The William Heath Davis House

The William Heath Davis House was the first stop on the Ghosts and Gravestones tour of San Diego. I liked it. The people who worked there were really nice. The house was built in 1850 and was still in use until the 1980's or so when it was converted into a museum.Today it stands in the Gaslamp district of San Diego, right next to where the annual music festival, Street Scene, is held. Street Scene is not what you'd want going on when you give a ghost tour. We did it anyway, but it made the house seem more likely to be haunted by James Brown, than any ghost.

The house was used as a hospital, and it seems that some of the ghosts were people who died there at that time. The most famous ghost was the woman on the stairs that some of our guests claimed to see once. Sometimes I'd hang out on the second floor while someone else's tour was in the house but I never saw anyone else up there with me.

We'd begin the tour of the William Heath Davis House by going into the basement. Now the basement isn't haunted and it isn't original to the house, but we used it as a place to talk about the history of the house and to conduct a little seance in which we invited the spirits to contact us.It was pretty hokey, so I had fun with it. We had this trick candle that I made that would blow itself out. It was supposed to be like the spirits blew it out, but that wasn't funny, and it rarely impressed anyone.

I decided to stick with what i had done before the candle. I'd look in the back of the room and squint my eyes and say, "Is that... David Hasslehoff!?" then while everyone looked, I'd blow out the candle in an obvious manner and say, "Well the candle has mysteriously gone out." Then I'd invite people to join me in the parlor where I'd tell them about the ghosts in the house and about a 1980's show called Knightrider. It always got a laugh. I got the idea from watching Knightrider on the scifi channel before going to work. And little did they know that that wouldn't be the last they heard of... David Hasslehoff!!

We'd look around the house and then board the trolley and I'd begin my little back story about myself and the driver. I'd start by asking if everyone enjoyed the house, and then I'd say how glad I was because I actually built that house myself. But the driver also helped. Yes the driver was an interior designer back then and he chose the wallpaper for the house. Then I'd tell everyone about how when the historical society bought the house, they found something like 19 layers of wallpaper. Ah, but the driver finally got it right didn't he?

Speaking of houses, the next stop was believed by some to be a cursed house