Was Visalia's Mooney Mansion haunted by the spirit of a little girl?

Statue of Hugh Mooney and his favorite hunting dog, located in

Mooney Grove Park. - Image courtesy of Visit Visalia.

If you've ever visited Visalia there's a good chance you have been to or at least driven by Mooney Grove Park; so named for Hugh Mooney who donated 100 acres of his ranch to act as a park in 1909. For over a century the park has hosted many gatherings and since 1948 has been home to the Tulare County Museum. But there is another location that was associated with Mr. Mooney. His home. And it was said to be haunted.

The house itself was located on Court Street and changed ownership through the years after Mr. Mooney passed away. Sometime in the 1980's the owner turned the mansion into a boarding house that had nine bedrooms with a common bath and kitchen facilities. One of the upstairs bedrooms was turned into a billiards room complete with an antique table. Also, downstairs in the main foyer there was an antique jukebox that played an old selection of 78 rpm records.

But in the evenings for many years, random thumps would be heard from the upstairs billiard room usually right before or after midnight. The inhabitants of the house would go upstairs to investigate and when the opened the door and entered the room they would find billiard balls and cue sticks on the floor; the balls were usually stored a wall rack with the cues or left in the table pockets. This happened on many occasions and once it was said that when the people entered the room to check on the noise the balls were still moving as if they had just been touched.

Even more interesting is that the antique juke box would randomly play, and usually around the early dawn hours. It got so bad that the owner started to leave it unplugged during the summer months when the occurrences were more likely to happen.

Curious as to what was causing all the strange activity, the owner of the house started to research the history of the home. After talking with several historians at the Tulare County Museum they discovered that sometime in the early 1930's a young girl, about the age of 6, had died in one of the upstairs bedrooms from some type of lung malady. She wasn't a member of the Mooney Family, but it's believed that she might have been the daughter of two San Francisco socialites who had come to Visalia to visit the Mooneys. Her full name is unknown but the owner was able to discern that her first name was April and her last name was Mc-something. It's said that her body was buried somewhere on the property, but there has been no documentation to prove this.

The strange occurrences seemed to stop sometime in 1990's when the property was sold numerous times and the interior of the house was gutted for refurbishment. During demolition an old doll was discovered in one of the walls in what was the billiard room. The doll was given to the Tulare Historical Society and was able to be dated to being made sometime in the 1920's and was made in a factory in San Francisco.

Was the little girl haunting the room where her doll was at because she wanted it back? That could explain the odd sounds and objects being moved. But what of the antique jukebox playing on random (was it playing Queen?) down in the foyer? Perhaps the little girl liked to listen to music. It is interesting to note though that the activity stopped when the doll was found. I wonder since the doll was given to the Tulare County Museum to put on display, is there any activity there now?

Recent Central Valley UFO Sightings

From as far south as Porterville to north of Madera, strange things are in the skies. All sightings were reported to the National UFO Reporting Center and are linked back to their original entry.


Occurred : 1/21/2009 19:00
Location: Fresno, CA
Shape: Rectangle
Duration:3 minutes

4 unknown flying crafts were following our car and another one hovered over our neighborhood when we got home.

My husband and I for the last 2 1/2 months have been seeing strange hovering objects in the sky beginning Nov. 3rd 2008. The last sighting was last night around 6:45 pm. We were driving west on McKinley ave in Fresno CA on our way to a meeting. We noticed 4 hovering objects at a stand still on each side of our car about 3 miles up in the sky when we were at a red light. Once our car started moving they moved along side us, every time we stopped they stopped. They all looked alike and did not look like helicopters and not planes. Later on in the evening on the way back home we spotted another craft similar to the ones earlier just hovering at a stand still above the houses in our neighborhood. the object even brightened its lights from red to super bright white. it was still for about 3 minutes then slowly started to move to the right, then left then it either vanished or we just did not catch it take off. This is not the first time we have seen these objects in the sky. we seen larger ones the size of two commercial planes before. We just find it strange that the sightings have not stopped. Our children, my parents friends and my mother in law have all witnessed them. For some strange reason these objects have not gone away and seem to be growing by the numbers each day and showing themselves pretty boldly. If anyone has seen them also please post a report, we hope we are not just going crazy over here by ourselves.


Occurred : 1/23/2009 22:35
Location: Fresno, CA
Shape: Triangle
Duration:3 minutes

Red glowing lights form triangle

I work Security at night, and I was just leaving some ones house that was a loud party call. My partner called me, he is about a mile away locking up a pool and dock area, he tells me to look up in the sky, I do, and there is a big triangle,( the point is at the rear, ) with red glowing lights at each point. Now when I say lights, I don't mean like car or plane or copter lights. They looked like a glow from a fire or if a trash can was turned upside down and a huge road flare was put inside of it. I didn't see anything else to describe, no hull, nothing else.

It was very cloudy that night due to an earlier rain, the clouds were low, and it moved right in them. It also moved very slow. As it moved further away from me, the back light trailed back and the front left light trailed to the left. And that is the last I seen of it. It was also big, hard to tell exactly, best guess, about 60 to 75 feet.

It was some what close, about 100 to 150 yards in front of me, and about 3 light poles up, I am not great at guessing feet when it comes to altitude. There was no sound that I could hear.

Juan, my partner said he seen some of the hull, and saw the lights crossing. I will try to get him to fill a report out.


Occurred : 2/2/2009 20:45
Location: Dinuba, CA
Shape: Triangle
Duration:2 to 3 minutes

Four red light in shape of a triangle gliding over the city of Dinuba CA.

February 02, 2009

Between 8 and 9 o’clock, I stepped outside, like I normally do around this time to smoke a cigarette before heading to sleep. I like gazing up at the stars while I’m smoking and that night I heard like a humming sound, I looked around and then proceeded to look up at the sky. From the corner of my eye (towards my right) I noticed something coming in fast.

As I turned to see what I had seen, the object slowed down and glided across Dinuba, CA. I would guess about 1 ½ from where I was standing and about ½ mile up in the sky. I know that this was not a plane because I have seen planes go across the sky and this did not move like an aircraft. It had four red lights and it was in shape of a triangle. Three lights coming down one side and one on the other side.

I ran inside the house and got my mom to go outside. My mom also seen what I had seen and she was just saying, "What the heck is that?" It glided for about five minutes and then it just speeded off. Before speeding off, the lights turned from red to a yellowish orange color and then it speeded off.


Occurred : 2/3/2009 04:30
Location: Madera, CA
Shape: Sphere

I saw 2 unknown objects with bright lights

I was driving on the freeway when my uncle saw something in the sky and kept pointing to it and couldn't see it at first till i got closer then i saw 2 bright lights in broad daylight just slowly moving kind circular motion then as i got closer one disappeared and I passed underneath it and i saw a black object that appeared to be an unknown object just sitting their floating it wasn't round it wasn't a helicopter or a plane it something different more like a triangle. I reported that sighting to the police department.


Occurred : 2/13/2009 18:30
Location: Fresno, CA
Shape: Circle
Duration:2-3 seconds

Glowing bluish- green ball of light flying west to east at rapid rate of speed

I was driving due east on a dark street when a bluish-green ball of light flew directly over my car from behind me (west) at a very high rate of speed. It was a little smaller than the diameter of a traffic light across 4 lanes of road and had no tail or other lights, just a glowing ball of unearthly light. The sky above me was clear but it's direction was toward the Sierra Nevada mountains which were shrouded in clouds. I couldn't tell if it simply disappeared or was obscured by the distant clouds. Nor could a tell if it was small and close or large and at high enough an altitude to fly into the clouds. No sound was heard.


Occurred : 2/16/2009 19:30
Location: Visalia, CA
Shape: Light
Duration:30-45 minutes

It was about 7:30pm we looked into the sky (Southeast) and there was a very large bright off white light with a green tint around it. It stayed in the same spot just moving back and forth for about 30-45 minutes, then just disappeared. Kind of hovering back and forth. We kept looking at it and took some pictures, but the movie pictures just looks like a white speck moving back and forth. The movies look nothing like just looking at it with the naked eye. We thought it was a bright star, but it had green around it and it hovered back and forth. We also thought at first it was a helicopter, but it never moved. We never took our eyes off of the object, then it just disappeared. No movement at all.


Occurred : 2/24/2009 16:10
Location: Dinuba, CA
Shape: Sphere
Duration:10 minutes

Sphere-like aircraft flying in circle eight pattern at a flying height of a commercial airline.

This day I noticed, what I thought was a flock of birds circling, a group of sphere-like flying objects several feet in the air. Approximate height in the atmosphere is around the level a long distance commercial flight would fly. I thought at the beginning it was a flock of birds, but they were hard to make out and appeared to be 1/3 of the size of a commercial plane flying by seconds after they disappeared. 10-12 spheres flew in a circle 8 pattern in two separate locations in the air and flew at a rather high speed considering the height in the air. They flew in two separate locations for approx. 10 minutes. They disappeared as soon as two commercial airlines flew into view from the south and east. It truly an amazing sight to see with our two 2 year olds and 5 year old as we viewed the sky from the front yard of our house.


Occurred : 3/7/2009 22:15
Location: Porterville, CA
Shape: Fireball
Duration:3 hours

Huge craft moving at incredible speed after hovering for about 3 hours

At around 7:30 PM on March 7, 2009, my boyfriend and I observed what we thought was a very bright star in the western sky. It was much closer then any other stars and it was relatively large but it was not moving, just hovering there, so we ruled out and airplane or helicopter. At around 10:15 PM I had to drive my brother and sister to their grandmother’s house for the night. The kids went outside first while I grabbed my things. One of them screamed so I ran out to see what was wrong. They immediately pointed to the object which we earlier thought was a very bright star or planet, but this time it was bright red, still sitting in the very same spot it was just 3 hours before. By this time my boyfriend and my other brother had also emerged from the house. After observing it for about five minutes the big bright red ball shot across the sky at an amazing speed and covered a distance in one second that would take any airplane a good 5-10 seconds to cover. Then it slowly faded out and was gone.


Occurred : 3/13/2009 19:35
Location: Murrieta, CA
Shape: Circle
Duration:1 min.

A small, flaming- looking object that moved strangely.

Circular flaming object. Seemed like 60 ft. in the air, moving slowly then it took off quickly. We continued to see it for about a 1/2 mile and the flame would get bright and then alternate to a dim flame. Another bystander was watching it while standing outside of a storefront.

Ex-Valley nutjob err lawmaker wants to split Calififornia

From the Fresno Bee.


SACRAMENTO -- The revolution will begin in Visalia -- and it will be led by a man named Maze.

As in Bill Maze, a termed-out Assembly member turned rebel who is pushing for California to split in two: the conservative interior as one state and the liberal coast as another.

He's serious.

"We're looking at establishing a breakaway state," he said, with a new government and a new capital. "We'd actually be creating a 51st state."

Maze is a conservative Republican who served Visalia in the Assembly until last year. He is tapping into the anger of Valley farmers and others who say environmental rules and high taxes are sending the state into a tailspin.

"Citizens of our once 'Golden State' are frustrated and desperately concerned about the imposition of burdensome regulations, taxation, fees, fees and more fees, and bureaucratic intrusion into our daily lives and businesses," declares downsizeca.org, the movement's Web site.

Under Maze's plan, 13 coastal counties from Los Angeles to Marin would split from the remaining 45 counties, which the Web site calls "the new revitalized California."

To promote the idea, Maze has established a nonprofit group called Citizens for Saving California Farming Industries. The group is selling sponsorships that run from $1,000 to as much as $10,000 -- for a "California Gold" level. So far, they've raised "a few thousand" dollars, Maze said.

Meanwhile, Maze is selling the plan up and down the state, appearing on television and radio shows. With enough money and momentum, he hopes to put the question before the state's voters. According to the U.S. Constitution, Congress and the state Legislature would have to sign off.

The odds are against the plan, for sure.

Californians have tried to parcel the state 27 times before, with most attempts never getting far off the ground, said former Republican Assembly Member Stan Statham, who made the last serious attempt in the early 1990s.

The most famous secession movement came in 1941 when several counties in Northern California and southern Oregon tried to form the State of Jefferson -- until World War II intervened.

Statham, who represented the Redding area, got a bill passed in the Assembly in 1993 to bring a nonbinding question before voters to split the state in three. But the legislation died in the Senate.

He's still for it: "When you divide something that huge to manage into smaller parts, the problems go down in size."

But to others, "it appears on the surface to be too radical an idea," said Statham, who now heads the California Broadcasters Association. "It becomes too much of a fun thing -- and it was only really good for talk show hosts."

A 1993 Field Poll showed 60% of voters against the idea. That sentiment probably hasn't changed much, despite the state's ongoing woes, said Jim Wunderman. He is president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, a business group behind the effort to convene a constitutional convention to fix California's "fundamentally broken" government.

"I strongly suspect that Californians like being Californians and they would reject [Maze's] idea," Wunderman said. "The concept of California collective, I think, is still popular."

Really? This will make things better? Yeah getting rid of most of the tax payers will solve ALL of our problems. Me thinks you just want a way to somehow get back into office. Nice try guy, I don't want to be another West Virginia. Maybe you should either move to someplace like Utah if you don't like things here or think of something that will actually help the State. Not stupid bullshit like this.