San Diego Still Has What It Takes to Be a Ghost Town

Be advised that San Diego County is amply represented in the new book “Haunted Houses of California: A Ghostly Guide.”

That’s real haunted houses--apparitions, ectoplasm, restless dead people, mysterious goings-on, etc. -- not the Halloween type.

The book is by author Antoinette May, who grew up in La Jolla and writes a horoscope column for the San Francisco Chronicle. She’s best known for her biographies of novelist Helen Hunt Jackson and war correspondent Marguerite Higgins.

May identifies as San Diego County’s poltergeist centers:

* Rancho Jamul, built in 1852. Strange lights, cold spots, crying Indians, screaming women.

* The Thomas Whaley House, built in 1857, in Old Town, once a site for public executions. Ghostly men in frock coats, weird women in calico dresses.

* Casa de Estudillo, built in 1829, in Old Town. Faces in mirrors, flashes of red light.

* Hotel del Coronado, room 502, doors closing, noises, lights, strange occurences, maybe from a hushed-up society suicide in the 1920s.

* The Fallbrook Enterprise office. A little girl in a red dress is seen occasionally and vanishes, maybe from a long-ago family.

At five, San Diego has one more haunted house than all of Los Angeles.

May, 47, who lives in Palo Alto, explained in a telephone interview that the history of San Diego County has all the fixings for wandering spirits.

“San Diego was a frontier town, with lots of violence, confusion, political feuding and discord,” she said. “That’s what generates the energy necessary for an atmosphere where spirits thrive.”

Violence, confusion, political feuding and discord as the ingredients for spooky stuff?

If so, San Diego these days must be cooking an entire subdivision of haunted houses.

“I see no reason why not,” May said. She’s already trying to track down a modern haunting in Mission Hills.

For Something a Little Different

The best of everything.

* No chicken and peas, please.

Kara Kobey may not be elected to the governing board of San Diego Community College. But her fund-raiser next Sunday seems destined to be the season’s best buffet:

Ceasar salad; rigatoni with four cheeses; canelloni Avanti; tortellini with walnuts, mushroom, cream and Parmesan; eggplant parmigiana; penne (macaroni) and spicy tomato sauce, and focaccia bread with onion and tomato.

* The Lakeside-based Animal Press is tilting toward Dianne Feinstein in the governor’s race.

Feinstein opposes puppy mills and supports putting animal-rights advocates on the Fish and Game Commission. Pete Wilson is mum.

An irate voter called Pete Wilson’s San Diego office to check a rumor that if Wilson is elected governor he’ll appoint Sunny Bonno to his Seante seat.

Answer: No.

* With a week to go before the deadline, the drive to recall San Deigo Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt has only two-thirds of the signatures needed to force an election.

* North County bumper sticker: “When in despair, hug your bear.”

Putting a Claw on Glasnost

For seven years, Larry Lobster was a regular at the Old Globe Theatre.

The 18-inch plastic lobster made his debut in the feast scene of the 1982 production of “The Tempest.” Then he became a good-luck charm and was hidden on stage for each new play.

But he vanished after “Brothers and Sisters,” last year’s offering from the Maly Drama Theatre of Leningrad. A search was futile.

Globe technical director Loren Schreiber has now just returned from a trip to the Maly.

Yes, he spotted Larry on stage. He also decided Larry should remain in Leningrad.

Reason: An ersatz crustacean is a small price to pay for glasnost , dramatically speaking.