Whaley House Museum — Attraction in San Diego

We went to the Whaley House with our four kids and enjoyed our self guided tour and took our time. We really enjoyed our time speaking with one of the Docents in the theater. He was fantastic! I wish I could remember his name. We spent at least half our time just telling stories with him and learning more about Old Town in general. This is our third time being stationed in San Diego, and we LOVE Old Town. I am embarrassed to admit I hadn’t learned much about its history or even know much of the Whaley House at all. My husband and kids took my parents to the airport one evening while I had to take our lizard to the vet and they, of course hit up Old Town. They were walking around and happened to walk around the grounds of the Whaley House. It was closed already, and my little four year old started shaking my Mom’s hand and said, “Nana, there is a lady in the window in a white dress waving to me.” My Mom didn’t see anything, of course, and reassured her no one was there, but all we heard about for weeks was that she “wanted to go visit Mrs. Whaley, she invited her over.” Super weird! Interestingly, the docent told us during our visit, that apparently Mrs. Whaley used to invite the neighborhood kids in when they would come by, and tell them stories. And give them cookies! We enjoyed our time in the house VERY much and the story of the family is really quite tragic. You may get some inklings of emotions there, and they encourage you to snap photos in succession to try and catch something. So why the one star knocked off? The plastic dividers to the rooms!!! Ugh! They were absolute let downs. You felt so removed from a real experience even on a quiet day, and there is NO, zip, zero chance of a valid photo. We could debunk every single photo as glare or reflection from the dang plexiglass dividers. The restoration was done beautifully and well, and the stories are great. The house is beautiful. If you are going in hopes of having an experience, don’t! I repeat, DO NOT GO FOR PARANORMAL REASONS, go for San Diego history!!! It’s still awesome!!! Maybe they will consider taking down the...

I took my two daughters and my niece for a fun family night out. After a wonderful dinner in the restaurant there on the property my 9 old was so excited to do the tour. She had been begging us for hours to do it but we insisted on doing it after dinner, and since the Creole restaurant was so behind dinner took a few hours before we were able to finally get through. We spent an extra $10 even to do the 8:40 tour rather than 9 because according to them they use “surge pricing” so our tickets were $94 at the earlier time rather than $84 later. Perhaps we should have waited for another tour and another guide because Mr Hunny should not be working with the public. From what seemed like a lovely enough start, we got through the court room and the store before Mr Hunny decided in the most mortifying of ways that my 12 year old daughter with special needs was distracting him with her vocal ticks and we would need to take her to the parlor. Obviously we would not be doing that. He claimed they do that with their special needs clients all the time. I don’t understand how banishing people for things that is part of their disabilities is ok. So he brought in his manager who said he would talk to Hunny, but still kicked us off the tour and refunded our groups money, or at least $92 of it. I can’t fathom how that is ok. You don’t kick people off the tour for talking, because there were plenty of people on our tour talking so it’s obviously not the sound that’s the problem. My 9 year old got to tell me all the horrific things people were saying as the entire tour was watching and laughing as this mortifying scene unfolded in front of them. Glad she gets to have those amongst her core memories. Not because we did anything wrong. It’s just her sister having...

First off, I want to say it was a awesome experience to have came here! I’ve been to the Winchester mansion before, and honestly I didn’t expect to have felt more here than I did in the Winchester home. From the moment you come in, you already feel the energy in the room(no harmless). This house wasn’t at all what I expected. As I walked through the dinning room, our tour guide A.J.(amazing by the way) explained to us the significance of each room and what we may feel. Before walking up the stairs, I mentioned to my wife and friends that I felt a sharp pain on my chest. As we walked through the upstairs theater room, I felt a pulse feeling on the right side of my chest this time. It was really strange, but again I didn’t think anything of it because I thought it was all just in my head. As we enter the last room downstairs before heading outside, the pulse feeling I had stopped. We came to find out that one of the daughter of Mr.Whaley shot herself in the chest was brought into that room by Mr.Whaley himself. Her last moment were spent in that room with her father and we were all saddened by this. As for me, I was in shock because of the feeling I had the whole time in there and how it just stopped in that specific room. At the end of our tour, I asked A.J. where did she get shot specifically if he knew. He pointed on his chest the same spot where I was feeling the pulse through the whole trip… I woke up today with a bruise mark on the same spot he said she got shot and where I felt what I felt. This by far has been one of the best experiences I felt. I recommend anyone to go and check it out, specifically the 7...