Tour to Make Rounds of Hot Spots for Goblins

You’ve heard about the headless horseman who terrified poor Ichabod Crane in “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” How about the headless horseman of Ojai?

A musty local legend has it that the rider, sans head, sometimes gallops down the Ojai Valley into Ventura at midnight on the last day of the month.

“He’s looking for sinners,” says Richard Senate, who will tell the story and other chillers Friday night in the courtyard of Ventura’s Olivas Adobe.

October, with its ghoulish goings-on, is a busy month for Senate, a historian for the city of Ventura and local ghost hunter. He has published a small book called “Haunted Ventura,” a collection of reported ghost sightings and bizarre happenings.

Some of these sightings are fodder for tours and lectures that Senate is involved in this month--everything from a nighttime bus tour of supposedly haunted sites in the city to a bone-chilling walk through the historic Olivas Adobe. The spooky events, sponsored by the city’s recreation department, are geared for adults and children.

Senate himself is no stranger to spooks. His first run-in was in 1978 when he was working on an archeological excavation at Mission San Antonio de Padua near King City. He said a ghost appeared as a monk dressed in a hooded robe. That perked his interest in psychic research, and since then he has had a couple of encounters at the Olivas Adobe.

During Friday night’s “Chilling Tales of Old Ventura,” Senate will relate some thrillers he has written. Other stories, like the headless horseman of Ojai, are based on local legends.

“They all tend to be a little on the grim side,” he said. Grim hardly describes the headless horseman, who, as the story goes, was a heartless desperado a century ago. Supposedly he was killed by a posse and decapitated before burial.

According to the story, the desperado thunders through the valley on the devil’s black stallion, which snorts flames. To snare his victims and seize their souls, he uses a flaming lasso from the devil.

“It’s a Latino boogie-man story,” Senate said. It may have its origins in the stories about the legendary Mexican bandit Joaquin Murietta, who terrorized California in the last century.

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Senate has others: the one about pirates who steal treasures from San Buenaventura Mission, and a more contemporary one about a boy tempted to join a gang.

The storytelling runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and costs $5 for adults and $4 for children.

On Saturday, Senate is leading a bus tour to purportedly haunted spots in Ventura such as Cemetery Park and Olivas Adobe, where some people claim to have seen a shadowy woman. During a seance, a medium supposedly connected with the spirit of Teodora Olivas, whose husband built the hacienda in 1849, Senate’s book reports.

The tour, with refreshments included, runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and costs $8. Reservations are required, and because of limited seating it fills up fast. But if you miss this one, Senate is leading another on Oct. 19, and a special one Nov. 2 in honor of the Latino holiday Dia de los Muertos.

For those who want to delve more deeply into the supernatural, he will give a talk and slide show Oct. 11 at Ventura’s Barranca Vista Park. Running from 7 to 9 p.m., it costs $5.

Then, on Oct. 12 and 29, he will conduct an evening walking tour of Ventura’s downtown spots where people claim ghosts lurk. The tour, from 7 to 9 p.m., costs $6. For this one, “The Ghosts and Ghouls Tour,” reservations are required.

To hear Senate tell it, Ventura is a hotbed of ghostly activity. One of the best-known locales is the downtown Bella Maggiore Inn, where the ghost of “Sylvia” is said to still try her playful tricks on guests.

The most recent episode concerned a woman honeymooning at the inn about a year ago, Senate said. In the middle of the night, the water in the bathtub burst on. Then the couple heard a woman’s laughter and yelling.

There have been other stories about toothbrushes leaping into the air, doors opening, footsteps, shadowy figures and the smell of cheap rose perfume. During a seance at the inn, Senate reports, contact was made with Sylvia, a prostitute who supposedly took her life there in 1947.

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It’s a similar story up the block at Ventura’s City Hall, formerly the courthouse and jail. Six years ago, a psychic reported seeing a 1940-ish “lady in blue” glide down the hallway and vanish. Phantom phone calls and a finicky elevator have plagued the building. The restless spirit of a female suicide victim jailed there in the 1930s has been blamed for some of the odd happenings.

When Senate takes the tour group to City Hall, he will lead them into rooms never opened to the public. But ghost watchers shouldn’t expect anything flashy. Senate’s office is in this building, and despite some late nights there, he hasn’t seen anything spirited.

Ghosts will definitely be in residence Oct. 26 when Olivas Adobe gears up for its Halloween tours. The place will be decked out in ghoulish splendor--scarecrows that come to life, furniture that moves by itself, a spider here, a scream there.

“It’s not the factory of terror,” Senate said. In fact, during tours of the home docents manage to squeeze in some history about wealthy rancher Raymundo Olivas and his huge family.

The adobe tours, which leave every 15 minutes, run from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets, purchased at the door, cost $5 for adults and $3 for children and seniors. Those waiting in line for the tour can fill the time by having their fortunes told in the “gypsy camp” set up for the evening.

DETAILS

* WHAT: “Chilling Tales of Old Ventura.”

* WHERE: 7 p.m. Friday.

* WHEN: Olivas Adobe, 4200 Olivas Park Drive, Ventura.

* COST: $5 for adults, $4 for children.

* CALL: 658-4726.

* FYI: For other tours and lectures throughout the month, reservations may be required.