Description Of Place: Separated behind a stone wall with an iron-wrought gate almost completely covered by vines, the Van Ness House is situated on a hill surrounded by trees overlooking the coast. The structure is a three-story Tudor-style edifice with forty rooms, a grand entry hall, dining room, parlor, library and turn-of-the-century kitchen. During Prohibition, parts of the house were altered to include a bar and a hidden room for high-stakes gambling. Partially intact, sections of the house are in uneven states of deterioration.  

Ghostly Manifestations: For several centuries, haunted houses and locations have inspired several of the most famous pieces of literature from "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow" to "The Innocents," and in recent years, they have become locations of curiosity and interest due to their historical significance or more morbid details. However, there is no surefire way to deter teenagers, vandals and vagrants from systematically defacing and ruining these locations.

Like numerous similar places of unwarranted teenage interest, many of which have become Lover's Points for exploring underage sexuality, the Van Ness House has possibly seen more curious high school students and adolescent outlaws than local Bodega Bay High School. Legends of people vanishing inside go back to the 1930s, but disappearances are not typically the stuff of haunted house lore.

"I have never heard of any stories of people vanishing in the local Van Ness House..." Jan Padalecki is a local high school history teacher and amateur historian who collects and shares the stories of the area. One of her ancestors came from Ohio to dig for gold in the area, and while researching her family tree, she came across diaries and forgotten journals about characters from the history of the Van Ness House.

"Nor have I heard a many ghost stories coming from the house." She continues. "However, given that it's been empty since the Late Forties and no one lives there, I'm not surprised. It's haunting reputation seems almost entirely based on its presence and sordid history rather than any actual stories. How do you find ghost stories for a place that's been deserted for several years?"

Without any modern stories from the house, Andrew Luttrell of the CGS back-tracked through local newspapers and witness accounts of stories from the house including reports of people who said they saw the lights on in the house as if a party was going on there. This story claims that a traveler driving down to Los Angeles ran out of gas on the highway, and while walking back to town for help, he noticed the Van Ness House active with lights, voices inside and sounds of partying. To him, it seemed as if a very raucous active party was going on inside the structure, but as he got closer to look into the window, there was a gun shot, a woman's scream and the sounds and lights drifted away. The traveler suddenly found himself outside the very dark and very deserted house, terrified and very confused. The problem is that this similar story has also been repeated for several other locations in the United States, such as Whipstaff Manor in Friendship, Maine. However, this does not mean it could not have also happened here.  

During a search for former students of the Van Ness House when it was a school, Luttrell eventually located Marcie Harker, whose mother worked in the house as a dancer when it was a speakeasy, and Max Finley, who went to school at Bodega Bay Grammar School in the last year that it was open. Some of their stories involve the same description of an identical apparition seen seven years apart, that of a tall, thin man dressed in black. 

"My mother called it one of the spookiest places she had ever worked." Marcie is now a newspaper editor for the Peoria Dispatch in Iowa. Her mother, Janice Brunner, now deceased, was a dancer and entertainer along with eleven other girls who entertained the clientele who visited the Van Ness House during the time it was used to hide illegal whisky. "I wasn't party to the experiences there, but I do recall the stories she told in passing to other family members who claimed to have other paranormal experiences."

While the second-hand stories from Janice Brunner can hardly be counted as incontrovertible evidence, they do give some insight into what was happening in the house immediately after the death of Whitman Van Ness, the last owner. Activity such as voices, footsteps, figures that vanished and objects that vanished. Brunner herself testifies that martini glasses filled to the brim vanished when the place was empty and turned up empty. Others described a figure in a dark suit who sat in the corner of the room and watched the room, but when one looked back, the figure would be gone. 

Max Finley, however, has a more personal insight and direct observation of what was happening in the house between 1938 to 1943 when the location was a boarding school, mostly for orphans and children of American GIs overseas. Although he was eight years old at the time, he has told and repeated his stories often over the years, carefully rehearsing them like lines from a play. 

"The place was haunted." Finley states affirmatively. "As a kid, you think every place that looks as if Boris Karloff lives in it is haunted, but this place really was."

"Back in those days," Finley continues. "They used to herd kids into rooms for basic learning. Crowded classrooms, thirty to forty kids, anywhere between eight to twelve years or older, depending on how hard they refused to learn anything, and we were always reciting and writing. The teachers weren't cruel but they did dose us every night with castor oil back when they thought it had medicinal properties...

"Anyway, there was several times we'd be reciting from our reading, and we'd gradually become aware of another voice that wasn't quite natural. In the multitude of children's voices, we'd start hearing a man's voice reciting with us... a bit louder and distant at the same time. The teacher would stop us, and it would stop. We'd start again, and in a few seconds, it would start again. One day, I recall looking up and seeing a man in the back of the room. He had a round white face, hair slicked back and looked to be wearing overalls with an old coat. I'd see him, others would see him, and one day the teacher chased him out into the hall where he apparently vanished."    

Rumors were this figure was Dexter O'Connell, a former groundskeeper who was rumored to be illiterate in life. One wonders if his spirit was attracted to the lessons being taught in the former residence. If that was the case, then another more maternal spirit also presided on the grounds. While the children were learning their lessons on the first floors, their bedrooms, sometimes as many as eight to ten students to a room, were on the second and third floors. In the girl's wing on the north side of the houses, girls often reported woke to found themselves tightly tucked in at night and found their clothing neatly folded at bedside. No one knew who was doing it until a girl woke and noticed a spectral woman sitting by her at bedside. According to Finley, the screaming resulting in the ghost retreating, but her activities continued for years after.

"Not a lot of girls wanted to stay in that room afterward..." He adds. "But the staff wasn't about to take the dreams of a few girls as credible evidence.

"If there was one constant figure that seemed to hold more sway, it was the Man In Black. I don't know if anyone ever saw him on the second or third floors, but I do know he was felt on the first floor. You could feel when you were being watched because the room would get really cold and you could see your breath. Teachers were always looking for a strange man they said they saw prowling the grounds or ascending the staircase. After the school changed hands and became a regular school, many of us were sent to foster homes, and I heard a rumor of a photo that caught him standing in the parlor door at the end of the front hall. I recall seeing it in the newspaper back then, but I don't know where it is now."

Over the years, the Man in Black was reportedly seen by several people sent to keep up with the condition of the Van Ness House, but his last known sighting was in 1967 as a realtor taking a hotelier on a tour of the house was sent running from the house in fright. The hotelier was reportedly never seen again, thus sparking the rumors of people vanishing in the house, but this kind of local folklore can't be taken at face value. It is just impossible to confirm a disappearance when there is no name to the victim. 

It is known that there have been seventeen reported disappearances of individuals in a hundred mile radius of Bodega Bay of teenagers, people with social and mental problems and travelers that traveled down the Bay Highway, but it is not possible to link all of them to the Van Ness House as people do tend to vanish for more logical and illogical reasons without paranormal reasons.

Regardless of the local folklore, the Man in Black is believed to be the ghost of Whitman Van Ness prowling the house and grounds and seemingly terrifying intruders to the premises. Over the years, it has been theorized his presence has become stronger, possibly holding sway over the other ghosts. According to the Ghost-Facers group, "Whitman is a much stronger presence now than he was when the house was used as a school which is why the house has stayed vacant for so long." They further rationalize he's been keeping the other ghosts captive, alluding to the way the ghost of Emeric Belasco held sway over the ghosts of his former party guests at the Belasco House.  

It should be added that the Ghost-Facers have been arrested three times in trying to explore the house without the permission of the owners.

Although the CGS has also yet to do an actual investigation themselves, the Van Ness House continues to be a location of local intrigue and folklore. Police patrol the area looking for trespassers and amateur ghost-hunters all the time, but whether they are seeing Whitman sneaking a glimpse from a window or wandering the house is not public knowledge. After more than sixty years, Whitman's ghost remains elusive, hiding in the house he believes is his until eternity. To test Max Finley's claims, he was shown several photos of similar attired men with identical features. Almost immediately, he pointed out Whitman Van Ness standing next to Dexter O'Connell in an old photo.

"That's him..." Max looked at the photo. "That's exactly who I saw on the first-floor  landing."

History: Listed as one of the most haunted houses in America by the Collinsport Ghost Society and the Ghost-Facers Paranormal Group, the Van Ness House was built by Miles Van Ness, a gambler and traveler who made his fortune in the Gold Rush. Van Ness had a way of turning adversity into good fortune. He was only thirteen years-old when he was caught in a fire at the former Edmonds Hotel (now the Pacific Coast Hotel) and came back with his gold fortune to invest in the gutted hotel to turn it into a gambling hall and saloon. He used his fortunes to build the Van Ness House in 1862 on the bluff over the bay. He married Anna Houghton, the daughter of financier Bernarr S. Houghton, a wealthy financier, but their son, Whitman Van Ness, lacked his father's cunning and business acumen, gambling away the family fortune and eventually losing the house in 1901. Miles continued to live illegally in the house operating it as a bordello until 1903 when the sheriff dragged him out against his will. Three months later, Whitman came back to the house and on September 13, 1935, hung himself from the staircase. (According to local legends, Whitman shot himself in the head.) His body was found a week later, and buried at county expense in 1935.

Afterward, the house became known as the Bodega Bay Boarding Schoolhouse and later Bodega Bay Grammar School before it became too costly to keep up. Afterward, it was a speakeasy during the 1940s. Today, the house is private property and vacant. Although it has passed in and out of custody through several owners, there are currently no known plans for the property.

In an odd addendum to this location's history, on April 23, 2012, Whitman's grave was discovered desecrated and his remains burned into ash  by unidentified vandals. No one has yet been arrested for the desecration, but speculation as to motive suggests some form of occult worship.

Identity Of Ghosts: The house is said to be haunted by possibly as many as twenty surviving consciousnesses, but the ghost of Whitman Van Ness, a local scoundrel and inveterate gambler, who died alone and became a ghost in his home, is the main spirit everyone seems to come looking for here. After depleting the family fortune, he had operated a bordello in the house afterward trying to keep it, and when that failed, he tried to marry into wealth, later murdering his fiancée on the eve of her wedding and framing his groundskeeper Dexter O'Connell for the crime. Police never found enough evidence to convict him for the crime, but the court of public opinion crucified him. Shunned by the community, Whitman later hung himself in the house in 1935 to ruin its reputation as well and reportedly drive off potential buyers.

Psychics have also described quite a number of other spirits haunting the structure including Haskel Caine, a gambler who died on the location when it was a speakeasy, and Victoria Dodd, a prostitute who Whitman may have murdered. Dodd is said to have lost a daughter in the house, who was born stillborn, suggesting she could be the maternal spirit upstairs. Still yet another apparition is believed to be Dexter O'Connell who had murdered a man in 1927 in self-defense and was hired as a groundskeeper by Whitman in 1933. O'Connell was also blamed for the murder of Whitman's wife, but a modern re-examination of the case confirms Whitman as the killer.

Not so well known are speculations that Van Ness was also a psychopathic killer, possibly killing and murdering prostitutes from the house's existence as a bordello.  

Source/Comments: Supernatural (Episode: "Of Grave Importance") - Activity based on the Easkoot House in Stinson Beach, California, Prosperity School in Joplin, Missouri, Farrar School in Farrar, Iowa and the Old Charles Street School in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

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