HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
An 1859 Sonoma County stagecoach stop where paranormal photographers claim to have captured two distinct apparitions in a single frame
2840 Roblar Rd, Petaluma, CA 94952
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Restaurant and bar; food and drink prices apply
Access
Wheelchair OK
Single-story roadhouse with level entry
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1859 · Sonoma County Historic Landmark · California's Oldest Continually Operating Roadhouses · Stagecoach Era Commerce
Robert Ayres built the Washoe House in 1859, two years after Sonoma County was established and at a moment when the interior roads connecting Petaluma's river-port economy to the coastal Bodega region were being roughed out. The roadhouse sat at the junction of what are now Stony Point Road and Roblar Road, near the headwaters of Washoe Creek — a logical stop for stage lines and freight wagons working the Petaluma–Santa Rosa–Bodega triangle.
The building accumulated functions over its first decades in the way durable rural structures do. It served as a hotel, a butcher shop, a post office, and a community hall at various points in its 19th-century life. During the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination in April 1865, an armed pro-Confederate militia group rode toward Santa Rosa before turning back at the Washoe House — a minor incident remembered locally as the Battle of Washoe House. The story that Ulysses S. Grant delivered a speech from the building's balcony has circulated for generations, though no historical documentation supports it.
By the 21st century the building had settled into its current identity as a bar and grill, trading on its age and the Buffalo burgers that regulars drive out for. A portion of the 1999 Clint Eastwood film True Crime was shot on location here. Sonoma County designated the Washoe House a Historic Landmark — one of the oldest continually operating commercial structures in Northern California.
Sources
The paranormal investigation of the Washoe House produced something less common than anecdote: photographs. A team called NorCal Paranormal Investigators brought cameras to the building and documented what their case manager Tami Oakey described as two distinct apparitions captured together in a single frame — a balding man visible from the torso up, partially transparent, standing near an upstairs window, and a man in a cowboy hat beside him.
The identity of the balding figure is suggested by a detail that circulates in accounts from local press: that a man shot himself in one of the upstairs rooms at some point in the building's history. No date or name has been attached to this story in the sources that document it, and the claim has not been verified against county records. It functions in the local telling as background rather than documented fact.
The employee accounts are more granular. Staff have described cups flung across an empty restaurant with no one in the room, wine bottles dropping from shelves under the same conditions, and the upstairs jukebox switching on by itself — playing a song not in its programmed rotation. A cold gust moving through the bar area during the NorCal Paranormal investigation was noted with no obvious air-conditioning or window source.
The building's long history as a way-station for travelers — many of them in the desperate circumstances of 19th-century frontier life — gives the haunting claims a plausible context. The photographs are the most substantiated element; what they actually show is debated.
Notable Entities
The Washoe House has been serving travelers since 1859 — first as a stagecoach stop, later as a hotel, post office, butcher shop, and community hall. Today it operates as a bar and grill known for Buffalo burgers and local beer. The upstairs rooms where paranormal investigators captured photographic apparitions are not publicly accessible, but the bar and dining room occupy the original ground-floor structure.
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