Marianne Clark considered herself a skeptic when it came to ghosts. Then, one day, she was in the basement of an empty Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara when she heard something above rolling toward her.
Have you ever been in an old building and felt a chill down your spine? Heard something that didn’t make sense? Or maybe you saw something out of the corner of your eye or a strange reflection?
You wouldn’t be alone. Many residents and visitors have reported encounters with spirits that once lived or worked in some of Santa Barbara County’s oldest buildings.
Many theaters are famously said to be haunted, and the Lobero is no exception. Clark, now the executive director of the Lobero Theatre, was a relatively new employee at the Lobero in 1998 when she and her husband went to the theater after hours to look for Halloween costumes.
The two went down to the basement, which is under the stage, and as they were digging through costumes they heard what sounded like a heavy equipment box rolling diagonally across the stage to right above their heads.
Clark said she went back up to the stage, where no box nor equipment was seen, and when she called out to see if anyone was there, she was met with silence.
Thinking it was just an old theater making noise, she went back down into the basement when she and her husband again heard the sound of a box rolling back to where it came from.
When she went back up to the stage to try to find where the noise was coming from, nothing was there.
“For a couple of years, I was generally scared to walk in here by myself, to be the first one in the building. It made me really nervous,” Clark said. “But I have since gotten over it. I haven’t had any of those kinds of experiences since.”
While checking the stage, she saw her husband at the bottom of the stairs holding a prop spear.
“I realized if he’s this scared, we’ve got to get out of here, and so we left,” Clark said. “I’ve never been able to explain why we heard what we heard, except that then I learned about Harry, and think that he may have been here just doing his work.”
One of the theater’s most popular ghosts is believed to be former stagehand and night watchman Harry Pideola, who worked in the theater from 1947 to 1956 and died in the converted dressing room in which he lived.
Clark said other employees over the years have heard clomping from Harry’s old room, and it’s believed that he is watching over the theater to this day.
Employees even leave on what’s known as a “ghost light” on the stage at all times, a tradition among many theaters that Clark said goes back to the time of William Shakespeare.
“It’s left on the stage at night to welcome the spirits of performers past so that they can come and do their work while everybody is gone,” Clark said.
Even visitors have had some unexplainable experiences in the theater. When a New York dance company was performing at the Lobero for a month, performers asked if the Lobero had a ghost who wore a top hat and a tuxedo.
That description matches Dr. Frank Fowler, a founding member of the Alcahema Theatre Group that performed in the theater during the 1960s and ’70s and who is believed to haunt the Lobero.
“On opening nights, he would dress to the nines, put on his top hat and his tuxedo tails,” Clark said. “More than one person has said that they’ve seen, just in the wings, this top-hatted gentleman. So, for these dancers to ask such a specific question was very striking.”
To the relief of employees and theatergoers, the Lobero ghosts have been known to be friendly, which seems to be a trend among the other ghosts in the area.
Lobero historian Brett Hodges said he has not experienced any of the theater’s resident ghosts.
“I am a skeptic because it would require an entirely new law of physics for ghosts to be real and be able to move around physical objects,” he said.
However, despite not believing, he enjoys the stories.
Santa Barbara, The City of Friendly Ghosts
An aspiring nun turned ghost hunter.
It’s not a movie plot but the career trajectory of Julie Brown, a Santa Barbara City College professor and founder of Santa Barbara Ghost Tours.
Brown grew up as the only religious person in her family and carries her faith into her ghost hunting passion. She said she prays for every ghost she talks about and for all of her guests so that nothing follows them home.
She has been teaching Santa Barbara residents and visitors about the town’s ghosts for more than seven years. However, she affirms that Santa Barbara has only friendly ghosts haunting the town.
“These ghosts are just fine. They are just happy. Oh, they love each other,” she said.
Brown said she had her first ghost experience at 27 years old.
“I tell my guests, if you’ve never had a ghost experience, it’s because your subconscious is in control,” she said.
On her tours, she teaches her inquisitive guests about some of the spirits in town, including Pearl Chase, the Presidio Chumash guardian and Dorsey, a calico cat.
Brown said she believes the ghosts in the area are stuck in basements of well-known local historical buildings until they get rid of all of their “nastiness.”
The basements are at El Presidio de Santa Barbára, Casa De La Guerra and at the Lobero.
The tours, however, aren’t a spooky adventure just for her guests. While giving tours, she has felt spirits touch her, often startling her.
“I’ve only been touched twice, and that is enough,” she said.
One of the instances happened on Oct. 30, the most haunted day in downtown Santa Barbara, according to Brown.
While standing outside the front of the post office at 828 Anacapa St. dressed in a coat from England, a Spanish gown and gloves, she said it felt like an arm rose through the concrete and grabbed the top of her calf.
“But in a very gentle and sweet way,” Brown said. “Let me tell you, my reality was shaken and I couldn’t talk.”
She said she thinks the hand was thanking her for praying for the spirits in town.
“I don’t tend to do ghost tours on the 30th,” she said.
When the ghosts aren’t touching her, they appear in front of her unexpectedly.
Brown recalled an evening standing close to The Pickle Room at 122 E. Canon Perdido St. She noticed a tall man wearing a baseball cap with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Brown, who feels strongly about smoking in historical buildings, said she was ready to tell him off when all of a sudden something came over her, telling her not to say anything.
Brown said the man told her he had a ghost story to share. He told her there are three ghosts who like to tune into her tours from across the street. He listed the ghosts off as a young girl, a Franscican friar and a Spanish soldier.
After thanking the man for his story, Brown began to notice that the cigarette in his hand had never dropped ashes.
However, Brown said there is something else following her around Santa Barbara — another ghost tour company. She said she has noticed another tour company in the area repackage the stories she tells on her tours, often changing the story to be more sinister than originally told.
Skeptics and believers can join Brown for a tour around Santa Barbara to learn about the other friendly ghosts in town.
The Spirits of Solvang
Ghost tours in Solvang also have led to a few unexplainable encounters. Wes Leslie is the founder of The Haunt, which leads paranormal investigation tours throughout the state, including Solvang.
“I stopped in Solvang, and I just sort of fell in love with the town,” Leslie said. “I thought it was so cute and quaint, but at nighttime, it just feels very, very different from the daytime. It just gets silent. There’s nothing going on. The streets are deserted. It has a sort of sinister fairy tale energy to it.”
The tour opens with a summoning spell to invite spirits to make their presence known. People on the tour are given ghost hunting tools such as an electromagnetic field (EMF) reader to detect energy spikes, radio scanners to detect ghost voices, and dowsing rods used to ask the spirits questions.
The tour then ends with a closing spell to thank the spirits and ask them not to follow anyone home.
Hornsyld House on First Street, the former home to Professor Peder Hornsyld, one of Solvang’s three founding fathers, is known to host ghostly activity.
“People see a figure of a woman wearing this kind of black dress with a high collar, staring out from the top floor window,” Leslie said. “People would report hearing someone stomping around upstairs when there should have been nobody in there, seeing a pair of feet through the crack underneath the door.”
At Birkholm’s Bakery & Cafe at 460 Alisal Road, Leslie said the ghost of the bakery’s founder, Carl Sr., is known to hang around the building.
“People sometimes smell his cigarette that he was always smoking while he used to bake,” Leslie said. “Upstairs, people just get a really weird, eerie feeling on the top floor.”
Leslie said people have heard voices during tours, felt chills on warm days and started crying over the emotional weight of trying to communicate with the spirits.
The Big Yellow House
Encountering a spirit can be a life-changing moment. That was the case for Rod Lathim when he met a ghost at The Big Yellow House at 102 Pierpont Ave. in Summerland.
Lathim details his paranormal experiences while working at the wine cellar at just 15 years old in his series of books titled “The Spirit of The Big Yellow House.” In 2019, he published the third edition.
The Big Yellow House was originally built in 1884 for H.L. William to live in. The house also served as the headquarters for the town’s spiritualist colony, according to Lathim.
“My experience in the wine cellar in that house really opened a portal for me and changed the course of my life,” he said.
While working there, Lathim befriended the ghost of a little boy whom he named Hector. Lathim said Hector does not appear to him with human characteristics, but rather his body is composed of sparkly particles.
Hector made himself known, turning lights on and off, sometimes even on command, according to Lathim. He would even create sounds of a wine bottle crashing onto the floor, but when Lathim would go to check, there was nothing there.
“He delighted in being mischievous and playful,” Lathim said.
Lathim said he visited Hector just a month and a half ago, because of his impact in Lathim’s life for the past 50 years.
Earlier this month, Lathim finished writing another book to accompany his Big Yellow House series titled “Finding the Divine Child,” which he plans to release next year.
These are by no means the only haunted locations in the county. Places such as the Santa Maria Inn, Casa de La Guerra and the Santa Barbara County Courthouse are also rumored to be haunted.
Do you have a ghost story? Share your ghost story with Noozhawk by emailing news@noozhawk.com.
