Devils Gate, Pasadena, Los Angeles County

At Devil's Gate Gorge in Arroyo Seco there sits a large rock outcrop that many believe is shaped like Satan's head, hence the name of the location. Factual information about the location's history is hard to come by, having been buried in tall tales and folklore, and these have, in turn, influenced much of what people say and have written about it in the tight circle of fact and nonsense that is human collective memory.

Holy crap, I read what I just wrote and realize that I have been listening to a lot of Aaron Mehnke's podcast* lately.

Regardless, what become common belief tends to color what people wish to write about and tends to change stories that we hold to be true of older stories. So, keep in mind that, especially when talking about Tongva beliefs below, there is a fair chance that the story is more nonsense than sense. But it's entertaining nonsense, and in the end, isn't that the highest form of truth?  The answer is no.

Okay, I promise that I have all of that out of my system now.

As noted above, the rock formation, from one angle, looks like a devil's head.  See what you think:

Local stories holds that the sounds of the river moving through the gorge sounds like laughing, which was allegedly thought by members of the local Tongva ethnolinguistic group to be the culture hero Coyote laughing**. Some telling shold that the Tongva felt that the location was supernaturally powerful and to be avoided, and others that it was the gateway to the afterlife and therefore to be shunned by the living. I am skeptical of the claim that the Tongva had these story, especially the variations about avoiding the location - this sort of embellishment is often added to ghost stories to make them seem more authentic, but is almost always false.

In 1920, the gorge was dammed to create a reservoir and control flooding in the Los Angeles river system. However, the Devil's Head remained above water and continues to be visible

As time went on, the place began to collect other stories, the most entertaining of which involve Alastair Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard, and their friend, Jet Propulsion Laboratory c-founder and scientist and all around really weird guy, Jack Parsons.  According to the story, Ol' Al , Ron, and Jack were convinced that the Devil's Gate Gorge was a gateway to Hell (one of specifically seven) and full of all manner of supernatural power. Some folks have claimed that the location of the Jet Propulsion laboratory was intended to use power from the Devil's Gate, and is tied in to the various occult movement that have become popular in Los Angeles and Hollywood during the 20th century. While these stories tend to breakdown into incoherency pretty quickly, they are fun to hear and tell.

Among the stories are claims that Hubbard and Parsons too part in rituals at the gorge with the intention of tapping into the Hell gate's energy, possibly to create a Moon Child, a being that would embody a feminine divine force. Parsons and Hubbard did, in fact, engage in rituals for this purpose in 1946, though whether they did anything at Devils Gorge is not reported anywhere.

In the 1950s, a series of children went missing in the area, including 13-year-old Donald Lee Baker and 11-year old Brenda Howell in 1956, and 8 year-old Tommy Bowman in 1957 and 6-year-old Bruce Kremen in 1960. Bruce Kremen is especially baffling, as the boy was attending a YMCA camp, and left the counselors to walk 300 yards back to the camp lodging, only to vanish. The 1956 disappearances were explained years later when serial killer Mack Ray Edwards was caught. The later disappearances are still unsolved, and may have been tied in to Edwards, or may be due to some other cause. Regardless, they have added to the grisly history of the area.

Modern L.A.-area ghost hunters like too claim that these rituals opened the gate, allowing evil entities into our world. And they flock to the location hunting for these entities (I wonder what the OSHA requirements for protective equipment are? A Mojo hand? a gris-gris bag?).  Stories for the location include the (disappointedly mundane given the history above) usual orbs in photos and phantom voices. In one case, someone did report hearing singing coming from the metal gate shown in the picture above, and seeing red eyes peering from the back of the tunnel.

The folks at Offbeat L.A. provided a short and enjoyable description of the area, though they refer to mysterious wood structures that, to this individual who deals with utilities, look exactly like transmission line structures, so, you know, grain of salt and all.


*Which, if you haven't been listening to it, I have to ask, what is wrong with you? If you like the sordid tales that I post here, Aaron Mehnke's providing you the stronger stuff, and in excellent, if sometimes very wordy, format.

** I am not a specialist in Tongva mythology, but I am a professional archaeologist and anthropologist that works in California, and this explanation of allegedly local Native American belief sounds to me more like a 20th-century white-person claim than an actual part of the local Native Folklore, but, again, as I am not an expert on the stories of this particular region (my graduate research was performed farther north in the Santa Barbara area, and my professional life has been primarily in the San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevadas), I may be wrong and it is possible that this place was forbidden in the Tongva belief system. Incidentally, as I refer to utility companies later in this entry, I am an archaeologist employed currently by a utility company to help them comply with federal and state cultural resources laws - so I help protect archaeological sites, historic buildings, and spots important to Native Americans - yep, it's an actual job with a good career path and decent pay, so if you decide to get a Masters degree in archaeology, yes you can actually have a good job, no matter what all of those condescending assholes will imply.


Commentary: Naturally, the ghost hunters who visit the area are looking for the "norm" of our time - orbs, cold spots, and the like. Which is disappointing given the allegedly deep supernatural meaning of this place. I have to admit that, in reading LA Ghost Portal's write-up, I was a put off by their description of trying to reach out to the spirits of missing and dead children. That just seemed really tasteless to me. On the other hand, I included them in my description here, so perhaps I am guilty of the same tastelessness.


What I like about this story is the way that it weaves numerous different strands present in other ghost stories together. Appeals to Los Angeles supposed hedonism?  Check! Reference to a cult? Check, and bonus (both Crowley's temple and Scientology make an appearance!)! Reference to dark rituals?  Check! Reference to Native American sacred sites?  Check! Turning the mundane (a gate) into something creepy?  Check!

The story is, undoubtedly, mostly bullshit, though, wonderfully, the one element that might be true is the most outlandish - while I can't confirm that Parsons and Hubbard ever engaged in rituals at the Devils Gate, it would not have been any weirder than things that these two were confirmed to have gotten up to around that point in time.

Source: Atlas Obscura, LA Ghost Portal, Timeout, Offbeat L.A., Weird U.S.

Return to Babylon, Haunted Film

The film Return to Babylon is a bit of an interesting oddity, a silent film released in 2012 (similar to The Artist), it tells the tales of Hollywood's early years, focusing on the scandals that made and broke the stars of the silent film era.

According to the director, Alex Monty Canawati, he had wanted to make a silent film in the style of those from the 20s, and, one night, found a bag on a sidewalk in Hollywood. The bag contained 19 rolls of unused black and white 16 mm film. Canawati decided that, with this, he'd make his movie.

The film was shot on a shoe-string budget, despite having a number of well known stars in its cast. It never found a distributor, thanks in part to the sheer oddness of making a silent film in the modern era (though, yes, The Artist was successful), and so it took a while for people to see Return to Babylon...but when people did begin to see it, they saw something disturbing - not the content of the story, but things that were happening on screen.

In some scenes, the fingers of characters elongated into inhuman, possibly claw-like appendages. In others, the faces of the actors appeared to change into the faces of demonic monsters or desiccated corpses. In one case, an actor opens their mouth, and fangs appear.

The film makers insist that there were no special effects, and that they did not design these weird changes. The usual take is that the special effect that could do this is one referred to as "morphing", which would not have been feasible on the film's miniscule budget.

In interviews, cast and crew described numerous spooky happenings: feeling watched, feeling people poking or shoving them, hearing strange sounds without a clear source, and so on. Jennifer Tilly, who plays Clara Bow, has been especially vocal about this.

What was the source of these strange phenomenon? The film was shot in the homes and other favored places frequented by the stars whose fates the film dramatizes. Perhaps these locations are haunted, and this showed up on film. Maybe it's the film itself, those canisters that mysteriously came into Canawatti's possession - did some mysterious power want these images unleashed on the world and make the film available as an avenue for this?

Whatever the answer, the film remains a creepy mystery for now...

Commentary: ...or perhaps not. While neither I, nor anyone else aside from possibly the filmmakers, can say exactly what is going on in the footage, there are a number of possible explanations that are not supernatural.

For starters, some of the spooky images are, well, not really what they are claimed to be. For example, in a scene where an actor allegedly grows fangs - if you look closely at the image, it becomes clear that there are no fangs, just teeth and a low-quality image that makes the perfectly normal teeth reflect in a slightly odd way.

Some of the images, though, are decidedly odd. Even there, though, there may be a bit more going on in the natural world. Turns out that transferring from an old reel of film to digital medium for distribution (or online viewing) can cause some weird image distortions. In addition, I have my suspicions that the relatively low-resolution black and white image providing by the film may make it more open to cheaper post-production digital manipulation than a 35 mm color print or high-definition digital image would be. And, frankly, having looked at some of the images, they appear to me to be pretty clearly examples of blurrier images promoting Pareidolia rather than the horrific items that they are claimed to be.

Then, of course, there's the story of the film discovery...which seems like perfect fodder for an attention-getting ghost story, rather than a true event. I don't know, maybe running into bags of unused film does happen from time to time in Los Angeles (it never happened when I was down there, but maybe I was just hanging out in the wrong part of town), but that just seems...a little to convenient, I suppose.  Also, there's the fact that the film couldn't find a distributor, and that the filmmakers needed to draw some attention to it in order to remedy this problem. Put that together, and, as an outside observer, it seems likely to me that the story was added at a later time (maybe with some special effects work) in an attempt to draw attention to a film that wasn't getting any.

Also worth noting - the director is either nutty or (more likely) a hilarious prankster, and has claimed that various places where shadows or hair cover the faces of various actresses demonstrates that they have become "Christ Like" and that, perhaps, his movie is part of biblical prophecy.


Added Bonus: Of course, we can't leave the entry about a haunted film without included a trailer and clips, now can we? For whatever reason, Youtube is not letting me embed the clips, but the links below should get you where you want to go.

First off, the director is either crazy or funny, I am not sure which:

https://youtu.be/6NxQxOZedOk

Next, a short film on the film...

https://youtu.be/4VNer3mEl_g

...and the trailer

https://youtu.be/rrPrDFHJf5A


Sources: Wikipedia, Week in Weird, The Paranormalistics, Strange State, Moviepilot, Telegram.com

Ghosts of Howard Hughes, a Small Boy, and the Playa Vista Project

One of my subordinates was an osteologist* on the Playa Vista project (see commentary below for description of the project).  Her job was to excavate and process human remains excavated from burials that were to be otherwise destroyed by the construction of a new planned community.  Once the human remains were removed from the ground, they were taken to a building that was once one of Howard Hughes' industrial facilities where they were catalogued and prepared for further analysis, repatriation, or curation, depending on the particular materials in question.

While working in the field lab, my minion (I prefer the word "minion" to "subordinate") and her coworkers began to experience some strange things.  They would see shadows moving in unoccupied rooms or between stacks of boxes; they would see something colored bright white moving along just at the corner of their vision; and they began to hear what sounded like the footprints of a child.

After a time, they began to hear noises, which at first were simply odd, indistinguishable sounds, but eventually became voices.  On more than one occasion, one of the archaeologists working int he lab said that she heard someone whisper her name into her ear.

My minion reports that after the sound of the child's footprints began at the lab, she also began hearing them at her home.  One morning, she woke up and saw the child, a little caucasian boy who looked like something from the 1950s, standing in her room.  Others working on the project reported the same thing.

For reasons that she was never quite clear on, she and the other workers came to the conclusion that the white shape seen moving in the lab was another spirit, specifically the ghost of Howard Hughes.  As far as she knows, people on the project continue to see it.




*An osteologist is an anthropologist who specializes in dealing with human bone.  On projects like this one, they often are brought in to study the remains taken out of burials.

Commentary:  First off, let me say that I am happy that this is not a typical "haunted Indian Burial ground" story.  The entire trope is rooted in racism and is insulting to Native Americans, as it essentially says lays at the feet of their ancestors every stupid thing that someone is too lazy to explain about their home.  That being said, even though the ghosts aren't Native American, these stories wouldn't exist without the excavations being performed at Playa Vista, so I would like to explain a bit about what is going on there.

The Playa Vista project is something of a textbook case of what can go wrong when Native Americans and land developers clash.

In 2003, construction of a huge mixed-use community called Playa Vista began along the Ballona Wetlands in Los Angeles County, California.  Cultural resources studies, including archaeology, had been performed prior to construction, and plans put into place for treatment of any archaeological resources encountered during construction.  This is all on the up-and-up, and everything appears to have followed the usual path from planning to environmental studies to development.

But then something went wrong.  It had been anticipated that a few burials might be found during construction, but hundreds were found.  The Native Americans who had participated in the initial studies and consultations, as well as others who had not (some claim that they were excluded intentionally, though I can find no evidence to confirm or deny such claims) demanded that plans be changed to account for the number of bodies found.  The developers refused, and continued on with the project.  Archaeologists tasked with excavating burials and seeing to it that they were properly treated got caught in the middle (with some archaeologists choosing sides and, frankly, making matters worse).  It is possible that the matter could have been resolved if the developers had been willing to redesign a portion of the project to avoid burials, or if enough bad blood had not been developed to allow for further consultation rather than simply the excavation of more burials, but this was not to be.  The project has now stretched on for eight years, and emotions continue to run high on all sides.

This Playa Vista project has devoured a huge amount of money in the excavation, study, and treatment of Native American remains.  I am one of the few archaeologists I know who has worked for more than a year in southern California who has not been sucked into the project, a fact for which I am very grateful.

So, it is in this pressure-cooker situation in which the archaeologists were working on this project, and a field lab for processing archaeological materials was set up in a building that used to be used by famous aircraft magnate/nutjob Howard Hughes.  Under the conditions, it is fair to ask whether the people who reported strange events were really experiencing them, or were simply dealing with a high-pressure situation while dealing with human remains in a building that has been owned by one of history's great creepy guys.

Still, I like the fact that the ghost story that came out of the excavation of Native American burials deal with a white industrialist and some white kid.  That amuses me.


Sources:  Personal Account, NPR News, Los Angeles Times, New York Times

Una Lake, Palmdale, California

Lake Una, located south of the City of Palmdale and immediately east of the reservoir Lake Palmdale, is a small lake or pond. Although the presence of such a body of water is remarkable within the arid desert environment, it appears otherwise uninteresting on first seeing it's placid water and rather typical local vegetation.

But, of course, it has it's stories. It is said that people approaching the lake at night have encountered a dark figure in clothing that appeared to be a fisherman's, telling them in slurred speech to leave the area. People have also reported seeing dark figures climbing into the trees and vanishing at night.



In addition to these ghostly phenomenon, some locals tell of a strange creature - never described - that sometimes emerges from the lake to devour whatever animals it can lay hand (um...teeth?) on. The lake is reputed to be bottomless, and it has been claimed that at least one diver has vanished while looking for the bottom, and that bodies of murder victims have been dumped in the lake never to be seen again. One story even holds that a school buss once ran off of the Sierra Highway (immediately adjacent to the lake) and neither it nor the driver or children in it were ever found.

Should you wish to enter the property, it is fenced off and private security has been known to patrol the area. So, this is one that is best viewed from afar.

Commentary: This is one of those entries that illustrates both why Shadowlands is simultaneously a wonderful and a terrible website for ghost story enthusiasts. This website contains the simple description: "Ghost of a fisherman has been reported to lash out, slurring viciously, ordering them to leave, also tales of black figures climbing into the trees and vanishing" complete with the weird phrasing and grammar. As I understand it, the webmaster of Shadowlands doesn't create these descriptions, but rather posts what is sent in. On the one hand, this allows us to quickly find ghost stories for most towns in the United States (as well as a few other countries), on the other hand the stories are often so brief, garbled, and confused that it can be difficult to do anything with them. So it goes.

Because Shadowlands is so useful for locating ghost stories, entries on the site are often simply copied and pasted into other websites, so if you go looking for Una Lake ghost stories online, you'll usually find a direct copy of the above-quoted sentence. Again I have to wonder if our reliance on the internet isn't a double-edged sword, allowing more access to stories, but also freezing them in (often lame and inane) forms rather than allowing them to grow and warp as folklore should.

Okay, so a bit o' science: Una Lake is what is called a rift lake or a sag pond (yes, there are technical differences between them, but I have been unable to find out which one best describes Una Lake). It sits on the San Andreas Fault, in a depression caused by the movement of the fault. Nearby Lake Palmdale (nearby as in "across the street") is in a similar basin, where a small natural lake has been turned into a larger reservoir (edited to add: the 1915 USGS topographic map for the location shows Lake Palmdale labeled as Una Lake, with the part now known as Una Lake being the eastern extent, cut off from the rest by the railroad, which appears to have been built on fill soils - so much for the bottomless lake, and thanks to one of the commenters below for pointing me to this map). A bit to the west, Lake Elizabeth is in a similar geologic formation. There has been a small lake within what is now Lake Palmdale for centuries, and it appears that Una Lake was part of this larger body. Regardless, the alleged depth of the lake may be due to it being on the fault and potentially between two cliffs....or it may be complete nonsense, I have been unable to find a reliable source of the lake's actual depth.

Neat!

Incidentally, my favorite entry from the comments on one of the "illustrious internet" entries in the sources below comes after a description of a cross erected near the lake that supposedly commemorates a murder victim. The commenter simply states "i broke that guys cross off nd threw it in the lake" (sic). Nobody feeds the troll, which is a shame, as it would likely have been hilarious.

Sources: Local Folklore, All Voices, The Illustrious Internet, My AV Online, More from the Illustrious Internet, Shadowlands