Gold Hill, Nevada was founded as a mining town in the 19th century. Unlike the placer mining towns with which I am familiar in California, Gold Hill has a number of tunnels, shafts, and adits running through the town itself. Much like the mining settlements of California, the mines of Gold Hill often proved deadly to workers laboring in them. Local tradition holds that 37 workers died in the Yellow Jacket Mine, which opens up directly behind the Gold Hill Hotel.
Patrons and staff of the hotel both report strange sounds, voices without sources, footsteps when nobody is around, doors opening and closing, lights turning on and off, and beds shaking. Two rooms, known as "Rosies Room" and "Williams Room" appear to be the focuses of this activity.
A film crew staying in the hotel reported all of these events, as well as a strange late-night scratching at the door to William's Room.
When the well-known ghost investigator Richard Senate stayed in the room #2 at the hotel, reportedly haunted by the ghost of a woman named Rosie, he experienced a strange, strong smell while taking a bath. Unable to find a source for the smell, he interpreted it to be a manifestation of the ghost. He later learned that many other people had the same experience in room #2 (although some folks say that it's room #4).
Commentary: Hotels with reputations for hauntings are very common, even more so when the hotel is historic. Mining towns throughout the American west seem to be especially susceptible to ghost stories. Every still-existent mining town that I am familiar with has at least one haunted hotel, and usually a few other haunted locations to boot.
The reason that the ghost stories rise in these mining towns seems clear - the image of the grizzled miner is permanently seared in the American imagination, and it's part of both historical fact and national folklore that many of these people came to unpleasant ends, through mining accidents, hard living, inter-personal violence, and sometimes just plain ol' getting lost in the wilderness. Add to that the fact that these hotels were often the sites of violence, and more often the location of daily actvities that we would now consider sordid such as prostitution, heavy drinking, and gluttony (when the miners had the money).
One of the most interesting aspects of hotel hauntings is how they are treated by the hotel management. Often they are welcome as free publicity - the hotel doesn't even have to promote them, plenty of enthusiastic tale-tellers will do it for them. Others actively promote them - one hotel near Half Moon Bay in California used to have a billboard on Highway 1 advertising their reputation for being haunted - the hotel is now under new management, the sign is gone, and when I have stopped in and asked about the haunting the staff claims no knowledge (in other words, the original claim was probably nothing but a marketing move). While not all hotel management openly embraces their resident ghost stories, I have yet to hear of a hotel that actively suppresses such stories. In the end, these stories are good for business.
Sources: Richard Senate, Internet, Internet
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The Curse of SLC-6
Vandenberg Air Force Base is located just north of the California Bight - the point where the California coast turns from a north-south course to an east-west course. The Chumash, the native people of the region, considered Point Conception and the surrounding area to be the gateway to the afterlife*. When Camp Cook was established in the first half of the 20th century, and later expanded as Vandenberg air Force Base, this upset members of the Chumash community still present in Santa Barbara County. To make matters worse, when the Air Force built Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, AKA "slick" 6) during the 1960s, it is said that the construction disturbed an archaeological site containing human remains. Whether due to the disturbance of the human remains, or the actions of a shaman, the site became cursed (or did it...be sure to read the commentary below).
The project became embroiled in political problems and government blunders. The SLC was originally developed for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, but this project was shut down after construction. The SLC was then to be the site of space shuttle launches, but these were cancelled after the Challenger exploded in 1986 (an event that some people lay at the feet of the curse). Several rocket launches were attempted, and all failed.
The construction of the complex was also not without problems - bad welds, exhaust ducts trapping gases, extremely bad winds (which, in truth, is normal for this area), and cost over-runs all plagued the project.
Finally, the contractor running the facility on behalf of the air force contacted a shaman, who performed a ceremony to lift the curse. Ever since then, the facility has run smoothly.
Commentary: Okay, alot going on here. Let's start with the "dry facts" and then get into the interesting stuff. First off, this is a classic "built on an Indian burial ground" story. In this case, as in most other such stories, there was in fact no archaeological site at the location of SLC-6, and therefore no burials.
Also, the initiation and cancellation of programs related to SLC-6 makes perfect sense in the context of the nature of and changes to military spending throughout the 1960s and 1970s, so you don't really need a curse to explain that. Likewise, the construction problems are rather typical of the sub-rate contractors who sometimes manage to wrangle their way onto military bases, as well as unique elements of the weather and environment on the base that make construction difficult to begin with.
In other words, you don't need a curse to explain what happened.
Which leads to an interesting question - why did the story of the curse arise to begin with, and why does it persist?
In order to understand that, you have to understand when the story originated. And that would be the 1970's.
As Dwayne Day points out, the story began in the 1970's, during a time of social change and ethnic empowerment movements. The Native American movement resulted in the organization of tribes into politically vocal (and eventually effective) groups that began to protest the treatment of Native American archaeological sites as well as the mis-treatment of Native American individuals and groups. In the midst of this, the development of Point Conception became a hotspot for protests, and, to a lesser degree, so did the development of southern Vandenberg.
Day argues that the curse story began as a way to place blame for the problems at the expensive complex. There may be some validity to this argument, but I think that the explanation may be simpler. The stories probably began as jokes, engineers talking about how the place was "cursed". But regardless of how they started, the stories probably spread for two reasons: A) everyone loves a good spook story, and will tend to share it whenever possible, and B) alot of people hold to the, frankly racist, belief that Native American sites are filled with, for lack of a better term "bad mojo" - which is why the old "built on an Indian burial ground" trope gets tossed around whenever weird things happen at a particular location.
Regardless, the story annoys and offends many of the local Chumash (although I have met a few who think that its funny). This is understandable - how would the average baptist feel if they heard that a place was haunted because their church's pastor had cursed it? Also, beliefs such as this reinforce the "mystical red man" stereotype that has, unfortunately, helped to keep many racist beliefs about the native peoples of the Americas alive.
For this reason, when the contractor hired a shaman to "lift" the curse, this upset the locals, and resulted in the Air Force brass having to do some fast work to try to mend the damage to an improving relationship with the Chumash community.
Wackiness: When I was an intern in the environmental conservation office at Vandenberg, we had, in our library, a paper that had been written by a student at the local community college about the curse. The paper, filled with all manner of hokey pseudo-intellectual silliness, demonstrated that the author was overly-reliant on spell check - the paper constantly made reference to "viscous underworld beings."
So, if the site is cursed, it's okay, the underworld beings who haunt it move reeeeeaaaaalllllll slow, so you can make your getaway without breaking a sweat.
Sources: Personal Accounts, Local Folklore, Internet, Internet, Internet
*Or so it is typically believed, the truth is a little messier, and there are alot of different stories concerning the afterlife and how to get there. The Chumash were not a single monolithic group, but were comprised of numerous different autonomous villages who all shared a language family and material culture. There were probably alot of different beliefs concerning the afterlife, and the confusion regarding whether or not Point Conception was important to it probably comes from the conflation of alot of different stories from alot of different groups.
The project became embroiled in political problems and government blunders. The SLC was originally developed for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, but this project was shut down after construction. The SLC was then to be the site of space shuttle launches, but these were cancelled after the Challenger exploded in 1986 (an event that some people lay at the feet of the curse). Several rocket launches were attempted, and all failed.
The construction of the complex was also not without problems - bad welds, exhaust ducts trapping gases, extremely bad winds (which, in truth, is normal for this area), and cost over-runs all plagued the project.
Finally, the contractor running the facility on behalf of the air force contacted a shaman, who performed a ceremony to lift the curse. Ever since then, the facility has run smoothly.
Commentary: Okay, alot going on here. Let's start with the "dry facts" and then get into the interesting stuff. First off, this is a classic "built on an Indian burial ground" story. In this case, as in most other such stories, there was in fact no archaeological site at the location of SLC-6, and therefore no burials.
Also, the initiation and cancellation of programs related to SLC-6 makes perfect sense in the context of the nature of and changes to military spending throughout the 1960s and 1970s, so you don't really need a curse to explain that. Likewise, the construction problems are rather typical of the sub-rate contractors who sometimes manage to wrangle their way onto military bases, as well as unique elements of the weather and environment on the base that make construction difficult to begin with.
In other words, you don't need a curse to explain what happened.
Which leads to an interesting question - why did the story of the curse arise to begin with, and why does it persist?
In order to understand that, you have to understand when the story originated. And that would be the 1970's.
As Dwayne Day points out, the story began in the 1970's, during a time of social change and ethnic empowerment movements. The Native American movement resulted in the organization of tribes into politically vocal (and eventually effective) groups that began to protest the treatment of Native American archaeological sites as well as the mis-treatment of Native American individuals and groups. In the midst of this, the development of Point Conception became a hotspot for protests, and, to a lesser degree, so did the development of southern Vandenberg.
Day argues that the curse story began as a way to place blame for the problems at the expensive complex. There may be some validity to this argument, but I think that the explanation may be simpler. The stories probably began as jokes, engineers talking about how the place was "cursed". But regardless of how they started, the stories probably spread for two reasons: A) everyone loves a good spook story, and will tend to share it whenever possible, and B) alot of people hold to the, frankly racist, belief that Native American sites are filled with, for lack of a better term "bad mojo" - which is why the old "built on an Indian burial ground" trope gets tossed around whenever weird things happen at a particular location.
Regardless, the story annoys and offends many of the local Chumash (although I have met a few who think that its funny). This is understandable - how would the average baptist feel if they heard that a place was haunted because their church's pastor had cursed it? Also, beliefs such as this reinforce the "mystical red man" stereotype that has, unfortunately, helped to keep many racist beliefs about the native peoples of the Americas alive.
For this reason, when the contractor hired a shaman to "lift" the curse, this upset the locals, and resulted in the Air Force brass having to do some fast work to try to mend the damage to an improving relationship with the Chumash community.
Wackiness: When I was an intern in the environmental conservation office at Vandenberg, we had, in our library, a paper that had been written by a student at the local community college about the curse. The paper, filled with all manner of hokey pseudo-intellectual silliness, demonstrated that the author was overly-reliant on spell check - the paper constantly made reference to "viscous underworld beings."
So, if the site is cursed, it's okay, the underworld beings who haunt it move reeeeeaaaaalllllll slow, so you can make your getaway without breaking a sweat.
Sources: Personal Accounts, Local Folklore, Internet, Internet, Internet
*Or so it is typically believed, the truth is a little messier, and there are alot of different stories concerning the afterlife and how to get there. The Chumash were not a single monolithic group, but were comprised of numerous different autonomous villages who all shared a language family and material culture. There were probably alot of different beliefs concerning the afterlife, and the confusion regarding whether or not Point Conception was important to it probably comes from the conflation of alot of different stories from alot of different groups.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
A Night-Time Cry on the Beach
When I was a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara, I used to study until quite late in the evenings, taking a break for a few hours in the late evening (usually around 10:00) to take a walk and clear my head.
One of my freuqnet haunts was a cliff overlooking the beach south of Santa Barbara Shores Park, off of Hollister Avenue in Goleta. One breezy night, it must have been in the Spring of 2004, I was walking out there by myself. As a walked on a pathway overlooking the beach, the wind picked up, and above the wind, I heard what sounded like a baby crying. I moved towards the sound, but no longer heard it. Assuming it was just the wind, I began to walk back towards my car, when, through the breeze, I heard it again. I wasn't as certain of the direction this time, so I walked back towards where I had thought the sound had come from previously. Again, the sound faded away, and I was uncertain. This time, however, I spent time looking for possible sources, never finding one. I eventually left, feeling rather unnerved.
Although I suspect that it was just the wind whistling through the trees, I must confess that I returned to the location on a number of nights and never heard the sound again.
Commentary: This is my own personal story. I debated putting this up on the site due to the fact that I am inclined to think that there was a perfectly mundane explanation for what happened - likely just something odd about the wind on that particular night. However, as I thought about this, I realized three things:
A) It has all of the markings of a classic ghost story (dark night, atmospheric location, weird noise)
B) Although I see no reason to believe that this sound was anything supernatural, years of collecting ghost stories has taught me that there are many people who would likely either assume that it was, or tell it as such because, hey, it does make a good story.
C) The story was a good place to point to a basic principle that is useful for others who are interested in these stories: that the fact that the source of the sound is unexplained doesn't mean that it must be supernatural or that it was unexplainable, simply that it was unexplained. In this case, I think that there was something unusual going on with the wind int he trees that night,a nd that this was the source of the sound, but it may be some other explanation as well. This is especially useful to keep in mind if you are trying to talk to someone who is not inclined to believe a story - the lack of a known explanation is not the same as no explanation being possible.
Anyway, so that is a personal experience of my own.
Sources: Personal Experience
One of my freuqnet haunts was a cliff overlooking the beach south of Santa Barbara Shores Park, off of Hollister Avenue in Goleta. One breezy night, it must have been in the Spring of 2004, I was walking out there by myself. As a walked on a pathway overlooking the beach, the wind picked up, and above the wind, I heard what sounded like a baby crying. I moved towards the sound, but no longer heard it. Assuming it was just the wind, I began to walk back towards my car, when, through the breeze, I heard it again. I wasn't as certain of the direction this time, so I walked back towards where I had thought the sound had come from previously. Again, the sound faded away, and I was uncertain. This time, however, I spent time looking for possible sources, never finding one. I eventually left, feeling rather unnerved.
Although I suspect that it was just the wind whistling through the trees, I must confess that I returned to the location on a number of nights and never heard the sound again.
Commentary: This is my own personal story. I debated putting this up on the site due to the fact that I am inclined to think that there was a perfectly mundane explanation for what happened - likely just something odd about the wind on that particular night. However, as I thought about this, I realized three things:
A) It has all of the markings of a classic ghost story (dark night, atmospheric location, weird noise)
B) Although I see no reason to believe that this sound was anything supernatural, years of collecting ghost stories has taught me that there are many people who would likely either assume that it was, or tell it as such because, hey, it does make a good story.
C) The story was a good place to point to a basic principle that is useful for others who are interested in these stories: that the fact that the source of the sound is unexplained doesn't mean that it must be supernatural or that it was unexplainable, simply that it was unexplained. In this case, I think that there was something unusual going on with the wind int he trees that night,a nd that this was the source of the sound, but it may be some other explanation as well. This is especially useful to keep in mind if you are trying to talk to someone who is not inclined to believe a story - the lack of a known explanation is not the same as no explanation being possible.
Anyway, so that is a personal experience of my own.
Sources: Personal Experience
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
Friday, May 8, 2009
Christie Ranch
The Christie Ranch on Santa Cruz Island boasts two seperate ghost stories. The first is a classic "white widow" story - a young woman married the captain of a ship, and the two made their home on Santa Cruz Island at the ranch house. One day, he headed out to sea, and every day she stood at the window at the top floor of the house, waiting to see his ship. He is late in returning, and the young woman becomes worried, despite the assurance of her friends and family. Eventually, word comes that the ship sank, and that the captain went down with the ship. Her grief devoured her, and she stopped taking care of herself, eventually withering away and dying. To this day, her ghost can be seen, dressed in white, standing at the house's window, still watching the sea.
In a slightly more sinister version of the story, the husband was a slave trader, a fact unknown to the wife until she paid an unexpected visit to his ship while it was in port. On discovering her husband's true business, she scorned him and returned to the home. On his next trip, his ship sank and he drowned, and the wife again wastes away and dies, though this time torn between guilt and disgust over her husband's trade. This version of the story often features the ghost not as a passive watcher of the sea, but as an angry and vengeful force.
The second story is centered on a bridge that crosses a ravine that separates the main ranch house from the ranch hands quarters. One night while crossing this bridge, a Chumash servant girl began to scream. The ranch hands rushed out to see what had happened, and found the girl sobbing and gibbering incoherently. They brought her back to the ranch house, where she continued to spout incomprehensible nonsense. Eventually the girl was taken to a hospital on the mainland, where she died many years later, never having recovered her senses. However, to this day, people report hearing a weird, inhuman scream in the dead of night coming from that bridge, and nobody has ever seen its source.
In addition to these stories, the ranch also has reports of strange lights and odd shadows seen moving about in the ranch house, weird happenings on the land, and the occasional odd noise from an unknown source, usually occuring late at night.
Commentary: The land now known as the Christie Ranch served as the headquarters of a ranch that occupied the seaward-portion of Santa Cruz Island during the 19th century. The ranch is no longer used, although descendants of the pigs that were bred there now run rough-shod over the islands native flora and fauna. The ranch headqaurters has not been abandoned, however. The University of California runs a research facility on the island, and the Christie Ranch is a satellite base used by researchers on the southwest portion of the island.
Alhough there is running water (and hence showers and toilets), what electricity there is comes from a gas-powered generator, and the telephone lines to the ranch were long ago cut. Although there are standing buildings suitable for use as kitchens and work spaces, they have not been retrofitted for earthquakes, and as such are not suitable to sleep in, so workign there comprises an odd mix of camping and domestic life. Signs posted throughout the buildings warn of the danger of earthquakes, as well as other signs noting that Hanta Virus is a known danger in the area. Also, there is a telephone in the ranch hands quarters, but the line has long since been cut, and as such the "in case of emergency call 911" sign has been altered to read "in case of emergency call God."
A cozy place, all in all.
People usually work in groups out there, and the main form of entertainment in the evenings is sitting around the firepit outside of the ranch hands quarters. And this is when the stories come out. However the stories got started, they are passed on by researchers staying at the ranch.
Personal Experience: I stayed at the ranch for a week in the summer of 2003, while working on an archaeological research project with my advisor, one of his other graduate students, a graduate student from the University of Oregon, and a set of professors and undergrads from CSULB. On the first day, before we set up our tents for the night, we began telling each other what we knew about the place, including the ghost stories.
After I had told the story of the bridge, my advisor, Mike, decided to place his tent right by the bridge, leading to great amusement for all of us.
Later that night, I told the story of the widow in the ranch house. This led to me being dared to enter the house after sunset (yep, here we were, a bunch of adult researchers, behaving like 13-year olds). I agreed, nervously crossed the bridge in the dark, and made my way towards the house.
I had expected that the house would be locked, and I could return with that news. I tried the door. No such luck, it opened and allowed me in. Now, it was clear that the house had been built in two stages, and that there was a newer "outer" layer to the house, to which I had gained access, and an inner layer comprising the original structure. The doors to the inner part of the house were locked, and I could not enter. Nonetheless, I had done what was asked, I had entered the house, if only the outer portion, and I could now report back.
After all, the sooner I reported back, the sooner I could be an adult again.
Sources: Local Legend, Folklore, Personal Accounts
In a slightly more sinister version of the story, the husband was a slave trader, a fact unknown to the wife until she paid an unexpected visit to his ship while it was in port. On discovering her husband's true business, she scorned him and returned to the home. On his next trip, his ship sank and he drowned, and the wife again wastes away and dies, though this time torn between guilt and disgust over her husband's trade. This version of the story often features the ghost not as a passive watcher of the sea, but as an angry and vengeful force.
The second story is centered on a bridge that crosses a ravine that separates the main ranch house from the ranch hands quarters. One night while crossing this bridge, a Chumash servant girl began to scream. The ranch hands rushed out to see what had happened, and found the girl sobbing and gibbering incoherently. They brought her back to the ranch house, where she continued to spout incomprehensible nonsense. Eventually the girl was taken to a hospital on the mainland, where she died many years later, never having recovered her senses. However, to this day, people report hearing a weird, inhuman scream in the dead of night coming from that bridge, and nobody has ever seen its source.
In addition to these stories, the ranch also has reports of strange lights and odd shadows seen moving about in the ranch house, weird happenings on the land, and the occasional odd noise from an unknown source, usually occuring late at night.
Commentary: The land now known as the Christie Ranch served as the headquarters of a ranch that occupied the seaward-portion of Santa Cruz Island during the 19th century. The ranch is no longer used, although descendants of the pigs that were bred there now run rough-shod over the islands native flora and fauna. The ranch headqaurters has not been abandoned, however. The University of California runs a research facility on the island, and the Christie Ranch is a satellite base used by researchers on the southwest portion of the island.
Alhough there is running water (and hence showers and toilets), what electricity there is comes from a gas-powered generator, and the telephone lines to the ranch were long ago cut. Although there are standing buildings suitable for use as kitchens and work spaces, they have not been retrofitted for earthquakes, and as such are not suitable to sleep in, so workign there comprises an odd mix of camping and domestic life. Signs posted throughout the buildings warn of the danger of earthquakes, as well as other signs noting that Hanta Virus is a known danger in the area. Also, there is a telephone in the ranch hands quarters, but the line has long since been cut, and as such the "in case of emergency call 911" sign has been altered to read "in case of emergency call God."
A cozy place, all in all.
People usually work in groups out there, and the main form of entertainment in the evenings is sitting around the firepit outside of the ranch hands quarters. And this is when the stories come out. However the stories got started, they are passed on by researchers staying at the ranch.
Personal Experience: I stayed at the ranch for a week in the summer of 2003, while working on an archaeological research project with my advisor, one of his other graduate students, a graduate student from the University of Oregon, and a set of professors and undergrads from CSULB. On the first day, before we set up our tents for the night, we began telling each other what we knew about the place, including the ghost stories.
After I had told the story of the bridge, my advisor, Mike, decided to place his tent right by the bridge, leading to great amusement for all of us.
Later that night, I told the story of the widow in the ranch house. This led to me being dared to enter the house after sunset (yep, here we were, a bunch of adult researchers, behaving like 13-year olds). I agreed, nervously crossed the bridge in the dark, and made my way towards the house.
I had expected that the house would be locked, and I could return with that news. I tried the door. No such luck, it opened and allowed me in. Now, it was clear that the house had been built in two stages, and that there was a newer "outer" layer to the house, to which I had gained access, and an inner layer comprising the original structure. The doors to the inner part of the house were locked, and I could not enter. Nonetheless, I had done what was asked, I had entered the house, if only the outer portion, and I could now report back.
After all, the sooner I reported back, the sooner I could be an adult again.
Sources: Local Legend, Folklore, Personal Accounts
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
The Hound Outside The Door
A friend has provided the following story:
"When I was a kid, probably eight or nine, I woke up one night and heard a sound outside my door. I got up and walked toward the door, opening it slowly, and when it was just cracked open, less than an inch, I heard a sound like a large dog snorting. I slammed the door shut, and held it there, hearing the creature move around outside the door. Once I was sure it was gone, I went back to bed."
Commentary: A lage number of stories start with the teller explaining that they had just woken up before the events unfold. This is unfortunate, as these stories don't tell you much or provide anything particularly new. There are a number of different plausible explanations for these events, ranging from the person having a particularly lucid dream but never being awake to the person being partially awake and mobile and yet still dreaming, all of which explain the events perfectly well. It's worth noting that, after the horrifying event took place, the teller usually reports that they went right back to sleep, which I, for one, wouldn't do if I had just lived through a disturbing event, but would do if I had simply dreamt it.
And, for the record, I have had some very weird, creepy experiences that I perceieved ot be occuring immediately after I woke up, including seeing a spectral platoon of WWI-era dougboys, and seeing my girlfriend intone strange and unfamiliar words in a voice filled with deep menace. However, in each of those cases, during each of which I believed myself to be awake and have my wits about me, but I decided to do a bit of follow-up investigation after the fact and determined that, in each case, it wasn't a ghostly experience, but simply my sleepy brain doing its own magic. So, for anyone who wishes to know, yes I have had this kind of experience, it has happened to me.
While these "I just woke up" stories are themselves not particularly interesting, what is interesting is how important they can become to the teller. When you suggest a plausible explanation that is natural (such as that it was a dream) you can expect to be greeted with a very hostile reaction - usually having the person shout some variation on "I know what I saw!" or "I wasn't asleep!" Why is it that these types of events become so important to the people who perceived them? I don't know, but THAT is what is interesting about them to my mind.
"When I was a kid, probably eight or nine, I woke up one night and heard a sound outside my door. I got up and walked toward the door, opening it slowly, and when it was just cracked open, less than an inch, I heard a sound like a large dog snorting. I slammed the door shut, and held it there, hearing the creature move around outside the door. Once I was sure it was gone, I went back to bed."
Commentary: A lage number of stories start with the teller explaining that they had just woken up before the events unfold. This is unfortunate, as these stories don't tell you much or provide anything particularly new. There are a number of different plausible explanations for these events, ranging from the person having a particularly lucid dream but never being awake to the person being partially awake and mobile and yet still dreaming, all of which explain the events perfectly well. It's worth noting that, after the horrifying event took place, the teller usually reports that they went right back to sleep, which I, for one, wouldn't do if I had just lived through a disturbing event, but would do if I had simply dreamt it.
And, for the record, I have had some very weird, creepy experiences that I perceieved ot be occuring immediately after I woke up, including seeing a spectral platoon of WWI-era dougboys, and seeing my girlfriend intone strange and unfamiliar words in a voice filled with deep menace. However, in each of those cases, during each of which I believed myself to be awake and have my wits about me, but I decided to do a bit of follow-up investigation after the fact and determined that, in each case, it wasn't a ghostly experience, but simply my sleepy brain doing its own magic. So, for anyone who wishes to know, yes I have had this kind of experience, it has happened to me.
While these "I just woke up" stories are themselves not particularly interesting, what is interesting is how important they can become to the teller. When you suggest a plausible explanation that is natural (such as that it was a dream) you can expect to be greeted with a very hostile reaction - usually having the person shout some variation on "I know what I saw!" or "I wasn't asleep!" Why is it that these types of events become so important to the people who perceived them? I don't know, but THAT is what is interesting about them to my mind.
Monday, May 4, 2009
Haunted Bathroom
Some years back, my girlfriend moved with her then-husband (yes, they are now divorced) back to Santa Clara County after having lived in Sacramento. They rented a two-bedroom/two bathroom apartment in a modern apartment complex. On the whole, it was a nice place, but there was one thing that always bothered the couple: one of the bathrooms didn't feel quite right. The couple rarely used that bathroom, guests avoided it and used the other bathroom, the cats wouldn't go into the room, and whenever anyone would take a shower in that bathroom they would report feeling on-edge the entire time, as if they were expecting someone or something to attack them. One time, a cat was locked into the bathroom while the rest of the apartment was being cleaned, and when it was let out, the cat attcked my girlfriend, something that it never did when locked in the other bathroom.
Commentary: I have come across a number of similar stories - a room that simply doesn't feel right, nothing is ever sean or heard, no truly weird or unexplainable events occur, but the room just feels wrong, and everyone seems to notice it and react to it whether they have been told about it or not.
I am fascinated by this type of story for a simple reason. While some of these stories have pretty obvious explanations (if you tell everyone that a particular room is creepy, the power of suggestion can go along way), others don't. To be certain, there is not shortage of possible explanations, running the gamut from the reasonable to the absurd, but I have yet to see one that clinches the deal. In other words, this is one of those places where a clear explanation as to what is really going on is completely lacking, and that makes it interesting.
I have little else to say, but this sort of story, where I don't yet have an explanation, is one of the things that keeps me interested in ghost stories.
Sources: Personal Account
Commentary: I have come across a number of similar stories - a room that simply doesn't feel right, nothing is ever sean or heard, no truly weird or unexplainable events occur, but the room just feels wrong, and everyone seems to notice it and react to it whether they have been told about it or not.
I am fascinated by this type of story for a simple reason. While some of these stories have pretty obvious explanations (if you tell everyone that a particular room is creepy, the power of suggestion can go along way), others don't. To be certain, there is not shortage of possible explanations, running the gamut from the reasonable to the absurd, but I have yet to see one that clinches the deal. In other words, this is one of those places where a clear explanation as to what is really going on is completely lacking, and that makes it interesting.
I have little else to say, but this sort of story, where I don't yet have an explanation, is one of the things that keeps me interested in ghost stories.
Sources: Personal Account
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
