Walk Softly : Historic Tours Can Conjure Up Some Spooky Images

Huddled in the darkness under a dim half moon, the ghost hunters nervously cast their flashlights at an empty yellow building towering ominously over downtown Ventura.

Bard Memorial Hospital, says the tour guide in a creepy monotone, was the city’s first medical center but stands nearly vacant today as one of the most haunted buildings in the county.

This night, the 93-year-old structure is the last stop on a two-hour mystery tour of Ventura’s spookiest haunts--a tour that 40 or so participants signed up for not just to get the wits scared out them, but out of a longing to connect with the city’s history and folklore.

Such events have become hugely popular across Ventura County. About 270 people signed up for a historical dinner theater at the Stagecoach Inn and Museum in Thousand Oaks earlier this month.

A ghostly tour of Santa Paula this past weekend attracted so many visitors that organizers were forced to turn 150 souls away. And Ventura’s walking tours have become so popular that city officials are now dreaming up new ones.

“People want their history,” said Darlene Appleford, exhibits curator for the Conejo Valley Historical Society in Thousand Oaks.

And increasingly, it seems, they like their history served up through spooky tales and recollections of the county’s ghoulish bygone days.

This fall, five of the city of Ventura’s nine walking tours are centered on ghostly themes. They all cost less than a movie ticket and sell out quickly, especially at this time of year.

“I think people are more aware of [the tours] in October because of Halloween,” said Debbie Senate, who leads the tours with her husband, city historian Richard Senate.

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The Santa Paula Theatre Center’s Ghost Walk also sold out this haunting season. In its second year, the one-hour tours featured local actors portraying characters from Santa Paula’s gritty oil days, ghosts telling stories of how they were killed.

Organizers got a shock of their own at the popularity of the tours. “It took off just like wildfire,” said Mary Alice Henderson, president of the Santa Paula Historical Society.

Thousand Oaks has taken a different tack in telling its tales. In addition to permanent exhibits at the Stagecoach Inn and Museum, the historical society brings history alive by holding a dinner theater in October.

Century-old recipes are served on century-old China, and actors perform vignettes of famed characters from the region. In Thousand Oaks, walking tours are difficult.

“So much in Thousand Oaks has been torn down compared to Ventura,” Appleford said. “I don’t know if people would want to look at an empty spot.”

Many Ventura County cities have demolished old buildings and, to a degree, the rich history that goes with them.

But cities such as Ventura and Santa Paula still cling to their landmarks, and local officials have capitalized on them as vehicles through which tales of the colorful people and events of the past can be told.

And there is no better season to tell tales than October, when children and adults alike seek out all that is ghoulish and spine-tingling.

On Friday the 13th, for example, about 40 local residents met at the front steps of Ventura City Hall for a two-hour walking tour of downtown haunts.

“Let me tell you a little thing about ghosts,” Richard Senate told his audience at the start of the tour. “They seem to inhabit places where people undergo great stress.”

And at that, the historian rattled off countless tales of great trials once held in the former county courthouse, and stories of lost souls who still haunt local bars, hotels and the historic hospital.

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A favorite stop on the tour was the former women’s jail on the third floor of City Hall. Armed with plastic flashlights, tour members crept through the dark, open room, searching for a cold spot on the concrete floor alleged to be where an inmate committed suicide.

“It’s just like a breeze or a tingling feeling,” said 11-year-old Mary Claire Ramirez of Ventura, who thought she found the spot. “I’m really into this stuff.”

After a sweep through City Hall, a spin through the Bella Maggiore Inn and a stop at the Ventura Theatre, the tour wound up at Bard Hospital.

“I thought it was wonderful. I especially enjoyed the historical information about the city,” said Susan Mayberry of Oxnard, who was particularly taken with the story of the Bella Maggiore’s famous ghost, Sylvia, known to haunt Room 17.

“I’d like to stay there,” she said, “with maybe eight people with the light on.”

For information or reservations for walking tours in the city of Ventura, call 658-4728.