Regis Philbin's Night Vigil at the Whaley House and the Holzer and Leek Séance

The Whaley House stands at 2476 San Diego Avenue, in San Diego's Old Town. Building began on May 6, 1856. Thomas Whaley's family moved in on August 22, 1857. It is the oldest brick structure in Southern California.

Its past is heavy. James "Yankee Jim" Robinson was hanged on the site in 1852 for stealing a boat. Thomas Jr. died of scarlet fever in 1858. Violet died by suicide in 1885, aged 22. Anna Eloise Whaley died on February 24, 1913. On May 25, 1960, the house opened as a museum.

1964. Regis Philbin, then working in San Diego television, stayed on after hours with a friend who has never been named. They waited in the dark.

About 2:30 a.m. In his own words: "All of a sudden I noticed something on the wall. There was something filmy white, it looked like an apparition of some kind, I got so excited I couldn't restrain myself! I flipped on the [flash]light and nothing was there but a portrait of Anna Whaley, the long-dead mistress of the house." A 1996 newspaper account traced its path. The image floated from the study to the music room and into the parlor. Then the beam of his flashlight found it. And it was gone.

Around 1965, parapsychologist Hans Holzer came to the house with Sybil Leek, an English witch and medium. Holzer used table knocking and a séance. In trance, Leek sensed a hostile male presence she identified as Thomas Whaley, "angry at the injustices done him and the intrusions into his house." He was upset that the Derby-Pendleton house had been put on his property. She also spoke of a Russian who had died hunting sea otters, and a 13-year-old girl who had died suddenly. "It was a long-haired girl… She was very quick, you know, in a longish dress," Leek said.

Retellings blur the two nights. Rosemary Ellen Guiley's encyclopedia places Philbin at the séance, with Anna's apparition vanishing under his flashlight there. Other accounts describe a separate visit with his friend. Holzer's verdict was firm. The house was "one of the most actively haunted mansions in the world today." Philbin later sent Holzer a postcard recalling their "California adventure" there.

Others have seen things too. Former curator June Reading remembered a little girl, perhaps 5 or 6, who waved to a man she said was standing in the parlor. "We couldn't see him." Visitors describe phantom footsteps, a man in frock coat and pantaloons on the upper landing, a gavel pounding in the old courtroom, organ music and cigar smoke. Life magazine called it "the most haunted house in America."

No hoax claim has been made against Philbin, Holzer or Leek. No photograph, film or recording from 1964 or 1965 has surfaced, and Philbin's account ends at a portrait on the wall. Some legends have not survived scrutiny. Alexandra Holzer found no historical record of "Annabel or Carrie Washburn", the playmate said to be the girl in the dining room. The museum stays measured. "Many of our visitors come to the Whaley House to see a ghost, although we cannot produce them on demand," said Dean Glass.

Philbin is said to dislike discussing that night. Still, in 2012 he returned with medium Kim Russo for the Biography Channel's The Haunting Of..., first aired December 1, 2012. He wanted to understand "why a ghost appeared to him and why she left so suddenly." His words on the program: "You know a lot of people pooh-pooh it because they can't see it. But there was something going on in that house."