The landscape of Kern County changes through different sets of eyes. There are some people who see nothing but an old house here, an empty vacant lot there, a park with homeless people sitting on benches. But others see thin, wispy smoke shaped like an angel. They see a man in an old hat who disappears through doors. They see a woman in a gown floating through a Bakersfield park at dawn. A trick of the eyes? An imagination too vivid? Perhaps. But for those who see and feel the presence of Kern County's ghosts, haunted spots are not just Halloween tales.

You may believe some of these stories. You may reject them all as bunk and nonsense. One thing is certain: They have taken on a life of their own, having survived generations of telling and retelling. Some of these local legends are subtle, more of a feeling or memory of an event that happened long ago. Others are outrageous, suggesting the spirits of those who died were not ready to leave this world. "Something happened and took them before their time and they just never finished the journey," said Jerrie Cowan, who operates the Tehachapi Museum and says she knows of haunted houses in Tehachapi. Ghosts are, by most commonly accepted definitions, unsettled beings. But few people believe they are inherently evil. Some people, in fact, feel a sense of protection from a guardian soul that has stayed behind to make sure everything goes well in that earthly place it once loved. These tales are a sampling of Kern County ghost stories, some stretching back to Bakersfield's earliest years.

The ghosts of Bakersfield Some believe certain spirits were people who were wrongfully killed. One example is the lady with the flowing robe seen wafting along the canal in Central Park at dawn, just east of the intersection between 21st and R Streets. John Sarad, co-owner of downtown Bakersfield's Haberfelde building and a lifelong resident of the city, was told the ghost belongs to a woman believed murdered. Her bones were found buried in the old foundry across from the park. The bones, discovered when the foundry's floor was torn up, had bullet holes in them.

Although it may be easy to imagine a spirit in Central Park at dawn, it may be more difficult to imagine ghosts in a trim and prim residential area of Bakersfield such as Westchester. But a certain house on 20th Street, Sarad said, has been known to have problems ever since a woman killed her husband while he was in the bathtub. At the end of this same street was a hospital that was torn down at the turn of the century, Sarad said. Ghosts of little children who died of yellow fever are said to wander the area. Sometimes, ghosts take on a seedier form - like the ghosts of firefighters seen crossing K Street. According to a waitress who used to work in Sarad's grandfather's restaurant, these firefighters would cross from where their station used to stand, to the Mitchell Building, which is said to have once contained a brothel.

Other buildings, like the Haberfelde building itself, Bakersfield High School and even The Bakersfield Californian, have had their share of strange occurrences, like creepy sounds in the halls when janitors swear there's nobody there. In these buildings, however, activity has died down. Although more recent reports are limited to strange sounds and the ele-vator operating for no reason, security guards at The Californian have claimed to have spotted the reflection of Alfred Harrell, the newspaper's founder, in mirrors. One time, it is said, a late-night worker even saw him sitting in a chair behind the desk of publisher Ginger Moorhouse, his great-granddaughter. Guards at a corporate office building in the 5000 block of California Avenue report seeing the lights turn on and off for no reason, and wisps of smoke that mysteriously turned up in a photograph - although nobody was smoking and it wasn't foggy when the picture was taken.

Another place with a ghostly past is the Melodrama Musical Theatre. The spirit, the story goes, is that of a man who worked in a toy store that was in the building before the theater. The man, who reportedly committed suicide, returned to the theater because he liked the building, said Shari Fortino, a Melodrama producer. The ghost was very active in the 1980s, but may have left, Fortino said. In the ghost's heyday, however, the theater's house manager entered an office and saw the phone receiver in mid-air, being sprayed by a can of black paint. Another time, a stack of wooden screens fell on a woman in charge of props. She was trapped under them until the flats lifted themselves off her. "In a way, people felt kind of protected when he was here," Fortino said.

Bakersfield hauntings wouldn't be complete without something afoot at the Kern County Museum, where outdoor replicas of old homes form a late 19th century village. One night a few years ago, a group of Cal State Bakersfield students were allowed to spend the night in the old schoolhouse, museum director Carola Rupert Enriquez said. They reportedly heard the tapping of chalk on the chalkboard, but saw nothing. Enriquez, however, is skeptical about haunts in the old buildings, many of which are replicas or transferred from their original locations. "The chance of any ghosts actually transferred with buildings were slim to none," she said.

Bakersfield is not the only part of Kern County that has legends and ghostly encounters. There's an eerie story of a shepherd who died and was buried near an old cabin at Bonita Meadow, on the Kern Plateau near Sherman Pass. Kern Valley historian Bob Powers said the shepherd put an old coffee grinder in a tree near the cabin, which was built before 1900. When the wind blew, it rattled the device, making it sound as if the spirit was making coffee.

Even creepier is the ghost at the property of Bobbie and Tom Underwood, the caretakers of the historic gold-mining town of Garlock. A tall, slender man with an old hat from the 1800s struts around her property regularly. Sometimes, Bobbie Underwood hears a steady whispering that she's sure isn't just the whipping desert wind. And once she ran after the figure, calling to it, thinking it was her landlord. It vanished through a closed door. Underwood said she was told the description sounded like a man who used to live on the property a long time ago. The ghost doesn't bother Underwood, who says she has seen ghosts all her life.

Though some ghost legends are a thing of the past, people with active ghosts say they learn to live with them. That's pretty much the option in Tehachapi, where many private homes are inhabited by ghosts, says Cowan. Cowan says she has seen a few spirits herself. She won't say where any of the hauntings are, but notes most of them are harmless, even good presences. One is dressed in a robe, with curly brown hair and no face. Haunted houses like those in Tehachapi, which are still on the market, can cause dilemmas for real estate agents, who are required by law to disclose any "material fact" that would affect the value of the property, said Debra Ferrier, assistant general counsel for the California Association of Realtors in Los Angeles. While it's difficult to prove a house is haunted, it could be a material fact that people say it's haunted, Ferrier said. It's up to the agent to decide whether these rumors have an effect on the property value. Realtors are required to tell prospective buyers if someone died on the property, but not if the death happened more than three years ago. One Tehachapi house, where an elderly couple lived, is the home of a legendary ghost who seems to love classical music. Each time it played, he or she would rock in a rocking chair. Few believers seem to want to get rid of these spirits. If they do, having weddings on the premises or praying for the ghost to find the afterworld are two techniques that may work.

Whether the ghosts come or stay, people who see them could be at an advantage. For them, Kern County could be a little more interesting - even when it's not Halloween.