The Whaley House

In September 1852, James "Yankee Jim" Robinson was hanged on this ground in Old Town San Diego for stealing a boat. The gallows had been built without regard for his height — at six foot three his toes reached the cart beneath him, and he took roughly three quarters of an hour to die. Thomas Whaley watched the execution. Three years later he bought the hanging ground, and in 1857 built on it the first brick house in San Diego; the family moved in that August. The house served variously as the county courthouse, a granary, a theatre and a store, and it held the Whaleys through their own losses, among them the death of their daughter Violet, who took her own life there in 1885 after a divorce. The family themselves attributed the heavy footsteps they heard to Yankee Jim. Visitors and staff report those footsteps still, along with Thomas and Anna Whaley, and a woman sensed in an upstairs bedroom whom guests describe as welcoming rather than frightening. The house is preserved as a museum and open for tours. Ghost Files, the YouTube series with Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, investigated the house in "The Grim Gallows of the Whaley House" (2022).