A dimly lit picture of an unexplainable shadowy figure, stories of tragic deaths from decades ago and first-hand accounts of cold spots in an otherwise warm room were just some of the highlights from this year’s Ghost Walk tours.
Organized by the Museum on Main, the special tours are an annual program that take place on select October weekends and feature dozens of volunteers who dress up as the ghosts of Pleasanton’s past and help keep the city’s history alive in a spooky, but educational, way.
“It’s really personal to the town,” Mia Cortese, one of the actors who portrayed a ghost at the old PRIMM Boutique building next to Inklings, told the Weekly during the Oct. 10 tour. “It’s talking about the history, and it kind of keeps people thinking about where we are and why we’re here … It’s a really fun thing that our town does that maybe not everywhere does.”
According to the museum’s executive director, Tony Cruz, the Ghost Walk tours started nearly 20 years ago and continue to be one of the museum’s most popular events. It remains one of, if not the, biggest fundraising campaign for the museum.
He said last year the Ghost Walk tours raised about $17,000 and this year they hope to break $20,000 — they were already grossing about $18,000 during the first night of the tours.
Held during the two to three weeks before Halloween, each tour takes residents and visitors through several stops in downtown Pleasanton where people have witnessed paranormal experiences or that have a long reputation of ghostly encounters given the history of the buildings.
One of the stops was Towne Center Books where Nancy Gilvin, one of the workers inside the store, told the uninitiated group of first-time Ghost Walk participants about the three ghosts that haunt the old building, which used to be a laundry and dry cleaning store.
Gilvin said she encountered her first ghost at the store 25 years ago when she started working there — she noticed an old rocking chair move by itself. Since then, she has experienced cold spots throughout the back area of the store and has heard of books being moved around by themselves.
At one point, she said there was a psychic who visited the book store and said the ghosts were from the turn of the 20th century, which could suggest that the ghosts were those of deceased manual workers who died when they were young.
After the first stop, the tour group moved on to other locations such as the Blue Agave Club next to the museum, the Rose Hotel and the Ruby and Roses Restaurant. Each of the stops featured different volunteers who dressed up as the ghosts who supposedly haunt each of the locations.
Museum on Main education director Peter Wallis said he just started working at the museum six months ago but as a longtime educator, he appreciates just how much work the museum and local volunteers do to keep history alive through events such as the Ghost Walk.
“A big part of the Ghost Walk that’s really neat to me is the way that history comes back alive and you get to walk through it in a way,” Wallis said.
Wallis said that with all of the cuts to museums nationwide, he appreciated just how much the Pleasanton community demonstrates its support of the nonprofit Museum on Main.
“It’s just really cool to see how many people show up on a daily basis for our events and really show up for some of the fundraising,” Wallis said.
From stories of ghosts walking through walls to how they would mess with people by messing with lights, the actors had fun with their roles as they told the stories of Pleasanton’s past and practiced a little bit of their improvisation skills as tour participants asked questions about the ghosts’ lives and how they died.
One volunteer who has participated in the Ghost Walk for the past four years was Bruce Torquemada, owner of the Kottinger Barn, which is Pleasanton’s oldest standing building.
Dressed in old, western clothing Torquemada walked the Oct. 10 tour group through the barn, which used to be a jail and courthouse, and told them about all of his first-hand paranormal experiences and about the 22 ghosts that he said haunt the barn.
He even started off by showing them a photo of a shadowy figure that he said had to be a ghost based on where he was standing when he took the photo — he used one of the tour participants to demonstrate how the lighting in the room suggest it couldn’t have been Torquemada’s own shadow, which garnered audible gasps and excitement from most of the tour participants.
He even noted how one time, a lady’s earring came out of her ear by itself and how it likely was a ghost who simply liked jewelry.
Torquemada told the Weekly that he believes the barn belongs to Pleasanton because of its historical significance and that he just loves showing people around the barn. He said he has been involved with the Ghost Walk since he bought the barn in 2021.
And while he said he originally did not believe in ghosts, he does now after all of the things that have happened to him at the barn.
However, after the first tour, Torquemada finished off this year’s Ghost Walk tours on somewhat of a sour note after two of the coins from the 1800s that he passed around during his presentation have gone missing.
He said the coins were likely taken on Oct. 17, and he is simply asking for the return of the coins because of their historical significance.
Still, during the Oct. 10 tour his stop garnered a lot of excitement from the crowd.
One tour member who particularly liked the barn stop was Gabriel Kong, a north Oakland resident who came with other friends from the East Bay to take part in the tour. He said one of his friends who is from Pleasanton suggested the tour as a fun activity to do on a Friday night.
“We were like yeah, for sure, we would love to see Pleasanton,” he said. “It’s cool that there is a centralized knowledge base about the ghosts here.”
Cruz noted how important the event is given the city recently cut the museum’s funding during the most recent budget development process — $25,000 for the 2025-26 fiscal year and $35,000 for the 2026-27 fiscal years.
“With all the cuts, it’s significant,” Cruz said. “It’s a fun event that we’re known for and people are going to have a good time and support a good cause.”
Cruz also said that apart from the tours being an educational and fun event for families, it is also a great way to bring more business to downtown Pleasanton solely based on how many people congregate in the area for the tours.
“Bringing in 1,000 people downtown who probably wouldn’t be down here tonight is just good for the city,” he said.
Cruz said the museum’s mission is to enrich community life through education and making history accessible, which is why he said the Ghost Walk is so great because any age group can take part and really learn something about Pleasanton’s history — while also getting a couple good scares here and there.
“It’s entertaining enough to keep little kids’ attention and educational enough to satisfy the history buff,” Cruz said.
