disruption,” she said. “When we first moved in we used to hear real light stomping in the master bedroom. My ears would ring when I was here by myself. That’s when we knew there was something going on.”

Robson, a truck driver who is mildly skeptical of paranormal occurrences, said he has often heard annoying sounds.

“The neighbors used to ask me, ‘how’s things at the spook house?’ ”

He said he doesn’t mind because the rent is reasonable and it’s not the first time he’s lived somewhere that a death occurred.

“Before I lived here I lived at a place in Canoga Park where some guy committed suicide,” he said.

Robson sleeps in the room where Sean was killed. On his bedside table he has a lamp, the body of which is a glass jar filled with marbles.

“The marbles were moving,” Robson said. “You could hear them. I figured the building might be settling or something . . . “

The next day Robson moved the lamp downstairs, and the shifting marbles stopped.

Fleming, who owns a house cleaning business, conducts a spiritual scrub down by regularly burning sage, an ancient ritual favored by native Americans.

The Gruesome Details

The paranormal aside, there are some practical complications to living in a house where someone was recently slain.

How do the current occupants feel about bathing in the tub where a woman was found floating, or sleeping in the room where a body was stashed?

The law requires real-estate agents to tell buyers if a death happened within the past three years. Most buyers prefer not to learn the details precisely so they can take a hot bath without getting goose bumps.

“It’s none of our business,” said Elton Peterson, who owns a house in Thousand Oaks where a woman’s throat was slashed by her boyfriend, who then dumped her in the bathtub. “As long as the person was caught and convicted.”

In the Thousand Oaks case, the boyfriend was apprehended.

Police never did catch Lynn Mueller’s killer.

Mueller attended a service at the Pentecostal Church one night in 1975 next to her home on East Main Street in Ventura. Two hours later, when her husband returned from work, he discovered her dead in the bedroom. She had been stabbed so severely that Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury, who was then a deputy district attorney, said you could smell the blood from the sidewalk.

Douglas Chase lives in the house now.

“We’ve been here 10 years and no strange occurrences so far. We had a friend who was spiritualistic or whatever you want to call it. She was in the Elvira fan club. After I told her there was a murder here, she said she was picking up vibes, but I think the only thing she was picking up was a second glass of wine.”

Wine and, Chase added, whatever she picked up from him through the power of suggestion.

“It’s in the mind of the beholder,” he said.

Spooky Film Background

Or in the eye of the cinematographer.

Filming wrapped up this month at an old Victorian house in Casitas Springs for a movie called “Fatally Yours” about, what else: A ghost.

The Nye house just outside of Foster Park looked to the movie people like every inch the loitering spot for the afterlife. The garden was ragged. The house hadn’t been painted for 30 years, and bats had taken up residence behind the shutters.

In old photos, the house looked like a block of ivory perched above the Ventura River. Set off as it is from the rest of the houses along Santa Ana Road, the stately Victorian projected a presence, even a mystery. People used to call it the Nye Mansion.

“I’ve heard all sorts of stories about this house,” said Jim Nye, the current resident. “It’s really gotten into the public imagination. Some people are spooked by black cats. I think Victorian houses fall into that same category.”

The popular myth is not without foundation. Jim Nye’s uncle, Bill Nye, was bludgeoned to death with a table leg in 1985 as he lay in his bed. The elderly amputee suffered wounds so severe that police said it appeared he had received a shotgun blast to the face. Robbery was the motive.

The critical clue was a shoe print where the attacker kicked in the bedroom door. Timmy Morris is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.

“Ever since I was little I’ve heard about it,” said Mitra Watkins, 17, who lives less than half a mile from the Nye house. “We always stayed away from it. I don’t even like to be alone here in this house because of that place over there.”

Watkins’ mother said her daughter shudders every time they drive by. But Nye is unfazed.

“I had a dream once about a ghost,” he said. “It was incredibly vivid, but it was just a dream. Having lived here for six years with my wife and two kids, I can tell you that it’s nice and cozy.”

Nye’s children are the fourth generation to live in the house. His grandmother said she would die there. She did. She left behind Nye’s uncle Bill, who had been disabled after losing his leg at an early age.

His prosthetic leg was still in the attic when the production company filmed the ghost scene. So were a bunch of bats.

“The night we filmed the big murder scene, there were tons of bats,” said executive producer Bruce Ditchfield of Ojai. “There were blue and purple lights. It was big trip. It was huge.”

Although it lacks the drama of bats, Kim Hawkins tell a story that’s spooky in its own way.

Hawkins and her husband bought a house in Camarillo that belonged to a couple named Vicinsky, both of whom died in a 1990 murder-suicide.

“The first time we looked at the house, I was walking around in the driveway imagining how to redecorate it,” Kim Hawkins said, “and I just started crying. It was the strangest thing.”

She said she couldn’t imagine why she would have such an emotional response.

The agent later disclosed the murder-suicide and Hawkins said the disclosure, coupled with the tearful reaction, gave her a chill.

“We’re not superstitious, but I wonder if the bodies were found outside.”

Rash of Violent Deaths

Hawkins, like most buyers of homes where slayings occurred, wasn’t interested in the details and the Vicinsky shooting was not unlike a rash of other family murder-suicides that year, three in Simi Valley alone.

The only thing that distinguished the killing was a call to police that served as a grim transcript of the events.

Elsa Vicinsky’s son heard his mother’s screams and dialed 911. The boy told dispatchers that Donald Vicinsky, his stepfather, had shot his mother.

“My stepfather just said he shot my mom. He’s got blood on his leg and it looks like he shot her.”

On the tape the boy was heard trying to talk his stepfather out of taking his own life.

He pleaded with him until his stepfather walked out of the house toward the driveway and shot himself in the head.