Photo Illustration by George Sakkestad
A ghostly apparition? Staff photographer George Sakkestad used a double-exposure technique to create this ghostly figure descending the stairs just in time for Halloween. Not all of his ghost photographs are contrived, however.
By Clarence Cromwell and Cecily Barnes
To outsiders, Saratoga looks like a sleepy hamlet at the foot of the mountains. Passersby might fill their gas tanks on the way over the hill, eat lunch in a little cafe, or maybe buy antiques on Big Basin Way.
But appearances can be deceiving. Strange things do happen here. Flickering lights, slamming doors, sudden chills and ghostly apparitions flirt with our senses. Sometimes things that thud in the night can be attributed to the wind, or a branch tapping at the window panes, or a bat that flapped down the chimney. Sometimes, we fail to find a logical explanation.
Some folks say restless spirits roam the two villages. We can't verify their facts, but we can tell you a couple of stories...
Spotted in Saratoga
Years ago, inside the big white house now occupied by the Bella Saratoga restaurant, a ghost was spotted.
Over the years, various different business people have reported strange, unexplainable happenings in the building, including ghostly apparitions.
Bill Cooper, owner of Bella Saratoga, said some employees have felt something "swish by" 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 sold it to the entrepreneur who passed it on to Cooper. Maddalena said that, when he slept upstairs at the restaurant, mysterious things happened.
"It was always around midnight," said Maddalena, who would sleep in an upstairs office that was a bedroom before the house became a commercial building, and second-floor doors would begin to slam open and then close four or five times.
"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 then close, 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 the building, it was occupied by the Saratoga News.
Former newspaper employee Shirlee Duncan 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."
Well-schooled spooks
At the edge of West Valley College's property looms a 66-year-old, two-story home, with a history all its own. Back before Saratoga was a city, this home pulsed with the daily lives of families. The Cowans and the Oviatts and the Carlsons lived there.
But now the old house is laden with rusty padlocks and aging boards. All that remains is a faded white exterior, a stubbornly strong foundation and perhaps a few memories that refuse to leave.
Today young students carrying bookbags and backpacks tread the path once walked upon by Martin Carlson and his wife, Ruth. And for many passersby, the sight of the old building spurs the telling of stories heard and rumors told.
Some students say they've heard the old boarded-up storage shed is haunted, but they don't know for sure. However, two old-timers have come forward who claim the Carlson home is haunted.
Mauricio Cabanayan, 82, worked as a maintenance man at West Valley College from 1969 to 1979. He worked the night shift and on his route was the old Carlson home.
"Around nine or ten at night, a lady dressed in white with long hair would come out," his daughter, Jennifer, translated over the phone.
Every night, when he would enter the Carlson home, Cabanayan claims, this figure would appear.
"The first time I followed her quite a ways around the building and it disappeared; it's a lady," Cabanayan said. "It is very scary the first time I saw her, but that's all I can remember."
Now retired, Cabanayan has not visited the Carlson house for many years. He recalls very little of his maintenance days at West Valley. But he remembers the woman with long hair and a white dress. And he remembers running from the building in fright. He remembers being ridiculed by his coworkers when he told them the Carlson house was haunted.
During those same years Ernie Hammaker, who worked as a police officer for the college district, experienced something that makes Cabanayan's story more believable. For a few years in the mid-1970s, the district's police department was based on the second floor of the Carlson house. One evening in 1974, Hammaker and his partner were working late filling out reports.
"It was a Friday night between one and two in the morning," Hammaker recalled.
Amid the silence, the two men heard a metal desk drawer open in the downstairs part of the building.
"We both stopped, looked at each other and kind of dismissed it and went back to what we were doing," he said. But then the partners heard the opened drawer close and they couldn't deny it a second time.
"If you've ever heard a metal drawer open," he said, "you know the sound."
The officers drew their weapons and scoured the building. However, their search revealed nothing, and they heard nothing more.
"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."
Hammaker is still an officer for the college district. Last Tuesday, he returned to the old police base to meet reporters from Channel 4, which was doing a Halloween special on the Carlson house. Hammaker told his story of the brief time he was a part of the home's long history.
The Carlson house was built in 1930 under the commission of Mr. Cowan. After its completion on April 8, Cowan lived there with his wife and three children for only four months before he died. In 1943, Mrs. Cowan sold the home to Nellie Evelyn Oviatt for $19,500. A mere one year later, Mrs. Oviatt sold the home to Mr. and Mrs. Carlson. Years later, the property was purchased by the college. Today it sits on the college's property, filled with boxes, cobwebs and 66 years of history, and maybe more.
Paying neighborly visits
Ghosts can be found in the neighboring town of Los Gatos, too. Nobody is sure how long the Opera House in Los Gatos 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 George Sakkestad, a photographer for Metro Newspapers, snapped 25 frames of an Opera House employee to illustrate a business-section article.
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 banister 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 knew 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.
Then there's the old cemetery. Did you know it's right under a portion of downtown Los Gatos? In the old days, the few buildings in Los Gatos were at the corner of E. 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, 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 the deceased 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.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, October 30, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved