Whaley House Update






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Update on the Whaley House

In the past two weeks we made a trip over the mountains to San Diego to visit the Whaley House. Boy have things changed!!!! Everything is so glitzy it doesn't even appear to be the same house. In point of fact, it isn't the same house in many ways.

First: The room at the top of the stairs was once displayed as the master bedroom with a sitting room. While now it is a make shift theater with a tilted floor at one end for the stage, that never existed there before. Though it is true the Whaley's did rent that section out to a theater group at one time, it was short lived and was soon converted back to their master bedroom.

Second: What was once the kitchen is now a dining room and a 'new' kitchen, which the new caretakers contend, was never attached to the house in the first place, is being built in what was once the garden or back yard.

Third: The story of Violet, who reportedly killed herself over a failed marriage (none of the Eeeek Team believes this to be true based on the evidence we found at the historical society and the hall of records regarding the death of Violet and based on the coroner's inquest) has changed quite a lot. Now they say that Violet, who stayed in the back second floor bedroom on the right of the Whaley home, shared this room with her sister Lillie and her mother. Yet no historical reports, testimony given by the family ever stated any such thing. Plus, according to the new caretakers of the house, who clearly did no research into the coroner's inquest, state that Mr. and Mrs. Whaley and Lillie (their other daughter) heard the gunshot that killed Violet. But according to the coroner's inquest on the morning Violet died, a note was found on the back porch written by her, telling of her unhappiness since her divorce and her desire to die. Oddly, the note was not found by her father until after he heard the gun shot from the privy where Violet was. Oddly because her father had paced the porch for nearly twenty minutes waiting for Violet to get finished in the privy so he could use it. Once Thomas, and according to the inquest only Thomas, heard the shot, he knew exactly, according to his testimony, where the shot had come from and he raced to the privy. Violet had been shot in the chest by a .32 caliber bullet. Thomas carried her into the house and placed her in the back parlor. She lay there until her death, fifteen minutes later saying "nothing" according to Thomas. The inquest was attended by Thomas and Corinne Lillian, but not Anna or George (the Whaley's son). The answers were pat and sounded rehearsed as well as exact. In addition, the testimony clearly showed no gun was found. But in the 1950s when they removed a concrete slab in the back of the house, where the stables had once been, they found buried beneath this slab a rusted gun...oddly it was the same caliber as what killed Violet. According to the new caretakers Lillie later contended that this gun may have been her own.

The new caretakers don't even mention the fact that Lillie, who never married, refused to be buried in the Whaley family plot and selected another burial location completely. They do mention that Lillie wrote a historical record of these times in San Diego, covering the politics, the development of the town etc. but failed to make one mention of her family and their contribution to the city of San Diego.

Fourth: The entry way to the home has been completely changed. No, not from the stand point of the doorway or anything like that - but the walls now, instead of being painted as they once were, now have marble squares on them. The appearance is so completely different we weren't certain it was the same house.

If there were any ghosts there we are certain they have taken flight just to avoid the constant tourists that travel through the house and the changes that are being made. None of us were impressed nor did we have any impressions of any haunting activities. We recommend you save your $10.00 per person and get a nice Mexican meal down the street instead.