1. ANZA BORREGO STATE PARK: Vallecito Station
Once a stop on the Butterfield State Line (which boasted to take
passengers from St. Louis to San Francisco in less than twenty-four
days), the adobe lodge is now the home to two Texans who killed each
other in a gunfight. Also, a spectral white horse appears on moonlit
nights, but perhaps most famous of all is the White Lady of Vallecito.
It is believed that the White Lady is Eileen O'Connor who was on her way
to marry a wealthy man in Sacramento. The trip, however, was too much
for her, and she died at Vallecito. She was buried in her bridal gown in
the small graveyard on the site. According to local legend, she is
sometimes seen rising from her grave and floating next to the stage
stop, as if waiting for the next coach to arrive. One man even claims to
have received a shock when he touched the White Lady. A laughing cowboy
has appeared in a camper's tent and when the foundations of the
restrooms were being dug, workers were surprised to discover a woman's
ghost hovering above them. Current custodians at the park track the
mysterious movement of rocks at the site. Frequently, large rocks are
found placed in tree branches or on the corners of picnic tables. No
explanation has been given for the phenomenon.
2. BARSTOW: Calico Ghost Town
Tours though an underground mine and Iron Horse train rides to the Old
Workings mine in the north are just some of the attractions in Calico,
an 1880s silver mining town. The spirit of Wyatt Earp, who once lived
here, is said to roam the old wooden sidewalks, and the ghost of a woman
named Esmeralda haunts the old Playhouse. Calico is located off I-15
about ten miles northeast of Barstow.
3. BODIE: Bodie State Historic Park
In its heyday, in the late 1870s, Bodie was a booming mining town. It
had a population of ten thousand and had seventy saloons, thirty mines,
three breweries, three newspapers, a school and more than a handful of
whorehouses. Now, however, the only residents left in Bodie are a
handful of ghosts. A former Asian maid reportedly still walks the halls
of the J.S. Cain House.
Reportedly, she likes to sit on people's legs
while they sleep and pin them down. In the upstairs window of the
Dechambeau House, the ghost of the town busybody can still be seen
peeking from the window on occasion. In the museum people have reported
hearing a phantom player piano and disembodied voices have been heard in
and around the Seiler House. An elderly woman still sits in her rocking
chair in the Gregory House and a mother and her child haunt visitors to
the Mendocini House. Guests to the Order of Odd Fellows building have
heard the stomping of phantom feet on the floors. Around 4:00 P.M., in
the Bodie Graveyard to the northwest of the town, a woman wearing a
white dress and knitting has is often seen floating over a man's grave.
Perhaps, though, the most famous ghost in the Bodie Graveyard is the
"Angel of Bodie" who has been seen on numerous occasions by a variety of
people. She is the spirit of a little girl who accidentally strayed too
close behind a miner and was struck in the head with his pickax.
The abandoned mines in Bodie are also reported to be haunted. In 1902 a
pack mule was killed by a mine car at the five-hundred-foot level in
the Standard Mine. With its back broken, the miners shot the animal in
pity and buried it in a depleted shaft. Soon, the sound of the dead
mule's pack chains was being heard by miners and some were overwhelmed
by the smell of fresh mule droppings, and yet others, working at the
five-hundred-foot level, where the mule was killed - reported seeing the
white animal's ghost and refused to work on that level. According to
local legend, the mule still haunts the site of the Standard Mine. Also
in the Standard Mine, rocks tossed down the Lent Shaft (which is
1,200-feet deep) are answered with the ghostly echo of "Hey, you!"
Lucky Boy Mine was one of the last places where gold was dug out at Bodie. It shut down after
World War II
and there were only six people left in the town. Shortly there after,
in a drunken fight, one of the last remaining residents, by the name of
Ed, shot his Native American wife with his shotgun. Her right breast was
blown off by the shot and she later died in a hospital in Reno. Three
of the remaining Bodie residents decided to mete out their own brand of
justice against Ed. They tied him up, threw him in a local creek and
kicked him in the head until he passed out and drowned. Two months
later, the men started seeing the apparition of Ed's vengeful ghost, and
three weeks after the first appearance, each of the vigilantes did
under mysterious circumstances. One was found with a large gash in his
head. Another had a hemorrhage that grossly inflated his head. The body
of the third man ... was never found. Ed's ghost is still said to haunt
the landscape surrounding Bodie.
Bodie is twenty-six miles
southeast of Bridgeport. In Mono County, follow Highway 395 north and
exit east on Highway 270, fifteen miles to the ghost town. A total of
168 structures remain standing, some dating back to 1849.
4. BRENTWOOD: Monroe House
Psychic Anton LaVey and Bob Slatzer, one of Marilyn Monroe's former
husbands, claim that - on the eleventh anniversary of her death in 1973 -
Marilyn's ghost appeared to them in front of the house where she died
of a sleeping pill overdose on August 4, 1962. Even though she died that
night in the ambulance, her body was returned to her bedroom in order
to give Peter Lawford time to clean up any evidence of Monroe's affairs
with the Kennedy family. Numerous psychics have claimed to have been
able to contact Monroe, and all agree that she wants to send a specific
message: she did not commit suicide, her death was an accidental
overdose. But that's not all. According to Kenny Kingston, her psychic
advisor, she contacted him while he was driving on the Pacific
Palisades. She told Kingston in a psychic message that she would be
reborn in December 1980 on the Isle of Capri as a boy. Also, according
to a séance held in her bedroom in 1982, Monroe told those present that
in a past life she had been an Aztec maiden who had been offered up as a
sacrifice to the Aztec gods.
5. CALABASAS: Los Angeles Pet Cemetery
Many Hollywood pets are buried in this pet cemetery including Mary
Pickford's dog, the Little Rascal's dog and Hopalong Cassidy's horse.
However, the most famous ghost in this pet cemetery is Rudolph
Valentino's Great Dane, Kabar. The dog passed away in 1929 and was
buried here, but visitors to the cemetery report that the dog's playful
phantom still haunts the area around his grave, panting and licking
people who come close to his grave.
6. COLOMA: Vineyard House
In 1879, Robert Chalmers went mad. His mansion - Vineyard House - had
just been completed, but he never really got to live in it. He became
violent and for his own protection, as well as the protection of others,
his wife Louise chained him in the basement. Robert Chalmers refused to
eat and, eventually, starved to death. After Robert's death, the
grapevines at the home withered away and Louise had to close the winery
and turn the home into a boarding house in order to make money. Louise
even went so far as to allow the basement - where her husband had been
chained and died - to be rented for jail space and executions (by
hanging) were performed on the front lawn. In 1913, Louise passed away
and was buried next to Robert in the cemetery across from their home.
Since that time, those who have owned the home have been so frightened
by shining phantoms and the sounds chains rattling in the basement that
they have all sold the house. In 1956, the home was turned into a hotel,
but that did not stop the sightings. Guests and employees at Vineyard
House have reported numerous poltergeist events; glasses move by
themselves in the bar, and a Sacramento couple once left the hotel in
the middle of the night, insisting they had heard someone being murdered
in the next room. Sheriff's deputies, however, could find nothing
wrong; recently, however, a guest reported seeing the spirit of a small
boy being savagely beaten in Room 5 ... the same room that the
Sacramento couple had reported hearing the bloodcurdling screaming.
7. HALF MOON BAY: Moss Beach Distillery
140 Beach Way, Moss Beach
This old speakeasy is now haunted by the specter of a woman in a blue,
soaked in blood. Employees and customers have witnessed her next to the
piano, outside the women's bathroom or dancing in the deserted rooms. A
boy once ran from the restrooms screaming that a lady covered in blood
had touched him. In February 1992, two waitresses witnessed a barstool
turn somersaults across the room. The bloody woman in blue has even been
seen standing in the middle of Highway 1 which runs in front of the
Moss Beach Distillery. Her ghost has been sighted at the restaurant at
least once or twice every year for the last fifty years. "In August
1992, all the settings in the restaurant's automatic thermostat system
were mysteriously changed. The complicated reprogramming would have
taken most people three or four hours to perform. 'The company told me
that there was no way to could have been done except manually,' owner
John Barber related, 'but I had the only access key!'" Local legend
holds that the ghost that troubles the Moss Beach Distillery is that of a
young woman who was stabbed to death by a jealous lover in front of the
restaurant over seventy years ago.
8. HOLLYWOOD: Hollywood Roosevelt
One of the most haunted locations in Hollywood, former guests at the
Hollywood Roosevelt have never really left. Hotel employees report
catching glimpses of some of the stars who once stayed at the Roosevelt
in the hallway mirrors.
Marilyn Monroe
has been seen in the mirror that used to belong to her, which is on
display in the foyer by the elevators.
Montgomery Clift has been seen on
the ninth floor of the hotel, pacing the hallways and sometimes, people
have reported hearing him practicing his trumpet.
The ghost of actress
Carole Lombard has been seen in the suite that she once shared with
Clark Gable on the top floor of the hotel.
9. HOLLYWOOD: Runyon Park
Behind the tennis court on this decrepit 148-acre estate is a pink
concrete wall. On that wall is a piece of graffiti which reads "Welcome
to Hell." You would be hard pressed to find a place where this epitaph
would be more appropriate. The estate was originally built by singer
John McCormack and later owned by Huntington Hartford (the A&P heir)
and later still by Errol Flynn. However, in the 1960s, Runyon Park's
most infamous residents moved in when the abandoned estate became home
to
Charles Manson
and his "family." Today, a few brick foundations is all that stands on
the site of the once glorious mansion, but neighbors say that on some
summer nights, the old mansion still appears in all its glory complete
with the sounds of a party and "multicolored lights" on the upper
floors. In 1983, a malicious voice told psychic investigators on the
property to "GET OUT!"
10. LAKE TAHOE: Emerald Bay
On the southwest shore of Lake Tahoe is Emerald Bay, and located in
Emerald Bay is Fannette Island where the ghost of Dick Barter is still
said to roam. By the mid-1800s, most of the land around Emerald Bay had
been bought up by stagecoach magnate Ben Holladay. Dick Barter came to
Lake Tahoe in 1863 to serve as Holladay's caretaker, and even though he
was a sailor at heart, he soon took up the life of a hermit, only
leaving Emerald Bay to buy whiskey and provisions on the South Shore of
the lake. One night in January, Barter got caught in a winter storm and
in order to survive the squall, tied himself to his boat. He did not
make it home until the next morning, but by then it was too late for two
of his toes, which had frozen. He amputated them himself when gangrene
set in and kept them preserved in a jar to show people. After the storm,
Barter dug a tomb and built a small chapel for himself on Fannette
Island and let it be known that if he was ever found on his boat,
drowned, he wanted to be buried on the island in the tomb he had made.
Three years later, Barter's boat broke on the rocks at Rubicon Point. He
and his boat sunk in 1,400 feet of water and he was never recovered.
However, some say that Barter's ghost found its way back to Fannette
Island and now haunts the tomb and chapel he built there.
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