Photograph by George Sakkestad
Weekly-Times photographer George Sakkestad captured an image of the ghost that haunts the Opera House during a routine photo assignment in February 1992.
By Clarence Cromwell
To outsiders, Los Gatos looks like a sleepy hamlet at the foot of the mountain. Passersby might fill their gas tanks on the way over the hill, eat lunch in a little cafe or maybe buy antiques on Main Street. They'd expect nothing exciting in a town of carefully arranged Victorians and craftsman cottages.
But strange things happen here. There are flickering lights, slamming doors, sudden chills and ghostly apparitions at the corners of our sight. Sometimes things that thud in the night are just the wind, or a branch tapping at the window panes, or a bat that flapped down the chimney. Sometimes, there's no natural explanation.
Some folks say restless spirits roam our old village. I can't say that's a fact--but there are stories. Pull up near the rocking chair, and I'll tell you some of them.
Mystery Photograph
Nobody is sure how long the Opera House has been haunted. A spirit could have been there when Paul and Linda Dorsa bought the building more than 12 years ago.
The ghost might have been responsible for lights that turned on for no reason when people left certain rooms, according to Paul Dorsa. He said people have also reported feeling a presence in the building "like a shadow that moves."
When the Dorsas remodeled their banquet room four years ago, Los Gatos Weekly-Times photographer George Sakkestad snapped 25 frames of an Opera House employee to illustrate an article for our business section.
In one of the photos, a dark figure appeared on an upstairs balcony where the woman had stood minutes before. The next shot, at the end of a roll of film, is only half a frame, but the figure is still there, and has moved to the photographer's left.
The phantom of the Opera House cannot be a darkroom blotch, Sakkestad said, because the bannister of the balcony is clearly visible in front of it. And no one was on the balcony when the photo was taken--he didn't notice the figure, even on his negatives, until he printed the photograph. He assumed right away it was a ghost.
"I just don't think it's a human being," Sakkestad said. "There wasn't really anyone around, so it's got to be a ghost."
Sakkestad didn't know that the building was reputedly haunted until he went back later and told the owner about the strange photo.
Cemetery Down Under
Then there's the old cemetery. Did you know it's right under the downtown?
In the old days, the few buildings in Los Gatos were at the corner of W. Main Street and N. Santa Cruz Avenue.
So it must have seemed a good idea between 1860 and 1890 to bury people on the plot that used to be bordered by the railroad tracks, Highway 9, N. Santa Cruz Avenue and Village Lane.
Of course, when the downtown spread at the turn of the century, the land was developed, and a handful of graves were not moved to the new cemetery on Los Gatos-Almaden Road. Relocation of a cemetery requires permission from families of those buried, and some families couldn't be found.
Road work and construction in the area have unearthed tombstones and coffins. If you don't believe that, ask local historian Wilma Thompson.
Saratoga Ghosts
They've had their frights over in Saratoga, too.
A ghost was spotted there, years ago, inside the big white house now occupied by the Bella Saratoga restaurant on Big Basin Way.
Over the years, various business people have reported strange, unexplainable happenings in the building, including ghostly apparitions.
Bella Saratoga owner Bill Cooper said some employees have felt something "swish by," even during the year that's passed since he bought the restaurant. Most of them don't work there anymore. And doors sometimes open and close for no reason, Cooper said.
Fred Maddalena founded the Bella Mia restaurant in that building, and the restaurant changed hands once before Cooper bought it. Maddalena said when he slept upstairs at the restaurant, mysterious things happened.
He would sleep in an upstairs office that had been a bedroom before the house became a commercial building, and second-floor doors would begin to slam open and closed four or five times.
"It was always around midnight," Maddalena said. "When we first took over, I would say, 'Well, it's just the wind.' "
But no matter how tightly the house's windows and doors were closed--barring intruders or any breeze from slipping upstairs--the doors would still slam open and closed Maddalena said.
"The second time I stayed there," he said, "I thought, 'That's strange; why is that happening?' Then I didn't stay there anymore."
Before Maddalena took over the building, it was occupied by the Saratoga News. Shirlee Duncan, a former employee of the newspaper, said she frequently felt a presence standing beside her or behind her when she typed in the upstairs office, the same room Maddalena slept in.
Duncan said she's kept the ghost a secret from most people for years.
"I didn't want to look like a nut," she explained.
But she's sure of what she saw, she said, because one day at a company dinner, another employee asked if anyone else had seen the girl at the top of the stairs.
Duncan didn't speak up at the time, and neither did anyone else at the table, but she had seen the ghostly figure of a young woman in addition to feeling the presence.
Numerous times during her 16 years at the paper, spanning the 1960s and '70s, Duncan saw the ghost climb the stairs outside her office, turn left toward the front of the house and walk past the door. Since the door was to the left of her desk, Duncan would see the visitor pass out of the corner of her eye; she said she's sure the ghost was a woman, about 20 years old, wearing a dress. She would check the upstairs to see who went by, and no one would be there, although those stairs are the only way up to the second floor.
Duncan never noticed any slamming doors or swishing breezes.
"You just felt a very nice presence," she said.
Duncan said she hasn't seen or felt the ghost on recent visits to the building.
"I want you to know I don't believe in any of this stuff," she added. "If I hadn't heard that girl at the table [the one who also saw the ghost], I don't think this ever would have gone anywhere."
Another Saratoga ghost was seen at West Valley College, in a 66-year-old abandoned house at the edge of the campus.
It's a storage shed now, but when the house contained campus security offices, employees heard strange noises one night that sounded like a desk drawer opening and closing, according to officer Ernie Hammaker.
He and another officer searched the building, guns drawn, and no one else was there.
Hammaker, still a college district officer, said: "It was an old house, and you would hear someone
coming or going. You'd hear someone walking on the hardwood floors. But we didn't hear anything, except the drawer open and close."
Maybe the noises were made by the woman in white, seen numerous times by former West Valley College maintenance employee Mauricio Cabanayan during the 1970s; he worked there from 1969 to 1979.
Cabanayan said a long-haired woman in white clothing would appear at 9 or 10 p.m. some nights, go into the building and vanish.
"The first time, I followed her quite a ways around the building and [she] disappeared," Cabanayan said. He ran away in fright the first time that happened, and when he told coworkers, they laughed. Later, the woman in white made a number of appearances, and Cabanayan became accustomed to seeing her near the old house.
High School Haunting
Another ghost was observed at Los Gatos High School by a student. Historian Thompson heard the story from a friend who heard it from someone else.
It was just a few years ago. She said that a young fellow from Los Gatos saw something there that couldn't have been anything but a spirit.
Thompson said the young man "was walking down the hall at Los Gatos High School. That would be that new entrance off of High School Court. And approaching him came a young man wearing clothes of about the 1920s period."
The specter was clad in knickers and carried his books with a strap around them, as youngsters did long ago, and it glared at the young man with a fearful grimace.
"And as he approached the young man going out," Thompson said, "the ghostly-like appearance said: 'I'm going to kill you.' "
Then the figure disappeared.
The young man is still alive--and so are the stories of ghosts in Los Gatos. You can believe it or not, but strange things go on in our haunted hamlet.
Metro Newspapers staff writer Cecily Barnes contributed to this story
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, October 30, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved