Institution

This house is located at 960 E. Gaillard Street and is now within the city limits of neighboring Azusa. It is surrounded by newer houses and seems out of place among them. There has never been any explanation for the early sightings or why they abruptly stopped. There were stories of the house being haunted for some time. A bearded man, dressed as a farmer, was seen on several occasions in the late 1970s and early 1980s by the owners. There were also sightings by utility men and for a time The Gas Company refused to come on the property to read the meter. In 1986 the house was sold and there has been no activity since.  The above stories are believed by those who have lived through the experiences. However, there is no documented evidence that they occurred.

Even utility people saw the spirits that haunt the house at 960 E. Gaillard Street

This historic Victorian house was constructed in 1887 when all the little townsites in the valley were first emerging. It is the only structure that remains from the former town of Gladstone which was only in existence a few short years.

960 E. Gaillard Street

Are you ready to experience a spine-chilling adventure? Join us for our Spooky Historic Haunted Tour, where we will take you on a journey through the eerie past of the City of Glendora. Get ready to encounter ghostly tales, mysterious legends, and haunted landmarks that will send shivers down your spine.

Please drive safely and obey all traffic rules.

Glendora's Haunted Past

Director

In 1915 the Warren family built a beautiful two-story home, which presently houses the Glendora County Club. The first floor of the house consisted of a living room, dining room, library with balcony, kitchen, breakfast room and a full basement. The second floor had five bedrooms, a sitting room, two bathrooms, and three sleeping porches. Minnie Warren was very active in the community and was a charter member of the Glendora Woman’s Club. During World War I she organized a group of women to sew for the war effort and they gathered at her home. In 1954 Minnie Warren died and the estate was sold. Previously the land had been sub-divided among the four Warren sons, except for the portion where the house stood.   After her death in 1954, Minnie was continually seen within the Country Clubhouse especially right before a patriotic holiday. Martha Wilson explains: “One afternoon the group were posing for a yearly photograph. The cameraman came and set up his equipment. When he started shooting pictures, he noticed the batteries of his camera flash until they were drained- completely dead. He snapped several shots, then once again the same thing happened. It was as if someone didn’t want him to take pictures of us at that moment. Finally, the cameraman lost his patience and left the building. A few months later when the pictures were developed, there was Minnie grinning brightly in the background in two of the sample pictures and right in the center of the others. The cameraman told us that this had never happened to him in the past and that he didn’t understand. We simply told him that she was our founding member and accepted the photographs. Within a few months each of us noticed that no matter how we framed our eerie ‘ghost’ photographs, the image of Minnie was fading.”

Glendora County Club was once the Warren Estate. The Warren Family were among the early pioneer settlers that helped farm the Southern California area. Charles Clifton Warren married his childhood sweetheart, Minnie Horne, near Stockton in Northern California in the early 1800’s. Warren came to the San Gabriel Valley in 1883 and his wife followed after their first child, Leslie, was born.  In 1898 the Warrens purchased the land at Amelia and Alosta, (Highway 66) in Glendora and lived in a two-room house. It was so small that their sons slept at the old Cunningham house just down the road.

Glendora Country Club

The Colby Ranch house is two stories with several rooms and bathrooms. It has had several owners through the years and the exterior remains very much the same as it did in the 1890s. At one point it was rumored to be a hotel, but upon further investigation this was found untrue; instead several rooms had been rented out during WWII to a family from Arkansas. Interesting to note was that one set of owners found scrawled writing on a wall at the back of a linen closet: “Mrs. D.A. Cole, 1891”. There is no record of a Cole Family residing in this house, yet the 1898 City Directory lists a D.A. Cole as a rancher in Glendora. Rumor has it that a baby died in the nursery and that the mother walks the house at night. Some of the previous occupants claim to have seen her on several occasions. One of the families, who resided in the house for over 20 years, had many encounters with a male ghost and maintain they photographed it, but the photos were lost over the years. They affectionally called their ghost “Herman” and never had any bad experiences.

Originally a plot of 40 acres homesteaded by W.H. Potts, a Glendora Pioneer, the old Colby Ranch was built around 1890. It is located at 301 W. Bennett Avenue.  The Colby family appeared to be the 2nd owners of the home. An article in the March 8, 1906, Glendora Gleaner states that “W.J. Cox sold his home, including 20 acres of fine orange grove, to George A. Colby of Great Falls, Montana for the sum of $20,000," noting also that “this is one of the finest orange groves of the valley.” Mr. Colby was a large stock rancher in Montana and bought this home for “a California home” that he would occupy a part of each year with Mrs. Colby.

 Colby Ranch

For years many who have worked within the old Opera House have reported strange sounds emitting from the walls. Marcia Evans remembers this strange experience. “I was working the late shift at the café and was trying to get cleaned up so that I could leave when several of the bus boys and I started to hear this strange moaning coming from the men’s bathroom. I asked one of the guys to go inside and check things out to make sure that none of the customers was in there sick or something. Carlos came out and told me that there wasn’t anyone but there was a foul order in the room. I noticed the same horrible smell in the office and had everyone look around to try to locate the odor. Perhaps some food got behind something. The odor reminded me of spoiled cheese or rotten eggs. We searched the place and couldn’t find a thing. Then we heard this banging in the ceiling that sounded like some sort of code. I remembered the morse code signals my dad taught me as a kid and tried to read the signals but realized that they were the same thing over and over again. It spelled “help me”. We searched the entire place for something that we couldn't see, but never found a thing. I finally decided to check upstairs to see if anyone was in the real estate offices or in the theater. When we got up there, we found nothing unusual. The real estate office was locked tight, and the sounds started up again only this time they seemed to be coming from inside of the theater room. The doors up there are usually open, so Carlos brought a flashlight and turned it on. Together we slowly entered the room and thought we could make out a shape of a woman dressed in a formal gown. Carlos flashed the light in her direction and sure enough we could now make out her full figure. She stood on the stage with her arms outstretched as if a about to speak her line in a play. The woman looked in our direction and asked us to either come in and sit down or leave so that the show could continue. We entered the room lightly lit by that of the full moon outside and found no one else except the actress. She motioned with her hands for us to take chairs and found that there were only three or four scattered around the room. Carlos looked at me and I at him and we knew that this had already become an experience of a lifetime, so we sat down and waited. The woman started reciting strange and macabre sounds as if in a weird play. We watched as the inarticulate woman continued and I noticed that there was a freezing cold chill through the tiny room. I rubbed my arms, which had goose pimples all over them and glanced at Carlos who nodded that he too felt the cold air around us. The actress leaned to her side and picked up a large hat that looked as though it was covered in feathers. She placed it on her head and looked back into the audience of two at The Opera House and stated, “And that was my one night in Rome”. Then she just stood there as if waiting for an applause or something.  Carlos and I clapped and noticed that in the dimly lit room we could see the wall behind the woman but what we didn't realize until that moment was that we could see the wall right THROUGH HER. I almost screamed. The woman thanked us and smiled at us continually until she looked around and told us the play was over. As she turned towards the still yet slightly opened door it slammed shut as if someone had grabbed it from the other side. Carlos ran towards it and tried to get it open, but it wouldn’t budge. I knew that there was another door towards the back of the room and headed towards there but found it also locked tight. We hadn't started to panic yet, and I looked towards the stage and yelled at the Ghost “You unlock these doors and let us out! You got us up here and performed your weird play, now Let us OUT!” with this order both of the doors clicked as if someone had turned their locks and the doors opened simultaneously. Carlos and I ran downstairs locked up the coffee shop and left for the night. I was so freaked out with what had happened I quit the next day and never returned to that strange building. Carlos continued there for another year or two claiming to have run into the Ghostly actress again several time before he finally left the company as well."

One of Glendora's most historic buildings in the downtown area presently houses the Village Vault Restaurant, at 161 N. Glendora Avenue. This landmark was built in 1906 by C.A. Weaver and was occupied by the First National Bank with the town’s Opera House upstairs.  First National Bank of Glendora was chartered 1907 with Carrol Whitcomb, son of George Whitcomb as President, and M.C. Wentworth as cashier. The present-day restaurant proudly displays the original vault door from the bank which has been completely restored.  Early photographs of the building show statues of Beethoven and Mozart decorating the outside upper portion where the Opera House was located. The double doors on the north side open to a wide stairway, which was once a grand entry way, and this remains much the same as it did in years gone by. The Opera House was the social and cultural center of the community in the early days.

Opera House

This vintage home tells tales of murder and violence. One of the owners of this home had extensive remodeling done. Inside the living room wall, human bones and a rusted gun were discovered.  Later, owners experienced things flying through the air and even saw images. It was at this time that a prominent university, specializing in parapsychology, was contacted and instruments were set up inside the house to record the disturbances.  A medium held a seance and contact was made with the three unsettled spirits, which was tape recorded. According to the voices on the tape they were a brother and sister with the third person being a male. Supposedly, the man had violated the sister and was killed by the brother. He then sealed the body and the murder weapon inside the wall. After the seance there were no more disturbances in the house.  In 1985, an in-depth interview was done with Mario and Jane Rosso, former owners of the house at 530 N. Wabash Avenue. The Rossos were responsible for bringing in the medium and had the tape in their possession at the time of the interview. However, their whereabouts at the present time is unknown.

One of Glendora's first homes, originally built in 1886.

530 N. Wabash Ave.

The house was owned in the 1970's by the Magallon family. In 1978, two of their three children, Tia and Eric, observed two ghostly occurrences: one when a man with a top hat was seen on the inside stairs, and another time when the same man was noted lounging in one of the doorways. Everyone agreed he appeared to be a friendly ghost.

The historic Bradley home, nestled at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, is located at 736 North Vista Bonita Avenue. The charming Victorian home, constructed in 1887 by Bartholomew Bradley, is believed to be one of the earliest homes within the townsite of the City of Glendora.

Bradley House

In 1974, Rick and Jane Negley were a young couple who fell in love with the old house. They became aware of a “presence” in the house from the beginning but never felt any fear. When their first-born child, Matthew, was two years old, he had a make-believe friend that came to play with him on a regular basis. The family believed that this was just a normal childhood imagination working overtime and didn't think much about the situation. About three years later, when Matthew was five years old, he saw a photo of Kiwanis Club members that was taken in the 1930s and identified one of them as his long-time playmate. After further investigation by the family, it was discovered that it was Wirt Williams, former owner of the house, that little Matthew recognized. They also found that Williams had passed away about the same time Matthew was born.  The family has experienced many other occurrences throughout the years. The following story was related by present owner, Jane Negley. “My first experience occurred shortly after we moved in. Since the upstairs needed to be restored, we used the downstairs bedroom as ours and didn't go upstairs very often. One night when I was sound asleep on the side of the bed closest to the doorway, I woke up suddenly. I could hear someone coming down the stairs. The footsteps came into our room. She (I came to this conclusion because of the lavender cologne that I could smell) stood at the doorway for at least five minutes and then the footsteps could be heard going back into the hall and gradually faded away. I never moved nor woke up my husband because I couldn't. I wasn't scared, but I just could not react."

The charming grove house located at 621 N. Pennsylvania Avenue seems almost out of place amid the newer tract homes that surround it. At one time the house was in the center of a large grove and was a working citrus ranch. It was constructed in 1910 for Rudolf Hopps, a well-to-do Chicago businessman. Wirt and Mary Williams were the second owners of the house. They raised their three children here, Evelyn, Vincent, and Leland. Wirt Williams was the first superintendent of schools in Glendora; Williams Elementary School on Loraine Avenue was named in his honor.

621 N. Pennsylvania Ave

When first approaching the Hamlin House, one of the first things that you will notice is the extensive stonework done on the fence surrounding the yard, the fireplaces, and the foundation. The material for this stonework was taken from the San Gabriel Riverbed. These features are representative of the Craftsman home construction. Parts of the upright posts are still visible where a grape arbor or rose arbor once stood. Before entering the house by way of the front door, you will see the evidence of the “glassed in” front which was, at the time, called a “sunroom”. The front door is solid oak on the outside and pine on the inside with wrought iron hinges individually designed for the house. There is an interesting legend regarding Mr. Hamlin’s ghost, which allegedly comes back and smokes in the library at night. When the library is closed at night, the next morning upon opening, the smoke can be detected in the air and cigar ashes can be found in the ash tray over the fireplace. Mr. Hamlin did smoke cigars. Also, in the 1940’s and 1950’s, the Hamlin house was referred to as being “haunted” and that an “old witch” lived there. The “old witch” no doubt refers to Mrs. Hamlin, who did get out in the yard at times and always wore black after the death of her husband. Helen Dye, director of the local DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution), related the experience of the DAR lady who once spent the night in the den in a sleeping bag. "She was alone there, and at 1:30 a.m. she swears she felt one of her toes being pinched!"Mrs. Dye also told the tale of how on occasion a ball of light was seen by members as it moved to the bottom of the large old staircase, where it disappeared. Another time, six DAR members were meeting in the parlor. Suddenly there was a loud popping noise, and a ball of flames appeared over the fireplace. It quickly dissipated, leaving no damage or even marks. The lady of the house, Mrs. Helen Hamlin, lived into the sixties. When she was alive, she used to spend time in the upstairs office just above the parlor. Some DAR ladies meeting in the living room have heard the distance sounds of someone moving around above them, and the opening up of filing cabinets. But when they investigated, there was never any human entity to be found.

One of the most fascinating old houses in Glendora is the Hamlin House located at 201 W. Bennett Avenue. Ghost sightings have been well documented right up to the present day. This home was bought by the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) in 1982.  This was the “Dream House” of Mr. &amp; Mrs. Rueben Hamlin. It was built for them and completed in 1909.

Hamlin House

Their first child, Amos Brady Scofield, was born in 1888. Several miscarriages followed for the family until 1890, when their second son, Ora, was born. Unfortunately, a little less than one year after his birth, Ora mysteriously died. No distinct explanation was given by the coroner for cause of death. The first child, Amos, would reportedly cry throughout the night complaining of strange noises coming from the walls. He therefore needed to be watched carefully. Mary stayed in a depressive state since the death of their young boy. This depression continued until her untimely death by being struck in her horse and buggy by a train in 1893 or 1894. Amos was also present during that crash and said to have heard the agonizing screams of his dying mother after being launched many feet away.Sanford eventually married a second time to Amos’ teacher, Miss Emma Casey. She would hear stories from Amos about seeing his mother and other ghost friends. She tried to humor him so that he could recover from her death. One night though, Emma and their nanny were practicing their embroidery when they looked upon the staircase to find Mary Scofield in a black mourning dress holding the banister. Mary told the two that she was worried for her boys. It is said that Mary smiled towards Emma who comforted her in saying that she would take very good care of them. Mary is said to haunt her Victorian mansion and the place where she died in search of her children, who she adored.

The Home was originally built on a 160-acre parcel of land by Sanford and Mary Scofield in 1887. According to the United States Land Records they were the first people to own this property. The home is an example of a Victorian Style farmhouse. They were considered pioneers of the Citrus Grove Association during that time.

Glendora's Haunted Past

960 E. Gaillard Street

Introduction

Images

Backstory and Context

Sources