Name: Beth

City: Long Beach

State: CA

Date Experience Occurred: 1991

Approximate time: 04:00pm

Where did you have this experience?: Whaley House

With whom did you come in contact?: No idea

In what area did this occur?: Backyard

Do you have paranormal pictures or voice recordings?: no

Did you experience cold spots?: no

Moving furniture or lights?: no

Knocking or other sounds?: no

Please explain your experience: My boyfriend and I were walking on the sidewalk path behind Whaley House. In the back corner, we saw a woman dressed in period costume.  At first glance I thought she was on a smoking break because of the haze sort of floating around her. Later I realized that I never saw a cigarette, just the smoke.  My boyfriend said "HELLO" ,then waited a beat for her to respond. She was silent. It pissed me off because it seemed rude and I shot her a dirty look.  Instantly I got the most intense wave of sadness and pity from her; as if she COULDN'T speak. It came from her eyes, she never said a word. We walked a few more feet and turned around but no one was there. We literally took less than 5 steps and joked that she was probably a ghost since she didn't say "hi" back to us. We turned and she seemed to just have vanished.  I mean, she wasn't there and we definitely would have seen her walking away.  The shops were closed and the curator said nobody dresses up in period clothing there.  When we really considered what we saw, we both agreed she had looked very transparent and stood at an odd sideways angle. Neither of us could really wrap our heads around what we had seen.

Note:  This experience took place in 1991.  The docents at the Whaley House do wear period clothing today but they did not wear them in 1991.