Picnic Table still there 37 years later |
Minus
the blood and gore and crushed corpses and police caution tape, not
much has changed in many years.
High up and deep within Griffith Park
the scene remains otherwise no different from how it looked on
the evening
of October 31, 1976, when tragedy literally befell a young Hollywood
couple,
inconceivably
crushed by a nearby tree that toppled over upon them while they made
love upon a picnic table just off winding Mt. Hollywood Drive.
As
lurid as it was inexplicable,
the deaths of 22-year-old musician Rand Garrett and aspring actress
Nancy Jeanson, 20, were nonetheless a brief blip on the radars of local
newscasts
and newspapers, by and large laid to rest after their cremated remains
were scattered upon the table and surroundings where the childhood
sweethearts died in each others' arms.
Though
their ashes have long since blown away,
what hasn't been so quick to dissipate is the legend that has grown
up around strange
events and eerie occurences — especially around the
anniversary of their demise — that witnesses claim began happening
shortly after their deaths and purportedly continue to occur to this
day, bolstering
a belief that the anguished spirits of Rand and Nancy are wandering
never too far away from the picnic table that simultaneously brought
them together and tore them apart.
"People
thought I was damn crazy," says retired city tree trimmer Morris
Carl when he tried to explain what happened to him a few days after
authorization had been given to clear the fallen tree and he was
tapped for the duty. "I
drove up there with a job to do and I aimed to do it. What I didn't
figure on was getting scared out of my wits!"
Carl
is quick to add that up to that day he never gave much thought to whether
ghosts were real. "But from that point on
I certainly don't give any thought that they aren't," he says.
According
to the incident report he filed with his supervisor later that evening,
Carl arrived at the site at 11:40 a.m. on November 7. He was
to be joined by two other Bureau of Street Services Tree Division workers
with a large truck and loader to remove the material later in the afternoon
but until then he was charged with sawing up the branches and trunk
of the large sycamore tree into more manageable pieces. Only a few minutes
into it he wrote that was
overcome with a strange sensation.
"In
my statement I said that I felt funny. What happened was I'd sawed
off the crown of the tree when from out of nowhere I got hit with
these
real strong chills so hard it was as if I was coming down with the fastest
flu ever. I tried to shake it off and get back to work, but each time
I'd fire up the saw and get near the tree I'd get real cold and hear
this weird moaning and crying. So I'd stop the saw and listen and it
would go away. But then I'd start her up again and it would come back.
Finally I was freezing so bad I had to go to the truck and get my coat."
That's
when Carl wrote that the fallen tree started shaking violently.
"I
set down the saw on the picnic table and headed over to the truck, and
that's when I heard it start shaking from behind me. The tree just went
crazy! Not just lightly shaking, but bouncing up and down as if someone
was picking it up and dropping it."
It landed
repeatedly on the table with such force as to knock the heavy powersaw
off the table to the
ground.
As soon
as that happened," he wote in the report, "the
tree stopped moving."
But then the moaning started up again, accompanied by a warning from an ominous voice that Carl says sounded as if someone was sitting right there in the cab with him and whispering into his ear.
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"It
told me 'leave us alone' very insistently," Carl says. "So
I tried, but the engine wouldn't turn over. Next thing is this rubbing
sound along the windshield and letters are being written across the
fogged up glass. First there's an "n" and an "e" and the first word
is "next."
Then there's a "t" and an "i" and then that ends up being "time." Then
a "y" and an "o" and a "u."
The
last word was "die."
"Man,
but did the truck engine finally fire up right then and I burned rubber,
Carl says. "Left the saw right there on the ground in broad daylight
and
just got the
hell out.
I
still
get chills,
and no
there never was a next time. I never went back."
Plenty
of others have though — including Carl's supervisor, Dennis
Higgs.
"See
once Denny got over being pissed at me fro refusing to finish the job
he turned it into a huge joke that got old real quick to me, but not
to him. When that
day
came
a
month or so later and he'd asked me for the millionth time if I'd heard
any knew ghost stories
lately
I
broke and bet him $500 that he didn't have the guts to shut up and
go up there and cut that tree up himself. Dang if he didn't take me
up on it right there — and it was his crazy idea to go do it after
dark!"
It was
the last time Carl saw Higgs alive. The next morning just after sunrise
a jogger heading uphill along Mt. Hollywood Drive found a city vehicle
idling with its headlights on and pointed at the fallen tree.
Stopping to investigate the jogger found Higgs flat on his back and
not moving, a chainsaw by his side with the blade bent into a u-shape.
Summoning help with the vehicle's radio paramedics arrived shortly
thereafter but attempts to revive Higgs were unsuccessful.
"You
know the coroner listed the cause of death as a heart attack," Carl
says, "but he died of fright! The fool's hair had gone completely white
and the paramedic who tried to bring him back told me Higgs had the
most
horrified
expression
frozen on his face as if he'd seen the devil."
The
initial police investigation even suspected foul play after finding
Higgs' hands injured and several fingernails broken in what looked
to be a struggle against someone who dragged him from the side of the
truck along the ground more than 15 feet toward the damaged picnic
table.
"Not
someone, "Carl insists. "Some thing!"
And
while whatever caused his supervisor's demise may be a matter of opinion,
what is fact is that no attempt to take down that dead tree or to remove
that broken table has been made since, something that Griffith Park's
Chief Ranger Albert Torres sarcastically thinks is city bureacracy
at its
finest.
And he
scoffs
at the idea
that the ghosts of Rand and Nancy are lurking in the shadows waiting
to lashout at hapless passers-by.
"It's
a big park, somebody's got to haunt it," Torres says. "But frankly
I'm not afraid of any make-believe demons as much as I am of some of
the living and breathing human monsters who come here. Don't get me
wrong, the vast majority of the visitors to the park are here to enjoy
themselves and its resources. But if you knew even a quarter of the
stuff we find within the park's perimeter you'd
never set foot in it again. Animal sacrifices, satanic cults, murders,
prostitution... with stuff like that happening on a regular basis it
makes a pair of 30-year-old ghosts look like good times."
Not
according to one former Griffith Park ranger who claims to have encountered
the ghosts of Rand and Nancy in 2002 but would speak only on condition
of anonymity.
"It
was about 10 p.m. and I'd just come off a break on Mulholland Trail
admiring the serenity and the view to the west. Heading north on Mt.
Hollywood Drive I was passing the picnic table on my left and from
out of nowhere I heard this unearthly noise from somewhere up in the
brush to the north. I'd never heard anything like it before. It started
as this horrible sobbing that alternated between screams and a
wicked laugh that made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight
up."
A radio
malfunction prevented the ranger from calling for assistance.
"All
I got was static."
Shining
the door-mounted spotlight at the table and beyond, the ranger saw
what looked to be two shrouded figures freeze before fleeing deeper
into the forest and melting into the dark beyond the reach of the beam.
All
my training was telling me not to pursue. That and the fact that before
they ran away I was looking at two sets of glowing red eyes staring
back at me. That freaked me out, but I got out of the truck and gave
chase anyway. I think it was more curiosity than common sense.
Armed
with only a flashlight it was a curiosity that almost killed.
"The
screaming stopped abruptly when I was not more than a few feet past
the table and the fallen tree and for a second everything was quiet
until I was overcome with this deep sense of dread and evil.
There was no
doubt in my
mind
that whatever was out there was angry at my presence and was going
to do whatever it could to get rid of me."
And
that's when the ranger's flashlight failed.
"Unable
to see at all I turned to run back to the truck but I was suddenly
enveloped in a suffocating embrace and there was this freezing cold
air on
my
neck
as if
something had grabbed me around my chest and was breathing on me.
Then a voice whispered 'leave us alone!'"
And
the stink is something the ranger will never forget.
"It
was the smell of death," and the last thing I remember before coming
to on the hillside a short while later."
It was
still dark when the ranger woke up.
"I
wasted no time thinking about what had happened or why I wasn't dead
or why my shirt had been undone
and my chest hurt
and
instead
just
got
buttoned up and back to my truck where I found the radio back in
working order and my
supervisor
on the other
end
wondering
where the hell I was. I gave some half-assed explanation about
being out patroling on foot and got back to the station as quick as
I could."
The
ranger filed no report on the incident, but put in for a transfer first
thing the next day after coming home and
finding
out
the reason
behind
the unbuttoned shirt and burning chest pains.
"I
was all set to start to blame what happened as the product of an overactive
imagination until I got home and took my shirt off to take a shower
and found my chest caked in dried blood from a warning
scratched
into it as if with a fingernail.
It read:
"Next time you die."
1 comment:
Scary that's it now 2020 and this happened around in the 1970s
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