DemonTengu
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(4/3/04 11:43 am)
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GHOSTLY 'SOMETHING' TRIGGERS COURTHOUSE SECURITY DEVICES
GHOSTLY 'SOMETHING' TRIGGERS COURTHOUSE SECURITY DEVICES
Posted Apr 02.04
Original headline: Night janitors say the downtown courthouse haunted
Sometimes modernization can uncover pieces of the past, as when construction projects
uncover archaeological sites.
But in the case of the Mendocino County Courthouse in downtown Ukiah, a new security
system is apparently revealing the presence of some long-time residents of the building who
have a mind of their own despite their lack of an earthly body.
In other words, they're ghosts.
New, high-tech, motion-detecting cameras are revealing to security and janitorial staff that
something is moving about the courthouse's gloomy halls in the still hours of the night.
Something best described as a "mist" has repeatedly appeared on the cameras moving back
and forth across the courthouse's lower hallway where the jury selection department is
located.
A janitor who saw the tape said this ghostly apparition can also be seen floating up in front of
the light that hangs down in this hallway, causing the light to be partially obscured.
This janitor also said that a "little box lights up" when motion is detected, "and you can see
the box light up and then it lights up somewhere else."
New metal-detecting machines at the courthouse entrances have also gone off without a soul
-- or at least a soul combined with a body -- to be found, according to some of the security
personnel.
To the janitors and some of the long-time employees in the building, these occurrences are
something of a vindication.
"We've known there was something here for years," said the janitor "informant," who, like
everybody else, would prefer not to risk ridicule from skeptics by providing his name. Many
talk of how "spooky" the building gets once it gets dark and cleared out of (living) people.
Many in the building refer to the supernatural occurrences in the building as belonging to a
spirit named "George," and this name has been passed down through the years through
generations of employees.
The courthouse is comprised of two different sections, one built in the 1920s and one built in
the 1950s. But parts of the building also comprise remnants of an earlier courthouse from the
"Wild West" era which itself had replaced an earlier courthouse.
Just a brief review of some of the incidents that occurred in one version of the courthouse or
another supply ample evidence that the site has some dark history.
The only execution that took place in Mendocino County history occurred on the courthouse
roof, in the days before executions were moved to San Quentin.
A judge was also shot and killed by an irate defendant during a trial. The man made his
escape from the courthouse but a posse brought him back and they were in the middle of
hanging him on the street when a lawyer made an impassioned speech calling for the rule of
law, so the man was taken to San Quentin.
The county jail was also located on the site of old, and evidence of jail bars are still to be
seen in some areas of the existing building. Apparently one of those incarcerated in the jail
committed suicide.
As for the janitor theDaily Journal spoke to, he didn't know how to connect to any historical
tale the apparition he and another janitor witnessed one night about 10 p.m. as they were
sitting in a janitor's closet.
"Someone came walking down the hallway and we didn't think much of it," he explained.
"The door was open and I caught out of the side of my eye a dress walking by and high
heels. After it went past the doorway, it only went about five more steps and then it stopped."
He went out in the hallway to see who it was, but nobody was there. "There was nowhere for
this person to go in five steps," he said. "It either would have had to continue on down the
hallway or turn left down another long hallway." The latter direction would have taken the
ghost directly to the area that the motion cameras have been picking up strange imagery.
In addition, this janitor and his colleagues -- along with other members of the courthouse
administration who spoke with the Daily Journal -- have witnessed the elevator traveling up
and down the various levels of the building with no one in it, and always at night.
"One time the elevator started up from the ground floor and we could hear it stopping on
every floor," the janitor said. "When it got to the top, it turned around and did the same thing
back down. And then I had to get into the thing and go up and clean the top floor."
.:Story originally published by:.
Ukiah Daily Journal / CA | Mark Hedges - Apr 02.04
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