More Haunted Places in Los Gatos

When people first hear that there are ghosts in Los Gatos, they want to know - right away - where they are!  The old cemetery location doesn't surprise them, at least not once they hear that there's a former graveyard that now has shops residing there.

But aside from a final resting place, where else are there ghostly sightings and activities?

One of them is the popular Los Gatos party destination, The Opera House. Apparently it's just too much fun to leave!  Seriously, the ghost there is said to be a woman - she has been seen and heard so many times, by so many people, that it is one of the few spots absolutely not in doubt to be inhabited by a spirit of a former human being. One of the most remarkable things is not just that she has been seen and heard, but that she has even been photographed.

But not to worry, whatever her name is (there is some dispute about that), she is known to be benevolent. I spoke to several employees there myself a few years ago. Those who'd had an experience of her (not all had, but many did) all claimed that she was kindly, protective. One told me that this gal has a conscience. The worker wanted to sneak out early but amazingly, the door was unable to be opened until her shift was over. Scary? The woman I spoke with said no. "She was not about to let me leave early - this is a ghost who's ethical", she confided.

One of Los Gatos's More Haunted Haunts

Yesterday, an article I wrote about Haunted Real Estate was published on Real Town. I have received a ton of emails about ghosts and people's experiences with them in the last 24 hours!  I have never had so much fun reading email.

So I thought you folks might like to know about some of our haunted spots, right here in beautiful, charming, upscale Los Gatos.  There are so many stories that it's hard to know where to begin!!  Today I will address just one of these interesting locations. More to follow in later entries, I promise!  This will be "Mary Pope-Handy's Los Gatos Ghost Tour". 

Cemeteries tend to give people the creeps, so let's start there. If you are local to Los Gatos, you probably know that the Los Gatos Memorial Park is actually in San Jose, with a Cambrian Park zip code, out on Los Gatos-Almaden Road.   How did that happen?  Well, usually you want the burial grounds to be a little bit out of town, right?  The Los Gatos Memorial Park began in 1888 (first burials in 1890) and was initially called the Los Gatos Cemetary.  By the late 1800's, Los Gatos had expanded such that the in-town graveyard was just too close, so it was decided to move folks from their final resting place to a "more final resting place" out in the country. (It has no website, amazingly, but you can see great photos of this park by visiting an "unofficial" site at www.LGMP.com.) 

Where was this old cemetery?  It was located at the corner of Highway 9 and North Santa Cruz Avenue and bordered roughly by Village Lane and the old train tracks.  (The land for the train is now the long parking lot parallel to University Avenue and North S. Cruz Avenue.  As an aside, North Santa Cruz Avenue was called Cemetery Lane easy of Hwy 9 then!)   

It should be noted, too, that not only were there people laid to rest at this location, but it's also possible that someone was killed there in 1906 when an interurban trolly car jumped its tracks and crashed at the same location - approximately where Double D's stands today.

The town's leaders tried to move all the bodies, really they did. From 1890 through 1924, they did a relocation of the town's dead to the new country location.  But some family members could not be located to obtain permission to move their deceased loved ones.  After the bodies were moved (or most of them), the land was converted to the Hunt Brothers Cannery and housing for cannery workers for awhile. Today it's a bustling part of our downtown and houses many shops and some restaurants, the most visible of which is Double Ds.  Is it haunted? You'd be surprised if I said no. Several of the businesses there do, indeed, have paranormal experiences and it appears that some of the folks initially buried there still consider this their home.  Yes, it's haunted. Very haunted.

Blog entry by Mary Pope-Handy,
Los Gatos Enthusiast,
Los Gatos & Silicon Valley (San Jose area) Residential Real Estate Specialist and
Realtor, CRS, ABR, SRES, ASP, CNHS, RECS, E-Pro,
Intero Real Estate Services, 518 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos, CA 95030
www.PopeHandy.com
Do not use without permission, please.

Los Gatos is home to many great things, many great ideas too, but also home to many fascinating people who are successful in their own fields. The list includes CEOs, sports celebrities, and other famous people.  Wikipedia lists several of our Los Gatos contemporaries who are very well known, and if you live here, you do bump into them at Whole Foods, a restaurant, or maybe your child's school.  They're just normal people, trying to lead normal lives.  I, for one, won't bug them if I see them in public or at some function where we happen to be together. I once spent a year in a body cast and it made me appreciate, deeply, how important it is just to be treated like a "normal person" - no matter what the circumstances are.

But Los Gatos has often been a popular place among those who could choose to live or visit anywhere they wanted - this is not a new experience for our pretty town. John Steinbeck lived here and wrote "Of Mice and Men" in those days. Charlie Chaplin came to visit and was seen a few times at the old Lyndon Hotel in the days when he was filming at Niles Canyon (a district of Fremont). The famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin lived in Los Gatos, up near the Holy Names Sisters convent and the Jesuit Novitiate, for a bit of time in his childhood. It was a treasured time for him.

Want to read up on well-known visitors? Take a look:

Visiting Movie Stars:
http://www.community-newspapers.com/archives/lgwt/10.17.01/pics-past-0142.html
Visiting Presidents:
http://www.losgatos.com/history/presidents.html

In addition to all the famous (and those of us who are not-so-famous) people who have enjoyed making Los Gatos home, there was a time in which ordinary, but very ill, people would pilgrimmage here too. The climate was so favorable it was prescribed. Did you ever wonder about the fact that Los Gatos was so small, but for many years had two mortuaries? Many of these sickly folk did improve here, but many others did not. Read John Baggerly's surprising bit of history as Los Gatos, the health refuge: http://www.losgatos.com/history/climate.html .

Finally, some residents just won't leave, even when their earthly life is over. If you are interested in our (mostly) unseen residents, please visit a page on one of my websites dedicated to Haunted Real Estate. Los Gatos is a featured location and I discuss there the old cemetary (which has shops over it now) and other places where the townsfolk remain in spirit.