It’s that time of year when all things spooky are suddenly in vogue. And, in Stockton, serious ghost hunters need not look further for evidence than the city’s historic downtown.
A team of paranormal investigators went ghost hunting in several prominent buildings and came away convinced. Using ghost-hunting equipment like infrared cameras and temperature sensors, they unearthed spirits just about everywhere they looked.
Or so it seemed.
The result was a series of creepy videos on the website of the Downtown Stockton Alliance. Among the team’s discoveries:
- Eerie temperature changes that appear connected with a spirit lounging in the Bob Hope Theatre.
- Communication with the dead in a cluttered hotel where they had come looking for ghosts associated with one of Stockton’s more notorious criminal cases. It was the Main Hotel that was the scene of a murder involving two-timing wife Emma LeDoux, the first woman in California to receive a death sentence. She was convicted of killing her husband with a dose of morphine and stuffing his body into a steamer trunk. She was spared the noose, however, and died in prison. And the trunk? It’s on display in Stockton’s Haggin Museum.
- A thrift store owner who remembers an otherworldly force pulling at his hair about a decade ago.
The alliance used to give ghost tours of downtown. Now, it pretty much lets people explore on their one via the videos, which have rolled out periodically. Another one is in the works but the staff couldn’t complete it in time for Halloween.
Are there really ghosts?
“We let the audience decide for itself,” said Courtney Wood, the alliance’s economic development director.
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