by Sarah A. Peterson-Camacho

“But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!—for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

“And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.”
–Edgar Allan Poe, “The Haunted Palace”

Forty-eight hours before he was murdered, Percy Williams was living large on the last night of September, 1890.

The favorite son of a former Attorney General of California, Williams was all of 26 years old, wealthy, married, with an infant already in the ground, since the previous February—but here he was at the Palace, Stockton’s premier bordello, cozying up to madam Dora Russell on El Dorado Street…only several blocks from the mansion where his young wife Bessie slept alone in their cold marital bed.

The only two live bodies in the Palace that night, Williams and Russell, were just about to get down to business when the madam heard the steady patter of footsteps creaking their way down the empty hall. And upon the discovery that there was indeed no other living being who could have possibly made those phantom footfalls, Russell dismissed her paramour from her bedroom, promptly locking the door behind her. And she would not leave her room for the rest of the night.

A carnal encounter never materialized for Percy Williams in these wee hours of the first of October, 1890, but an apparition certainly did. As the disappointed young man settled down for the night in another of the Palace’s many luxurious bedrooms, imagine his surprise when the figure of a woman glided past his bed in the velvety darkness.

“Next morning, Williams reproached her [Russell] for not speaking to him when she passed through his room during the night,” reported The Stockton Evening Mail several years later. “He said that she had changed her red gown for a white one, and had combed her hair straight back.

“From the description, she [Russell] realized that he had seen the house ghost, and begged him to heed the warning, and give up his projected trip to Fresno…” as “the appearance of the ghost [was] supposed to portend evil…” But “this he declined, and two days later, he was dead.”

There is no doubt that Percy Williams lived fast and died young. Not two nights after his nocturnal encounter with the apparition of a woman in white, a bullet pierced his heart, killing him instantly.

A gambling man, Williams was in Fresno to bet on the horse races at the Fresno Fair, but his losses at the track were especially heavy on that Thursday, the second of October, 1890. So that evening found him drowning his sorrows in whiskey at the Hughes Hotel in downtown Fresno, where he engaged hack driver Jack Smith in an ill-fated card game that he would wind up winning—but that would ultimately cost him his life.

“The awful tragedy, which was enacted in the barroom of the Hughes Hotel, at about 4:30 o’clock yesterday morning, and which resulted in the death of Percy Williams, of Stockton—and the wounding of Jack Smith, of this city—shocked the entire community,” The Fresno Daily Morning Republican opined on Saturday, October 4, 1890.

“The two men [Williams and Smith] had been playing cards for high stakes all night,” reported The San Francisco Examiner of the same date, “and Smith, having lost about $250, became ill-tempered and quarreled over the last hand played, on which he had lost $25.

“Williams persisted that he was right, and his friend, Dan Brown, who held the stakes, gave the money to him. The game stopped, and all three stepped out from the alcove to the barroom, where Smith and Williams at once began to fight, Smith being the aggressor. Williams was knocked back against the wall, and he then drew a revolver and fired at Smith.

“Smith drew a heavy revolver at almost the same instant, and the two shots were so close together that the witnesses disagree as to which fired first.” And when the smoke had cleared, Williams lay dead in a pool of blood, and Smith clutched at his left elbow, shattered by the last shot Williams ever fired.

“Stockton has a haunted house—a place where spooks and spirits abound, and where ghostly visitants awaken the sleeper.”

So proclaimed The Stockton Evening Mail of Thursday, March 15, 1894. “The house in question is situated on El Dorado Street. It is a structure almost as old as the city itself, and it will be well remembered by the pioneers, as well as by many of the present generation. It is called the Palace, and for more than a decade, it has been used for immoral purposes.”

Located on El Dorado, between Washington and Market Streets, the Palace opened its doors as a house of ill repute sometime in the early 1880s, by a colorful local character named Dora Russell. Not much is known about Russell, except that she was a single mother raising a son named Frank, and that no one knew her exact age—for every year, she threw herself a champagne-fueled 33rd birthday bash at the Palace, “where everything went to the tune of popping corks and flighty music” into the wee hours.

Known for its beautiful, high-class “inmates” and plush accommodations, the Palace served an upper-class clientele who routinely paid handsomely to keep their names out of the papers. But that much-coveted discretion flew out the window in the spring of 1894, as whispers of the red-light establishment’s resident specters reached the press—and as Dora Russell’s girls began to flee the Palace’s lush confines nightly.

“The story of the uncanny visitants has been variously told,” revealed The Stockton Evening Mail on Thursday, March 15, 1894. “One girl, who, one evening, fled shrieking from the house, declared that a headless woman had appeared to her in the bathroom—and had touched her with cold and clammy fingers. The other inmates of the place scoffed at the story, but the fair ghost-seer could not be persuaded to re-enter the building.”

Once the word spread of this young woman’s paranormal encounter, others began to speak up, coming forward with their own supernatural experiences.

“In spite of their loud expressions of disbelief, however,” the Evening Mail continued, “many of the inmates of the house had seen the spooks, and all, save the one mentioned above, agree in their description of them. The chief ghost of the house is a woman. She is said to be tall and portly. She had a head, and her smile is said to be very pleasing. Her costume is a Mother Hubbard [dress] of some white material, or of faded calico, and her dark hair is always combed straight back from her forehead.”

On one particular evening when she was found alone in the Palace, one young woman watched as the disembodied head of a man floated past her in the dark. His “wide, staring eyes and threatening expression filled her with terror, and she fled from the scene. Later, when she returned with companions, the head had disappeared.”

Another of the ghosts most often encountered was that of an older man, “a heavy-set, dark-complexioned individual who wears a pepper-and-salt sack suit, and a huge black slouch hat pulled well over his eyes,” reported the Evening Mail. “He never looks up, but paces mournfully about, with his gaze fixed upon the floor.”

And just who was this mismatched pair of apparitions—the smiling woman in white, and the somber gentleman with the downcast eyes? The Evening Mail reporter had a theory of his own.

“Back in the early [18]60s, the house was occupied by an Italian and his family,” the reporter wrote. “The man had some trouble over land, and one afternoon, as he was walking with his daughter in the garden about his home, a volley of rifle shots was fired at him from ambush. He fell dead, and his daughter, struck by a stray ball, soon followed him. These two are supposed to be the persons who, unable to rest in their graves, haunt the scenes of their lifetime.”

And then the anonymous reporter began naming names. “The appearance of the ghosts is supposed to portend evil…And an example of this is related in the case of Percy Williams, who was shot and killed in Fresno two or three years ago by a man named Smith. On the second evening before his death, Williams went to the haunted house…”

The outing of such a prominent—and infamous—client of the Palace must have proven a painful embarrassment to Percy Williams’ young widow and his remaining siblings, but the reputation of the haunted Palace certainly did not suffer. Madam Dora Russell continued to host her extravagant 33rd birthday soirees every year, paying off the cops to keep the noise complaints at bay—and stories about the brothel’s ghostly clientele continued to circulate in the press…including appearances from none other than Percy Williams himself.

In a piece entitled “The Other World”, appearing in The Stockton Evening & Sunday Record of Wednesday, September 16, 1896, playing on the liminality of both the bordello and the hereafter—the occasion of the madam’s umpteenth 33rd birthday extravaganza featured an otherworldly appearance by one of the Palace’s new ghostly residents.

“The occasion was the birthday of the woman who is known to the world as Dora Russell,” another anonymous reporter wrote, “and whose place was once the resort of Percy Williams. It is said even now that his ghost haunts the house, and several inmates have left it on that account…”

But the Palace’s days were numbered as a high-class house of ill fame—by 1898, the indomitable Dora Russell had vacated the El Dorado Street property, and had downsized to a place at 120 E. Market Street. By this time, her son Frank was grown and gone, and Russell settled in for another decade-and-a-half as a bawdy house madam.

But instead of being inhabited by the spirits of the dead, Russell’s new digs were haunted by wraiths of a different kind—those living as denizens of “the other world,” her own girls. Suicide attempts were made all too frequently at 120 E. Market Street, making the papers every few years.

“Dolly King, one of the demi-monde in the house run by Dora Russell at No. 120 East Market Street, this afternoon attempted suicide by taking carbolic acid,” revealed The Stockton Evening Mail on Thursday, September 15, 1898. “She got more of the acid on her face than in her mouth, however, and Dr. Harkness, who responded, soon had her out of danger. The girl is but 22 years of age, and rather good looking. She has been drinking a good deal lately, and this is thought to be the cause of the attempt at suicide. This is her second unsuccessful trial to take her life.”

Not five years later, another prostitute’s attempt surfaced in The Stockton Evening & Sunday Record of Thursday, April 30, 1903. “Lou Bell, a woman of the half world, attempted suicide at 120 East Market Street late yesterday afternoon by taking poison. She was restored by Dr. S.F. Priestley.”

And by 1912, it had become quite evident that the ladies of the Market Street cathouse had been making a habit of multiple suicide tries on their own respective lives.

“A woman named Campbell, whose residence is sufficiently stated as being at No. 120 East Market Street, took half a bottle of corrosive sublimate tablets early yesterday morning with suicidal intent,” The Stockton Evening Mail reported on Monday, July 1, 1912. “Dr. R.T. McGurk, who was summoned by other inmates of the house, found the woman suffering intensely, but full of fight—born of a determination to make her exit from this world of strife.

“The doctor had a hard time getting the stomach pump into the woman, as she fought strenuously, but with the aid of a good working majority, the physician accomplished his purpose and snatched the woman from the brink of the grave…

“Questioned as to her reason for wanting to die, the woman stated that there wasn’t enough excitement in this life. Some time ago, she made an unsuccessful attempt to leave this earth by the pistol route.”
“After recovering, the dejected woman became angry because her life had been saved,” concluded The Stockton Evening & Sunday Record of the same date.

A tragic—and troubling—side effect of these reports was the flippant tone in which they were written—and the fact that the woman’s looks were considered important enough to mention alongside the fact of the suicide attempt itself (“The girl is but 22 years of age, and rather good looking,” as a reporter opined of Dolly King in 1898).

The reason that these long-dead women’s names are mentioned at all—because of their umpteenth attempts to end their collective lives—is a sad reminder of how little they were valued by the society in which they lived: as denizens of the demi-monde, the half world. The other world.

Whether living or dead, the ghosts of Dora Russell’s Palace—a place where the good times rolled into the wee hours, as the papers of the day would have you believe—belie that rollicking superficial image resplendent with both thrills and chills—as “any actual rough edge is smoothed over in the commodified retelling of scandalous local history” (Janes 173).

And just who were the spirits that wandered the velvety dark halls of the haunted Palace?

The local papers dismissed these apparitions as casually as those of the luxurious brothel’s living residents. They exist as a phantasmagoria of spectral visions on rotation in a long-ago, small-town spook show: a headless lady who wanders about, her cold fingers snaking up your spine; a man’s disembodied head, his dark eyes wide and staring; a smiling woman in white, whose image only exists as an omen of death; and the mournful old man, his murdered soul keeping watch over his former home and its revolving parade of lost souls, living and dead.

The origin story unearthed by The Stockton Evening Mail reporter in 1894—that of an Italian landowner gunned down in the early 1860s, and that of his spinster daughter in white, caught in the crossfire—speaks of the American Dream and its tragic demise: one man’s New World dream home turned Stockton’s premier house of prostitution.

In the case of the male ghost, his attire from witness accounts matches the time period mentioned by the reporter, the early 1860s: men’s sack suits came into vogue in the 1850s, and slouch hats reached their peak popularity during the Civil War era (1861-1865), so those points of reference seem on target.

But the dress worn by the female ghost—in all accounts across the board—is revealed to be a white Mother Hubbard dress, a ladies’ fashion that first dates to around the early 1880s, which is two decades too late to be a frock that the Italian landowner’s daughter would have possibly worn.

In fact, Mother Hubbard dresses became a popular choice for late 19th-century prostitutes around the same time Dora Russell first opened the Palace on El Dorado—as “these loose-fitting gowns became the unofficial uniform for sex workers as they could be worn without corsets, and were perfect for ‘easy access’” (Woomer 150).

Therefore, it is much more likely that this young woman’s ghost was the spirit of a recently deceased lady of the night—one of the Palace’s many young residents, who perhaps died as the result of a successful suicide attempt.

Who knows how many suicides—or at least attempts—were kept quiet within the swanky red-light establishment’s well-guarded walls? It was only when the madam downsized to 120 E. Market Street that the press became privy to the myriad suicide tries brokered behind Dora Russell’s walls.

Russell’s antics would live on in Stockton’s collective memory well into the 20th century—that time she got swindled by a shady john, was arrested for vagrancy, or fined for partying too hearty until dawn. And as late as 1936, one disgruntled Stockton Evening Mail columnist was still complaining about her preachings of free love before the local school board.

But as for all of her girls—unless their attempts at ending it all made the papers, in callous news briefs that rated their looks, no less—“the prostitutes themselves tend to be more anonymous than the madams, just as in life” (Janes 166).

“Hence all that frothy, scandalous Old West vice was, at its heart, a business transaction (and any profitable business depends on an anonymous, replaceable army of underlings, which is why madams tend to have identities, while the working girls do not)” (Janes 166).

Dora Russell’s Palace on El Dorado, between Washington and Market Streets, no longer exists, and 120 E. Market Street is now a Mexican restaurant. Who knows if any of these long-ago ghosts still linger, walking the invisible corridors of Stockton’s salacious past?

Let’s raise of toast to every single one of them, both the remembered and the forgotten alike.

Works Cited
“Percy Williams Shot Dead.” The San Francisco Examiner, Saturday, October 4, 1890, p.1.
“Williams’ Death.” The Fresno Daily Morning Republican, Saturday, October 4, 1890, p. 6.
“A Haunted House.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Wednesday, March 14,1894, p. 4.
“Inhabited by Spooks.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Thursday, March 15, 1894, p. 1.
“The Other World.” The Stockton Evening & Sunday Record, Wednesday, Sept. 16, 1896, p. 4.
“He Wore Diamonds.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Monday, February 22, 1897, p. 1.
“Maudlin Music Rent the Air.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Friday, October 15, 1897, p. 1.
“Dora Russell’s Sentence.” The Stockton Evening & Sunday Record, Monday, Oct. 18, 1897, p. 1
“Tried Carbolic Acid.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Thursday, Sept. 15, 1898, p. 5.
“Attempted Suicide.” The Stockton Evening & Sunday Record, Thursday, April 30, 1903, p. 2.
“Sought Excitement.” The Stockton Evening Mail, Monday, July 1, 1912, p. 10.
Smith, Willard R. “Doc Spears is Center of New Badger Uproar.” The Stockton Daily Evening Record, Friday, January 31, 1936, p. 21.
Janes, Andrea, and Leanna Renee Hieber. A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America’s Ghosts. Citadel Press, 2022, pp. 166-173.
Woomer, Amanda R. The Spirit Guide: Harlots & Hauntings. SpookEats, 2022, p. 150.

All photos provided by the author.

Sarah A. Peterson-Camachois a library assistant with Fresno County Library, with a Bachelor’s in English and a Bachelor’s in Journalism from California State University, Fresno. In her free time, she makes soap and jewelry that she sells at Fresno-area craft fairs. She has written for The Clovis Roundup and the Central California Paranormal Investigators (CCPI) Newsletter.