Category: Los Angeles County


PhotobucketYesterday my rag-tag group of ghost hunters (including Connor Bright, Jeff McLane, Dominique Swain & Max Timm) headed out to a movie, but beforehand, we stopped off at the reportedly Photobuckethaunted Culver Hotel in the heart of downtown Culver City.  The hotel opened in 1924 and served as an official capitol building for Hollywood’s golden age of film.  It’s location near Culver Studios lent itself perfectly to host important meetings, parties and serve as housing for stars maintaining intense production schedules.  The most celebrated and storied instance was when over 100 munchkins from “The Wizard of Oz” were housed in the hotel.

Though I have heard some tales of phantom conversations, very little else is established as to how exactly this building his haunted.  It might be yet another case of an old, moody, intriguing and historically fascinating building being too interesting to not be considered haunted…..almost as if it’s earned it.

At the very least, what this place has earned is several return trips – next time with ghost hunting equipment.  The staff is open to talking about the rumors of hauntings and the official site even refers to the place as being haunted, while also admitting that no evidence, visual or audio, has been recorded as of yet.

Do you have a first hand account of a haunting at this site?  Do you have a strange picture taken here or perhaps more light to shed on this, Culver City’s “skyscraper?”

Mountain View Mausoleum in Altedena, CA

Mountain View MauoleumMountain View Mauoleum

Another film shoot has brought me to an amazing location that might eventually be covered in my next book.  This time it was a week long shoot in Altedena (near Pasadena), CA called Mountain View Mausoleum.  Unlike another recent film shoot that landed me in the famously haunted Linda Vista Hospital in East LA, there are no known reports of hauntings at this location.  I must also say, that in my four days at this location, I didn’t feel anything other than excitement for the location, which is not the case when it came to Linda Vista.

The initial excitement certainly came from the overall beauty of the site.  It was absolutely epic in scale.  The the building seems large from the outside, but feels even larger within.  When you think you’ve seen the entire place, you find another corridor that leads you to another chain of hallways.

Mountain View Mauoleum

Mountain View MauoleumI snapped the top picture on my first day and immediatelyDan Melone chimmed in from Chicago on it, comparing it to one of Chicago’s Freemason resting places, Acacia Park Cemetery.  So, armed with partners in crime Kyle Jolly, we scoured the place, finding all sorts of symbols.  Kyle had a surprising amount of knowledge and I’m entirely new to the Masonic conspiracy theories.  I haven’t even seen or read “Di Vinci Code.”

The entire place was covered with symbols, from some familiar, though still interesting like the one on the left, to the more elusive carvings over the front door (are those chickens in the above picture?).

Mountain View MauoleumI hadn’t seen so much stained glass in a mausoleum (or anywhere for that matter) since Chicago’s famed Rosehill Cemetery, which has the largest collection of real Tiffany glass in the world, but, even Rosehill doesn’t have entire, long, hallways of stained glass ceilings.

Beauty and majesty aside for a moment, one chilling moment (though not at all paranormal) happened when we were filming in one room that was referred to in the script as the “storage room.”  Turned out it was the room where the cremations happened.  Of course, we had full access to both the viewing room and the “business end.”  Again, a chilling place to be standing, but nothing paranormal (pictures of both are posted below).

There are apparently 120,000 interments in the mausoleum and surrounding cemetery, so I wouldn’t at all be surprised if there were some ghost stories associated with the place.  If you have any stories of your own or even just any additional interesting facts about this location OR if you want to start a discussion about the Freemasons, conspiracies, etc, just leave it in the comments below!
Mountain View Mauoleum Mountain View Mauoleum

Murderous Mansions and Tunnels (CA)

Upon the advice of awesome research partner Mary Czerwinski, I’m starting to look into the so-called Los Feliz Murder Mansion.  As the story goes (more detail here), in 1959 a Dr. Harold N. Perelson murdered his wife, then beat one of his three children nearly to death before committing suicide himself.  All three children did survive….felt the need to find a silver lining here.  Since that murder, no one has occupied the house.  One family has owned it for the past 60 years, but the house has been left eerily undisturbed, allegedly to the extent that there are still board games in-progress sitting on tables waiting to be finished from a game started during the cold war.

I happened to be in the area recently and decided to drive past the property.  Even then, not leaving the car, but driving up the driveway as far as you can go (which isn’t far at all) is a bit of a harrowing experience.

Los Feliz Murder Mansion, Los Feliz Murder Mansion

(Above: as close as I got) I do want to investigate the location professionally and with permission, but I anticipate a tough sell to the hard-to-locate home owner. Due to the elusive nature of this property, even if it was haunted, there aren’t really any possibilities for witnesses to any strange occurrences, but I will ask you, the cyber audience anyway: have any of you heard of any ghost stories associated with this property?

In other news, I attended a Moth storytelling session yesterday and one of the stories that was told was about the ghost of Zelda in West Covena.  This is apparently the ghost of a child from the 1900s who was murdered underground in a spillway (now called Zelda’s Tunnel/Pit/Cave/etc) that is still accessible today.  The ghost story involves, at the very least, the phantom sound of a bell, which Zelda was wearing on a necklace at the time of her death.  Other recountings are more urban legend-y and say Zelda was sacrificed by a cult and will now kill anyone walking through her tunnel (there’s actually a fun retelling of this tale along with a personal….encounter(?) at this site).  Questions to you guys:  Do you have any tales of your own from this site?  Do you have any hard evidence that there was actually a murder here (something that would also tell us Zelda’s last name)?  And, of course, where EXACTLY is the entrance to her tunnel?

Editorial: A visit to Linda Vista Hospital

For those of you who don’t know, my day job is working as a filmmaker (see, proof!: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1377864/)

Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts

Whether it be Chicago, Hawaii or Los Angeles, it’s always an amazing experience making a movie on-location (as opposed to in a studio). Now, I do hope to uncover some ghost stories from our many backlots here in CA. I’ve worked on a handful and can’t imagine them NOT being haunted, but that’s a tale for another post (though if you have any leads, let me know).

Today I unexpectedly found myself at Linda Vista Hospital in East Los Angeles. Not only was I without any ghost hunting equipment, but I was also without a camera (the images you see were taken with my cell phone). What an amazing gold mine this place was – a pure playground of amazing locations from basement to roof.

Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts

I talked to one worker there who came across an (at first) cooperative spirit. After he and a friend heard unexplainable sounds, the man requested that the spirit knock on the wall. The spirit complied. After asking for another series of knocks, only louder, the spirit again complied. Walking towards the source of the sounds, the man came across a doorway that he believed these sounds were emanating from. He asked, “Is this the room you’re in?” This time the response was less benign. He heard a loud scratch on the wall he was standing next to, which was immediately followed by a growl into his ear. Both of these sounds were heard by the man and his friend. As one might assume, they made a hasty exit and did not return again that night.

This location might sound or look familiar to you. In addition to serving as a filming location to literally dozens of movies and television shows in recent years, this hospital was also the subject of a recent “Ghost Adventures” episode (season 3, episode 5 to be exact) and, even more recently, an episode of Paranormal Challenge (season 1, episode 10, which featured the always amazing Ursula Bielski).

As you might guess, I fell in love with the location and will be covering it extensively in my upcoming book.  Now is your chance – What do you know about the location?  Do you know any interesting trivia that one can’t easily find on Wikipedia?  Have you had a paranormal experience there?  Have you heard any Urban legends about the hospital?  Do you have any interesting pictures, video, EVPs from the location to share?  Here, I’ll bribe you with more glorious cell phone pictures (click the thumbnails to see them larger) (in order, left to right: operating room, basement-I know the morgue is down here, but can’t say for sure this is the right area, main 1st floor hallway, filming in the rear courtyard, hospital chapel):

Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts - Operating room Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts - basement morgue Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts Scott Markus - Linda Vista Hospital Ghosts - chapel
Oh yeah, and as if that place wasn’t rockin’ enough as it is – they’re also hosting a zombie prom dance in the chapel room on Oct 29. If you can make it, you must attend!

Your True California Ghost Stories

My official announcement about doing a book on California ghost stories. I wanna hear everything you have to share. In this episode I talk about the Pasadena Suicide Bridge, Hollywood Forever Cemetery, the Queen Mary in Long Beach, the site of a former asylum in Lancaster, Shadow Ranch Park & Capistrano Avenue in West Hills, CA

Edit/Update:  Since first posting this video on YouTube, I’ve gotten some great comments.  A few are posted below:

* Two summers ago I went to Shadow Ranch Park with couple of friends of mine.  Here’s the story: the actual house you see use to be a ranch with a family etc etc. they had a son named “Blue” whose room is the on the 2nd floor to the right facing the house. it is said he died tragically on a horse riding accident. we know this because when we visited, the two workers there were so nice to give us a tour of the place.

The Lancaster Asylum is on 80th St west and f-12. you can see it on google maps it looks like 5 white boulder things making a circle on the map.

* I went to preschool at Shadow Ranch Park and it was my hang out in the 70′s as a teenager. The house has a few secret rooms long since boarded up. Also the author of The Wizard of Oz lived there around the same time the book was written. The story was that the original owner committed suicide. As a teenager we use to sneak in the house at night and never once did I see or hear anything paranormal. Although it would not surprise me if someone did!  A few miles away is Munits Cave. This has an interesting story of murder involving a Shaman and the son of an indian Chief . Also known as the bat cave,

Laurel Canyon ghosts

I just got a frantic call from a singer/songwriter (we’ll call Lynn) who was in a recording studio in the Laurel Canyon area who had a session interrupted by a shadowy figure that appeared on a wall in front of her.

Laurel Canyon is an incredibly haunted area.  Just last week Mary Czerwinski gave me a small, impromptu tour some some of the haunted sites she knows of.  It may be the most densely haunted area I’ve been in outside of Archer Avenue in Justice and Summitt, Illinois.  There will certainly be more stories of the ghost stories and history of Laurel Canyon on these pages in the near future.

Do you have a Laurel Canyon ghost story?  Would you interpret Lynn’s encounter different than I?  Please let me know in the comments below!

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