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Photo Illustration by Skye Dunlap and Robin Mendez
The Unhaunted House
The Clark House is ripe for a haunting-all it needs is a ghost
By Jessica Lyons
The Clark House doesn't look haunted. The white, Prairie-style home, with long windows lining nearly every inch of its face, is too lucent, too symmetrical, too low. But I'm on a quest for a good haunting, and the history of the Clark House--a tragic love story, a grieving widow and a violent suicide--seems to merit an uneasy spirit or two.
My first target is Leta Friedlander, executive director of Live Oak, the senior day-care program occupying the home.
The Day Center opened its doors to seniors about two weeks ago, but the file boxes and stacks of paper in Friedlander's lavender-walled office say the center's coordinators are still in the process of settling in.
I ask Friedlander if she's seen any spooky happenings since Live Oak bought the house in 1996. Any late-night footsteps, temperamental lights or chilly drafts?
Nope.
"I don't believe in ghosts," she says.
But there is this lingering odor that only Friedlander can smell.
"It still has a mildewy smell," she says. I don't notice anything.
The home was originally built for Paul Clark, the first mayor of Willow Glen. The town of 3,293 elected Clark mayor in 1927, the year the city was incorporated.
Clark was active in civic affairs long before his mayoral debut, however. Participating in Nebraska state politics, he served two terms as speaker of the state House of Representatives, beginning in 1905. After an unsuccessful run for Congress in 1912, Clark and his wife, May, headed west to California. Two years later, the couple moved to Willow Glen, where Paul fought to keep the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific railroads from building railway tracks directly through Willow Glen. Once the city was incorporated, earning its own City Hall, jail and police and fire departments, Clark began tireless efforts to pave the sidewalks, protect the community and work with its residents. But, in Friedlander's own words, "May is the more fascinating of the two."
A native of New York, May Clark graduated from the University of Nebraska, studying anthropology and archeology, and conducting her field work in Alaska. Besides traveling the world with her husband, May was a member of the American Anthropological Association and founder of a local chapter of the Housewife's Club, a group that recommended low-cost health foods and policed local grocers to see that farmers were getting fair pay. An amateur painter and member of the National League of American Pen Women, May published a book of poems and two novels.
May's loves were her husband and her home. Both serve as inspiration for most, if not all, of the poems published in Eternal Quest.
May referred to her house on Minnesota Avenue as Casa Mañana--House of Tomorrow--because of its modern structure and design. She even wrote a short article detailing the house for Sunset magazine.
May's capacious spirit broke in 1932 when her husband Paul Clark died at the age of 71.
How could I guess the endless grief--/That never sleeps?/Each empty day, without relief/Its vigil keeps./Stark through the night, wan shadows stray./Oh bitter rue!/I bow my head, and try to pray--/By calling you, she wrote in "De Profundis"
Five years after her husband's death, she shot her hand while cleaning her gun. A week later, May used the same gun to shoot herself to death in the bathroom of her "dear house of ease."
The room has been remodeled and is now a staff room for Live Oak.
I figure that May, the participant in a romantic tragedy of Titanic proportions, must have a few bones to pick with her home's present owners. Surely the grief-stricken widow must wander the halls wringing her hands, bemoaning her lost mate. I figure if anyone would know May's whereabouts now, it must be the senior clients of Live Oak.
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I head to the Clark House to visit the seniors who attend Live Oak. Every afternoon they join in a different scheduled activity, ranging from bingo, to current event discussions to dancing. Today, volunteer Pam McCoy leads singing.
About 10 seniors sit on the couches and easy chairs in the Live Oak activity room, some sharing red song binders, all joining in on "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." A few take a break to talk to me.
Photograph by Skye Dunlap
High Spirits: Anita O'Connor and Ruth Carnes say they haven't seen hide nor hair of any ghosts since they began attending the Live Oak senior day center at the Clark House.
Lois Kitzmiller, 69, and her husband, Lance, 74, live in Willow Glen. Lois grew up around the corner from the Clark House. They raised three children in their Cherry Avenue home, all of whom attended Willow Glen Elementary, Markham Junior High and Willow Glen High schools.
"I remember seeing this house for years," she says. "It really was a dingy old building. It looks great now."
She didn't know the house belonged to the first Willow Glen mayor, and she has never heard about the tragic suicide in the bathroom. There's one thing Lois is very sure of, however.
"There are no ghosts here," she says.
Anita O'Connor, 95, doesn't know about any Clark House ghosts, either. But she does know a thing or two about dancing.
Fridays are dance days at Live Oak, and even thought it's still three days off, Anita is already looking forward to boogeying down.
"I love to dance," she says. "When there's music on, I can't sit still--I have to get up and jump around. I like to do the Charleston, but I can't do it like I used to. Mostly I just get up and jiggle around."
Anita began attending Live Oak almost two years ago at its Los Gatos location. To be closer to home, she's now transferred to Willow Glen.
"I think the place is just beautiful," she says. "It's so light. And they all put up with me, as ornery as I am."
After May Clark's death in 1937, the house was auctioned off for $8,500 to the Minton family, who lived there until 1942, when Robert and Virginia Combs moved in. Their son, Lloyd Combs, lived in the house until joining the Air Force in 1966. He says he never saw any apparitions floating over his bed--although his older brother Bob tried to convince him otherwise.
"My older brother told me she hung herself in my room," Lloyd says. "But I always thought she hung herself over the stairs leading down to the basement. I did not like the basement at all."
While remodeling the kitchen, however, the Combs found something May had left behind. After knocking down a wall, revealing an old pantry closet, they discovered a hidden lock box. Inside the box were two $10 bills and a note from May Clark listing several names. The finders of the note, it said, should hire a detective to find out who murdered May.
Lloyd offers a simple explanation.
"I think she was nuts," he says.
In the early 1950s, Lloyd's father, Robert, left the family.
"Mom needed to make a living somehow," Lloyd says. Virginia Combs converted the house to a board and care home. She took in four elderly men, housing and feeding them, and tending to their medical needs.
If his mother was alive today, she would be pleased with the house's current use, Lloyd says.
"My mother was always a nurse at heart," Lloyd says. "I think with the history of the home being a place for elderly people to live and be taken care of in a positive manner, I know my mother would be thrilled."
After Virginia Combs moved out, the house was rented to an alcoholics rehabilitation center, and later, transformed into a day-care center.
Hot on the trail for a historic haunted house, I've discovered a home of historic social consciousness. The Clark House has abundant potential to be haunted--a tragic suicide, an eccentric owner, even a secret compartment or two. So where's the ghost?
I decide to turn to the experts.
I call the Academy for Psychic Studies on Lincoln Avenue for a sound explanation. "Where's May's ghost?" I ask.
Debi Livingston, a clairvoyant staff member at the academy, fields my question. "Basically, what I'm seeing, is that she has made her transition to the spiritual level," Livingston says. "Oftentimes, a ghost is a person who passes on but doesn't necessarily know that they're not in their physical body anymore--the spiritual body can look just like the physical body. So you can be talking to people but they're not responding because you're really not there. It looks like she made her transition. She really didn't want to stick around anymore.
"But that was a good assumption that it would be a haunted house," Livingston adds comfortingly.
Considering the source, I'm satisfied.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
