The Vineyard House
The story that I'm going to share with you takes place only a few miles from where I live. There is a house known as the Vineyard House in Coloma, California, and it is famous for being haunted. For many years, it was used as a restaurant and inn and my family and I had dinner there many times when I was growing up. It is an old Victorian house that was built some time in the 1800's and it was during this time a very well-known vineyard. Some of the best tasting wine in California was produced here by the family who built the house. This family at first had a lot of luck with their vineyard and they were very happy, but eventually, their good luck began to run out. A blight occurred that ruined their vineyard and they could no longer make money selling wine. Then, several of their young children died. The husband, whose name escapes me at this time, developed syphilis and eventually went blind. In addition to losing his eyesight, he also began to go crazy, so his wife had him chained to a wall in the downstairs basement where he eventually died. After his death, the wife needed to make money or she would lose the house, so she turned the upstairs part of the house into an inn where weary travelers could stop and rest before returning to their journeys. She also eventually allowed the lower portion of the house, or the basement, to be used as a small jail. It is known that many prisoners died down there and others were executed on the property in front of the house. To make this long story a little shorter, I will now go into the part that deals with the hauntings. In the years following the wife's death, the house was owned by many different people who fixed it up and turned it into a restaurant and an inn on the upstairs section. Many, if not all, of the owners, as well as those who worked there, experienced very strange things. A bartender working in the bar down in the basement where the jail had been and the husband had died told a story where he was cleaning up late one night after closing and he was wiping down the counter. A single glass was left at one end of the counter and he was working at the other end, when the glass suddenly slid on its own down to where he was. Other employees told of hearing the sound of rustling skirts and footsteps when no one was around. Many stories were told by people who stayed in the upstairs rooms. One couple from Sacramento was awakened late at night by the sound of drunken men who were laughing loudly and being obnoxious. When the man opened his bedroom door to ask them to quiet down, he saw three men dressed in Victorian clothing fade before his eyes. Another couple was so frightened by something in the middle of the night that they packed their things and left without ever saying what had happened. There is a very old graveyard directly across the street from the house and the original family is buried there, as well as many other people from that time period and before. Some people who had eaten at the restaurant reported seeing a strange woman in old-fashioned clothes wandering around the graveyard. She has been seen by quite a few people, but no one has been able to identify her. She appears to people to be very sad, almost as if she is mourning. These are just some of the stories of the Vineyard House hauntings. There are more, but I've written enough for now. The Vineyard House is quite a famous place. On the inside were pictures of famous people who had visited there such as Dudley Moore and even John Wayne. It is so famous for its hauntings that it has even been featured on such TV shows as "That's Incredible" and "Ripley's Believe It Or Not". I never saw these shows myself, but I read that it appeared on them when I was doing my research on the house a few years ago. It truly has a fascinating history. Sadly, the Vineyard House has been closed for a few years now, but I hope that someone will open it to the public again. In case you're wondering, I never had a ghostly encounter myself when I was there, but sometimes I wish I had. I've read stories of people eating in the restaurant who saw very young ghostly children, and I have to assume that they were probably the children of the first family. I hope you have enjoyed reading this. If you ever come this way, take a drive down to Coloma, the home of the famous gold rush, and go and see the Vineyard House for yourself. Maybe by then it will have been reopened and you can go inside.
Who knows... maybe you'll see one of its old "residents"!
Tisha, Northern California
