Bodega Blues

By Bruce Robinson

A FEW COWS graze languidly on the lush grasses above Highway 1 while the light onshore breeze is colored by the briny scent of fish being smoked in a nearby roadside shack. Yet this bucolic hillside overlooking Bodega Bay is at the center of a heated battle that has lasted more than 10 years.

Even though the long-contested Harbor View subdivision finally won approval from county officials a year and a half ago, the debate isn’t over yet.

“I don’t know why they approved it. I sure wouldn’t have,” snorts Don Nielsen, a vocal member of Bodega Bay Concerned Citizens, a citizens’ group that has consistently fought the development. ‘We’re not anti-growth per se, but we want rational planned growth that is consistent with our infrastructure here, not [a project] that is going to dump 84 upscale houses in the middle of our town with a little road right in the busiest part of the community.”

As approved in December 1994 by county supervisors, the Harbor View project will feature 70 luxury homes and 14 affordable units on 27 acres of sloping pastureland that now separate the Inn at the Tides from the “old town,” where most longtime residents of the fishing village live. The 10 apartments and four townhouses are to be developed in cooperation with the Santa Rosa­based Burbank Housing Corp.

In addition, two lots have been set aside for environmental preservation: a 2.8-acre parcel, just above the highway, that houses a natural wetland; and a 1.3-acre lot, halfway up the hillside, that serves as a groundwater recharge for the wetlands. Another 4.2 acres, adjacent to the Inn at the Tides and originally proposed as a commercial site, are now identified only as a remainder parcel whose future use is unspecified.

Citing traffic, water, visual impacts, questions about soil stability on-site, and other issues, BBCC has launched a petition drive to try and interest the county’s Open Space Commission in acquiring the Harbor View property. In the few weeks since that effort began, the group has collected hundreds of signatures from residents and visitors.

But the grassroots campaign emphatically does not have the backing of Supervisor Ernie Carpenter, who says, “It’s not the purpose of the Open Space District to go into areas that are sewered and watered and to buy up subdivisions that have been approved.”

Carpenter argues that when he has mentioned the petition drive to his colleagues on the board, “jaws drop. It’s incredible that anyone would even ask,” he says.

The odds of an eventual purchase by the county, he says, are “one in 10 million. Heck, make that one in 20 million.”

IN THE 1980 COASTAL PLAN, the Harbor View property was identified as a future housing site with densities up to 10 houses per acre, so this less-intensive development shouldn’t upset anyone, contends influential Bodega Bay realtor Hazel Mitchell. “It’s an ideal place because it’s right in the center of town, which is the sensible [place to locate] so there would be no strip development,” she says, noting that the parcel is surrounded by lands already served by the town’s sewer and water systems.

Opponents, however, are skeptical about the ability of those systems to support 84 additional families, as well as the rest of the community. “Our infrastructure can’t handle it. There’s only so much water out here,” objects BBCC activist Bev Burton. “This isn’t the only project in town,” she continues. “There are a hundred-some-odd lots still to build on at Bodega Harbor, and there are other projects around town.

“We’re looking at a lot more homes coming in.”

With each new home comes additional traffic on two-lane Highway 1, a thoroughfare so narrow in places that there is barely room for a pedestrian to squeeze along the shoulder. The bumper-to-bumper creep through town on summer weekends is a fact of life and getting worse at other times, too. Traffic congestion is a nuisance to out-of-towners, a major inconvenience to residents, and a potentially fatal problem for the local fire department. County supes once considered requiring a traffic bypass around the center of Bodega Bay before development of Harbor View. An additional 65 units planned for a second portion of the property remain in limbo on that basis.

“We need a bypass so bad we can taste it, but nobody will do anything about it,” fumes Nielsen. “Maybe if we had a bypass and eliminated the traffic, it wouldn’t hurt so much if this stuff did get built. But it would still be ugly.”

Those 84 new families will have a big effect on other residents, especially those with children. The Shoreline Unified School District has an agreement with the developers to pay $100,000 in development fees over the first seven years of construction to help defray the cost of school improvements, says Superintendent Roberto Salinas. The lion’s share of those funds would most likely be used to construct a new classroom building at Bodega Bay School near the northeast corner of the Harbor View property.

But there is widespread doubt that the project will heavily impact the school because the price of the new homes–estimated at between $300,000 and $500,000 and up–is less likely to be within the means of families with young children. “If the town has any need, it’s really in the middle- to low-income range,” says Shoreline school board trustee Rich McCudden, echoing a point made by several members of Bodega Bay Concerned Citizens.

“The final development is not as attractive as it could have been,” says McCudden. “Bodega Harbor is already here, and that has a lot of amenities that [Harbor View] doesn’t, from the golf course to beach access. The town has a screaming need for some housing, but not in the $300,000 bracket.”

From the June 20-26, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Taking the Road to Freedom

Photos by Janet Orsi

A little help from his friends: With assistance from local advocates, Michael Pasquini, above, has gained the freedom to live on his own.

Developmentally disabled adults finally won the right to live on their own. But will federal budget cuts end hard-won freedoms?

By Trine Miller

MICHAEL PASQUINI’S day is like any one else’s–sort of. In the morning, he rides a bus to work in north Santa Rosa. In the afternoon, he returns to work at his own apartment. In between, he eats lunch with co-workers, maybe does a few errands.

Quite normal, and yet quite remarkable.

Just a few years ago, Pasquini, 48, spent his hours–along with hundreds of others–behind the walls of the Sonoma Developmental Center, playing games and watching TV, seldom leaving the 1,600-acre compound.

But, just a short while ago, he got a chance to leave and took it. A lifetime bout with cerebral palsy has left him in a wheelchair with limited arm movement and only partial control above the neck. He is also developmentally disabled. So the idea of living in the world was always just that–an idea–until he got help.

The North Bay Regional Center is part of a state system that oversees the needs of the developmentally disabled: people with autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, or mental retardation. Over the last few years, the center has helped about 2,000 people to leave SDC, part of a statewide trend that is allowing people like Pasquini–including those with more severe physical and developmental disabilities–to move into the community to live and work.

But these days, there is some fear that this tide is changing. If government Medicaid cutbacks continue and state control replaces federal guarantees, people like Pasquini may not have the chance to experience the simple things in life outside the walls of an institution.

Not My Brother’s Keeper: A personal story.

Wearing an earring in his left ear and a brand new pair of very chic wire-rimmed glasses, Pasquini doesn’t fit any mold. While his movements may reveal the involuntary effects of cerebral palsy, don’t let that fool you. When I interview him on his break from work, Pasquini is unequivocally clear about life on the outside. And he puts up with my invasive questions with a mixture of seriousness and jubilance. “I like it,” he says of living on his own. “The developmental center is too institutionalized. I had people breathing down my neck. . . . You have people watching you all the time.

“That bothers me.”

Formerly known as the state hospital, the developmental center had for a long time been the only option for people like Pasquini. The institutional nightmares of long ago, the horror stories of inhumane treatment, are gone. But they’ve given way to something equally frustrating, equally sad. There are still people there who don’t want to be.

Fortunately for Pasquini, his parents didn’t have conservatorship of him and couldn’t stop him from moving out on his own. “My parents didn’t swallow it very well, though, ‘cuz, you know how parents are,” he says. “My mother begged me not to do it. [But] she’s happier now. Finally.”

Even people who helped him leave SDC are surprised that Pasquini has been able to move from a group home into his own apartment. He’s what you’d call a frontiersman for people with developmental disabilities.

A great opera fan, Pasquini may now listen to Wagner’s Faust Overture whenever he likes. He touches his handsome salt-and-pepper beard as he reflects on the benefits of his new lifestyle. “My personal life is better,” he concludes.

PASQUINI and others had to work hard to get things changed. There’s a bureaucratic boundary that’s difficult to cross: Developmental centers get federal money that until recently couldn’t be transferred into the state-funded community along with the individual. Now just some of that money moves in the form of Medicaid waivers.

The irony is that it costs much more to keep someone in SDC than to keep them in the community. Try an average of $110,000 a year at SDC, compared to about $45,000 on the outside. That’s reason enough to support independent living.

But perhaps an even more compelling reason has to do with human rights.

“The benefit [of these programs] is the extension of the civil rights movement,” says John McCue, executive director of the Santa Rosa­based Becoming Independent. A longtime advocate of the developmentally disabled, McCue explains that rubbing elbows with our fellow man is as necessary for someone imprisoned by a physical or mental ailment as it is for anyone else. He feels it is an indisputable covenant between society and the individual.

That’s part of the argument that won a class-action lawsuit in 1994 against the state Department of Developmental Services. The Coffelt lawsuit–waged by Bill Coffelt, whose son is severely developmentally disabled–argued that Medicaid money going to developmental centers should be redirected to community resources. Coffelt had searched for a group home and other essential services for his son, but found few available. So he took the DDS to task and won.

The results of that suit are a crucible for future generations, as more and more people are released from SDC into community programs. DDS committed $334 million in Medicaid funds to the regional center system to move 2,000 people through the year 1997. They’ve unofficially vowed to continue beyond that time. But if cutbacks contained in the House Republicans’ Contract with America follow through, federal block grants could devastate the community system.

The funding breakdown for people with developmental disabilities goes like this: The individual gets federal Medicaid subsidies for health care, housing, and transportation; regional centers provide the rest. Five years ago, regional centers were almost entirely funded by the state. Now, federal Medicaid funds flowing from the Coffelt lawsuit account for 55 percent of the revenue. And the developmentally disabled have an entitlement from the state, meaning their funds are separated from, say, the impoverished or the elderly, and have no limit.

IN CALIFORNIA, that has meant no waiting lists for services, which is virtually unheard of in any other state. It has also meant that once someone is in the community, their needs are taken care of because there are a number of venders served by the regional center. But the Republican-controlled Congress is pushing for block grants to the states, whereby that state entitlement would disappear. As a result, the desiccated state budget will have money to allocate, and a lot of groups vying for it.

“The MediCal/Medicaid issue is really troubling to us,” says McCue, adding that all of the proposals on the table are cutbacks. “Under none of these decisions will there be the same level of funding. It would cause a mad rush for the same piece of pie.”

The moral dilemma continues because, while the regional centers fight for funds, their clients will become increasingly dependent on them as federal assistance to individuals diminishes.

It’s a catch-22.

People like Pasquini probably aren’t faced with being returned to SDC, but what emerges from funding cuts might not be much better. McCue says that if things get as bad as some predict, the developmentally disabled might be “gathered” into communal settings–a sort of one-stop mini-state center–not totally unlike the larger model. That would be the equivalent of putting people in a group-home bubble in the community, drastically reducing such hard-fought-for freedoms as apartments and work centers.

They’d see a glass wall instead of a glass ceiling.

“It might mean you stay home and receive no services . . . [which means] meals and a bed, but no training,” McCue warns.

JEAN WESTON is celebrating one year in her Santa Rosa apartment. She’s on the Governor’s Area IV Board for people with developmental disabilities; she works at Becoming Independent, an affiliated vender of the North Bay Regional Center; and she helps out with the Live Your Dream Program for people at developmental centers who want to leave. One of the Coffelt few, this active, animated woman has such a busy schedule that her BI case manager, Rita Gatens, has to plan far in advance just to see her.

A resident of institutional settings since she was a young girl, Weston says getting out of SDC is the best thing she’s ever done. “I wanted to get out of there a long time ago,” she recalls. Among the obvious benefits are time alone, privacy, just one roommate (her personal assistant, Lisa) instead of several, phone access–the list goes on.

“I meet people, do things,” she explains. “I wouldn’t trade this for nothing.”

Living in the “real” world can be scary, yes. “It’s very hard to get a good assistant,” says Weston, a youthful 58-year-old who is wheelchair-bound and needs help with various things around the house. “We joke around–you oughta hear us,” she laughs.

Of course, with so many more people helping out in her life, there’s the possibility of losing someone. Life becomes unpredictable. But the flipside is that it’s a life of her own making.

“Control. That’s what I wanted,” Weston answers long after I’d asked her why she left SDC. “I guess it all boiled down to that–personal freedom.

Nancy Gardner, director of the North Bay Regional Center, began work with the developmentally disabled in the mid-’70s. “Back then, they’d get four or five kids in a basement and that was the program,” she recalls. “It wasn’t until ’75 that people with disabilities had a right to a public education. That amazes me.”

Things have changed a lot since then. Through the regional center and affiliated venders like Becoming Independent, developmentally disabled “consumers,” as they are called, have access to day programs, residential opportunities, respite care, and behavioral consultants.

Individuals don’t just get the basic necessities, they also get valuable vocational training.

It’s a long way from SDC, as illustrated by one anecdote. “Someone in the developmental center wanted strawberries on their cereal,” Gardner says. “They had to spend six weeks to get approval. In the community, you just go buy ’em.”

BUT FEDERAL budget cuts threaten the very existence of the regional center system. “California stands to lose $10.8 billion in Medicaid,” Gardner points out. Any number of things could happen, including the complete dissolution of regional centers over time. Health care for the developmentally disabled in the state could remain managed like everywhere else, making it very difficult to find a dentist or doctor willing to work with the developmentally disabled, and mini-centers could hold all the services that are available to people.

Ironically, Gardner says, the state regional center system is very efficient, by public and private industry standards. With an overhead of less than 4 percent, Gardner says they’ve had cuts over the last few years while continuing to increase their consumer base, which is now somewhere around 4,700 people in Sonoma County. While she has nothing against SDC, it’s hard to see so much money go to a place that serves one fourth as many people. “They’re putting in sprinkler systems and I’m cutting services,” Gardner laments.

“What people don’t remember is a lot of these people are abandoned by their families,” she adds. “I’m afraid they’ll slip through the cracks without the regional center system.” Conceivably, she says, it could turn back the clock and make state developmental centers the only option.

A sad fact for many with developmental disabilities is that they have family in absentia, meaning family members either aren’t able–or willing–to visit. So people in their environment become extended family. Watching Weston and Gatens, it’s easy to see that theirs is more than merely a professional relationship. They see each other outside of work, for birthdays and special events, or for nothing extraordinary whatsoever. The opportunities for creating those relationships are exponentially higher out in the world than at SDC.

But community living does have its critics. They argue that life outside is too uncertain and has the potential to harm. A Press Democrat article recently cited reports of problems in group homes and day programs. Gardner points out that the article neglected to mention that those reports were from areas outside Sonoma County, where Coffelt money hasn’t gone to community resources.

But McCue asserts that a community-based system could be an enlightened alternative: both less expensive and more humane than developmental centers. With the right planning and backing, he says, there could be even more predictability and control. But these are moot points if Congress pulls Medicaid funds, a possibility that looks likely. Meanwhile, regional centers and their venders are trying to salvage what they can, and get the word out to the voters.

“Taxpayers would be supportive [of fewer cuts],” says Gardner, “if they knew how little we are spending.”

From the June 20-26, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Spectral Sonoma

Photos by Janet Orsi

The truth is up there: This doorway at the Bartholomew Park Winery was found mysteriously locked from the inside.

One reporter’s long, strange trip among the formerly living residents of Sonoma County

By David Templeton

THE GHOSTS know that we’re coming,” Victoria Bullis comments as she bounds out of my car and stands facing a street lined with old Victorian houses. “The ghosts are waiting for us. And there are a lot of them in this neighborhood, a whole enclave of ghosts down here. I can feel them. They’re everywhere!”

“Good,” I bravely remark, tucking my notebook under my arm and gripping my tape recorder firmly. I join Bullis where she stands on the sidewalk. “Why are the ghosts waiting for us?”

“Well, you have been asking a lot of questions,” she replies. “And word gets around fast among ghosts. I get the sense that they’re eager to cooperate.” She grins and lowers her voice. “Ghosts like getting attention as much as anyone, you know.”

Bullis is a popular Bay Area spiritualist, a psychic to whom numerous clients have turned for mystical insights, glimpses of the future, and the occasional clearing of a ghost. Or two. Or three. She is regularly heard dispensing her clairvoyant circumspections to desperate and/or curious callers on a variety of different radio stations, including KZST-FM. Though she seldom discusses ghosts on her programs, a stray, on-air joke about “ghost hunting” led to my invitation to Bullis to join me in a daylong meander among the so-called spectral residents of Sonoma County.

And here we are. Westside Petaluma. The corner of A and Keller. Ready for anything. Surrounded by ghosts. “You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?” she asks, matter-of-factly. “Well,” I admit, “I don’t not believe. I’ve just never, actually, you know, seen one.”

In other words, I’m skeptical, but hey, I’m open to anything. “Fair enough,” Bullis smiles. “But don’t be surprised if you’re seeing ghosts by the end of the day.”

Local Ghosts:

The Ghost of the Cavenaugh Inn
The Tale of the Phantom Lights
The Haunted Winery
Another Haunted Winery

RIGHT THERE,” Bullis says, stopping in her tracks. We are standing before a beautifully cared-for Heritage Home, near the corner of Sixth Street and Western in Petaluma. “I’m getting a sense of some dark energy up there on the second floor of this house,” she says, pointing. “There’s a quaint little woman who lives up there. She’s looking out at us right now.”

I see nothing, but an eerie sensation has definitely taken hold of me. We have walked several blocks in our quest, and Bullis, obviously delighted, has described dozens of ghosts already. Ghosts in windows, ghosts on rooftops, ghosts turning somersaults on the lawn, ghosts that have come out to greet us and see what all the fuss is about. “It’s a regular ghost carnival,” Bullis joked earlier.

There is a Victorian-era gentleman in the upper left-hand corner of the McNear building. He’s sorely vexed; something about a fire. Walking past the Cavenaugh Inn, Bullis affirms that there is a presence within; she puts the total number of resident ghosts at four.

“They wander in and out,” she shrugs. “Ghosts visit each other just like we do.” Further down the street, she describes two ghosts who live in side-by-side houses, carrying on a feud that has lasted for years. “They can’t give it up,” Bullis says. “It’s their identity.”

J.K. Clark, University of California

It goes on: A Native American ghost, male, steadfastly maintains his place in a corner lot, now under construction. A crotchety fellow dwells in a rundown place across the street, still trying to add to the Coke-bottle collection he started in his youth. A playful youngster hangs out in the garden of a house on Western, amusing himself by trying to get the attention of children driving by.

With my mind as wide-open as certain readers’ mouths are likely to be at this point, I am still unable to detect anything beyond a general, goose-bumpy kind of feeling and the occasional tingle down my spine. Despite my inability to see ghosts, I am obviously getting into this.

“Look down there,” Bullis exuberantly exhorts. “Concentrate. What do you see?”

Traffic? A house with strangely manicured bushes? “That’s the house!” she shouts. “Now look closer. What else do you see?”

Well, my eye is drawn to a glimmering just to the right of the door. “You got it,” she smiles. “It’s an old woman with dirty shoes. She’s waving at us.”

She pauses a moment. “I’m sorry, I meant that in the nicest way,” she speaks toward the house. Turning back to me, she explains softly, “She didn’t like being called old.”

We continue, walking past Bill and Jay’s auto repair shop. “Okay,” Bullis nods. “Ghosts like this place. They sit in the cars behind the wheel. There’s one standing behind that green van. He’s not in a good mood.”

Jay Miller, co-owner of the shop, is amused at the suggestion that his garage might be occupied by otherworldly back-seat mechanics, though he’s never seen anything with his own eyes. “On the other hand,” he chuckles, “I will admit that I never feel alone here. Even when I am.”

“Ghosts can make themselves visible, if they choose,” Bullis says, back at the car. “But you don’t have to use your eyes to see them. I look for a certain energy. It’s second nature now. I tune into the vibration that allows me to see the astral dimension of the ghosts. It’s not hard. Half of the population, or more, could see ghosts.”

A GHOST is someone who hasn’t fully transcended the physical plane,” Bullis explains. “They’re still partly here on an energy level. Usually they’re afraid to go to the other side.”

We are back in the car. After closing her eyes briefly, testing the revenant waters, Bullis has directed me to head out on Lakeville Highway, in the general direction of the town of Sonoma.

“Ghosts are in denial,” she says, explaining how she uses her psychic knack to assist ghosts in moving on. “I just talk to them, like a therapist would. I help them see that it’s time to go. Turn left. Some ghosts are dangerous,” she continues. “They are not to be fooled around with, though most of them are harmless, or even helpful. But it’s inappropriate. They need to move on. Its like not paying your taxes or putting off doing your homework.

“It’ll catch up to them eventually.”

Inevitably, it seems, we end up pulling into the parking lot of Old Adobe Historic Park, the one-time home of Gen. Mariano Vallejo, the reportedly despotic landowner who enslaved hundreds of local natives. His adobe-brick mansion, now undergoing historic reconstruction, stands before us. “This doesn’t feel good,” Bullis nods. “There are only one or two ghosts living in the house, but they are very disturbed. The whole place is bad news.”

After a brief wander up to the imposing edifice, we beat a hasty retreat. “They’re out here,” she says, gesturing to the surrounding fields and hills as we drive away. She refers to the ghosts that we expected to find within the Old Adobe. “They’ve come out here instead of staying there.”

Janet Orsi

So what about General Vallejo himself? Any sense that he was still around? She checks in. “He’s here,” she nods. “Even he won’t stay in the house, though.” We drive past a small, disheveled farmhouse. Bullis stares at it curiously. “He hangs out there,” she says, almost in surprise. “But he’s getting ready to move on. He’s done a lot of work.”

“Has he come to terms with any atrocities he may have done to his fellow humans?” I ask.

“I don’t know and I’m not going to ask him,” she replies. “What are you trying to do, get me in trouble?”

WE ARE STANDING in the lobby of the Sebastiani Theatre in downtown Sebastopol, where there have been reports for years of a ghost that will come up behind workers late at night and startle them out of their skins before disappearing suddenly. “He hangs out in the lobby,” Bullis nods. “He likes to be outside when people are coming in and out. He’s nice.”

Not so nice is the fellow around the corner, who spends time alternating between two different bars. “He was an alcoholic,” she says. “He soaks up the energy of the bar and of some of the people there. It’s his way of getting a drink.”

Though not as packed as Petaluma, Sonoma has a pretty fair spectral population. There’s one in the bushes across from a deli. Two lounging on the grass at the Courthouse lawn. A few meandering about the mission.

As we stand facing the square, attempting to picture this other level of being, I imagine this landscape of wandering, waiting souls, unable or unsure of how to take the Big Leap into the world beyond, playing games, playing tricks, hanging out. Waiting.

There are those who believe and those who don’t. If ghosts are a fabrication of our collective unconscious, they serve as an eloquent metaphor for procrastination, and the reluctance many of us have to give up old ways and move on to the next phase. On the other hand, if ghosts do exist, then perhaps it is a reasonable and fair system in which they exist; you have lots of time to figure out where you’re going.

“But they need to spend their time here wisely,” Bullis insists, walking back to the car. “It’s long enough, but it isn’t unlimited. The sooner you do your work and get on with life, the better.

“We’ve got a hitchhiker,” she announces, standing beside the car. “He got in somewhere along the way, but didn’t want to get out of the car here.” She informs me that he has agreed to get out where he got in, if I will drop him off in the same place. I glance into the back seat, aware only of the broad stripes cast across the upholstery by the afternoon sun.

Just in case, I drive home the same way I came.

From the June 13-19, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

The Haunted Winery

“We hear them singing,” admits Meg Scantlebury, promotions director at Bartholomew Park. “Late at night, sometimes in the afternoon. We will know, for certain, that no one is down there, and then they start. Hymns usually.”

The mood in the cellar, where the winery’s production department has been established, is certainly evocative of ethereal imaginings. Unlike the sunny lawns and gardens of Petaluma, this is exactly the kind of setting in which one would expect to run into ghosts, even musically inclined ones.

“I bring my boom box down here sometimes,” Scantlebury explains. “If I’m playing something really contemporary, they sometimes shut the music off. One time the boom box was suddenly flung right off of the counter.”

According to Scantlebury, one artist the ghosts can’t get enough of is evocative Celtic harpist Loreena McKennitt. “I was playing one of her tapes once,” Scantlebury describes. “She does ‘Greensleeves.’ Every time that song came to an end, it would suddenly rewind to the beginning of the song. Over and over.”

The employees of the winery have grown accustomed to such shenanigans, and are rather proud to be working alongside such esteemed company. The random visitor, however, has been known to become startled. In particular, the ghosts have an apparent fondness for spooking salespeople.

“One time this guy was trying to sell me something,” she says. “We were back in the production area, and I started telling him about the ghosts. I said, ‘Sometimes they even turn on my tape player,’ and right at that moment, way across the room, it turned on, all by itself.”

She laughs, and adds, proudly, “He suddenly had to leave.”

From the June 13-19, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.

Ghost Stories

The best friend of another friend once lived in a haunted house and every evening the living room light would flip on all by itself. That kind of thing. Then there are the first-person stories. You get the feeling that someone is watching you and you turn around but no one is there, and later you unexpectedly find the pair of glasses that have been missing for months and weren’t there on that bookshelf as early as this morning.

Or there are the ghost legends. There was this earthquake that smothered hundreds of Chinese workers in a cave where a rich man stored his wine, and now whenever there is a thunderstorm, you can hear the champagne corks popping as the dead workers throw themselves a party. These are all real stories, meaning that they have been recently related by real people eager to join in the centuries-old practice of telling spooky tales. Whether one believes in an afterlife per se or whether one questions the wisdom of trusting in superstitions, it is impossible to deny that such stories are fun, and that they can effectively turn a simple walk in the woods, or down a city street, into a mysterious romp with the unknown.

The Ghost of the Cavenaugh Inn

FOR JUST OVER A YEAR, Jeanne and Ray Farres have run a highly rated bed and breakfast inn within their historic old house on Keller Street in downtown Petaluma. Formerly owned by one Adelaide Cavenaugh, who raised numerous children there, the inn is beautifully restored, comfortably charming . . . and haunted.

“Someone walks back and forth in the Magnolia Room,” confirms Jeanne Farres. “We hear the footsteps. Sometimes we hear the closet open and shut. And that closet is always locked.” Healthy disbelief originally led them to think the noises were caused by a large magnolia tree that brushed up against the window. They recently trimmed the tree well back from the house, however. “We still hear the footsteps,” Farres laughs. “So we’ve just accepted that we have a ghost here.

“I think it’s Adelaide Cavenaugh,” she adds. “She must have been a very nice person, but I think she prefers men to women.” Male guests have reported that they have felt drafts against their face and arms, as if someone were brushing up against them.

Apparently, Adelaide is one flirtatious phantom.

Neither the Farreses nor their guests seem to object to the ghostly presence. In fact, she has proven to be good for business. “One woman from back east was staying here,” Farres relates. “Ray and I had just left for the evening and she was alone in the house. No sooner had we driven out of the driveway than she heard the footsteps outside her room. She opened her door and came out. She thought we’d forgotten something and had come back. But the house was still empty. She closed her door again, and the footsteps continued.”

Far from being frightened, the woman was charmed. A haunted bed and breakfast makes for great vacation stories back at home. “In fact,” the bemused innkeeper laughs, “that same woman just called and rebooked the room.”

From the June 13-19, 1996 issue of the Sonoma Independent

This page was designed and created by the Boulevards team.
&copy 1996 Metro Publishing and Virtual Valley, Inc.