Back in the seventies, I was studying parapsychology with Dr. Laurence Bendit, a British psychiatrist and parapsychologist who was living in Ojai, California. At that time, I lived in Santa Barbara and drove the short distance to Ojai several times a week to study with him. In the process, I would pass by a stately home next to the 101 freeway just south of Santa Barbara in Summerland, which I learned from Dr. Bendit had been founded as a Spiritualist colony in the late 1800s. I felt drawn to the house, and Dr. Bendit conjectured that it might have been a site for Spiritualist seances in the heyday of the Spiritualist community and that some psychic residue or even a haunt might remain. Since we were immersed in the study of parapsychology, he did not consider it unusual that I might feel a psychic pull to the house. It was soon turned into a restaurant with the name, "The Big Yellow House." Now it was open to the public and I could go there whenever I liked.

When I visited the Big Yellow House for dinner and some research, I was joined by my wife, my mother, and Bob Mayfield, a friend who was working as a physicist at a Santa Barbara research and development company. When I asked our waitress if any paranormal occurrences had been noted at the restaurant, she excitedly said "yes!" As it turned out, the staff and the manager as well had experienced strange things in the house. Huge, heavy stainless steel vats - used to whip up the copious amounts of honey-butter served with the restaurant's famous cornbread - sat on the floor in the kitchen. Members of the cooking staff reported that the vats would sometimes take on a life of their own and careen across the floor, like something out of The Sorcerer's Apprentice in Walt Disney's Fantasia. However, one room in particular was designated as the focal point where a strange presence seemed to reside. It had an inexplicable coldness about it too, no matter what the temperature was in the rest of the house. Waitresses we talked with claimed that tips were consistently smaller there and that customers sometimes even asked to be moved to another room. It was apparently just not a room anyone could feel comfortable in, except for an uninvited spirit guest - or so it obviously seemed.

As we were leaving the restaurant, I mentioned to Bob that it might be worthwhile to contact Elizabeth Huffer, a local mediumistic psychic with a solid reputation whom we had both met. Then, in the parking lot as I was getting into the car, I glanced back at the house and stopped in stunned amazement. There, framed in a second story window, stood Elisabeth Huffer! Bob recognized her as well, and we both quickly walked back into the restaurant and up the stairs to the second floor. There stood Elisabeth, talking to some friends sitting right next to the large window overlooking the parking lot.

We brought Elisabeth into the target room and asked her to see what she could pick up. After some time of quiet tuning in, she motioned to us and we left the room to the few diners who watched us quizzically. Elisabeth related that she had "seen" a huge black man conducting a ritual in the room area, attended by other spirits. She was able to communicate with him and urge him and the others to move on into higher regions of light in the afterlife. The spirit group acknowledged her message but showed little interest in it. Still, she hoped it might have an effect. She described the black man as truly a giant.

Saying goodbye to Elisabeth and her husband, we exited to the parking lot by way of the wine and gift shop on the lowest level. I felt prompted to ask the young man behind the counter if he knew anything about a gigantic black man connected with the history of the house. Indeed he did, as he was working to complete a brief history of the house, which had a remarkable background.

What had become the Big Yellow House Restaurant had originally been built as a home in the late nineteenth century by a Mr. H.L. Williams, the founder of Summerland, and had been a focal point for Spiritualist seances. One of the mediums who held seances there was Harry Allen, who used a unique and rather bizarre technique for attaining the altered state of consciousness required for him to function as a medium. He drank until he was dead drunk and then passed out. The spirit that "took him over" as an instrument for communication was described as a gigantic black man, around seven feet tall. Allen and his primary spirit communicator often participated in seances in the Williams' house. On one occasion, an attendee at a seance asked if he could be given some physical evidence of the purported size of this spirit. He then felt an unseen hand closing around his head, so huge that the heel of the hand touched the top of one of his ears while covering the ear on the other side. All accounts of this strange spirit tallied with the one Elisabeth Huffer claimed to have encountered. As far as Bob Mayfield and I were able to tell, she would have had no knowledge of Harry Allen and his spirit giant's connection with the house. It had taken considerable efforts by Rod Lathim, the man writing the history of the house, to research this information and it was not common knowledge even in Summerland. We also had confidence in Elisabeth's psychic ability and integrity.

When Lathim's book, The Spirit of the Big Yellow House, was published, I bought a copy and found that he had mentioned an anonymous psychic (Elisabeth Huffer) and the encounter with the spirit of the huge black man in the upstairs room. When I had lunch at the restaurant in the Spring of 1999, it had been remodeled and substantially changed. When I asked about the book about the house, I was directed to the giftshop where, prominently displayed, was a new edition of The Spirit of the Big Yellow House. I bought a copy and learned that there was no longer any mention at all, for whatever reason, of our encounter through Elisabeth Huffer with the resident spirit of the black giant.

Following our vicarious encounter with the spirit of the black giant through Elisabeth Huffer, and having heard the testimonies of various members of the restaurant's staff, we seriously discussed mounting a scientific study, complete with instrumentation, of what seemed to be a genuine, multi-spirit haunt. It could have been possible to do this, through friends of ours at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But a busy restaurant is certainly not a setting which is conducive to this kind of research, even if permission had been given, and so we were left with the tantalizing nature of the experience itself. Over the years, however, there have been various investigations of reputed haunts where spirits have not only been observed, but anomalistic readings on instrumentation has also been recorded.

Close to home, here in the Ojai Valley, there have been a number of haunts reported over the years. A veteran psychic investigator, who has appeared on various national media programs and with several works on ghost lore and history in California to his credit, lives near Ojai. He has researched Ojai's ghostly lore and written Ghosts of The Ojai: California's Most Haunted Valley. He claims to have seen an apparition himself while taking his class from a nearby community college on a field trip to a reputedly haunted 1915 era Ojai mansion. Five members of the class also saw the apparition, agreeing on her appearance, including the details of the old fashioned dress she wore. A pronounced drop in temperature was noted during the experience. So, apparitions and haunts have been perceived by creditable persons and apparently by animals, too, as well as producing reactions on sensitive instruments. As Ian Currie states in our course text, You Cannot Die, at the end of the second chapter:

"Hauntings do happen. They are more common than we think, and many of them are caused by the dead. We should not let that fact paralyze us with fear, for the dead are not terrifying, nor are they incomprehensible. They can be understood, communicated with, and freed."

I included this story of my experience at The Big Yellow House in the course readings to reinforce how widespread the appearance of apparitions and hauntings are and how they are an important consideration in an evaluation of Evidence of the Afterlife.

   © John Griffin

Copyright 2001, World University in Ojai