Est. 1899 · Oldest Commercial Building in Tracy · Odd Fellows Hall · Fraternal Lodge History
Tracy grew up as a railroad town in San Joaquin County, and like many such towns its early commercial core was vulnerable to fire. A major fire in 1898 destroyed the original Odd Fellows hall. The following year the Sumner Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows put up a new three-story brick building at 35 East Sixth Street, completed in 1899. It is recognized locally as the oldest commercial building still standing in Tracy.
The Sumner Lodge was for decades one of the town's leading fraternal organizations, with its meeting rooms on the upper floors. As Odd Fellows membership dwindled to roughly a dozen members over the twentieth century, the building's role shifted. The Loyal Order of Moose established Tracy Lodge No. 2283 in 1972 and began leasing the hall for meetings and social events, eventually purchasing it from the Odd Fellows.
The building also carries a persistent local tradition that part of it once operated as a brothel in Tracy's early decades. The claim appears in regional newspaper coverage of the lodge's history but is not documented in the same way as the Odd Fellows and Moose records. Today the Tracy Moose Lodge operates the ground floor as a member social hall and bar, and the upper floors retain the original lodge-room layout.
Sources
- https://www.ttownmedia.com/tracy_press/our_town/moose-lodge-mystery-solved/article_3f04830d-1e68-53ce-8c6a-5736c47c2eaf.html
- https://www.ttownmedia.com/tracy_press/voice/harrowing-tales-of-haunted-haunts/article_83fa8844-dcfe-11e6-b456-cf1295e5717c.html
- https://theclio.com/entry/28134
Lights turning offObject movementStacked coinsDoors opening
The Tracy Moose Lodge's reputation is built on the kinds of small, repeated incidents that staff and volunteers describe rather than on any single dramatic event. In coverage by the Tracy Press, lodge members reported lights shutting off with no one near the switch, the jukebox flipping or starting on its own, and doors found open upstairs when volunteers believed they were alone in the building.
The most often-repeated story concerns a pair of coins. Volunteers noticed two pennies on the floor and went back to pick them up, only to find the coins gone, then later discovered them stacked neatly, one on top of the other, on a nearby table. The stacked-coin motif recurs across several Tracy-area haunting accounts and is the detail lodge members tend to mention first.
The activity is generally attributed to the building's long history and to the unverified brothel tradition, though members do not present a specific named figure. The lodge is a private fraternal hall rather than a paranormal attraction, and the stories circulate mainly through local newspaper features and word of mouth among members.