Welcome To Bakersfeld's #1 Rated Ghost Tour

The pained cries of an anguished phantom fill the halls of the high school, and the glowing apparition of the town’s founder continues his watch over the town he left behind. Haunts are in no short supply throughout the San Joaquin Valley, each one a mark on the long timeline from Bakersfield’s start as indigenous land through its growth and evolution into a modern municipality for the undead.

Eight Stories of Horror

This lavished eight-story hotel carries its years well, but its near-century of service is barely noticeable in the updated, contemporary guestrooms. That’s not to say its long and complicated history isn’t evident. In fact, guests who seek them out can find the impurities that serve as markers of The Padre’s history, from a convenient stay for oil hopefuls to the comfortable accommodations guests seek today during their California getaway. 

Follow Bakersfield Ghosts on an exploration of the hotel’s extensive past. Meet the phantoms from different points in The Padre’s lifetime that stalk the halls of the stately 20th-century structure. From the unorthodox Martin Miller, the former owner responsible for bringing the hotel to the brink of closure, to a family who met a tragic end trapped within their guestroom as a fire burned nearby, all manner of specters are booked at The Padre.

Ghostly handprints, physical interactions, and ominous figures are just a sampling of the unexplained activity guests can expect to experience during their stay in Bakersfield’s oldest hotel. Learn more about the hauntings of this landmark and more on a heart-pounding ghost tour with Bakersfield Ghosts.

What Will I See?

Visit Bakersfield’s Most Haunted Locations, Including:

• The Padre Hotel – A family burnt to death. Suicides durign the oil boom. An eccentric owner who refuses to let go of his property. The Padre Hotel is more than a comfortable space for travelers to relax in. It’s a goldmine of paranormal activity spanning years of death and tragedy.

• Bakersfield Californian Building – Print news breeds a stressful environment of frantic editors and lead writers scrambling to complete the most pressing stories on time. Couple that with the dangers of printing equipment and the climbing suicide rate as radio threatened print media, and you have a maelstrom of darkness from which entities manifest.

• The Nile Theater – All the world may be a stage, but only at this iconic Bakersfield theater will you hear a spectral voice belting out the closing notes to a dramatic moment in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Otherwise respectful when children are present, the dramatic specter isn’t afraid to startle adults when they’re alone in the modernized theater.

News From the Otherside

Newsrooms on television and in movies are depicted as chaotic and loud. It’s as close to reality as Hollywood tends to come, as anyone who worked for the Bakersfield Californian will attest. The building the local paper was housed in has undergone several residents, though the essence of the high-energy, stressful paper will always linger behind. 

Join Bakersfield Ghosts on a haunting journey into the history of Bakersfield’s print media. Learn a little about the machinery and the dangers they pose, as well as how some may have direct ties to the ghosts still tied to the old newspaper office.

Could a four-legged good boy be residing in the shadows of the Bakersfield Californian Building? Legend has it that it’s not just the tragic shells of suicide victims and passionate employees that returned to work in the afterlife to deliver yesteryear’s news. 

Ghosts with a Flair for the Dramatic

The former employees of the Fox Theater have a hard time letting go of reality. That reality being that they’re dead, and no matter how much work is done on the historic building’s clock tower, it will never be fixed by spectral hands. Venture with Bakersfield Ghosts on a look inside the haunted history of the beloved Fox Theater, a relic that’s survived the highs and lows since Christmas 1930.

The theater has its own Quasimodo, a shadow that lurks in the long stem of the clock tower. Unlike other specters, who’ve been known to get physical with workers at the theater, the clock tower ghost is simply there to work and get the job done. A job, unfortunately, that has no end in site. 

Fox Theater’s main stage hosts both the living and the dead. An eerie presence lurks throughout the theater’s house, playing tricks on the hapless workers simply trying to make it from one production to the next without issue.

Why is Bakersfield so Haunted?

Village of The Cursed

Relics from decades past fill the Kern County Museum, the dark history attached to an unmistakable presence that lingers heavy in the air. The specters of old Bakersfield congregate around their anchor items, though it’s in Pioneer Village where the greatest crowd of apparitions and phantoms gather.

Step back in time with Bakersfield Ghosts and hear stories of the bevy of spirits that terrify the living at Pioneer Village. The 16-acre collection of historical exhibits sends visitors back in time amidst artifacts sourced from throughout Kern County. Typically, they don’t make the journey alone.

Figures in vintage clothing, poltergeist activity, and other tales of haunting encounters with Pioneer Village’s apparitions will leave you itching to explore the expansive property on your own. Albeit that will be in the light of day, not that the sun’s rays will quell the darkness that tournaments the village’s hapless visitors.  

The Pale Lady 

The empty halls of any high school reek of a spooky aura, dim lighting lending to the uncomfortable atmosphere. It’s no wonder that Bakersfield High School is pegged as one of the city’s most haunted spots.

Join Bakersfield Ghosts in a look at the history of the grounds, back to when a hospital once operated where the school now stands. The grounds doubled as a makeshift cemetery, the bodies of patients buried nearby. It’s these restless souls that disturb anyone stuck working in the school after hours. 

The quad is said to be the site of the most activity. From sprinklers that turn on by themselves to the mysterious floating apparition of a lady in white, the otherworldly presence at Bakersfield High School has run off several employees and will likely scare off many more in the future.

Bakersfield’s Most Haunted

The flow of spectral energy extends throughout the city and touches almost every building in Bakersfield, such as Garces Memorial Circle. One of the city’s oldest specters is believed to haunt the statue erected at the aptly named traffic circle. The 200-year-old spirit of Spanish missionary Francisco Garces is no stranger to Bakersfield locals, who are used to his antics at his namesake traffic circle. If you’re driving around the city, check it out, but be mindful of the whispered prayer said to precede car accidents.

Like the Fox Theater, the Gaslight Melodrama Theatre brings the dramatics to Bakersfield’s haunts. Did the arrival of stage backdrops from Knott’s Berry Farm coincide with the sudden paranormal activity that now plagues the theater? Doors slam closed, unexplainable noises echo throughout, and objects move around on their own in this spooky contemporary entertainment space.

Just outside the heart of the city, locals gather for a night of boisterous music and dancing. Club Paradise may seem too loud to house the ghosts of tragedies past, but that’s far from the case. An unseen presence is known to get a little rough with patrons and employees, trapping people inside and getting handsy with guests. Where the malevolent spirit manifested from is unknown, but it’s active enough to threaten to suck the life out of the otherwise lively establishment.

* This is a walking tour and we do not enter privately-owned buildings or private property *