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CHAPTER 2

Creole Café

OLD TOWN SAN DIEGO

The dining room for the Creole Café (the main office and kitchen is in the next building to the right) is one of the oldest buildings in San Diego—and apparently has become some kind of vortex for paranormal activity.

WHEN ANNA AND CHARLES WHALEY decided to put down roots in what would become the heart of Old Town San Diego, it seems there was a plan to bring a bit of Louisiana to Southern California. Anna Whaley, of French descent, planted the majestic pepper trees outside her house in 1856. Her trees, and other New Orleans touches, were recognized by Mark Bihm more than 150 years later, drawing him to the next stage in his career. He was intrigued by the blind real estate ad that read “Deli in a parklike setting,” describing the historic building that shares the Whaley House courtyard.

“I wanted to open a restaurant, and I didn’t want to see concrete or cars,” Bihm says. He immediately came out to look at the property and fell in love with it; the place reminded him of his homeland—his family has been in Louisiana since 1750. “The New Orleans style of the Whaley House [see Whaley House chapter], the gas lamps, the pepper trees—it was kismet.” And the rest is history.

Bihm’s San Diego Creole Café is part of the historic courtyard that Save Our Heritage Organization (SOHO) created from the buildings saved from demolition and painstakingly restored to preserve San Diego’s early history. The adopted buildings are now part of the family surrounding the historic Whaley House. What Bihm didn’t realize, but now knows very well, is that he was moving into one of America’s most haunted locations.

“I was raised a hard-shell Southern Baptist; my family wanted me to have the calling,” says Bihm, a Southern gentleman to the core. Instead of the ministry, Bihm went into corporate restaurant management, which eventually led him west to Baghdad by the Bay’s classic San Franciscan venue on Fisherman’s Wharf—and finally to San Diego, where he had fond memories of family vacations and the city’s Wild West history.

So what does Bihm say about ghosts? “I know the Bible, and it’s a good archetype for living, sure, but I’ve always wondered what the nuts and bolts of the afterlife are. Certainly using the scientific methods we have today we can perhaps find out more than we thought was possible about the afterlife. I think it would be good for our society to know … to be able to integrate this into our culture for a better outcome. Maybe knowing would give us hope.”

Mark Bihm (left) and Humberto Villegas in front of the Creole Café, sitting at their Día de los Muertos altar

Bihm and his life and business partner, Humberto Villegas, have both experienced many paranormal events in the buildings that house the Creole Café, moved from what was one of the oldest areas of San Diego called New Town, which is now part of San Diego’s downtown area. The two wooden structures with false facades definitely have a feeling about them, and many customers comment about their own experiences there.

Villegas has experienced the feeling of being watched. When they first moved into the building, he would sense someone walking up the path and into the building, but when he’d turn around there would be no one there.

“We’ve been here for eight years,” says Villegas. “Once, I was wiping down a table for the next guests when a woman here with another woman and a child said, ‘Is this building haunted? I definitely get the feeling there is someone else sitting here at our table.’ And that’s how it is for many people who come here. We get comments like that from tourists who don’t know the history of the Whaley House.”

One morning Bihm found himself in a not-so-typical paranormal event for Old Town. As we sat on the porch, he said, “I was coming to work and came in early because there’s a lot of stuff I have to do to get ready to open. I stopped at the gate [on Harney Street], and as I’m going though the gate I felt a gentle pushing on me and I got this feeling—no voices or anything, but just the feeling to stop and hold off from going in. It really affected me and I didn’t want to go in.

“One of the Whaley House docents, Casey, was following behind me, and I said, ‘Don’t go to the house.’ And she said, ‘Well, I have to—we open in ten minutes. Let’s go up to the Hacienda [The Hacienda Hotel in Old Town, just up the street from the Whaley House] and ask them if there’s anything going on.’ And we did. But they said nothing was going on that they were aware of—just a normal day. Casey said, ‘If you don’t want to go to the restaurant, come with me to the house—you can come open the house with me and we’ll be safe together.’

“Well, as soon as we started walking up, all of a sudden out of nowhere there’s a police helicopter, police dogs, and police cars,” Bihm continued about the incident. “Come to find out there was a guy under the restaurant’s porch with a gun that they’d been looking for all night. They pulled up a board,” he said, showing me the board, “and they pulled him up—he was a skinny little thing—totally pierced up, in black leather. He had little horns coming out of his head—he had his hair done up like that! I just thought, ‘Oh, look, it’s the devil!’ That was back in ’05 or so.”

Bihm feels that the spirits at the restaurant don’t mind his presence there, and after that incident have actually tried to take care of the partners in the face of danger. He once slipped and would have had a worse fall had something not intervened and actually kept him afloat and cleared him of the porch. I’ve heard of four other people having similar experiences in and around the surrounding buildings.

“There was one time I was out in the bathroom putting soap out there and I heard a banging on the door,” Bihm said. “It made me angry because they were banging way too hard. I said, ‘Stop that!’ And I came out and there was this couple outside, and they looked frightened and said, ’We heard that banging, too!’ ”

The bathroom is approximately in the area where the outhouse for the Whaley household used to be. That’s where Violet Whaley, Charles and Anna’s daughter, killed herself with a revolver and bled to death inside the home.

“Maybe the pounding is that of her father reliving the moments he heard the gun and was trying to get in to help her,” Bihm said, trying to make sense of the pounding. Bihm has empathy for what the Whaleys went through in their time at the house and respects the area where they lived, which is perhaps why they seem to keep an eye out for him.

The Creole Café spirits are also known to play tricks on Bihm and Villegas. “We have a special knife we cut the shrimp with, and Humberto said, ‘I wish I could find that knife; I’ve been looking everywhere for it.’ So I’m looking around for it everywhere. Humberto is sitting at the counter and cutting the shrimp with a big knife, and all at once we look over—and there it was on the cutting board. That would have been pretty hard for both of us to miss when we’d looked so hard. Things will disappear, but they turn right back up again.”

Customers and visitors comment constantly regarding the spirits and paranormal activity in the buildings.

“One day, I was sitting in the restaurant, and a man says, ‘I’m a psychic. Can we go into this building for a minute to talk?’ ” The mysterious man pointed to the indoor seating area (the building to the left of the kitchen building) where many have had paranormal experiences. “He was telling me there’s a woman here and her name is Amelia—she’s telling him the building used to be her brothel, and she’s showing him how it used to look, and she was very proud of her business. Then he suddenly stopped and said, ‘Your parents are here and they want you to know how pleased they are with what you’re doing—and they know things are slow here, but things will pick up in March and it’ll be really busy—you’re new here and give yourself a chance. Your grandmother is also here, and she wants you to know how much she loved doing dishes with you when you were a baby.’ Well, this is an old family joke; I’m kind of known for this—more like supervising washing the dishes with Grandma. It gave credence to his whole message. Then he added, ‘They want me to tell you that when you die, they’re going to embrace you,’ Of course, I asked, ‘Is that anytime soon?’ He assured me it wasn’t.”

The spirits in this group of buildings let people know about their presence by means of touch, smell, movement of objects, and speaking.

“I had a friend visiting and she was just kind of making fun of Amelia,” said Bihm. “It was the dead of winter and she stepped down off the steps, and I just saw her jump. She’d hit a wall of the scent of sweet-smelling flowers in front of her. She didn’t make fun of Amelia again. I’ve also smelled baking in the Whaley House with docents, when there was no baking going on anywhere else. I guess if you like to bake, it continues no matter where you go.” Bihm smiles, at ease with the idea of living among ghosts.

“We have this kitchen hood fan that sucks up an enormous amount of air. All of a sudden I smelled this cigar smoke, like someone next to me just blew it in my face to get my attention. I also felt this warmth—like a body standing next to me. I felt like I knew how tall this ghost was, so I went over to the Whaley House to ask a docent how tall Mr. Whaley was—they know everything there. I went to the back door and I leaned over the chain to get someone’s attention. All of a sudden the chandelier in the dining room started swinging violently—and just when it slowed down it would speed up again. It was summer and the house was packed—fifty people saw it.”

The Creole Café buildings are known by local paranormal groups as hopping with activity. Several groups, including my own Meetup group, Ghosts Happen, have used the dining space after the restaurant has closed to carry out investigations. One evening my group was having a séance with two Spiritualist mediums, Fran and Pete Monroe, discussing how mediumship works in regard to contacting spirits, and several messages came through. There was activity on all of the meters. We also had Frank’s Box #55 out and were listening for responses to questions at the end of the evening. Many people had already left, and we were getting ready to pack up when someone asked the box, “How many people are still here?” The box answered, “Fifteen.” We did a quick head count to find that there were, in fact, fifteen people remaining.

One evening we were seated for a dinner investigation sponsored by the San Diego Ghost and Paranormal Group. I sat taking pictures with my cell phone when a woman in the group began describing a young woman—more like a child—with long blond hair and a Victorian-era pastel blue dress coming through. As she described this spirit, I began shooting my camera, sans flash, at the mirror in the room—in my mind’s eye, and in the camera’s frame, I saw a huge multicolored light shoot through and then a girl in a dress began appearing from the mirror and came right out of the mirror, her dress spilling out onto the floor. I captured the emerging image in a series of five frames. I said, “I have the pictures of what you’re describing,” and the group examined the pictures. The woman in the SDGAP Group affirmed that the images paralleled what she’d been psychically receiving.

This photo was taken into a mirror that seems to serve as a portal for paranormal activity. I photographed a girl coming in through the mirror until her hooped dress spilled onto the floor. When the woman reflected in the mirror (holding camera) acknowledged the apparition, it disappeared.

I believe the spirits in Old Town have the confidence to walk among the living and be noticed day or night. The paranormal stories surrounding the Whaley House and Creole Café abound—and the time of the incidents is rarely confined to the darkness of night, or to the person involved being alone.

“I’ve been witnessing phenomena—and I have all my life,” says Bihm. “It just seems here it’s more accentuated. We all want to believe in them, and I know without a doubt that if we can figure out how they move chandeliers—goodbye energy crises, hello world prosperity. How do they do that? As far as the spirits here—too many people have come here and had the same things happen for generations—people who don’t even know each other. How else can they come up with the same phenomena? I do believe in them—absolutely. I’m not afraid. I mean, sure, there’s bad stuff out there, but not here.”