Gold Country Ghost Tours haunts Old Town Auburn for the weekend

For six years now, Gold Country Ghost Tours has introduced Auburn residents to their neighbors who have departed in the last century. The tour takes ghost hunters around Old Town Auburn to various buildings to hear the historic stories of prominent figures in the city's history and the supposed specters that come with it. "I've always been intrigued by the supernatural ever since I was young," said tour founder Melany Hall. "I've been on ghost tours all over. I've been on the Jack the Ripper Tour in London. I've been to one in New Orleans a couple of times, and I started to wonder why we didn't have one here in Auburn." Hall partnered with Ralph Gibson of Placer County Museums to start the tour, using his insight to tell the stories on the darker side of Auburn's history. "Melany came to us and we had a lot of our volunteers at that time that were really enthusiastic about it," Gibson said. "We thought it was a unique way to present history to people without realizing or getting a little history because there's always the history behind every ghost." Gibson, who admitted he used to be a skeptic, said his time working for the museum has turned him into a believer. "Whether you're a believer or not, you're going to see things, you're going to hear things here that are weird," Gibson said. "My first experience here I didn't even realize was an experience until hindsight." Gibson entered the courthouse the museum resides in one Saturday morning and cleaned all of the display cases to prepare for the day and its guests. After cleaning everything spotless, he returned to his office before an alarm went off that there was motion in one of the cases. "I looked at them from every angle and made sure I got all the fingerprints and everything else. I spent an hour and a half cleaning them," Gibson said. "I went to the alarm panel and it said motion case 6 and I ran to case 6, that's where the baseball exhibit is now, and about three feet off the ground, dead center, were two small handprints like from a kid or a little child." One character you get to meet on the tour is Maggie Cohen, the mother of that supposed ghost, a child that fell to his death in the courthouse in the late 1800s. During the mother's performance, there have been many strange occurrences and even a picture captured of a little boy's hand reaching out for his mom. "I really believe that his tragic death has kept his ghost wandering through the courthouse because there's been too many signings from people, from bailiffs to deputies to regular people visiting the museum," said Marsha Porte, who played Cohen on the tour. During Porte's performance last year, a fire alarm went off in the courthouse. The panel that controls that alarm is only accessible with a key that belongs to the fire marshal, who was not on the premises at the time. "If you talk to the fire marshal, he won't want to talk to you because those alarm bells are impossible to start unless he opens up with his key to turn it on or off," Porte said. "He's still freaked out about it." Cohen is not the only resident we met on the tour. Other characters include Auburn's former serial killer Robert Scott and the Fire Queen, a former madamè of the night. One of the top performances was that of infamous outlaw Rattlesnake Dick, who escaped from every jail in Placer and Nevada counties. Dick told the story of how he met his demise on top of Lincoln Way after a shootout with Sheriff Pole, a location residents now know as Raley's. "Every year we have something that kind of goes on," Hall said. She wasn't kidding. After touring Old Town, finding out about the murders and gunfights that took place across the street from our grocery stores and bars, we returned to the courthouse to wrap up the tour. As we were going down the courthouse steps to our car, my fiancée had her hair pulled by someone that wasn't there. With no bush that her ponytail could have caught on to and the nearest person more than five feet away, we can only believe one of our friends we met that night wasn't ready for us to say goodnight. Regardless of if you are a believer, skeptic or simply a history buff, the Gold Country Ghost Tours are a festive way to celebrate the spookiest time of the year.