By Paul Dale Roberts, HPI Ghostwriter
Edited by Shannon "Ms. Macabre" McCabe

I get a phone call late Monday night from fellow H.P.I. (Haunted and Paranormal Investigations of Northern California) Paranormal Investigator Jennifer "The Jen-Girl" Baca. Jen: "Paul, I hear rumors that the F Street Boarding House is haunted." Paul: "Hmmm...let's see, since Dorothea Puente resided there and she was a convicted serial killer, that killed nine people and buried seven people at her residence, I can see why people might think it's haunted. It was truly a Nightmare on F Street!" Jen: "Should we scout it out and see if there is anything credible to these peoples' claims?" Paul: "Why not, see you tomorrow night at 18:30 hours, let's check it out!" Today is June 26, 2007, Tuesday and Jennifer is on time. She hops in my Maroon Stratus known as the Ghost Tracker, she looks at me, grins and says, let me play some of my music and throws on "Dont'cha by The Pussycat Dolls".

While Dont'cha is blasting in my car and we're both bopping our heads, people are driving by looking at us like we're weird...then thoughts came to my mind about the murders. Let's take a brief examination of what occurred at this former boarding house.
Doreathea Puente married for her fourth time in 1976 to Pedro Montalvo, who was a physically abusive alcoholic. The marriage only lasted a few months, and Puente started to spend time in local bars looking for older men who were receiving benefits. She forged their signatures to steal their money, but she eventually was caught and charged with 34 counts of treasury fraud.

In 1981 Puente began renting an upstairs apartment at 1426 F Street in downtown Sacramento. The nine murders with which she was charged in 1988, in 1993, she was only convicted of 3 of them. In April 1982, her first victim 61 year old Ruth Monroe who resided in her 16 room boarding house died of an overdose of Codeine and Tylenol. The police judged the death as a suicide by the persuasion and charm of Puente.
A few weeks later, the police were back after a 74-year-old pensioner named Malcolm McKenzie accused Puente of drugging and stealing from him. Hmmmm...things are getting suspicious for Puente. Puente hired a handyman named Ismael Florez and had him dump a suspicious box on the river bank. The box contained a badly decomposed and unidentifiable body of an elderly man inside. Meanwhile, Puente continued to collect her dead tenant's pensions and wrote letters to his family, explaining that the reason he had not contacted them was because he was ill. She also maintained a "room and board" business, taking in 40 new tenants (most of whom were alcoholics and drug addicts). Although she was making a good profit doing this, she wanted more and therefore started to frequent bars looking for new customers.

Every month, Puente collected all the tenants' mail before they saw it and gave them only a small amount of their money, pocketing the rest.

Jennifer Baca standing outside of bar where Doreathea Puente frequented.

Finally on November 11, 1988, police found a body buried in the lawn of 60-year-old Dorothea Puente. Seven bodies were eventually found. Puente was charged with a total of nine murders, convicted of three, and is now serving two life sentences.

As Jennifer and I arrived at this F Street residence, we immediately sought out EVPs. No EVPs were recorded. We saw a pitbull resting peacefully on the steps. Animals usually have a sixth sense when it comes to the paranormal and this dog is either used to the ghosts of this home or the other explanation came to mind, that there were no ghosts at this home. After spending a considerable amount of time trying to get some EVPs, we finally gave up and headed over to Elk Grove Consumes District Cemetery.

Sign to Elk Grove Consumes Cemetery

While walking around this cemetery, no EVPs were recorded. Jennifer and I were thinking, this is becoming a non-productive ghost hunt. We snapped all sorts of digital photographs throughout the cemetery and to our surprise, we did get some orbs. But, more surprising is that in one of the shots, there are two HUGE red orbs. When I looked at this digital image, I immediately took two more pictures in the same location to see if I could duplicate the two huge red orbs and only had normal images of darkness. This is the first time, I ever took a picture of orbs that were red and quite large. When I first entered the cemetery I spotted a white figure dashing from one tombstone to another tombstone. I brought this to Jennifer's attention, but she did not see the figure. When I saw the figure, I immediately thought there was someone else in the cemetery, but the only people that were in the cemetery was Jennifer and I. I started questioning myself on what I could have possibly seen. Could it have been a darting white figure or could it have been a reflection of some sort? Or was my mind just playing tricks? I can't really say...I would say that what I saw was inconclusive.

As Jennifer and I headed back, I thought of how urban legends get started. The haunting of this former F Street Boarding house is a mere urban legend. People want to believe its haunted, because of the atrocities that occurred there. Whenever there is a murder that takes place, people automatically think of the deceased victims haunting the area where they were murdered at, similar to a story I once heard that happened on Hwy #1 near the Sanchez Adobe Ranch, close to Big Sur. The story goes that back in the 60s, three hippie kids in a volkswagon had cut out holes in two areas of the side of their Volkswagen. There was a top hole and a bottom hole to stick out a long metallic pole that held a machete type of blade. In the 60s many people hitchhiked down Hwy #1 and supposingly these kids pushed out the pole/machete on the lower hole when approaching a hitchhiker and cut off his legs and a hitchhiker further down, they pulled out the pole/machete on the top hole and beheaded a hitchhiker. They tried to get another hitchhiker and the pole/machete hit a telephone pole, causing their Volkswagon to swerve off the cliff and into the rocks below. People claim that late at night when you drive down this stretch of Hwy #1, they see the ghosts of a hitchhiker without a head and a hitchhiker without his legs. Of course, this is only an urban legend. I have searched for newspaper reports of this crime and never was able to locate any story of its kind.

Nevertheless, this was a fun investigation and I was happy that I captured on my digital photos the two large red orbs. This is something I have never captured on film before during all of my investigations.