Sally Richards, author of Ghosthunting Southern California, visits the Hale House with Psychic medium and paranormal investigator Kathryn Wilson.
The Hale House is the crown jewel of the Heritage Park Museum. It’s an amazingly active location with paranormal phenomena that you can both see and hear in real time.
The Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles is a community of Victorian-era buildings saved from demolition and moved to their present location, where they have been lovingly restored in an effort to educate people about what life was like in the city during the 1800s.
Hale House was saved from the wrecking ball at the 11th hour by the Heritage Square folks at the cost of $1. However, it cost $10,300 to move it; $3,000 to lift the wires as it passed through town during a midnight event (the crowed roared when the fireplace remained intact); and $300,000 to restore the house to its original glory, as somewhere along the way it had been “bombed” on a movie set. Originally built at the cost of $4,000 (a small fortune back in the day), the Hale House had been moved a total of three times. The restoration work on the home is beautiful.
Now, this is one of those houses that has had a lot of living within its walls, and there seem to be many spirits in the house, including an adolescent girl. During several sessions with the PX, the home was alive with characters coming through to speak with us. The PX was sitting on a table and saying “cards,” “frog,” and “rabbit”—toy items actually on the table as one of the home’s displays.
Wilson and I felt that the house had been used for séances in the past. Throughout the event, we were hearing noises in the kitchen, as though someone was working away making a meal, but there was no one there.
In the upstairs bedroom, we heard audible breaths that came from the area of the bed, where no one was standing or sitting; I picked up some of these on my digital recorder. Back downstairs, we continued to hear the sounds of someone walking upstairs after everyone had already come down.
Is the Hale House haunted? I’d say there are so many ghosts in the home now that Mrs. Hale had to open an ethereal boardinghouse to store all the dead who’ve decided to make this place their home . . . again.
About your guides: Kathryn Wilson is the medium from A&E’s Storage Wars and Sally Richards is the author of Ghosthunting Southern California.