Is Petaluma haunted? Ghost stories abound

Creaking footsteps in the night. A humanlike shadow in an empty room. Random pockets of thick, frigid air.

Petaluma is no stranger to ghost stories. Its longstanding history, its old Victorian buildings, its commerce economy utilizing farmland and the river – all of it lends to a few supernatural tales, the kind that usually come back to life around Halloween.

Numerous sites in the city are thought to be haunted. In fact, an extensive discussion in a Petaluma Facebook group has become a safe space for neighbors to share their stories and give advice on how to cleanse a home, or coexist with lingering spirits.

While the actuality of ghosts is heavily disputed, with little scientific evidence to support their existence, a 2013 poll by Huffington Post and YouGov found about 45 percent of Americans think they’re real. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center survey, one in five adults believes they’ve seen or been in the presence of paranormal forces.

“Usually it’s connected to some sort of tragedy like a murder, or hanging or hardship of some sort,” said Petaluma filmmaker Tom Wyrsch, who directed “Haunted Sonoma County” and its follow-up, “Haunted Wine Country,” which premiered last week at Summerfield Cinemas in Santa Rosa. “This area was the Wild West, there’s no question about it, especially during the Gold Rush and beyond. Things were going crazy and got pretty wild.”

Known for his historic documentaries of San Francisco, the Petaluma High School alum wanted to share the history of the area he was raised in, and discovered that ghost stories were the perfect vehicle.

One of the most notorious sites he covered was Petaluma’s Phoenix Theater, the former opera house turned live music venue. It’s survived two fires, and is still standing more than 100 years later.

Phoenix staff members have shared enough encounters to fill an encyclopedia, describing the spirit of a young fan that lingers in the balcony, the ghost of a projectionist that died of a heart attack while working, a floating blue light, and someone running down the stairs when the venue is empty.

Longtime general manager Tom Gaffey recalled a night when he and a few coworkers were sleeping in the venue and collectively heard someone walking across the stage and stop right above them.

In another instance, while playing onstage, a flickering light became visible through a grate in the floorboard. When Gaffey and his bandmates went down to investigate – sure that it was an expiring lightbulb – they found the light switch in the off position and the bulb working normally, he said.

Even after they went back onstage to continue, the light turned on again.

“I’ve seen and felt enough to believe there’s something quite possibly here,” Gaffey said. “That makes you consider, ‘Wow, what is there after life? Why are there spirits here?’”

Lifelong Petalumans might remember a time when the old Wahl house at Haystack Landing was touted as the “world’s most haunted location.”

Before an alleged arson incident burned the house to the ground on Sept. 1, 2004, the decrepit, two-story property gained notoriety after the 1999 Blair Witch-style thriller, “Incident at Haystack Landing.”

According to legend, a mysterious fire killed dozens of workers at a nearby dock. Children were crushed between the barge and the dock, eventually haunting the area. They drove inhabitants of Wahl house crazy, including descendants of the Wahl family and even squatters that stayed in the house later on in the 1970s.

Even though historical records do confirm accidents did occur at Haystack, no historical society recognizes any of the stories. Many have refuted the Wahl house even existed.

Then again, the controversial Dutra Group asphalt plant proposed for that site keeps facing one major setback after another. Eerily enough, the project was proposed the same year of the mysterious 2004 fire.

“I don’t know if (ghosts) exist or they don’t, but I like to hunt for the stories,” Wyrsch said. “It leaves people open to their own imagination for what the story just told them.”

To drive out spirits, many people smudge their homes by burning sage. Some try to address them directly and ask them politely to leave; others turn to the Bible or a psychic.

Petaluma resident Jean Haner, a successful author and renowned expert in energy clearing, takes a more pragmatic approach, she says.

“There’s a lot of superstition out there, which is not what I teach or agree with,” Haner said. “I know people think there’s a ghost in their home, and sometimes there is and sometimes it’s not as extreme as they believe.”

She combines western science, Chinese medicine and three decades of research spent embedding with various cultures around the world. Much of her success is due to the “newly-accepted understanding that people can be affected by the energy around them,” Haner said.

Her system, while acknowledging its new age appearance, is built from the concept of entrainment, an element of chronobiology that occurs when rhythmic physiology or behavior matches up to an environmental pattern.

When clearing energy, Haner said she uncovers the rhythm that the presence or spirit is using to trap the inhabitants of that space, and slowly removes it like she’s massaging a knot out of someone’s back.

“I connect with that energy, and through the process of entrainment, it relaxes and disappears,” she said.

Still, studies show only half of Americans will believe any of this, and the other half will dismiss it as nonsense.

Unfortunately, Petaluma isn’t getting any younger, which means its paranormal encounters will remain, whether it’s with ghosts, energy or simply a creaky foundation in need of repair.

(Contact News Editor Yousef Baig at yousef.baig@arguscourier.com or 776-8461, and on Twitter @YousefBaig.)