by Sarah A. Peterson-Camacho
As the fiery leaves of autumn give way to winter’s fog and frost, the colder seasons mingle in swirls of scarlet through icy tendrils of bone-white mist. An otherworldly haze of tule fog descends upon the Central Valley like a collective ghost, enveloping the vineyards in its numbing embrace. 
But as the natural world sinks into the shivery silence of hibernation, humans proceed to live it up in a festive flurry of family gatherings and seasonal soirees. And ever since the publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in 1843, stories of the supernatural have prevailed as the clock nears midnight on Christmas Eve, ushering in the Season of the Ghost…
Cradle to the Grave: The Feliz Navidad Haunting
December 1907
Piercing the misty air as sharp and pure as a knife plunged through a still-beating heart, a baby’s phantom cries rang out in the dead of a December night, echoing through the thick, wet blanket of fog that had descended over Selma, California. Brilliant flashes of light illuminated the wooden slats enclosing the space beneath the Feliz family’s front porch.
But perhaps most haunting of all, a young woman’s spectral weeping could be heard mingling with the distraught cries of the unseen infant—a mother’s anguish, maybe, a helpless kind of grief—all punctuated by the ghostly pulse of those otherworldly lights.
And so it would be—off and on, intermittently, over the next year—a disembodied cacophony as unearthly as it was heartbreaking.
December 1908
It began with an eerie flicker—so unlike those sudden white-hot rays flashing through the dark. This was the steady, bobbing lick of a candle flame, the golden throb of its light lengthening the shadows it cast.
Yes, there was definitely someone flesh-and-blood down there this time.
The Fresno Morning Republican, dated Sunday, Dec. 6, 1908
“It is only a few weeks since a child died at this house, under circumstances that led to an inquest by a coroner’s jury—and the suggestion naturally followed that a grave was being dug under the house.”
The occasion of the coroner’s inquest had been brought about by the fact that this was the third such child to have died at this particular residence in the past year. All three of the deceased little ones belonged to a married sister of the young Alviso, who had been visiting from Firebaugh with her husband when each in the trio of deaths had occurred.
The Selma Enterprise, dated Saturday, Dec. 5, 1908
“They threw out the loose dirt—with which a hole three by four feet had recently been filled to a depth of eight feet—and found only a large and very disagreeable odor. There was no body, nor fraction of a body, despite the well-developed rumors that have been floating about. All young Alviso would say—when questioned by the officers—was that he dug the hole just for fun. This story did not appeal to anybody as reasonable, and the officers continued to investigate.”
It was then that another married sister of Alviso’s—a Mrs. Feliz, who lived at the Selma home with her husband, parents, and young brother—came forward with an explanation that only served to simultaneously clear up—and then deepen—the central mystery.
Mrs. Feliz revealed to authorities that her and the young Alviso’s sister had lost three of her children over the course of the last year: the first had passed the previous December; the second had died several months ago; and the third child—over whose death the coroner’s inquest had just taken place—had passed away only a few weeks prior. And coincidentally (or not), the grieving Firebaugh mother and her family had been visiting their Selma brethren at the exact moment of each of the three untimely passings.
And “on Thursday, Constable Campbell procured from Mrs. Feliz a very plausible explanation of the goings-on at her father’s house,” The Selma Enterprise then divulged. “She stated that when the first one of her sister’s children died nearly a year ago, they buried it in the grave under the porch—but strange things commenced to happen about the house.
“Flashes of light could frequently be seen under the porch, and the child could often be heard crying. Its mother, too, was seen sitting on the porch, crying, when they knew she was not in town. These apparitions and incidents so worked on their nerves that they consulted a clairvoyant, who told them to dig where the lights flashed to find what was concealed there.”
Knowing full well just what was buried beneath the porch, the family then confessed to their parish priest where exactly they had interred the child. He advised them to disinter the remains, cremate them, and give the deceased a proper burial on consecrated ground.
“This they did a few days ago, and their discovery brought to light the whole affair,” concluded the Enterprise. “This explanation would account for the digging of the grave, as well as for the odor it contained…”
A follow-up piece—appearing in The Fresno Morning Republican the following day, Sunday, December 6th—noted that “other members of the family admit that they found the bones of a baby and burned them—so the story is probably correct.”
And as for the fact that three siblings had each died in the same residence—and each under mysterious circumstances—over the course of a single year? No further investigations were made by Selma law enforcement.
The cremation and proper burial of the child’s remains had solved the riddle of the Feliz Navidad haunting, but no doubt the fathomless depths of a mother’s grief are their own kind of haunting—one which will never fade away, no matter how much time has passed.
Works Cited
“Grave Under Front Porch.” The Selma Enterprise, Saturday, December 5, 1908, p. 2.
“Burn Child’s Remains to End Strange Cry.” The Fresno Morning Republican, Sunday, December 6, 1908, p. 10.
Deck the Halls with Blood & Screams: A Holiday Murder House Haunting
December 1895
You could say that Paul Baxter Beville had a thing for ghosts. Or rather, ghost stories.
And the Visalia, California, high school senior was about to unleash a supernatural double-whammy on his unsuspecting peers—just in time for the holidays. First up was Visalia High School’s junior-senior literary contest.
After Miss Dardie Jones’ impassioned speech on The Education of Girls, Paul Beville followed with an essay on Ghosts and Their Influence on Men, noted The Visalia Daily Delta of Saturday, November 30, 1895, “in which he cited many instances in which noted men of all ages had claimed to be aided by supernatural influences.”
The San Francisco Examiner, dated Wednesday, Dec. 25, 1895
Christmas morning dawned cold and clear over the Golden State on Wednesday, December 25, 1895, as California’s reading public awoke to the Christmas Examiner’s “Blood-Curdling Screams,” by one Paul Baxter Beville.
“Near Visalia—standing back a short distance from the public road—is an old brick house, deserted now, save for an occasional bat or owl which finds here a resting place,” Beville wrote. “In the early mining days of California, this building was considered the most imposing residence in this part of the State.
“In the midst of a beautiful grove of oaks—near which flowed the beautiful little stream known as the St. John’s River—with the mighty Sierras as a background, what sight could be more suitable for a home?”
But “the walls, once frescoed with rare designs, are now sadly mutilated,” lamented Beville, “while the windows are broken, and the door facings have fallen to decay. Its story is this…”
He spun the tragic tale of a wealthy miner, long widowed, and his beautiful young daughter, who was left an orphan by her father’s long illness and death—and placed under the care and tutelage of her doting dad’s best friend from the East Coast. But instead of acting as a benevolent guardian with her best interests at heart, her guardian instead locked her away.
“He pressed the idea upon his acquaintances that his ward’s mind was very nearly gone, owing to her grief over her father’s death. She was not insane, however, but he imprisoned her. This continued for nearly three years, during which time strange stories were circulated…Blood-curdling screams had been heard in the dead of the night, and strange apparitions had been seen.”
Death finally came for the beautiful young orphan, but her soul would find no rest in the wake of her suspected murder—and her greedy guardian’s subsequent disappearance with every last ounce of her beloved late father’s wealth. So it was only a matter of time before her unearthly anguish made its presence known.
“The house remained vacant for a time, when a family moved into it. At the end of a week, they moved their household goods elsewhere, saying the house was haunted.
“Most hideous noises could be heard near the house every night, much resembling the screams of a child. If the occupants of the house should open the door, a perfect image of this girl would advance toward them with outstretched hands, as if pleading for succor. In silence it would fall upon its knees, and then fade from sight.”
One family after another would move into this brick house, only to flee in terror after only several nights’ lodging. The cursed property’s reputation grew so infamous that within a few years, it was completely abandoned—“the abode of owls and bats. So there it stands at the present day, a perfect picture of neglect.—Paul Beville.”
The Tulare County Times, dated Thursday, July 20, 1899
“This brick house was built by John Jay Coby in 1859. It was the first brick house built in Visalia. Adobe houses were built about this time, but when the flood of 1862 came rushing down from the mountains, they crumbled up and washed away. Not so this brick. It stood the blasts of winter and the heat of summer equally as well, and during its lifetime, it had seen many changes take place in Visalia.
“It was in this house that Dr. Mehring was killed by a sheep man named James White some twenty years ago,” the County Times then divulged, “and for a while, a Dr. Smith had a hospital in the house.”
So this legendary brick structure—the first of its kind in the area—had indeed witnessed a murder, but it was a killing much more brutal and blood-soaked than the drawn-out demise of Beville’s long-suffering, locked-away maiden.
September 1878
Splattered across page 3 of The Sacramento Bee—as lurid and melodramatic as a crimson arc of arterial spray—came the first reports on Friday, September 13, 1878: A Man Kills a Physician in His Wife’s Bedroom.
The Sacramento Bee, dated Friday, Sept. 13, 1878
“Soon after, Dr. Mehring, the family physician, came in and entered Mrs. White’s bedroom. White went in and a scuffle ensued, in which White cut Mehring’s throat from ear to ear with a pocket-knife, and also cut him in other places.”
The California press did not disappoint in the weeks that followed, supplying eager readers with “sensational picturings, prurient facts, and horrifying details for the purpose of satisfying the morbid cravings of those who love that sort of reading,” as The Tulare County Times so eloquently put it.
Salacious details and tawdry innuendo reigned supreme in daily coverage of all the particulars: from the coroner’s inquest (“When the body of the deceased was being examined at the inquest, his pants were found unbuttoned, with the exception of the top button”)—to the adulterous wife’s tearful testimony (“He put his arms around my neck and kissed me…The moon was shining. My window was up…He told me to lie down on the bed, and he would make an examination”)—and even the words of the murderer himself (“I got out as quietly as I could…moved to the bedroom door, and saw two human beings in a fondling, stooping position on the floor”).
The violence always hovered in the shadows as the sex took center stage in the ink spilled by the thrill-seeking press—and perhaps this aided in the eventual success of the killer’s defense. By the time the trial took place the following June, the murderer had changed his tune—claiming self-defense, and that he had never meant to kill the not-so-good doctor.
William J. White was found not guilty—by a jury of his sympathetic peers—of the premeditated, first-degree murder of Dr. Abram B. Mehring on Friday, June 6, 1879, which The Sacramento Bee rendered “a just verdict.” His repentant wife welcomed him home with open arms, even as the true extent of his horrific crime leaked to the press in the wake of his triumphant acquittal.
The Santa Barbara Morning Press, dated Friday, Sept. 13, 1878
“On the one hand, the assassin plunging his knife into the vitals of Dr. Mehring, stabbing him some fourteen times—and at last, so weak from his wounds and loss of blood, threw him on the floor, tore off his collar and necktie, caught him by his whiskers—pulled up his head and cut his throat three times from ear to ear, nearly severing his head from his body.”
The helpless Dr. Mehring was “set upon by this inhumane monster,” the anonymous source continued, “and while pleading for his life—as was shone by the testimony—was then and there butchered almost beyond recognition.”
And then the also-anonymous County Times reporter took the reins of the fiery piece. “All Justice can do to smooth over the iniquity of such a verdict will not persuade the people to believe the killing of Dr. Mehring to be other than a premeditated, cold-blooded murder—consummated with all the vindictiveness and ferocity of the red-handed midnight assassin, without the slightest provocation—nor will it suppress the indignation of our citizens at the outrage perpetrated upon them by the finding of the Jury.”
But sadly, in the end, money talked (as well as the fact that each male member of the jury would more than likely have done the same thing in White’s shoes)—securing the wealthy sheep rancher his wholly undeserved acquittal.
Left standing was a solitary brick house—its very foundation soaked in spilt blood, and the echoing of still-heard screams—nothing more than a local legend by the time a high school senior from Visalia recounted the dark fairy tale of a damsel forever in distress.
Was there any truth at all to Paul Baxter Beville’s 1895 Christmas ghost story? I could find no record of a wealthy miner, his beautiful, orphaned daughter, or her wicked-to-the-bone guardian (which isn’t to say they never existed). But I did find a murder—a sickeningly gruesome crime awarded with a cold-blooded killer’s acquittal.
Perhaps it was just a house haunted by its own sordid past—as many houses are now, and as many yet will be. Or perhaps the blood-curdling screams were those of Mrs. White, seeping through the bricks like so much of her lover’s lost blood.
In the end, “it is gone now to make room for modern improvements,” per The Tulare County Times of Thursday, July 20, 1899, “and in a few years, will be dropped from the memory of man.”
Works Cited
“A Visalia Tragedy.” The Sacramento Bee, Friday, September 13, 1878, p. 3.
“The Tragedy.” The Tulare County Times, Saturday, September 21, 1878, p. 5.
“The Homicide.” The Tulare County Times, Saturday, September 21, 1878, p. 4.
“The Visalia Tragedy.” The Pacific Bee, Saturday, September 21, 1878, p. 7.
“A Just Verdict.” The Sacramento Bee, Friday, June 6, 1879, p. 3.
“The White-Mehring Murder.” The Tulare County Times, Saturday, June 14, 1879, p. 5.
“Literary Notes—Seniors and Middlers.” The Visalia Daily Delta, Saturday, November 30, 1895, p. 1.
“Christmas Examiner.” The Visalia Daily Delta, Friday, December 13, 1895, p. 1.
“Paul Beville has received…” The Visalia Daily Delta, Tuesday, December 17, 1895, p. 3.
Beville, Paul. “Blood-Curdling Screams.” The San Francisco Examiner, Wednesday, December 25, 1895, p. 29.
“Being Torn Down.” The Tulare County Times, Thursday, July 20, 1899, p. 1.
All photos provided by the author unless otherwise stated.
0 Comments