The Capitola Theatre in my current home of Capitola, California, is, unfortunately, no longer standing. Built in 1947 is a beachside movie theatre in the tourist area known as Capitola Village, the theatre was small, looked rather out-of-place, but was a local fixture for several decades. It became the second-run "cheap seats" theatre for the county, showing movies that had been out for several months as double-features at a discount price. This often resulted in very odd pairings, such as Raiders of the Lost Ark playing with the Neil Diamond vehicle The Jazz Singer or Modern Problems with Tron. The theatre closed as a movie venue in the mid-90s, but was saved from obsolescence by a group of local opera performers and enthusiasts who renovated it and used it for opera, live theatre, and the occasional cult movie (I remember seeing Raising Arizona at the theatre 'roundabouts 1999). After serving as a local performing arts establishment, the theatre again fell into disuse and was finally demolished in the first half of 2010.
Bit of a shame, really. For all of it's oddness, it was kind of a cool building.
And, of course, the theatre was said to be haunted.
The haunting manifestations are mostly of the audible, rather than the visible, variety. They are usually said to consist of the sounds of a crowd of people in the lobby or in the theatre after-hours. When investigated, naturally, there is nobody there. These stories are usually said to be reported by crews working on sets at night or in the mornings, and it is said that at least one of the construction workers who was performing renovations in the mid-90s walked off the job after hearing a crowd in the theatre, but seeing nobody present when he walked into the room. On another occasion, a woman working in the theatre took a phone call, which was intended for the theatre's seamstress. when she called up to the booth where the seamstress usually was, a woman's voice called back that she would accept the telephone call, but the woman who had initially taken the call was unsuccessful in transferring it. When she looked in the booth to see what the problem was, she found that the seamstress was not present.
Commentary: The Capitola theatre was a sort of non-landmark in Capitola. It was in the main tourist area which, by the 90s, had become very difficult to navigate during the summers, and parking was always a problem; it was located next to other buildings at the bottom of a cliff and less than 300 feet from the beach, meaning that it's architecture was not well-served by being near many things that might attract (or distract) one's eye; and it was one of many theatres within Santa Cruz county providing live theatre and oddball films. It was unique, it must be said, but it was a place that unfortunately faded into the background of a very active, busy community filled with unique buildings and eccentric artists.
I have commented before about the fact that it seems that every live theatre venue is said to be haunted. The same is not true of movie theatres - to be certain, there are movie theatres with ghostly reputations, but they seem to be less common than live theatre venues with resident spirits. Friends of mine who work in live theatre tell me that this has to do with a sense of tradition, a sense of fun among actors, and a tendency for many actors to be (for lack of a better word) over-dramatic and want to see wherever they are as special*.
In light of the disparity between haunted movie theatres and haunted live theatres, it is interesting to note that all of the ghost stories that I have been able to track down date to the mid-90s, and specifically cite set builders, renovation workers, seamstresses, and other people who would be present due to the conversion or use as an opera house/live theatre. It would appear that, in addition to being converted for use, the moviehouse also was initiated into the actor's tradition of ghost stories.
And, really, I wouldn't want it any other way.
*Though, one would think, that with the proliferation of "haunted" theatres, having the one that was ectoplasm-free would make your place special.
Sources: Santa Cruz Paranormal Research, Shadowlands (AKA the Illustrious Internet), Carpe Noctem, Cinema Treasures, KFRC
Showing posts with label Santa Cruz County. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Santa Cruz County. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Sunday, June 7, 2009
The White Lady of Graham Hill Road
A German immigrant living in the hills near Santa Cruz sent away for a mail-order bride from Massachusettes. The man was a violent alcoholic, however, and beat his wife on a regular basis, often forcing her to wear her wedding gown while he beat her.
After a time, the woman decided to leave her abusive husband, and began making arangements for escape. Upon learning of this, the drunkard's cruelty came to its climax, and he drugged her (though some versions of the story say that he killed her and then decapitated her post-mortem) and left her in the house, which he set on fire (some versions of the story claim that she was killed on her wedding night, before she even thought of leaving the man).
After her death, people began to report seeing a luminous woman dressed in white in the woods near the site of the house (just off of modern-day Graham Hill Road near the Ocean Street extension). Sometimes she is simply seen and/or heard as she walks through the woods. At other times she may take violent action against anyone that is unfortunate enough to encounter her (it seems likely that a white ghost said to haunt the Graham Hill Road Cemetery is the same as the White Lady).
Commentary: This is a variation on the White Lady ghost story, found throughout the world (one particularly famous example comes from the region of Bavaria, which mixes elements of the classic "White Lady" legend with elements of La Llarona). Santa Cruz's equivalent is made a bit more interesting by the fact that the area in which it occurs also has many other ghost stories associated with it (such as the stories associated with the cemetery on Graham Hill Road). The origins of the story are unclear, and even the story itself is highly variable - the version given above is the most common on heard, but another origin story for the ghost is similar to that for Christie Ranch on Santa Cruz Island, and features a young woman waiting for her husband, who has died in a shipwreck, eventually wasting away and dying of loneliness.
The location in which the story takes place, a forested area until a few decades ago when a new housing development and a condominium complex were constructed, is a slope at the foot of a hill. On this slope (at least as of a few years ago) is a decaying concrete foundation for a structure that might have been a house. The place has become a favorite location for local ghost hunters, legend trippers, and teens looking for a quiet make-out spot. It is across the street from the cemetery, and right next to one busy road and one eerily quiet road.
Sources: Local Legend, Newspaper, Santa Cruz Wiki, Wikipedia, Internet, Personal Account
After a time, the woman decided to leave her abusive husband, and began making arangements for escape. Upon learning of this, the drunkard's cruelty came to its climax, and he drugged her (though some versions of the story say that he killed her and then decapitated her post-mortem) and left her in the house, which he set on fire (some versions of the story claim that she was killed on her wedding night, before she even thought of leaving the man).
After her death, people began to report seeing a luminous woman dressed in white in the woods near the site of the house (just off of modern-day Graham Hill Road near the Ocean Street extension). Sometimes she is simply seen and/or heard as she walks through the woods. At other times she may take violent action against anyone that is unfortunate enough to encounter her (it seems likely that a white ghost said to haunt the Graham Hill Road Cemetery is the same as the White Lady).
Commentary: This is a variation on the White Lady ghost story, found throughout the world (one particularly famous example comes from the region of Bavaria, which mixes elements of the classic "White Lady" legend with elements of La Llarona). Santa Cruz's equivalent is made a bit more interesting by the fact that the area in which it occurs also has many other ghost stories associated with it (such as the stories associated with the cemetery on Graham Hill Road). The origins of the story are unclear, and even the story itself is highly variable - the version given above is the most common on heard, but another origin story for the ghost is similar to that for Christie Ranch on Santa Cruz Island, and features a young woman waiting for her husband, who has died in a shipwreck, eventually wasting away and dying of loneliness.
The location in which the story takes place, a forested area until a few decades ago when a new housing development and a condominium complex were constructed, is a slope at the foot of a hill. On this slope (at least as of a few years ago) is a decaying concrete foundation for a structure that might have been a house. The place has become a favorite location for local ghost hunters, legend trippers, and teens looking for a quiet make-out spot. It is across the street from the cemetery, and right next to one busy road and one eerily quiet road.
Sources: Local Legend, Newspaper, Santa Cruz Wiki, Wikipedia, Internet, Personal Account
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Porter College, University of California, Santa Cruz
The Santa Cruz campus of the University of California is divided into multiple residential colleges - individual semi-autonomous units where the students live and where administrative duties relevant to the students are taken care of. Each college has a specialty, and Porter College, on the western side of the campus, is primarily dedicated to the arts.
Porter is also home to some of the most ominous-looking buildings on the UCSC campus - grim concrete structures that loom more than stand. The residential halls (AKA the dorms) have basements in which students are allowed to live (or were allowed to live as of the time I graduated in 1998), an unusual feature for student housing buildings in California in general and Santa Cruz in particular.
Most of the stories concerning this place involve two buildings - Residence Hall A (aka Building A) and Residence Hall B (AKA Building B). In late 1998, a student killed himself in Building A. The suicide took place at a time and place that resulted in a large number of his fellow students witnessing his death - whether that was intentional or not I have not been able to determine. Since then, people have reported seeing this student wandering Building A, dressed as he was on the day that he killed himself.
Building B hosts two different stories. The first concerns a trio of rooms on the first floor known collectively as "the Bermuda Triangle." Reports from these rooms include objects moving on their own (sometimes as if they are being thrown violently), strange noises, and voices from unseen sources. All of this is accompanied by a general feeling of dread that permeates the rooms and their surroundings.
The other story for Building B concerns the third floor, where people report waking up and feeling as if they are being strangled and/or held down on the bed.
The Meadow - a large...well...meadow located in Porter College is also home to a ghost named Lily, the spirit of a transient woman who stayed there during the 1970s. She is usually seen dressed in rags or completely naked which, well, wouldn't really have differentiated her from many of the students at UCSC back when I was there.
I have heard these stories, and many others concerning generic feelings of dread, strange voices, briefly glimpsed apparitions, and the like from many of the Porter residents that I knew when I was a student at Crown College, across the Campus. Most of these stories were either clearly being told for entertainment purposes, or were told by rather overly-dramatic people who wanted solely to be the center of attention, and as such I was interested in the stories purely as entertainment and thought little else of them.
However, there is one exception. A woman who attended Porter, and has , eleven years later, become one of my closest friends, had some rather odd experiences. She is generally level-headed, and not given to fantasy-prone episodes, and so her stories are weightier to my mind than most of the others that I heard about Porter College.
She told me of numerous different happenings, most of them subtle, and most of them based either on perceived objects moving or sounds, or on general feelings of fear or malevolence experienced when in the residence halls. On one occasion, she opened the door to her room, and was left with a feeling that she describes as "being as if I had walked in on something, like a wolf had been breathing heavily, but suddenly became silent when the door opened and prey appeared."
On another occasion, she reports waking up in her bed with her arms stretched straight at her sides, and a general rigor-mortis-type feeling throughout her body.
Commentary: As stated above, Porter College is primarily dedicated to the arts, and as such it has the expected assortment of legitimate and talented young artists mixed in with overly-dramatic wannabes. Colleges in general are breeding grounds for ghost stories, and a place such as this even more so.
Porter's ghost stories are unusual in that the most famous undead resident, the student who killed himself, was a real person and not simply a fictitious construct. Stories of suicides-turned-ghosts are as common as college dormitory buildings, and usually are based on nothing but imagination. However, in this case, there really was a suicide, and it really was as public and disturbing as is usually described. Whether this occasioned new stories, or was simply meshed with previous stories of the ghost of a suicidal student, I do not know.
The experiences of my friend are somewhat difficult to explain. On the one hand, if I did not know the person, I would be quick to dismiss it as an overactive imagination. Certainly, some of the experiences she described to me (only two of many are described above) are consistent with well-known phenomenon such as sleep paralysis and waking dreams. Others, though, are more difficult to explain. Which is not to say that they can't be explained, but rather that I personally have not been able to do so, nor has anyone else provided a suitable explanation insofar as I know.
Porter is also host to many non-supernatural legends. It is rumored that the architect who designed had as his primary occupation the design of prisons, thus explaining the concrete blocks that stand-in for buildings at the college. This is, in fact, not true. The architect was attempting (and failing) to imitate traditional Japanese architecture, but did so using materials that resulted on one butt-ugly set of structures.
Also, it is rumored that Porter college was nearly named after Alfred Hitchcock, who had a home in Santa Cruz during the 1970s, but this is probably not true.
Also, general to UCSC and not just Porter, it is rumored that UCSC's non-centralized design (the various colleges are spread throughout a set of ridges in the forest) was intended to prevent student gatherings such as those at UC Berkeley. Given that the University was planned and built throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this seems reasonable. However, as someone who has gone through alot of the founding documents because of a job that I had while a student, I can tell you that there is no real truth to this rumor, and that the campus was designed as it is primarily for aesthetic reasons. Also, I can tell you from experience that the design of the campus has never prevented student protests.
All-in-all, Porter is one of the stranger parts of a very strange campus, even if you leave all ghost stories aside. However, the ghost stories give it that added element that just makes it particularly special.
SOURCES: Personal Accounts, Internet, Internet
Porter is also home to some of the most ominous-looking buildings on the UCSC campus - grim concrete structures that loom more than stand. The residential halls (AKA the dorms) have basements in which students are allowed to live (or were allowed to live as of the time I graduated in 1998), an unusual feature for student housing buildings in California in general and Santa Cruz in particular.
Most of the stories concerning this place involve two buildings - Residence Hall A (aka Building A) and Residence Hall B (AKA Building B). In late 1998, a student killed himself in Building A. The suicide took place at a time and place that resulted in a large number of his fellow students witnessing his death - whether that was intentional or not I have not been able to determine. Since then, people have reported seeing this student wandering Building A, dressed as he was on the day that he killed himself.
Building B hosts two different stories. The first concerns a trio of rooms on the first floor known collectively as "the Bermuda Triangle." Reports from these rooms include objects moving on their own (sometimes as if they are being thrown violently), strange noises, and voices from unseen sources. All of this is accompanied by a general feeling of dread that permeates the rooms and their surroundings.
The other story for Building B concerns the third floor, where people report waking up and feeling as if they are being strangled and/or held down on the bed.
The Meadow - a large...well...meadow located in Porter College is also home to a ghost named Lily, the spirit of a transient woman who stayed there during the 1970s. She is usually seen dressed in rags or completely naked which, well, wouldn't really have differentiated her from many of the students at UCSC back when I was there.
I have heard these stories, and many others concerning generic feelings of dread, strange voices, briefly glimpsed apparitions, and the like from many of the Porter residents that I knew when I was a student at Crown College, across the Campus. Most of these stories were either clearly being told for entertainment purposes, or were told by rather overly-dramatic people who wanted solely to be the center of attention, and as such I was interested in the stories purely as entertainment and thought little else of them.
However, there is one exception. A woman who attended Porter, and has , eleven years later, become one of my closest friends, had some rather odd experiences. She is generally level-headed, and not given to fantasy-prone episodes, and so her stories are weightier to my mind than most of the others that I heard about Porter College.
She told me of numerous different happenings, most of them subtle, and most of them based either on perceived objects moving or sounds, or on general feelings of fear or malevolence experienced when in the residence halls. On one occasion, she opened the door to her room, and was left with a feeling that she describes as "being as if I had walked in on something, like a wolf had been breathing heavily, but suddenly became silent when the door opened and prey appeared."
On another occasion, she reports waking up in her bed with her arms stretched straight at her sides, and a general rigor-mortis-type feeling throughout her body.
Commentary: As stated above, Porter College is primarily dedicated to the arts, and as such it has the expected assortment of legitimate and talented young artists mixed in with overly-dramatic wannabes. Colleges in general are breeding grounds for ghost stories, and a place such as this even more so.
Porter's ghost stories are unusual in that the most famous undead resident, the student who killed himself, was a real person and not simply a fictitious construct. Stories of suicides-turned-ghosts are as common as college dormitory buildings, and usually are based on nothing but imagination. However, in this case, there really was a suicide, and it really was as public and disturbing as is usually described. Whether this occasioned new stories, or was simply meshed with previous stories of the ghost of a suicidal student, I do not know.
The experiences of my friend are somewhat difficult to explain. On the one hand, if I did not know the person, I would be quick to dismiss it as an overactive imagination. Certainly, some of the experiences she described to me (only two of many are described above) are consistent with well-known phenomenon such as sleep paralysis and waking dreams. Others, though, are more difficult to explain. Which is not to say that they can't be explained, but rather that I personally have not been able to do so, nor has anyone else provided a suitable explanation insofar as I know.
Porter is also host to many non-supernatural legends. It is rumored that the architect who designed had as his primary occupation the design of prisons, thus explaining the concrete blocks that stand-in for buildings at the college. This is, in fact, not true. The architect was attempting (and failing) to imitate traditional Japanese architecture, but did so using materials that resulted on one butt-ugly set of structures.
Also, it is rumored that Porter college was nearly named after Alfred Hitchcock, who had a home in Santa Cruz during the 1970s, but this is probably not true.
Also, general to UCSC and not just Porter, it is rumored that UCSC's non-centralized design (the various colleges are spread throughout a set of ridges in the forest) was intended to prevent student gatherings such as those at UC Berkeley. Given that the University was planned and built throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this seems reasonable. However, as someone who has gone through alot of the founding documents because of a job that I had while a student, I can tell you that there is no real truth to this rumor, and that the campus was designed as it is primarily for aesthetic reasons. Also, I can tell you from experience that the design of the campus has never prevented student protests.
All-in-all, Porter is one of the stranger parts of a very strange campus, even if you leave all ghost stories aside. However, the ghost stories give it that added element that just makes it particularly special.
SOURCES: Personal Accounts, Internet, Internet
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The Rispin Mansion
The Rispin Mansion, in Capitola, CA is a forboding structure. A concrete mansion built in the style of an Italian villa, both majestic and oddly out of place. And, of course, it’s haunted. Although numerous different stories are attributed to the place – ranging from the truly strange and difficult to explain to the just plain stupid* - there are four that show up in every written account that I have found (though, interestingly, I have never heard anyone tell any of these four, they just show up in the written sources).
The first holds that a woman in Victorian-era clothes can be seen walking the top floor (odd, as the place wasn’t built until the 1920s). The second is that a man wearing glasses appears near one of the fireplaces and vanishes. The third is that a man can be heard calling for help from the basement. And the fourth is that an angry dog can be heard growling and sometimes be seen.
Other stories that I have actually heard from locals tend to be fairly typical of haunted houses – strange whispers that nobody can quite make out, weird feelings of being watched, cold spots, and things just glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.
*it was at this place that I watched a well-trained professional photographer explain to a guy that the “orb” in his photo was actually a well-understood photographic artifact and not a sign of ghostly interference – and watched the guy tell the photographer that she was clearly wrong and knew nothing about photography.
Commentary: The Rispin Mansion was built during the prohibition era by H. Allen Rispin, who had hoped to further develop the resort area in Capitola. In addition to its use as a residence, the mansion was also used for rum-running, and for this purpose there are numerous secret passages and hiding places throughout the mansion. Rispin overextended himself and hit trouble in 1928 and lost his holdings beginning in 1930 (though, to be fair, the 1929 crash and ensuing depression probably helped there). The mansion was then bought by Robert Hays Smith, who also suffered from the Great Depression and eventually sold the house to the Catholic Church, who used it as a convent. In 1957, the nuns left, and the building was derelict for a while, until a commune moved in during the 1960s. During the 70s, the mansion became the favored living quarters for local squatters. By the early 80’s, the ghost stories appear to have surfaced.
This particular haunted house is near and dear to my heart. You see, I have met the ghost.
When I moved to Santa Cruz in 1996, I immediately began to collect local ghost stories. It wasn’t long before I came across the story of the Rispin Mansion. Over the course of the next few years, I would ask locals about the building. In 1999, I finally hit the jackpot. I met a local woman who had been fascinated with the building since she was a teenager in the 1970s and 1980s. She was able to give me a large amount of detail about the building, and the lives of the various members of the Rispin family – outside of the scope of this entry, but fascinating stuff nonetheless. She also made clear her disgust of the vandals who would routinely do damage to the place. And then she told me something very interesting – as teenagers, she and her friends would go to the house in the evenings, and find hiding places – in secret passages, in hidden corners, etc. When others would come to do damage to the place, this group of self-appointed protectors would jump out of the passages screaming, let loose with eerie moans, and generally do all that they could to freak out any would-be vandals.
Given her descriptions of the place and how she and her friends would try to frighten others and matching it with the descriptions of the local ghosts, it quickly became apparent that many of the stories associated with this place have their roots in her activities (a few others probably come from the simple fact that it’s a big, creepy-looking decaying structure). In other words, it was one of those rare Scooby-Doo moments when you unmask the monster only to discover that it’s Mr. Johnson who runs the carnival.
Regardless of the source of the original stories, the place does have a creepy-ass reputation, and there are those who have sought to profit from this. When plans were developed in the mid-90’s to renovate the structure as a hotel (plans that only now, 13 years later, appear to actually be getting under way), one of the many “psychic spiritual medium and healers” that are rather ubiquitous in the Santa Cruz area came forth offering to “help the spirits move on” – and apparently was welcomed by the developers, whether because they thought she could help or as a PR move is not clear.
Regardless, it does appear that the mansion will soon be refurbished, and people coming to the area will be able to spend a night in the mansion. I have to say, I’m tempted to book a room myself.
UPDATE: As of early 2010, the house has been severly damaged due to a fire last summer, and there is a good deal of debate as to whether or not it is savable. The building may be torn down, unfortunately, removing a piece of Santa Cruz County's historic landscape. However, if it is salvageable, it may yet be renovated. We'll just have to wait and see.
SOURCES: Local Folklore, Consultation with Members of Santa Cruz County Historical Society, Newspapers, San Jose Mercury News, Internet , Internet
The first holds that a woman in Victorian-era clothes can be seen walking the top floor (odd, as the place wasn’t built until the 1920s). The second is that a man wearing glasses appears near one of the fireplaces and vanishes. The third is that a man can be heard calling for help from the basement. And the fourth is that an angry dog can be heard growling and sometimes be seen.
Other stories that I have actually heard from locals tend to be fairly typical of haunted houses – strange whispers that nobody can quite make out, weird feelings of being watched, cold spots, and things just glimpsed out of the corner of the eye.
*it was at this place that I watched a well-trained professional photographer explain to a guy that the “orb” in his photo was actually a well-understood photographic artifact and not a sign of ghostly interference – and watched the guy tell the photographer that she was clearly wrong and knew nothing about photography.
Commentary: The Rispin Mansion was built during the prohibition era by H. Allen Rispin, who had hoped to further develop the resort area in Capitola. In addition to its use as a residence, the mansion was also used for rum-running, and for this purpose there are numerous secret passages and hiding places throughout the mansion. Rispin overextended himself and hit trouble in 1928 and lost his holdings beginning in 1930 (though, to be fair, the 1929 crash and ensuing depression probably helped there). The mansion was then bought by Robert Hays Smith, who also suffered from the Great Depression and eventually sold the house to the Catholic Church, who used it as a convent. In 1957, the nuns left, and the building was derelict for a while, until a commune moved in during the 1960s. During the 70s, the mansion became the favored living quarters for local squatters. By the early 80’s, the ghost stories appear to have surfaced.
This particular haunted house is near and dear to my heart. You see, I have met the ghost.
When I moved to Santa Cruz in 1996, I immediately began to collect local ghost stories. It wasn’t long before I came across the story of the Rispin Mansion. Over the course of the next few years, I would ask locals about the building. In 1999, I finally hit the jackpot. I met a local woman who had been fascinated with the building since she was a teenager in the 1970s and 1980s. She was able to give me a large amount of detail about the building, and the lives of the various members of the Rispin family – outside of the scope of this entry, but fascinating stuff nonetheless. She also made clear her disgust of the vandals who would routinely do damage to the place. And then she told me something very interesting – as teenagers, she and her friends would go to the house in the evenings, and find hiding places – in secret passages, in hidden corners, etc. When others would come to do damage to the place, this group of self-appointed protectors would jump out of the passages screaming, let loose with eerie moans, and generally do all that they could to freak out any would-be vandals.
Given her descriptions of the place and how she and her friends would try to frighten others and matching it with the descriptions of the local ghosts, it quickly became apparent that many of the stories associated with this place have their roots in her activities (a few others probably come from the simple fact that it’s a big, creepy-looking decaying structure). In other words, it was one of those rare Scooby-Doo moments when you unmask the monster only to discover that it’s Mr. Johnson who runs the carnival.
Regardless of the source of the original stories, the place does have a creepy-ass reputation, and there are those who have sought to profit from this. When plans were developed in the mid-90’s to renovate the structure as a hotel (plans that only now, 13 years later, appear to actually be getting under way), one of the many “psychic spiritual medium and healers” that are rather ubiquitous in the Santa Cruz area came forth offering to “help the spirits move on” – and apparently was welcomed by the developers, whether because they thought she could help or as a PR move is not clear.
Regardless, it does appear that the mansion will soon be refurbished, and people coming to the area will be able to spend a night in the mansion. I have to say, I’m tempted to book a room myself.
UPDATE: As of early 2010, the house has been severly damaged due to a fire last summer, and there is a good deal of debate as to whether or not it is savable. The building may be torn down, unfortunately, removing a piece of Santa Cruz County's historic landscape. However, if it is salvageable, it may yet be renovated. We'll just have to wait and see.
SOURCES: Local Folklore, Consultation with Members of Santa Cruz County Historical Society, Newspapers, San Jose Mercury News, Internet , Internet
Monday, March 30, 2009
The Brookdale Lodge
Entry Updated 2-5-2013
The Brookdale Lodge is located on on Highway 9 in Brookdale (hence the name, amazing, isn't it?) in Santa Cruz County. In addition to a hotel, the lodge also boasts a beautiful restaurant known as the Brook Room, built on top of a natural creek - and the floor of the restaurant has been built so that the creek bed is visible running through the place.
I know that I have been spending too much time performing archaeological survey - I had to go through that last paragraph and replace the word "drainage" with "creek."
The lodge began as the headquarters of the local lumber company in the 1890’s. It passed through different owners, and was a hotel, resort, and currently is both a restaurant and hotel. During the 1920’s through 1940’s it was a hotspot resort and is known to the music world through three different swing-era songs, and known to the rest of the world as a popular vacation spot for the wealthy. Over time, the lodge feel into disrepute, but has been somewhat rehabilitated, and is today known as a local music spot, though no longer as a prime resort.
Local legend holds that mobsters from San Francisco would come to the Brookdale lodge when they wanted to lay low for a while or conduct their business in secret - after all, with the lodge as isolated as it is, law enforcement officials were supposedly rarely seen in the area. These stories are rather surprising, as from 1922 through 1945 the Brookdale Lodge was operated by a Seventh Day Adventist who adhered to prohibition, and was a wildly popular resort location. The period of infamy didn’t begin until the late 1940’s, but rumors of bodies buried under the floor and locations used for murders are a common part of local folklore.
Visitors to the hotel claim to have heard voices and also to have heard scratching along the exterior walls of the hotel - and it has been claimed that these are the actions of the ghosts of mobsters or their victims. Other, less ominous, voices and laughter are claimed to be the residue of the lodge’s good times as a resort. In addition, a previous owner of the lodge, H. J. Logan, had a young daughter named Sarah who fell into the creek in the Brook Room, was knocked unconscious, and drowned. Visitors report seeing and even talking to a girl who matches her description, but who vanishes mysteriously as soon as the person interacting with her looks away.
In the Mermaid Room, a room in which an entire wall is a thick sheet of glass that looks into the hotel's swimming pool, people have reported hearing voices, and clinking glasses, as if there is a spectral party taking place. And throughout the hotel, the sounds of slamming doors and footsteps in empty rooms have been reported.
Room 46 is reputed to be the most haunted location within the lodge. As put in a page on Montereybay.org's website:
Commentary: Okay, a lot of stuff going on here.
First off, there’s the allure of the dark history of a once-popular and glamorous location. That alone would put this place into legend-land without the ghost story aspect. Likely much of the gangland-era story (bodies in the floorboards, murders carried out in a meatlocker to prevent the victim’s screams from being heard etc.) are exaggeration or fabrication. Nonetheless, it makes for a creepy story even if you don’t think the dead are returning.
The ghost stories have three elements – one is a typical scare story that involves voices from beyond reliving their terrifying final moments or, possibly, giving voice to their current terror due to their violent lives or end. The experiences described are typically vague and could be explained by a number of different non-ghostly sources. However, it does make for a good story to tell your date when you are winding your way up Highway 9 – in fact, I highly recommend doing so. Regardless, these stories are typical of places that have a reputation, deserved or not, for violence and shady characters. They are interesting both in the fact that we often turn perceived evil into entertainment, and also because they often reflect two different notions: 1) we assume that places where dirty deeds were done may retain a taint from those deeds (or, perhaps, when we find a place we believe to be tainted, we tend to try to find events to which we may attach the alleged taint), and 2) we see this as consequences of bad action, a cautionary tale, so to speak.
The second type of story involves the general "bumps in the night" that tend to get associated with most historic buildings. This includes the sounds of diners and of hotel residents moving about. Usually these stories are creepy because they are "unnatural", but have little menace implied in them. However, as the story of Room 46 shows, even these stories can take on more disturbing aspects.
The third story, that of the ghostly girl who appears and interacts with guests, is typical of another type of ghost story. Children who die early are often the subjects of ghost stories, and are usually either pitiable – Sarah is sometimes seen crying for her mother – or else cute and charming – Sarah is also often said to be interacting with people in a very friendly manner. The deeper cultural meaning of these stories is not clear, but it likely results from the fact that most adults view the death of a child as a heartbreaking event, even if they did not know the child (I used to visit cemeteries on a regular basis and had to stop going to those that had a section of graves for children, I found the situation too upsetting). In a way, the presence of the ghost, while potentially unnerving, is also reassuring, it lets us think that she will remain an idealized pure and innocent child for eternity, and that perhaps her untimely death was not the end of the story.
Personal Experience: In December of 2009, I had the good fortune to attend a role-playing game mini-convention hosted at the Brookdale Lodge. The games all had a horror theme, so placing them in a haunted hotel was appropriate. The lodge, however, is in poor repair. The guest rooms, which are in a separate building from the rest of the facilities, were actually quite nice, if a bit strange in their set-up (there was no way to use the curtains to keep out the morning light, because the curtains were on windows that didn't get the morning light, curtains hung over the heater, preventing its operation, etc.). The rest of the lodge, though, including the lobby, dance floor, meeting room (which is called the Log Cabin because it is, well, in a log cabin attached to the rest of the building) were in a bad state. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed in, many of the light fixtures were broken, and we were experiencing extremely heavy rains, so leaks in the roof resulted in soaked floors in much of the establishment. Add to this that, due to the storms, the power kept going out, and quite literally half of the time that we were gaming, it was under candlelight or battery-powered lanterns, and you can imagine that the eeriness of the place really began to get to us.
For any other event, this would have been disastrous. For a horror game convention, this was perfect, and we all had a blast - in fact, when power was restored, most of the players clamored for the lights to be turned back off, as we had worked out a tremendous sense of atmosphere with the candles and battery-powered lanterns.
In between evening games, and after gaming had completed for the evening (around 1 AM), we would go exploring the lodge. Exploring the Mermaid Room was especially unnerving. The pool is closed, as is the bar in the room, and the room's floor was covered in water (not from the pool, but from multiple leaks in the roof), and with the lights out, the room had a truly creepy atmosphere. The general consensus was that everyone who entered the room kept expecting to hear a thud from the glass wall, and to see that a corpse had floated through the swimming pool and bounced up against it.
One of my fellow convention-goers ended up in room 46, and he claims to have heard someone clearing their throat when nobody but him was in the room. He was sitting on the bed writing a text message when he heard the sound immediately to his right. He decided that the best thing to do was to act as if he hadn't heard it, and continue with his message.
A couple of teenage girls had been brought to the lodge by the mother of one of them as a birthday gift - they wanted to spend the night in a haunted hotel. They claimed to have heard the spectral party in the mermaid room, as well as to have heard a crash without a source in the room adjacent to the Mermaid Room that contains a stage and dance floor. However, given that one of my fellow gamers had decided to sneak around the place and jump out at these girls and generally make noise, it is open to discussion just how much of the stories that the girls told were their imaginations, ghosts, or rowdy gamers.
I took my camera with me, of course, and took the following photos in the Brook Room shortly after sunset:
These photos were taken within 30 seconds of each other, and I don't know what the white haze is. My girlfriend suggests that it may be my breath condensing in the air in front of the camera, entirely possible as it was rather cold in the Brook Room. It may also have been some other camera malfunction, or the flash reflecting off of moisture in the air (edit to add: In the years since I first wrote thus entry, I have become a much more proficient photographer, and it's now clear that vapor reflecting a flash is the cause). Basic point - seeing something weird on a camera does not a ghost make, cameras malfunction sometimes, and flashes can create weird visual artifacts. Still, when you are in a hotel with a haunted reputation and you see something like this just as the sun has gone down...well, it kinda' makes you shudder just a little.
The rest of these photos were taken between 1 AM and 2 AM. I wandered through the brook room, feeling a bit creeped out the entire time, and simultaneously hoping that I would get an image of something unnatural, and that my photos would end up prosaic and boring. Well, I got prosaic, but the images do give a feel of what the place was like with all of the lights out:
SOURCES: Local legend, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Personal Experience, Listing of Newspaper Stories.
The Brookdale Lodge is located on on Highway 9 in Brookdale (hence the name, amazing, isn't it?) in Santa Cruz County. In addition to a hotel, the lodge also boasts a beautiful restaurant known as the Brook Room, built on top of a natural creek - and the floor of the restaurant has been built so that the creek bed is visible running through the place.
I know that I have been spending too much time performing archaeological survey - I had to go through that last paragraph and replace the word "drainage" with "creek."
The lodge began as the headquarters of the local lumber company in the 1890’s. It passed through different owners, and was a hotel, resort, and currently is both a restaurant and hotel. During the 1920’s through 1940’s it was a hotspot resort and is known to the music world through three different swing-era songs, and known to the rest of the world as a popular vacation spot for the wealthy. Over time, the lodge feel into disrepute, but has been somewhat rehabilitated, and is today known as a local music spot, though no longer as a prime resort.
Local legend holds that mobsters from San Francisco would come to the Brookdale lodge when they wanted to lay low for a while or conduct their business in secret - after all, with the lodge as isolated as it is, law enforcement officials were supposedly rarely seen in the area. These stories are rather surprising, as from 1922 through 1945 the Brookdale Lodge was operated by a Seventh Day Adventist who adhered to prohibition, and was a wildly popular resort location. The period of infamy didn’t begin until the late 1940’s, but rumors of bodies buried under the floor and locations used for murders are a common part of local folklore.
Visitors to the hotel claim to have heard voices and also to have heard scratching along the exterior walls of the hotel - and it has been claimed that these are the actions of the ghosts of mobsters or their victims. Other, less ominous, voices and laughter are claimed to be the residue of the lodge’s good times as a resort. In addition, a previous owner of the lodge, H. J. Logan, had a young daughter named Sarah who fell into the creek in the Brook Room, was knocked unconscious, and drowned. Visitors report seeing and even talking to a girl who matches her description, but who vanishes mysteriously as soon as the person interacting with her looks away.
In the Mermaid Room, a room in which an entire wall is a thick sheet of glass that looks into the hotel's swimming pool, people have reported hearing voices, and clinking glasses, as if there is a spectral party taking place. And throughout the hotel, the sounds of slamming doors and footsteps in empty rooms have been reported.
Room 46 is reputed to be the most haunted location within the lodge. As put in a page on Montereybay.org's website:
In the 1970's a wing of motel rooms was built over the spot where once stood the lodge's camping cabins. Room 46 of the motel wing is reported to be very haunted. A woman who worked at the lodge in exchange for lodging has reported that at night objects and shapes would fly across the room. Ghostly ballroom dancers would swirl around leering at her as they floated by. Ghosts would materialize around her bed, their faces sometimes vague and sometimes very very clear. One of the ghosts was a little boy, perhaps 12 or 13 years old, another was a man with his eye hanging loose on his cheek, and still another was a man with a knife wound across his face. Not all of her experiences in room 46 were visual. She also reports that once she felt somebody sit on the edge of her bed and stroke her arm.
Commentary: Okay, a lot of stuff going on here.
First off, there’s the allure of the dark history of a once-popular and glamorous location. That alone would put this place into legend-land without the ghost story aspect. Likely much of the gangland-era story (bodies in the floorboards, murders carried out in a meatlocker to prevent the victim’s screams from being heard etc.) are exaggeration or fabrication. Nonetheless, it makes for a creepy story even if you don’t think the dead are returning.
The ghost stories have three elements – one is a typical scare story that involves voices from beyond reliving their terrifying final moments or, possibly, giving voice to their current terror due to their violent lives or end. The experiences described are typically vague and could be explained by a number of different non-ghostly sources. However, it does make for a good story to tell your date when you are winding your way up Highway 9 – in fact, I highly recommend doing so. Regardless, these stories are typical of places that have a reputation, deserved or not, for violence and shady characters. They are interesting both in the fact that we often turn perceived evil into entertainment, and also because they often reflect two different notions: 1) we assume that places where dirty deeds were done may retain a taint from those deeds (or, perhaps, when we find a place we believe to be tainted, we tend to try to find events to which we may attach the alleged taint), and 2) we see this as consequences of bad action, a cautionary tale, so to speak.
The second type of story involves the general "bumps in the night" that tend to get associated with most historic buildings. This includes the sounds of diners and of hotel residents moving about. Usually these stories are creepy because they are "unnatural", but have little menace implied in them. However, as the story of Room 46 shows, even these stories can take on more disturbing aspects.
The third story, that of the ghostly girl who appears and interacts with guests, is typical of another type of ghost story. Children who die early are often the subjects of ghost stories, and are usually either pitiable – Sarah is sometimes seen crying for her mother – or else cute and charming – Sarah is also often said to be interacting with people in a very friendly manner. The deeper cultural meaning of these stories is not clear, but it likely results from the fact that most adults view the death of a child as a heartbreaking event, even if they did not know the child (I used to visit cemeteries on a regular basis and had to stop going to those that had a section of graves for children, I found the situation too upsetting). In a way, the presence of the ghost, while potentially unnerving, is also reassuring, it lets us think that she will remain an idealized pure and innocent child for eternity, and that perhaps her untimely death was not the end of the story.
Personal Experience: In December of 2009, I had the good fortune to attend a role-playing game mini-convention hosted at the Brookdale Lodge. The games all had a horror theme, so placing them in a haunted hotel was appropriate. The lodge, however, is in poor repair. The guest rooms, which are in a separate building from the rest of the facilities, were actually quite nice, if a bit strange in their set-up (there was no way to use the curtains to keep out the morning light, because the curtains were on windows that didn't get the morning light, curtains hung over the heater, preventing its operation, etc.). The rest of the lodge, though, including the lobby, dance floor, meeting room (which is called the Log Cabin because it is, well, in a log cabin attached to the rest of the building) were in a bad state. Parts of the ceiling had collapsed in, many of the light fixtures were broken, and we were experiencing extremely heavy rains, so leaks in the roof resulted in soaked floors in much of the establishment. Add to this that, due to the storms, the power kept going out, and quite literally half of the time that we were gaming, it was under candlelight or battery-powered lanterns, and you can imagine that the eeriness of the place really began to get to us.
For any other event, this would have been disastrous. For a horror game convention, this was perfect, and we all had a blast - in fact, when power was restored, most of the players clamored for the lights to be turned back off, as we had worked out a tremendous sense of atmosphere with the candles and battery-powered lanterns.
In between evening games, and after gaming had completed for the evening (around 1 AM), we would go exploring the lodge. Exploring the Mermaid Room was especially unnerving. The pool is closed, as is the bar in the room, and the room's floor was covered in water (not from the pool, but from multiple leaks in the roof), and with the lights out, the room had a truly creepy atmosphere. The general consensus was that everyone who entered the room kept expecting to hear a thud from the glass wall, and to see that a corpse had floated through the swimming pool and bounced up against it.
One of my fellow convention-goers ended up in room 46, and he claims to have heard someone clearing their throat when nobody but him was in the room. He was sitting on the bed writing a text message when he heard the sound immediately to his right. He decided that the best thing to do was to act as if he hadn't heard it, and continue with his message.
A couple of teenage girls had been brought to the lodge by the mother of one of them as a birthday gift - they wanted to spend the night in a haunted hotel. They claimed to have heard the spectral party in the mermaid room, as well as to have heard a crash without a source in the room adjacent to the Mermaid Room that contains a stage and dance floor. However, given that one of my fellow gamers had decided to sneak around the place and jump out at these girls and generally make noise, it is open to discussion just how much of the stories that the girls told were their imaginations, ghosts, or rowdy gamers.
I took my camera with me, of course, and took the following photos in the Brook Room shortly after sunset:
These photos were taken within 30 seconds of each other, and I don't know what the white haze is. My girlfriend suggests that it may be my breath condensing in the air in front of the camera, entirely possible as it was rather cold in the Brook Room. It may also have been some other camera malfunction, or the flash reflecting off of moisture in the air (edit to add: In the years since I first wrote thus entry, I have become a much more proficient photographer, and it's now clear that vapor reflecting a flash is the cause). Basic point - seeing something weird on a camera does not a ghost make, cameras malfunction sometimes, and flashes can create weird visual artifacts. Still, when you are in a hotel with a haunted reputation and you see something like this just as the sun has gone down...well, it kinda' makes you shudder just a little.
The rest of these photos were taken between 1 AM and 2 AM. I wandered through the brook room, feeling a bit creeped out the entire time, and simultaneously hoping that I would get an image of something unnatural, and that my photos would end up prosaic and boring. Well, I got prosaic, but the images do give a feel of what the place was like with all of the lights out:
SOURCES: Local legend, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Internet, Personal Experience, Listing of Newspaper Stories.
Graham Hill Road Cemetery
There is a cemetery on Graham Hill Road in Santa Cruz, near the entrance for Highway 17. People report taking photos of "orbs" (more on this below), as well as having encounters with various ghosts at this cemetery. One particular story holds that pulling a car into the cemetery’s driveway at night with the lights on will attract a violent spirit that is usually described as being "large and white" (yep, The Man even keeps the spirits down).
Commentary: This story is your basic “spooky graveyard” story. Other than the allegedly hostile ghost in the driveway, there’s really nothing that marks this story out as particularly unique. However, it is right next to a “white widow” ghost site (which I will write about later), so that’s kind of unusual.
By and large, the nature of the story seems to be little more than fodder for "legend tripping” – the habit of people, especially young people, to go to places where a ghost/demon/escapee from the insane asylum/Ed Koch is allegedly to be found in order to prove their mettle by facing a danger that isn’t really there. The stories describing the danger of the place in question are typically supernatural in nature, although there are exceptions.
As for the "orbs", These are apparent balls of light that appear in photographs of allegedly haunted places. They also appear in photographs of non-haunted places. In fact, they have nothing to do with ghosts. They are a very well-known side-effect of the way that cameras pick up light. When a particle of dust or moisture catches either the ambient light in a room or the light from a camera flash, it will appear as a floating ball of light. Our eyes gather light, and our brains process what our eyes gather, in such a way that we don't see "orbs." However, cameras gather light in a way that they become fairly common in areas with high dust or moisture contents. Wanna-be ghost hunters often point to “orbs” as evidence of spirit activity, but all that they are seeing is a very well-understood and mundane artifact of photography.
Incidentally, I have watched photographers and people with advanced knowledge of optics explain this to believers, and the believers invariably refuse to listen to anything being said and cling to their belief in the notion that these "orbs" are evidence of ghosts.
Personal Experience: One night, a friend and I decided to put this story to the test. We drove into the driveway with our headlights on, and waited.
Nothing.
I switched the headlights to brights.
Nothing.
My friend got out and began shining a flashlight around while I toggled back and forth between bright beams and normal headlights, and honked my horn once.
Nothing.
So, we concluded that the story was, unsurprisingly, nonsense. However, someone that I told this story to insists that the spirit was simply refusing to show itself to someone who was testing it.
Yep, it's a sulking spirit. You'd think that death would serve as a wake-up call to get someone to stop acting like a spoiled 16-year-old, but apparently not.
SOURCES: Local Legend, Internet
Commentary: This story is your basic “spooky graveyard” story. Other than the allegedly hostile ghost in the driveway, there’s really nothing that marks this story out as particularly unique. However, it is right next to a “white widow” ghost site (which I will write about later), so that’s kind of unusual.
By and large, the nature of the story seems to be little more than fodder for "legend tripping” – the habit of people, especially young people, to go to places where a ghost/demon/escapee from the insane asylum/Ed Koch is allegedly to be found in order to prove their mettle by facing a danger that isn’t really there. The stories describing the danger of the place in question are typically supernatural in nature, although there are exceptions.
As for the "orbs", These are apparent balls of light that appear in photographs of allegedly haunted places. They also appear in photographs of non-haunted places. In fact, they have nothing to do with ghosts. They are a very well-known side-effect of the way that cameras pick up light. When a particle of dust or moisture catches either the ambient light in a room or the light from a camera flash, it will appear as a floating ball of light. Our eyes gather light, and our brains process what our eyes gather, in such a way that we don't see "orbs." However, cameras gather light in a way that they become fairly common in areas with high dust or moisture contents. Wanna-be ghost hunters often point to “orbs” as evidence of spirit activity, but all that they are seeing is a very well-understood and mundane artifact of photography.
Incidentally, I have watched photographers and people with advanced knowledge of optics explain this to believers, and the believers invariably refuse to listen to anything being said and cling to their belief in the notion that these "orbs" are evidence of ghosts.
Personal Experience: One night, a friend and I decided to put this story to the test. We drove into the driveway with our headlights on, and waited.
Nothing.
I switched the headlights to brights.
Nothing.
My friend got out and began shining a flashlight around while I toggled back and forth between bright beams and normal headlights, and honked my horn once.
Nothing.
So, we concluded that the story was, unsurprisingly, nonsense. However, someone that I told this story to insists that the spirit was simply refusing to show itself to someone who was testing it.
Yep, it's a sulking spirit. You'd think that death would serve as a wake-up call to get someone to stop acting like a spoiled 16-year-old, but apparently not.
SOURCES: Local Legend, Internet
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Screaming Woman of Highway 152
Highway 152 runs from Watsonville in south Santa Cruz County to Highway 99 about 30 miles north of Fresno. This stretch of highway is an important route for truckers who transport materials between the San Joaquin Valley and the Monterey Bay.
As the story goes, several years back, a young woman was hitch-hiking along this road, and was picked up by the trucker. The trucker killed her - the details of how, and even whether it was a murder or an accident, change from telling to telling. Sometimes she dies when the truck crashes or drives off of the road, in others the trucker murders here.
However, the stories hold that the ghost of this young woman appears in two ways - a phantom truck will be sighted driving down the road, and she is seen sitting in the passenger seat screaming. Also, it is said that lone motorists driving on the road at night have reported seeing her appear in their car's passenger seat, scream, and then vanish.
Commentary: The version of this story in which the woman appears in the vehicle of the driver seems to be a variation of the vanishing hitchhiker urban legend, but without the voluntary cooperation of the driver and without the coda of meeting a family member of the deceased individual. The story is also curious in that it seems to alwasy creep people out but good when I tell it, but the ghost doesn't appear to do anything malicious, it just appears, makes noise and vanishes. The fact that the ghost seems to simply be in torment and that it appears when we should be safe but are in fact vulnerable (controlling a 1000-pound or more piece of metal hurtling down a road) seems to add to the creep factor.
The version of the story in which the woman is seen screaming inside of a phantom truck seems to be a variation on a common "ghost car" or "ghost wagon" theme present in many stories found throughout the U.S. This version also seems ot be less frightening, due no doubt to the fact that it involves the witness seeing something, rather than having an unexplainable force appear in their safety zone.
SOURCES: Local Legend, Newspaper, Internet
Another View of Highway 152
As the story goes, several years back, a young woman was hitch-hiking along this road, and was picked up by the trucker. The trucker killed her - the details of how, and even whether it was a murder or an accident, change from telling to telling. Sometimes she dies when the truck crashes or drives off of the road, in others the trucker murders here.
However, the stories hold that the ghost of this young woman appears in two ways - a phantom truck will be sighted driving down the road, and she is seen sitting in the passenger seat screaming. Also, it is said that lone motorists driving on the road at night have reported seeing her appear in their car's passenger seat, scream, and then vanish.
Commentary: The version of this story in which the woman appears in the vehicle of the driver seems to be a variation of the vanishing hitchhiker urban legend, but without the voluntary cooperation of the driver and without the coda of meeting a family member of the deceased individual. The story is also curious in that it seems to alwasy creep people out but good when I tell it, but the ghost doesn't appear to do anything malicious, it just appears, makes noise and vanishes. The fact that the ghost seems to simply be in torment and that it appears when we should be safe but are in fact vulnerable (controlling a 1000-pound or more piece of metal hurtling down a road) seems to add to the creep factor.
The version of the story in which the woman is seen screaming inside of a phantom truck seems to be a variation on a common "ghost car" or "ghost wagon" theme present in many stories found throughout the U.S. This version also seems ot be less frightening, due no doubt to the fact that it involves the witness seeing something, rather than having an unexplainable force appear in their safety zone.
SOURCES: Local Legend, Newspaper, Internet
Another View of Highway 152
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