The Rengstorff Mansion (or the Rengstorff House) is the oldest building in Mountain View.   It was the home of early Mountain View pioneer Henry Rengstorff and his family. Mr. Rengstorff built this Italianate Victorian house in 1867. Compared to other local homes of the time, it was mansion. Like many old buildings, this house has many spooky tales associated with it.

Things seemed to have been fine until after the last descendents of the Rengstorff family left the house in the 1959. At that date, Perry Askam, a famous opera singer and descendent of the Rengstorff family, sold the house to a land development company. For 20 years the house went through a variety of owners and residents. The era between 1959 and 1979 is believed to be time period when the house was most well known for the strange things that occurred within it. Former residents of the house have often been willing to tell their stories, and I will mention the one's that I know of here.

  
  The following stories were taken from "You are Now Entering Mountain View," a collection of short writings about Mountain View done by students of Old Mountain View High in 1976. The Rengstorff Mansion chapter was written by Ann Tamaru and Pat Catolico. They interviewed the Crump family, the last residents of the mansion.  
 

The Crumps said that the often heard the sound of a non existent baby crying at night and the sounds of something walking up and down the house's narrow staircase. This is a common story associated with the house.

  
  The family owned a large police dog that would hide under the bed at midnight as soon as the noises would start.   
  When the Crumps were out, there friends once dropped by, and when they knocked on the empty house's door, its doorknob turned by itself.  
  An old Mexican man used to walk by the house as a short cut to get to the nearby dumps. When the Crumps moved into the house he asked for permission to walk through the property. He also told Mr. Crump the story of a young woman with long dark hair that he often would see staring out of the houses large bay windows.  
  Most intriguing is the story of the secret attic room. One day Mr. Crump was putting a hook in a closet, the wall board slipped a bit and a previously covered up stairway was exposed. Mr. Crump removed the loose board and walked up the cobweb filled staircase. At the end of it he found a "secret room" that only had a hospital bed with leather restraint cuffs on it.  
  Spooky huh? Truth or Fiction? I don't know.  
  This is what the Rengstorff House looked like when I was a teenager around 1980.
My friends and I would go out there at night to party, but we never vandalized the place.

We sure had allot of fun though.

  
 

In 1979 the Rengstorff Mansion was bought by the city. Years of vandalism and decay made the house look even more haunted, especially when it was relocated to its current location which was quite isolated before Shoreline Park was completed. Luckily the house was saved, and renovated in 1991. It looks beautiful now, but also a bit eerily, especially at twilight.

The mansion's reputation of being haunted is slowly fading away. No one lives there anymore, so there isn't any more strange stories of ghostly happenings. It's now open to visitors on select days through out the week, and used for special events and weddings.  Docents often lead interesting tours, but chances are they won't talk about the mansion's haunted past.

  
     

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All information on this page was researched and compiled by Nick,
Author of "A Guide To Mountain View".
Thanks Nick.