Entertainment
Finding local ghosts

World-renowned astrologer and psychic Walden Welch tells the story of the ghost who watches over the Sonoma Hotel. Photo by Frankin Lee/Index-Tribune

According to travel brochures and Web sites, Sonoma is a quaint little town noted for its historic architecture, its surrounding vineyards and its world-class spas.

But what lies beneath may be a darker picture.

Carla Heine, who bills herself as an authority on Sonoma's haunted sites, tells chilling tales of what may really have happened, from the Indian ceremonial bear sacrifices to the Stevenson regiment's massacre of the last surviving Indians; to the Chinese tunnels and even the old roller rink under the Mercato, where stock boys say at night they can still hear the sounds of people skating.

Heine recounts stories of the famous archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, discoverer of Mycenae, and Mark Twain, noted journalist and writer, and U. S. Grant, general and U.S. president, all of whom supposedly bunked at the Blue Wing Inn.

But the men and women who spent time at the "Hanging Tree" remain nameless, although perhaps they left a more enduring impression.

The Hanging Tree

It doesn't look like much now, with its limbs lopped off every which way to make room for the paved parking lot and traffic beneath. But according to legend, this huge oak off First Street East was used for nearly 100 years as a hanging tree. And according to Heine, on the hottest summer nights when nothing stirs, it still tells its gruesome tale.

Sonoma Hotel ~ 1881

"Anyone guilty of less than a death penalty offense was hung (here) by leather thongs for three days and three nights," Heine says. Not only that, but they were given 40 lashes with a cat-o'-nine-tails braided with twists of barbed wire.

The criminals were hung by their wrists, not their necks; their toes barely touching the ground. But, she adds, the punishers were gracious and doled out the whippings in four sets of 10 lashes to make them more endurable. Less generous persons might suggest prolonging the pain gave the punishers more pleasure.

While the criminals hung from the tree, no one was allowed to come near them, not even to give them water or medical attention. In the heat of August and September, many died.

But during the night, between the hours of, say, midnight and 1 a.m., the mothers and wives and children would sneak down to the hanging tree and risk their own lives to keep their loved ones alive - to offer succor and food and water and comfort.

And to this day, during the hottest weather - in the months of August and September - neighbors near the hanging tree say they can hear the crying and singing and praying of women float in to them through their open windows.

The Vallejo Home

A different kind of ghost - or ghosts - may haunt the Vallejo house, if the stories Michelle Kazeminejad hears are true. She is the state parks guide at Lachryma Montis, the estate of Gen. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, off West Spain Street at Third Street West.

Seven years before Kazeminejad arrived in 1982, an old groundskeeper tended the gardens on the estate.

"He claimed that sometimes a voice would greet him in beautiful fine Spanish very early in the morning," Kazeminejad said.

She explained that Vallejo loved his gardens and his trees and would appreciate someone carefully tending them.

But that's not the only unusual occurrence.

During restoration of the house, Kazeminejad was surprised by a carpenter's confession. He had been working by himself on the roof and came down to confide in her.

"I feel something has been interfering with my tools," he said. "And I hear the laughter of a young person."

It was as if the young person had been teasing him, moving his tools around, Kazeminejad said, then laughing over his mischievous prank.

Hotel Circa 1920

She doesn't know whether or not the house is haunted, but she does say she is jealous. Some years ago the phone rang and a man from Oregon called with a story of walking into Vallejo's house and feeling his presence.

"I felt I knew a great deal about him," the man told Kazeminejad.

She, on the other hand, felt left out. After all, she took care of Vallejo's house and he didn't talk to her.

Later, she said, when she went to lock up, "I stood in the entry to the study, and felt I couldn't move. I felt this odd sensation, as if I was immobilized, transfixed."

Was it Vallejo, letting her know he understood?

A remote canyon ranch

Down one of the old canyon roads, back where there's still no electricity, lives an old woman and her companion, their ranch hands in the outbuildings. The woman, now 94 years old, has lived here for more than half a century. But her companion is new to the ranch, new to California, and new to the United States.

Because she is unfamiliar with clothing fashions for the past 150 years here in California, it did not seem odd to her to see a little girl in a long dress running through the house and out the door to the porch, although it was 10 or 11 at night and they lived miles from the nearest neighbors. The companion assumed the child was visiting one of the ranch hands.

"I was paralyzed for a moment," she told her friends, "then I went and got my lantern and went calling her."

But she got no answer.

Was it a ghost? her friends asked.

"No, it was a little girl," the woman insisted.

Maybe. But others who have visited won't spend the night again. Her daughter, for example, said, "I'm not going to spend the night up there anymore. I hear footsteps."

Sonoma Hotel

This quaint hotel which sits on the historic Plaza in downtown Sonoma may have a permanent lodger. Many guests have reported to the front desk seeing a janitor in old-fashioned clothes - a man who died years ago.

Walden Welch, world famous astrologer and psychic who has served as consultant to police departments and the FBI, stopped by to check out the story of this non-paying guest.

Sonoma Hotel ~ 1930

"First of all, the name is wrong," he said of the hotel. "I think it must have once been called the Plaza or Park Plaza, something like that.

"And I get the feeling this was not a hotel when it was built. I smell meat. It was a place to feed people and animals, probably horses."

But the desk clerk disagreed. The hotel was never named the Plaza; it had never been a market, and it had nothing to do with horses.

Undaunted, Welch climbed the stairs to the top floor, where he came up with a name: Frederick Daniel Ryan, an Irishman in his 30s or early 40s when he died, with a mustache and long side-burns.

He didn't dress well and wore a tool belt, said Welch, who had never before heard of this ghost.

Ryan, he added, was good-natured, the handyman who maintained these rooms. He loved the hotel and hated his marriage, so would often stay in an empty room instead of going home.

One night, he slept in a room that was being renovated. He fell, hit his head and died.

"Now he doesn't want to leave," Welch said. "He loved the place. He doesn't mean any harm to anybody."

Perhaps it is Ryan who calls attention to the photos on the second floor, just as Welch is leaving. There are pictures of the building when it was a dry goods store and butcher shop. And above a collection of antique horse shoes hangs a photograph of the hotel around 1920 - the Plaza Hotel.

Blue Wing Inn

Welch never saw the ghost who is supposed to inhabit the Sonoma Hotel, but he did see another apparition, although at the time he didn't know it was a spirit.

The Blue Wing Inn on East Spain Street, across from the Mission, was originally built to house soldiers and later became a gambling saloon and hotel. It is, according to Heine, California's oldest hotel, complete with a geothermal aquifer underneath. Legend has it a missing strongbox from a Wells Fargo Bank stagecoach robbery on Stage Gulch Road was buried here.

The inn and its surroundings have fallen into disrepair since the state took over the property, intending to renovate it, but failing to appropriate the necessary budget amounts.

But in 1971, the inn offered tiny but adequate residential apartments with a lovely back yard for evening parties. Welch attended one of these with his friend Jeannie, who lived in the inn.

He was sitting at a table next to the stairs that night when he turned his head to see a woman in a high-collared, long dress, her hair in a bun, her feet wrapped in button shoes, climbing the stairs. She was carrying a candle, something Welch thought odd, since it was still quite light outside. But then her whole appearance was odd, even to the pink rosebuds on her dress.

"But this was the '70s when women wore those granny skirts with the funny shoes," he said.

About that time, one of the other guests excused herself to go up to Jeannie's apartment to use the bathroom. But Welch suggested she wait as he had just seen someone else go in.

After a while, when no one came out, they questioned Welch, who described the woman. There was a gasp from the others. "You're about the 15th person who has seen her," Jeannie said, and explained about the Blue Wing's ghost.

She may have been a vision, but Welch said she looked as real as anyone there that night.

And maybe she was.

By Jane Lott
Sonoma Index-Tribune staff writer

Sonoma Hotel ~ 2004 on Historic Sonoma Plaza 110 West Spain Street