public

Heavily Investigated

Perched on a Gold Country hill like something conjured from a gothic novel, Preston Castle does not let you forget what happened inside it. People who wander its basement swear they feel the cold before they see the dark — and it's down there that Anna Corbin, the head housekeeper, was beaten to death in 1950, her murder unsolved to this day. Her presence is said to linger still. Visitors report shadow figures in the infirmary windows, unexplained sounds rolling through empty corridors, and the particular dread of being watched by something that has had decades to practice.

Constructed between 1890 and 1894, Preston Castle was the administration building for the Preston School of Industry — California's state reform school for boys, dressed in Romanesque Revival stone to look more like a college than a cage. On paper, it rehabilitated wayward youth; in practice: abuse, lye baths for new arrivals, tuberculosis deaths, and an on-grounds cemetery with twenty-three graves. Closed in 1960, it is now California Historical Landmark #867 and on the National Register of Historic Places — a fine honor for a building the State once simply planned to knock down.