October 27, 2005

Things that go bump in the night

New Almaden full of stories about ghostly goings-on

By Jeanne Carbone Lewis
Staff Writer

If you ask anyone around New Almaden about ghosts or hauntings, you’ll come up with all sorts of tall tales. What do you expect for an area that has a long history and its very own cemetery?

Many have seen apparitions on the staircase at Casa Grande. Photo by Jeanne Carbone Lewis

Santa Clara County park interpreter Terri Sanislo-Williams has heard her share of ghost stories after working five years at the New Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum. The building was the mine manager’s house, named Casa Grande, in the 1850s.

“I’ve heard about a spirit downstairs in the kitchen,” said Sanislo-Williams. “There were catering workers down there and a salt shaker flew behind them.”

Sanislo-Williams also said that an apparition has appeared to several people on the staircase. They believed the ghost must be of Mrs. Randol, the mine manager’s wife because of her reddish hair and old-fashioned lace collar. One man reported that he felt increasingly uncomfortable in the building. Another visitor shared seeing a man descending very quickly down the staircase.

There have been reports of the pitter patter of steps on the same staircase and when investigated nothing is there.

“Once a park visitor walked down to the Randol room and saw a little girl,” said Sanislo-Williams. “He said ‘I’m sensitive to the paranormal’ and reported that she had red hair, was wearing a blue floral dress and was giggling because she wasn’t supposed to be in there. It turns out it was the dining room years ago.”

About all the ghostly goings-on, Sanislo-Williams said she only felt a presence once when the room became icy cold.

Park Interpreter Mary Berger has also had her own personal experiences with ghosts at Casa Grande.

“I’m a skeptic,” said Berger. “But I did see something running down the stairway when I was alone in the house. Some say it’s a woman but what I saw was more like a boy or a servant. His arm was bare and he had red hair.
The second time was in the middle of the day and I saw someone go into the big room with dark shoes and red hair. I assumed it was a man but when I went in, no one was there. Then last summer there was a huge crash downstairs. When I came down, no one was there.”

NAQCPA docent Mary Lee Baiocchi at the Hacienda Cemetery where she shares stories of the dead to school children who visit on the walking tour of New Almaden.

A couple of weeks ago, Berger and another park employee heard someone coming up the stairs. When they both looked, there was no one else in the building. She says that none of the experiences were really frightening.

Several years ago, KNTV Channel 11’s reporter Rob Fladeboe and New Almaden Quicksilver County Park Association [NAQCPA] President Kitty Monahan toured the Hacienda Cemetery on Bertram Road. As they visited the crib-sheathed graves of the 1850s mining community, the two heard piano music. They later discovered it was one of the neighbors playing a prank.

“You’re going to a better place,” said Monahan when asked about the presence of ghosts in New Almaden. “Why would you want to come back?”

But that doesn’t explain why the grave of Jenny Daniels buried in 1888 always has flowers at her headstone even though no one ever witnesses their delivery.

“And the footsteps people hear at Casa Grande are explainable also,” according to Monahan. “It’s just the pipes thumping.”

NAQCPA docent Mary Lee Baiocchi leads school children on the museum’s walking tour. One of their stops is a visit to the Hacienda Cemetery. Her great-grandmother is the last person buried there in 1912 at age 76.

“The kids think it’s haunted but I don’t know. They see that Richard “Bert” Barrett’s arm is buried here and wonder if it’s trying to reach the rest of his body buried at Oak Hill Cemetery,” said Baiocchi. “I always tell them to walk quietly and whisper out of respect for the people who are buried here.”

Baiocchi says that she has also heard footsteps at Casa Grande.

NAQCPA docent John Drew shared a story of a PG&E man who came to read the meters and asked if Casa Grande was haunted.

NAQCPA docent Mary Lee Baiocchi at the Hacienda Cemetery where she shares stories of the dead to school children who visit on the walking tour of New Almaden.

“He felt something right behind him,” said Drew. “And, he never came back to check on anything here again!”

Mike Boulland lives on Almaden Road and enjoys collecting tall tales.

“There have been stories for years of ghosts in the houses here,” said Boulland. “One of the tales is that Mammy Pleasant lived in one of the houses on Almaden Road and ran a brothel. There have been reports of children screaming and ghosts and items missing and then reappearing. In one house, a little girl was seen. And then there are the Casa Grande ghosts.”

But it’s not just the current residents of New Almaden who have had ghostly encounters. During the 1800s, the quicksilver miners believed in “Tommy Knockers,” thought to be 2-foot-high men in boots who were spirits of the dead. They played tricks but also warned the hard-hat miners of potential mining dangers as well.

So are there ghosts in New Almaden? Or is it just some overactive imaginations reacting to the sounds of pipes knocking? Park Interpreter Berger suggests that perhaps a visit from local psychic Sylvia Browne would help identify misplaced spirits.

Sanislo-Williams says she takes all the sightings with “a grain of salt”—but adds that she’d never spend the night alone at Casa Grande.