The Shoemake Lake/Shoemake Road Ghosts, Salida, California

Near the small town of Salida, California, on Shoemake Avenue, there is a seasonal pond, caused by rainwater settling in a small natural basin, locally known as Shoemake Lake. It is said that several years ago, a woman was driving a car with her two children in the back seat, when she lost control (presumably because of water on the road) and drove into the pond. The children drowned, and the mother may have drowned as well.

Since then, if you visit this spot when there is standing water, you may just see or hear the ghostly children, and possibly the mother.

Image of the area via Google

Commentary: Despite growing up in Salida, I only recently heard this story when my sister and I began talking about ghost stories over the phone. Yep, me, the gatherer o' ghost stories, didn't hear about one from his own home town until after he had been living elsewhere for a good fifteen years.

I have been trying to figure out why I hadn't heard of this story before, and I have two basic ideas. 1) this may be a new story, and as a result is not something that I would have come into contact with as a teenager or child; or, more likely 2) I left Modesto just as people were beginning to routinely go onto the internet (I moved out of Salida in 1996, when computer ownership nationwide was something around half of what it currently is), and as a result access to stories such as this were limited to word-of-mouth, and, frankly, I wasn't the most socially adept teenager, resulting in less opportunities for me to hear the good stories. Interestingly, this story still hasn't made it online (well, I guess it has now since I'm posting it here, but...well, you get the idea).

The story has obvious parallels with La Llarona, but so far I haven't heard a telling of it that contains the same warnings of danger as one gets with La Llarona. It also has obvious legend tripping potential.

Regardless, it's a good little story, and as far as I can tell, I'm the first person to put it on the internet. So, yay me?

Oh, and the odds of drowning in what amounts to a big but shallow mud puddle because your car skidded into it? I'm going to go out on a limb and so that it's close to zero. I wonder if the story was originally cooked up for the larger body of water known as Miller Lake located to the west.

Sources: Local Folkore

The Church at Finney and Westwood, Salida, CA

I grew up in the small town of Salida, California. This story is once of the ghost stories that comes from my childhood.

At the corner of Finney and Westwood in Salida, there once stood a church. Now it is a parking lot and a large warehouse building for Salida Union school. But when I was a kid, it was an old church, the once-white paint now peeling and grey. The grass was patchy and sick looking. The interior lights were rarely seen turned on, though, as it was next to our school, we had little reason to see the church on Sundays when one would expect the lights to be turned on.

The church was surrounded by a grove of trees that that shed their leaves in the winter and looked like gnarled claws on trunks for a large portion of the year. Though the trees blossomed and were quite beautiful in the spring, this was not the image that stayed with us kids...no, we always thought of the church as being surrounded by evil leafless clawed trees, more creature than plant and malicious to the root.

We kids knew that the church was haunted. Some thought it was a Satanic church, others that it was an abandoned church on which evil had fallen, others that it was a church that had been abandoned and taken over by evil cultists, and others that it was a Christian church, but one built and pastored by an evil clergyman who was more interested in his own power than in religion (we were too young to understand or articulate it, but even as children we were aware of the corrupting nature of power, and it showed in many of the stories that we told each other). Our parents would assure us, usually while rolling their eyes, that the church was simply a building that had fallen into disrepair. But we knew better, we knew that it was haunted by something evil and corrupting.

The symptoms of the haunting, as far as my sisters and I ever felt them, were a vague sense of unease when walking by the church, and the occasional sense of being watched when near it. When one of us was feeling particularly brave, we might run up and touch the building, ensuring us both bragging rights and the (usually brief-lived) admiration of our siblings. Other kids told of tales they had heard - all of them second-hand of course - of sinister things inside the church. There were supposedly Satanic symbols near the altar, there was a painting of Satan that would kill anyone unwise enough to stare at it for more than 1 minute, and some stories said that the painting would leave the wall and float about the building of its own accord.

Of course, nobody ever entered the building to find out if these tales were true. No doubt we would have said that to do such a thing was foolish - suicidal even. But the truth is that this was part of our shared childhood folklore, and whether or not it we ever confirmed any of it was quite beside the point.

Commentary: As I said at the end of the story, this was part of our childhood folklore. We were frightened by the story, yes, but also thrilled by it. None of us ever looked for any evidence of the story - we never tried to get inside to church, we never inquired with people to find out if the church was still in use, and we never dared challenge someone who had come up with a new detail to the story. Whether or not it was true was beside the point. Walking close enough to touch the church was a test of bravery, and trading stories about the church was a favorite pastime.

When I was around 11 or 12, the church was renovated. The trees and lawn were tamed by gardeners, the white paint replaced with a fresh layer, and the doors were oftne left open on warm days, allowing members of the community to see inside the church. I don't know whether the church had ever been abandoned, but it had certainly not had the life that it would obtain during my teenage years. I never knew the pastor well, the church re-opened after my church-going years had ended, but I did know him at least in passing, and he always seemed to be a decent fellow and someone who was as concerned about his community as about his own church.

I don't know when the church was finally abandoned for good and torn down. It occured some time after I left Salida to go to college. By that time, it was no longer a terrifying edifece that harbored menacing spirits. It had become a part of the community. I wonder what the children in the area tell ghost stories about now.

A Haunting on 13th Street, Modesto, CA

I once again turn to the well, I go back to an article from an October, 2007, edition of the Modesto Bee (the newspaper of Modesto, CA and the surrounding area). The newspaper, like many regional newspapers, asked it's readers to submit their own personal stories of the supernatural int he run-up to Halloween. There were some really nice stories in there, including this one from a woman named Kim Meu. I'd paraphrase, but it seems better to just give a direct quote from the article:

Kim Meu of Modesto was a young single mother working the night shift when a ghost routed her from her rented home.

“About seven years ago, I used to live at a house on 13th Street in Modesto. Every night I would have dreams, seeing a dead cat, a skeleton in the back yard and a dead baby in the basement. During the day while I was asleep, I would hear male voices telling me to get out of this house.

“And when I used to sit up using my computer, I heard noises like someone was coughing or a little boy saying, ‘Mama.’ But I never thought anything of it.

“Until one day, after a year of living in the house, at about noon or 1 p.m. — I was working night shift — and my little boy was about 2 years old. He woke up and said, ‘Mommy, I want to watch TV.’ I was fully awake. I walked him to the living room and turned on a cartoon for him.


“I stood there with him and watched cartoons, then all of a sudden I felt something like a finger scratched me across my shoulder. I turned around really slow and my heart raced to about 150 beats per minute at the time, and there was nobody (there).

“I ran to the door to grab my son, milk and the diaper bag. I was in my pajamas (and went) straight to my mom’s house. I came back home a week later with my mom and sisters and never stayed there alone anymore. I moved out a month later.”

Commentary: This one is a good, old-fashioned ghost story. Notice that it has many of the elements that are included in the Amityville haunting but without going completely over-the-top as Amityville did. It's all very low-key: weird dreams, hearing voices, and feeling physical contact when nobody is there.

Is the story true? Well, I see no reason to doubt that Ms. Meu is stating her recollections honestly. Did things happen quite as she remembers? Who knows? As described in the entry on Shadow People, there are so many different ways that both our perceptions and memories can be affected that it's not posible to say with any authority what happened to Ms. Meu. And several internet searches failed to find any more stories about 13th Street.

But as a story, this is fantastic. The imagery of the dreams (especially the skeleton in the back yard and the dead baby in the basement) gives snatches of story that hint at bad deeds in the house's past. Coupled with the sound of a kid's voice during waking hours, this really hits the "creep out" button.

Whether you believe it or not, this is the sort of story that can keep you up at night, twitching every time you hear an unfamiliar noise.

Sources: Newspaper

John Muir School/Youth Center, Modesto, CA

On Morris avenue in Modesto, CA is a building that has served as an elementary school and a youth center for nearly six decades before being damaged in a fire. Built in 1923, the building originally served as the John Muir Elementary School (and can boast as one of it's pupils a young George Lucas), and was later the John Muir Youth Center.

Local legend holds that people working in the basement of the old school building often hear the sounds of voices and dozens (or even hundreds) of feet pounding the floors overhead, as if children are running to or from class. Some sources even claim that this happens between 2:30 and 3:00 PM, the time when the children would have been let out of class for the day. Running upstairs to see what is going on, the workers always find the place empty.

In the obligatory "true ghost story" article that appeared in the 2007 edition of the Modesto Bee, someone claiming to be a city worker (but wishing their name to be withheld) claims that this very thing happened to her.

Commentary: In ghost hunter and paranormal enthusiast circles, this is what would be labelled as a "residual haunting", a more-or-less prosaic replaying of events that is creepy not in it's content, but in that it is happening without a clear source.

Despite having grown up in the area, I am not familiar with this particular building (I lived far enough away in the boonies that a youth Center on Morris Avenue would have been about as useful to me as a youth center on Mars). The first thing that I wonder on hearing the story is what the conditions in the basement are like. I have been in basements where the sound and vibration of a truck passing by outside sounds a lot like people running in the building overhead, and the echoes of people walking by outside sounds like people talking in the building above. Having had those experiences, I immediately wonder if something similar was happening in the John Muir building.

Another thing I would wonder is whether the stories were passed on by city workers who used them to freak out their more gullible co-workers. I have worked with people who do such things before, so it's not much of a stretch for me to imagine that happening as well.

Sources: Internet, Newspaper, Local Folklore

Acacia Cemetery, Modesto, CA

Acacia Cemetery is located on Scenic Drive in Modesto, CA. It is claimed that people passing through the cemetery, which has paved roads that allow it to serve as a shortcut for both drivers and pedestrians, will often hear what sounds like a hysterical mourner crying and screaming, even when nobody is there. Sometimes the crying and screaming sounds as if it is so close that people have commented on it sounding as if it was in the car with them. This feeling is sometimes accompanied by a sense of intense dread. Whether these phenomenon are attributed to one of the buried, or someone who once mourned one of the buried, is not known.

Commentary: Sitting at the intersection of Bodem Street and Scenic Drive in Modesto, CA, Acacia Cemetery is across the street from both a hospital and a senior citizen's home. Whether this is oddly appropriate or simply grotesque I leave to the reader to determine for them self. When I was in high school, it was not unusual to see a hand-painted wooden sign advertising "free dirt" at the gate of the cemetery, and as far as we could tell, the sign had been erected by the cemetery management.

But enough of the local color.

One of the things that I find fascinating about this story is that it seems, at least to some degree, to be an Internet phenomenon. I grew up in the area, and never heard about this cemetery - that's not to say that there weren't stories about it pre-Internet (there most likely were), but that they weren't in particularly wide circulation. Now that the Internet is a common information-gathering tool for ghost story enthusiasts, this story is easily found by simply typing "Modesto Ghost Stories" into Google.

What is interesting, however, is that all of the Internet versions of this story are nearly identical - in most cases they have clearly been a cut-and-paste job (check the links below for example). So, rather than the typical "telephone game" scenario that traditionally played out with ghost stories - where one event gets changed or added on to by the next person who tells the story, and so on until the story that emerges is radically different from the one originally told - we have a near-perfect copying of the story from person-to-person and source-to-source.

I am left wondering if, with sites like Shadowlands increasingly becoming the repositories of local ghost legends, if we will see a poverty of variations on ghost stories as time goes on. I hope not - the variability is part of what makes these stories great, and it's possible that people on-line may continue to change the stories just as they did in person for centuries - but I suspect that we may...it's easier to cut-and-paste than to type out a new version, and that's a loss to our collective and developing folklore. Look through the links, and even at the story above, and you'll see little of the dread, and none of the flash, that makes ghost stories fun.


Sources: Internet, Internet, The Illustrious Internet, Internet

The Child Ghost of Ripon, California

When I lived in Ripon, I had a neighbor who lived in a haunted house. We would be out in the yard and see a shape that looked like a child, but without features, run into the space between the houses. When we would go to take a look, there was nobody and nothing there. Sometimes we'd hear kids playing when there was nobody around.

One night, my neighbor opened up a closet that had been closed ever since she bought the house. Inside of the closet, she found a box. Inside of the box was a small dress, like one that a very young girl would wear. As soon as she saw the dress, she was frightened, but didn't know how to react. When her husband came home from work, they talked about it and about the child-like figure that they had seen around the house, and both became more and more frightened as the evening went on.

Finally, they decided to burn the dress. They started a fire, and threw the dress in. As soon as the dress hit the flames, they heard a baby crying, and the crying continued until the dress was completely gone.

Commentary: This is another of the stories that I grew up with. One of the women in my neighborhood would tell this story, or some variation on it (it was always changing) to us kids. She loved to spin ghost stories for us, mostly because she seemed to like to entertain children, but also partially because ghost stories seemed to reinforce her particular religious view of the world.

As a kid, I bought this story, and asked for it many times. However, as I got older, the inconsistencies started to bug me, and I saw the stories of the neighbor for what they were: fun entertainments told by a genuinely warm and caring person who simply wanted to provide the children with fun in a safe environment, but not factual accounts.

I still love her stories. She told me the most memorable version of the Ouija Board Urban Legend that I have ever heard. And I have very fond memories of her as a neighbor and community member. So, in the end, her stories have done her credit, and I think that she would be happy to know that.

I was unsure how to classify this story. It clearly is a campfire story - a story told to entertain with a scare - based on the fact that the details were constantly changing and she didn't seem to much care how coherent the story was most of the time. It is centered around both a house and an object, so should it be considered a haunted house or a haunted object story?

To the haunted house story, I say no. It was always linked to some generic house, with no identifying details given, and the house seemed to be more a setting than an integral part of the story. A haunted object? Well, yes. The dress is certainly important to the story, and is clealry supposed to be the focus of the haunting.

Sources: Personal Account

Modesto High School

Updated on May 12, 2010

Anyone who has spent much time as or around students at Modesto High School is likely to have heard the story of the ghost in the auditorium. The most common version of the tale holds that a young man, a student at the school, fell from the auditorium's balcony and died when his head struck the floor below. Since his death, he is often seen walking back and forth on the balcony.

There are, of course, variations on this story. In some of the variations that I have heard, the young man was despondent and commited suicide. In others, he was killed in an accident involving a sand bag or weight used to move scenery on pulleys.

While the auditorium ghost is the only version of the story that I have heard from other people who have lived in or around Modesto, entering "Modesto High School Ghost" into Google also produces a few references to strange knocking noises heard in one of the school's hallways, next to a room that used to be (and for all I know still is) used for home economics classes. On a few of the sites that mention this, the knocking sound is said to come from the floor, and references are made to tunnels that used to run under the school.


Commentary: I probably heard the auditorium story for the first time from my older sister, who graduated from Modesto High in 1992. Since then, I have heard it numerous times, from students and alumni of the school as well as from other folks around town.

Gene and Bryan of Hometown Tales, in an episode on haunted colleges made a comment to the effect of "the reason why there are ghost stories in colleges is because boys and girls go to college together." The same probably applies to high schools, as the use of scary stories is pretty common in adolescent courtship. But there is a bit more to it than that. Scary stories are a part of teenage social bonding in general, not just between the sexes, and putting the story in a shared context, such as a high school, makes it even more effective.

Add to that the fact that, as I am assured by everyone I know who has ever been involved in theatre, "every theatre has a ghost*", and it seems certain that the auditiorium of a high school would have its own ghost story.

In of June 22, 2009, the Wikipedia entry for Modesto High School had a history section that was two paragraphs long. The first, longer paragraph described the school's history. The second, short paragraph listed, with no transition, a few ghosts said to haunt the school. The jarring and non-sequitor nature of the entry was hilarious. However, it has now been changed and lacks the comedy elements that it had back then.




*Interestingly, I have only ever met one person involved in theatre who scoffed at the ghost stories. While doom is said to fall on those who dismiss the spirits, she was actually one of the most succesful theatre professionals that I have ever met. So, go figure.




Sources: Local Folklore, Published Book, The Illustrious Internet

Spectral Soldiers in My Bedroom

As a teenager, I woke up one night to hear the sound of artillery shells, and saw that my room was occupied by somewhat luminescent and translucent World War I-era soldiers, preparing to leave the trench for the machine-gun fed slaughter that was mistakenly called a "battle" during that war. I knew that I had to go with my comrades, as futile as it was, and so I began to don my backpack, pick up my rifle, and get ready. I was still in my room, but I knew that once I opened the door, I would be int he trench, and ready to fight. I went to the door, opened it, and saw my hallway...by this point, I had completely waken, and felt a bit foolish to be standing there in my backpack, holding a dowel that I had been keeping in my room for who-knows-what reason.

Commentary: I was unsure about whether or not I should include this story on this site. It's a description of events that occured to me when I was a teenager, and to which I have never attributed a supernatural cause. However, it does have a basic structure in common with many ghost stories, and like my experiences on the cliffs in Goleta, I decided to include it to illustrate a point that becomes relevant to anyone who works with personal accounts of hauntings.

The events that occured bore many of the features common to stories of hauntings: I woke up as a result of sounds, witnessed some truly weird spectres, and (in a slightly unusual, but not unheard of, twist) I joined these ghostly soldiers for battle. I could have viewed this as some sort of weird visitation or out-of-body experience, but instead I reflected on the fact that earlier in the evening I had been watching a television show about WWI-era trench warfare, and that the descriptions of the misery of the soldiers had really disturbed and gotten to me, and I also had been having trouble sleeping lately. Putting the two together, it became obvious that I was experiencing a mundane, if somewhat creepy, event.

The point to all of this is pretty simple. When I collect ghost stories from people, most of them tell me about events that occurred while, or shortly after, they had been resting, usually (but not always) in bed. The descriptions are usuall pretty simple - they see someone standing over them that vanishes, they hear strange sounds that they can't identify, or they perhaps even get out of bed and see/hear/smell something unusual. Invariably, the teller of the tale assures me that they were awake, and I hear those words "I know what I" saw/heard/smelt/etc. However, I have yet to hear one of these stories that is not absolutely compatible with near-sleep hallucinations. I also have never had a conversation with someone about such an experience in which they said that they had bothered to look for dosconfirming evidence before deciding that their experience was a supernatural one.

In short - when you are looking into people's stories, don't take everything at face value. They may have perceived something, and honestly believe that it was an external influence, when it was in fact something that came from their own physiology.

Sources: Personal Experience

Grandfather Ghosts

After my great grandfather's death, many of my family members reported hearing strange sounds in my grandfather's house. They would hear doors open and close, and the sounds of footsteps walking around at night. Whenever anyone would ask my grandfather what the sound was, he'd say "that's just my dad, coming to check up on us."

The house is an old one, and you can not only clearly recognize the sounds of footsteps, but you can also accurately determine where in the house they are coming from by sound alone. Although my family tried to explain it away with descriptions of the house settling, noen of them were ever happy with these descriptions.

Thirteen years ago, in my last few months living in Stanislaus County before heading to UC Santa Cruz, my grandfather died. After this happened, family members tell me that there have been no more mysterious sounds or unusual happenings. However, my father reports that he now hears opening/closing doors and footsteps in his house at night. Perhaps it is the fate of the men of my family that we get to spend eternity looking after the poor housekeeping habits of our male descendants. If that's the case, then here's hoping that I have daughters.



Commentary: I have heard this story from numerosu family members for many years. Myself, I have never heard nor seen anything unusual in either my grandfather's or my father's house, so I can not confirm any of the story.

What is interesting to me, however, is that the ghost, if indeed that's what it is, doesn't seem to be viewed with fear or suspicion by the family, but simply as a manifestation of a deceased relative's concern. This is especially interesting as some of the family members who are quite comfortable with the presence of this ghost (or ghosts) have commented that other alleged hauntings were not the work of dead humans but of demons and other diabolical forces. However, when questioned about their own experiences, they opt for the more comforting answer.



SOURCES: Personal experience, Personal account

Pursuing Demon

“You don’t believe in demons? You’re being a fool! I know that demons are real. I was out at Robert’s house one day. I knew it was time to go, so I got on my bike and started to ride home. After a little while, I felt something that was just wrong. I felt this really intense cold behind me, and I looked around and saw a ball of…just blackness coming after me. I knew it was evil, I could feel it, and I knew I had to get away. I rode as fast as I could, all the way home, knowing that this thing was chasing me. I finally got home, and when I looked, it was gone. THAT is how I know that demons are real!”

Commentary: This is probably one of the first “personal account” stories that I collected, back when I was in high school. I listened as one of the other students in my electronics class told this story to another student who had begun to be open about his skepticism of supernatural claims. At the time, I dismissed the story as nonsense, but I see it somewhat differently now.

Was this kid making the story up, or did he have an experience that he couldn’t understand or explain (whether or not someone else might be able to understand or explain it)? I don’t know, but that’s not what interests me about this story. What interests me is how this story was used as a social tool.

In order to understand what interests me about this story, I have to give you a bit of background information. This kid, we’ll call him Joseph, was a member of an Evangelical Christian church that firmly believed in the reality of “spiritual warfare” – the idea that heavenly and diabolic forces were locked in combat and that humans were playing a rule in a real and bloody war through their choices and politics.

I heard Joseph tell this story under two circumstances – when he was trying to sway someone over to Christianity, or when he was talking to other members of his church. In the first case, the use of the tool was clear- it was intended to persuade someone that they were in danger and only Joseph’s group could save them from that danger. Joseph’s target on that day didn’t buy it, but nonetheless, it was pretty clear what Joseph was trying to do.

The other time that I heard this and similar stories was when Joseph and other members of his church had gathered together. They would trade “spiritual warfare” stories – most of which were much milder, those sorts of things that could easily be chalked up to an overactive imagination (“I was in my room reading a book that I knew I wasn’t supposed to be reading, when I felt a cold presence, and it frightened me, so I prayed….”). Joseph’s, however, was not alone in its more explicit nature – actually seeing the demon, having to escape, etc. These stories seemed to serve both for social bonding, they were stories that everyone told to frighten or excite each other and bring the group closer together. These stories were also as a sort of one-upsmanship, this particular group (and similar ones that I have encountered since then) viewed encounters with demons as a badge of honor – something that demonstrates how the teller encountered and defeated a demon, a religious variation on “big fish” stories.

SOURCES: Personal Account