Wolfe Manor was one of Fresno area’s most haunted places. What happened to it?
For more than 90 years, Wolfe Manor in Clovis was a popular spot for Fresno County ghost hunters.
The mansion at 2604 Clovis Ave. served as a home, a mental hospital and even a haunted house.
It was the site of several otherworldly events, including weird noises, electrical malfunctions and eerie presences — attracting the attention of paranormal experts.
“Throughout the years there were many deaths recorded in the place and till this day some believe ghosts still haunt the place.” ABC 30 News reported in 2014.
How did the 8,000-square-foot property gain a reputation as a supernatural hotspot? And what happened to it?
What was Fresno County mansion Wolfe Manor?
The property that eventually became known as Wolfe Manor began life in 1922 as a private residence called the Andrews Estate, according to Clovis historian Donette Wilson.
The three-story building at Clovis and Santa Ana avenues originally boasted seven bedrooms and a basement, as well as a lavish ballroom.
Anthony Andriotti, who later changed his last name to Andrews, built the home for his wife, Della, Wilson told the filmmakers behind a 2019 Wolfe Manor documentary produced by True Real Media.
Andrews was unable to pay the mortgage of the house, Wilson said, so it went up for auction on July 1, 1927, and sold for just under $25,000.
Paul A Mossessian bought the property and used it for fruit packing, according to Wilson.
The mansion housed the Hazelwood Convalescent Hospital for five or six years, starting in the mid-1930s, then operated as the Clovis Avenue Sanitarium after that, according to Wilson.
“Emergency workers dreaded answering calls from the residence because they usually meant someone had died,” Travel Channel television show “Ghost Adventures” said on its website. “When things were busy, Clovis staff would store the corpses of the newly dead in the building’s cool basement until they could be removed.”
The property was vacant from 1992 to 1997, Wilson said.
Hospital transformed into real-life haunted house
Todd Wolfe was looking to create a haunted attraction in Clovis when he discovered the old Clovis Avenue Sanitarium in 1997.
“I always wanted to open up some kind of a Halloween attraction and I thought that would be fun,” said Wolfe, the owner of Wolfe Manor Properties in Clovis.
Wolfe rented the Clovis Avenue mansion — which he eventually renamed Wolfe Manor — for a year before purchasing it outright in 1998.
He operated his haunted house attraction, Scream If You Can, on the site for six years.
Scream If You Can drew about 20,000 visitors annually and was named the best Halloween attraction in California by AAA, Wolfe said. He hired actors who were students at Clovis East High School, and donated part of the proceeds from the haunted house to the school.
“It was a huge success,” Wolfe said.
Still, Scream If You Can had its share of critics.
Wolfe said a Clovis Police Department officer told him, “The city of Clovis doesn’t want the haunted house here.”
In 2004, the Clovis City Council revoked Wolfe’s permit to operate the haunted house after neighbors complained about “traffic, noise and trash during the weeks before Halloween,” The Fresno Bee reported in 2014.
Clovis mansion featured on paranormal TV shows
The closing of Scream If You Can didn’t damper Wolfe Manor’s reputation as a spooky spot.
Over the years, the property received national attention for its ghostly goings-on.
In addition to appearing on three separate Travel Channel shows — “The Dead Files,” “Ghost Adventures” and “Ghost Hunters” — Wolfe Manor was the subject of an episode of History Channel’s “Mystery Quest.”
It also captured the attention of YouTube series such as “The UnXplained Zone.”
Wolfe said people started recognizing him from his TV appearances.
Once, he said, he was on a cruise ship when someone asked, “Are you Todd Wolfe, the owner of the haunted mansion?”
“It caught me off guard,” Wolfe recalled. “That happened a lot. So the place was famous. I was famous ... in the ghost hunting world.“
Was Wolfe Manor really haunted?
Paranormal investigator Don Staggs called Wolfe Manor “the most haunted house that I ever spent an entire night in.”
“Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of haunted houses,” Staggs said in “Wolfe Manor Documentary,” directed by Wolfe and Jesse Martinez.
What set the property apart, Staggs said, were “the number of spirits that were there, the different phenomena that happened” such as tapping and “mists or little dark figures.”
“Is there some kind of energy in here? I think so,” Wolfe told The Bee in November 2014, adding that “he wouldn’t live there even if he could.”
He gave a similar answer to ABC 30 News about a month earlier in 2014.
“Is there a presence in the house? Absolutely,” Wolfe told the television station in October 2014. “I just hope whatever is there they find some kind of peace.”
Nearly 10 years later, Wolfe talked about his encounters with the paranormal in greater detail.
“I saw things out of the corner of my eyes,” Wolfe said. “I was physically touched many times.”
Wolfe also described “how something rushed me” when he and his friend were upstairs, decorating a room known as Mary’s Room.
“Out of my peripheral vision, I saw this black figure, shadow person, come straight up to me,” Wolfe recalled.
Why was Clovis Avenue building demolished? When?
Despite its haunting reputation, the city of Clovis considered Wolfe Manor a “unsightly” eyesore” in dire need of repairs, The Bee reported in 2014.
The city designated the property as unsafe in occupy in 2012 and formally flagged it as a “nuisance” the following year after finding 22 code violations, according to The Bee’s archives.
Among the issues facing Wolfe Manor were excessive “cracking, peeling, chalking, dry rot and warping,” The Bee reported, adding that the property lacked plumbing and had broken and missing windows.
It also failed to comply with local fire, building and electrical codes, according to The Bee’s archives.
Wolfe questioned some of the city’s allegations of code violations — pointing out that the building wasn’t being occupied at the time.
“We didn’t have running water on the property. We didn’t need water in the house, and we told (the city) that,” Wolfe said. “The building’s not open. It’s an empty building. So why do you guys care if the faucet works?”
According to The Bee’s archives, Fresno assistant city manager John Holt said police had been called to the Wolfe Manor site more than 100 times and firefighters battled a fire in the building.
Wolfe said he occasionally lent Wolfe Manor to the Clovis Police Department for search-and-rescue operations.
Fans started a petition to save Wolfe Manor, gathering more than 1,000 signatures, The Bee reported in 2014, and set up a makeshift shrine in front of the mansion.
Despite those efforts, Wolfe Manor was demolished over the course of about six months, starting in May 2014 and ending that November.
“They (the city) wanted the place gone. That was their goal,” Wolfe said. “They wanted the attraction gone. They wanted the house gone. They want the history gone, and that’s what they got. That’s why they tore down the building.”
For Wolfe, the demolition was a very emotional and sad time.
He described standing among crowds of people, some of them crying, as they watched equipment “just chewing apart the house.”
“I was sick to my stomach,” Wolfe said. “It was just sad.”
When Wolfe Manor was torn down, Wolfe sold signed artifacts from the mansion — ranging from tiles and table lamps to bicycle wheels and medical books — on eBay.
“I’m not responsible for any (spooky) activity that comes with the item,” Wolfe told The Bee at the time.
He wasn’t the only one to profit from Wolfe Manor’s destruction, Wolfe said, claiming that the demolition company that tore down the property sold “haunted Wolfe Manor bricks” online for $1 each.
“I was sending letters to the city of Clovis, telling them, ‘I want all my bricks,’ ” Wolfe recalled.
What’s next for the property?
An empty lot now stands at the former site of Wolfe Manor, a few blocks away from Costco, Grill Masters BBQ restaurant and other businesses.
Clumps of grass grow from bare dirt.
Wolfe, who once worked with developer Jay Virk to turn Wolfe Manor into a boutique hotel, said he plans to construct a new building on the lot.
“ Right now, we have a great relationship with the city. We have for many, many, many years,” Wolfe said. “They’re trying to find someone to rent my property. We are all trying to find the perfect fit, whether it’s a hotel or a restaurant.”
This story was originally published October 24, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Wolfe Manor was one of Fresno area’s most haunted places. What happened to it?."
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