Glendora’s Bennett House, built in 1905, was purchased by the Daughters of the American Revolution and they found out quickly (during their very first monthly tea party meeting) that they weren’t alone in the home. The visage of a phantom man crashed the party before vanishing. Occupants also talked about hearing sounds of objects moving, but not seeing anything out of the ordinary happening; this seems to be a common residual-type haunting.
It’s unclear if much activity has taken place in the house since that first encounter with the vanishing man in 1982. It’s not uncommon for paranormal activity to spike when a building undergoes a change (renovations, new inhabitants, etc.). Maybe once the new owners settled in, the spirits settled back down as well.
This is not the only haunted residence in Glendora as John Zaffis, founder of the Paranormal and Demonology Research Society of New England (not to mention that he’s the nephew of famed demonologists Ed & Lorraine Warren) investigated another affected home in Glendora on his show, Haunted Collector. Read more about that story at Glendora Patch.
Do you know of other haunted sites in Glendora? Have you experienced anything yourself at the Bennett House? Were you there at that famed 1982 tea party? As always we wanna hear about it?
Hello! I’ve been traveling a lot and am in the process of getting some videos ready to share with you. First though, I need your help. I’m calling on you, ghost story fans to help me find the perfect location to do an extensive investigation on with a small group of people. Some of them are people you’ve seen in my videos before, some are brand new additions.
We’ll be filming in the Los Angeles area, but if LA and Hollywood are one thing, they are crowded! If they’re something else, they’re loud! So, I’m looking to find a location outside of the heart of LA. A place we could get permission to have the run of the place. It would be a single night overnight investigation. I’m looking for a place that is actively and heavily haunted. It doesn’t have to be a place where people see full apparitions or a place where people get physically confronted, though those would be okay for me too…. Sorry team, but just a place where the activity seems to be interesting and ongoing. If you have a personal experience there, we might be able to get you even more involved with the project, if you’d like.
Here’s a rough map showing where I’m looking. The red locations are potentially good target areas where the blue area is likely locations I’d avoid. So, I’m looking at a pretty big area. From Hidden Hills to Rancho Cucamonga, from the massive Angeles National Forest to further south than this map shows, really.
It can be a private residence, a public place or a company. We just need permission to conduct this one-night investigation. We’re not trying to do anything sneaky here.
If you know of a place within a more populated (blue) area, but you think the building is quiet and isolated enough that we could do an investigation without sound contamination, I’d be all for it. I even have a wish list for places In these areas:
The Hollymont house just north of Hollywood Blvd
Themla Todd’s Café and the house she died in, Castillo del Mar
The Warner Pacific Theatre, one of my favorite buildings in LA, one I’ve never set foot in because it’s been restricted since the earthquake in ’89. I’d love to get in there and try to make contact with one of the original Warner Brothers.
So, if you have leads on any interesting haunted location in any of the cities listed, please drop me a line with any info you may have, the history, alleged hauntings, if you know who I should contact and, maybe most importantly – if YOU have a personal experience there!
Actively haunted and easy to access prison from 1875
Site of a deadly riot
Famous prisoners and an infamous isolation cell
I’ve made countless trips across the California and Arizona desert, entering and leaving Los Angeles. On one of these trips, I ended up taking a very southern route that passed me through Yuma, Arizona. Even just briefly seeing the micro city from Interstate 8, I was immediately taken by its beauty. Trains traversed the Colorado River via aged bridges, huge sand dunes formed the horizon, surrounding the historic western town.
I thought to myself immediately, “I need to find a haunted location here and get back as soon as I can.” To my surprise, the work was done for me pretty quickly. Turning on an episode of “Ghost Adventures,” I could tell from the first establishing shot, “They’re in Yuma!” Sure enough, the episode was about the Yuma Territorial Prison (season 12, episode 8), a captivating, haunted structure that’s 36 years older than the state of Arizona itself.
Soon, I was making my own pilgrimage, heading south from Los Angeles and tip-toeing along the US/Mexico border to make my way to the wild west era prison.
The Yuma Territorial Prison (now operated by the State Park system of Arizona) is open year-round to visitors for a minimal fee (check out the operating hours prior to your visit here: http://www.yumaprison.org/hours-fees-parking.html).
The site is intimate. You are given a brochure at the visitor’s center and told to enjoy. And with that, you are off! The prison was surprisingly well attended considering 1) it’s Yuma and 2) it was a typical day, with temperatures reaching well into the triple digits. That said, there was still plenty of opportunities to explore the grounds alone as most visitors spent their time indoors. The main yard looks out over a canal and to the site of another place that merits future investigations – the location of a revolt of the Yuma/Quechan tribe that resulted in the destruction of two missions and the death of every European male, including the mission’s leader, Padre Graces, in 1781.
It’s hard not to think of the site of a failed Native American revolt that I investigated in Santa Barbara, which yielded the most drastic cold spot I’d ever personally recorded:
The prison, colorfully, and accurately, nicknamed “Hellhole Prison,” saw a tremendous amount of history and colorful characters pass through it’s doors despite only being in operation for 33 years (1876-1909). Those very first inmates were put to work immediately, helping complete construction of their still unfinished new home.
The most iconic feature of the prison is the solitary confinement cell, aka “The Dark Cell.” Prisoners found themselves confined within a strap iron cage, in the middle of this this dark cell. The only light came from a small ventilation pipe directly overhead. It was not uncommon for a prisoner to find themselves in the dark cell multiple times. Just check out the rap sheet for attempted murderer AA Stewart, who was sentenced for 4 days for insulting an officer, then another 10 days for disobeying an officer and threatening him. One might think spending a full month in solitary after an escape attempt would break his will, but the rebel had spirit, escaping and disappearing into the desert two months later.
Today, there is talk of a spirit of a child haunting the dark call. In addition to people not feeling alone there, there are reports of being touched by a small, cold hand. See a short video “tour” of the cell at AZCentral here: http://azc.cc/1RS0Nwv
The most infamous single incident at the prison happened in 1887 during an attempted prison escape that left four prisoners dead, three wounded and the superintendent of the prison suffering from multiple wounds from a butcher’s knife that were so severe, the man, Thomas Gates, eventually committed suicide to escape the pain. A detailed step-by-step retelling of the escape attempt can be found here: http://westernamericana2.blogspot.com/2010/06/yuma-territorial-prison-1875-1909-by.html along with a write-up of one of the more famous prisoners, “Buckskin Frank Leslie,” who was once a co-worker of Wyatt Earp at the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone.
Present day, the scene of the blood bath is around the main, green, courtyard. One can even stand in the guard tower, in the footprints where sharp shooter Benjamin Hartlee took aim and gunned down attempted escapees Villa, Lopez, Bustamante, Vasquez. Likewise, you can stand in front of the sallyport where Gates was held at knife point as the skirmish unfolded around him. It was from here that Gates gave the signal to the guard tower to open fire.
For as much as the prison was considered harsh, largely due to the landscape, climate and predatory wildlife of the area, it was actually quite comfortable for the day. The building even had hydroelectric electricity by 1884, a full nine years before people saw streetlights for the first time at Chicago’s 1893 world’s fair.
An interesting blurb in the “Cochise Review” (as re-reported by the “Phoenix Herald”) in 1900 even mentions how successful the prison was at helping criminals rehabilitate from “the morphine habit,” citing the positive change felt by famed female stagecoach robber Pearl Heart.
Indeed, the prison did house a number of the most ruthless female prisoners one could dream up including 16 year-old Maria Moreno, who killed her younger brother with a shotgun blast to the face over an insult and Elena Estrada, who literally cut out her lover’s heart when she caught him cheating.
We see the energy over 3,000 inmates brought into the prison over the years, the hardships they experienced on site and we haven’t even mentioned that over 100 inmates died in prison due to illness (mostly tuberculosis) or other non-violent maladies. You can easily imagine the location being haunted.
I casually asked a very official-looking state employee if he believed in the tales of the site being haunted. He was almost angry at how casually I asked the question. “I hear voices and shouts…. hear my name called to me almost every night when I’m working here alone.” It’s so often that employees of a haunted site, or someone in an official or authoritarian position, will downplay paranormal claims or experiences. It also comes off suspicious to me if an employee is glamorizing the haunted history of a site, as if it’s part of their marketing pitch. In this case, it was neither of those things. It was matter of fact – this place is actively haunted
The Ghost Adventures team caught a particularly engaging vision of a full band performing on stage in the on-site theater. This was captured live by the Infrared, body-mapping Kinect camera. While what they caught was jaw-dropping and the figures truly seemed to interact with the commands the team was giving, it should be noted that the theater was a recent addition, a room built specifically for tourists to watch an informational video. While this doesn’t mean the room can’t be haunted, prisoners were not performing on this stage in the late 1800s/early 1900s, as the show insinuates.
The nearby 115-body cemetery lacks any kind of individual grave markers, merely piles of rock over each body. There isn’t even a plaque listing the names. One has to wonder if this lack of individual recognition is leading some of the dead to continue to make their presence known. That alone, coupled with the residual hauntings that are undoubtedly continue at this historic prison, leads this place to be something of a paranormal gold mine. Phantom talking throughout the cell blocks, the metal clanging sounds of cell doors opening and closing by themselves are not uncommon occurrences.
The prison’s history continued after being a correctional institution. The campus become Yuma’s High School, a fact they continue to celebrate today with a wonderfully themed school shield and their team name being the Yuma Criminals. Then, one of the structures was converted into the county hospital. Later, during the market crash, countless homeless persons relocated here to live. So, even after the prisoner’s had moved out, there was still ample possibility for “new” hauntings to take hold.
A visit to the Yuma Territorial Prison is a can’t miss adventure for anyone interested in history, the wild west or haunted locations. It should also be noted that the women’s cells were destroyed in 1923 when the Southern Pacific Railroad expanded into the area. I wouldn’t at all be surprised if there are additional hauntings here, just outside of the current walls.
From a reader: Many people have died all from car accidents in Wilmot Road. Its curvy and wide open with no stop signs or lights. People usually speed on this road. When there is a car accident people are usually ejected from their vehicles and die in homeowners’ front yards. Home there are usually on large lots, about 8+ acres each.
So, a guy died on my brothers’ front lawn a few weeks back. The other day he was in his basement working out and watching TV. Out of the corner of his eye he saw someone sitting on a stool nearby. Yesterday his wife went to basement and saw a person sitting in the same spot. The house has felt very heavy and depressed since this accident.
Another occasion from a few weeks ago, also stemming from an accident, his wife and son saw a man standing at their front door. His wife saged the house and they have not seen him at the front door since. They are going to sage the entire house today to see if that helps the ghost in the basement.
There are stories of peoples’ homes that have ghosts due to the amount of accidents on this road.
My Response: Wow – very interesting. A lot of cultures believe people hang around for 7-10 days after death. It’ll be interesting if just a little more time will do the trick too. Very sad, but interesting story.
Also, makes me think of the crash of Flight 191 where people in the area would hear frantic knocking on their front doors after the accident. Like disoriented spirits looking for help.
As an additional note, the town of Antioch is a very old town with a rich and occasionally tragic history. I had the privilege of learning about this town through the eyes of Dr. James Dorsey as he explored important locations relating to the Underground Railroad in Lake County and the abolitionist movement, which was alive and well in Antioch.
Additionally, the town was victimized by major fires in the 1800s that wiped out large portions of the town.
Also, the first ever paranormal investigation I was on was at the Liberty Tattoo Parlor. I wrote about the hauntings at Antioch High School in my book and I just recently brought a tour group up to the Lodge of Antioch with Ursula Bielski, Nicholas Sarlo and Chicago Hauntings. To say that Antioch is an active location is an understatement!
Finally putting my feet up and relaxing after an awesome and VERY busy weekend at the Chicago Ghost Conference!
This was my 3rd year attending the show, which this year was super close to Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery! As Scott and I were driving to the Chicago Gaelic Park (where the ghost con was), I checked my Time Hop app and learned that it was also the anniversary of my first visit to the cemetery. So that was a fun little coincidence!
As always the Conference was A LOT of fun! A great place to see old friends and meet the new faces of the Chicago paranormal community!
Scott was there promoting his documentary on the La Crosse river drownings with Jay Bachochin (check it out here) as well as selling copies of his book Voices From the Chicago Grave (get it here)
I mostly came for the booze….just kidding! I got to sit with the talented and beautiful Virginia Madsen! Star of too many movies to name here, but mostly at the ghost con because of her work in “Candyman” and “A Haunting in Connecticut.” She is AWESOME and I am really looking forward to seeing her and Jennifer Lawrence in “Joy” this Christmas!
The show is run by Ursula Bielski, who is a wonderful and amazing woman with a CRAZY amount of knowledge on all things paranormal! She’s the best, Google her!
We got in a little too late (and I was a little too tired) for any of the Friday night activities….but we made sure we were well rested and prepared for Saturday!!
Saturday Scott lead a panel on urban legends in Chicago which was ENTIRELY full of AMAZING blonde ladies! From right to left: Ursula Bielski, Mary Marshall, Liz Nygard, and Virginia Madsen.
I…..mostly took selfies and tried to get everyone to join the Instagram Cult!
After day one of the conference, we headed back to the hotel to get ready for the costume party!!! Which was “Come-as-your-favorite-dead-Chicago-resident” themed. Also, it was at Chet’s Melody Lounge, right across the street from Resurrection Cemetery (home to Chicago’s most famous ghost, the aptly named “Resurrection Mary”).
I’m not going to lie, I thought Scott and I would have the most clever costumes…Black and white John Dillinger and Anna Sage (the woman in ORANGE, not red)
But then freaking Dave Schrader and Jeff Belanger show up as MRS. O’LEARY AND HER COW!! (The same cow that started the Great Chicago Fire) They just deserve all of the awards for that! All of them!!
We danced the night away and I did my best Janis Joplin impression on karaoke (which do me a favor and if you have video…delete it, okay? lol).
Sunday got off to a slow start, for obvious reasons! But once I picked out a good enough outfit to hide that my skin was still kinda grey….the ball got rolling and it was a lot of fun!
Some very FANTASTIC speakers, such as the brilliant Mary Marshall (you have to love a strong woman like her in the paranormal field)
And I promise I’m not just saying that because they wanted to talk to me WITHOUT Scott! (That doesn’t happen much, since we’re a team)
We had a GREAT time as always at the Chicago Ghost Conference! We learned a lot of new things and heard all of the latest on the paranormal in Chicagoland and the rest of the county! It’s always a good thing to get back to your roots and catch up with old and new friends at the most friendly ghost convention around!!
Since I apparently can’t take a picture unless it’s a selfie, I have two people to thank for all of these!
Thank you, Kenneth Munyer of Midnight Paranormal Society! You take a darn great black and white photo (and sweet colored ones too!)
And thank you Jay for letting me borrow your pictures, check out his group the Wisconsin Paranormal Investigators, currently on the trail of Bigfoot!
I recently had the experience of having to do jury duty and…. had a great time! I am one of those “lucky” people who have actually gotten called for jury duty three times in the last three years. Yes, I have gotten out of it in the past with legitimate reasons I was unable to serve. This time, however, I gave it a go. Okay, I did try to get out of it a few times until it got to the point that trying to get out of jury duty was more of a nuisance than actually serving jury duty.
So, to show off the bright spots of jury duty and to provide you with a jury duty survival guide, I wanted to create this post. If you’re on this site, I imagine you are interested in ghost stories, local history, crime history, Los Angeles and visiting museums. If you keep an eye on these themes, then serving jury duty is downright exciting! I know that sounds like BS, but stay with me here.
The first part of jury duty and truly the only part that most people experience is being in the “jury pool.” It’s just a big waiting room full of people hanging out. Honestly, is that so bad? Most people keep themselves busy with their iPads, phones, laptops, etc. There is Wi-Fi, so it’s not a bad way to get some work done. I, on the other hand, did a lot of reading. I got deep into a fascinating book on the Prohibition era that deserve its own blog entry. However, if you are serving jury duty in downtown LA, I would strongly suggest reading “A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption & LA’s Scandalous Coming of Age.” This amazing book covers the frequently lawless and corrupt age of life in Los Angeles, a town that was growing faster than its infrastructure was ready for. The book covers topics like the Castaic Damn disaster and Clara Bow’s blackmail case.
Back to jury duty. Each day you get a 90-minute lunch. That’s crazy! What’s more crazy is that most people stay local or even eat in the building. In 90 minutes, you can walk to a lot of great places, taking a nice tour in the process.
After giving quite a few tours and frequently losing tour members to Mr. Churro, I decided that this was finally my time to check the place out. Leaving 210 W. Temple (pictured, top with the white Pico House building visible on the far right) and walking North up Spring Street, you get a lot of great views of the Pueblo de Los Angeles area (pictured directly above). This is our destination and also where the city of Los Angeles was born. On your left, you walk past the largest cement military memorial in all of America, a tribute to the Mormon Battalion and the site of Fort Moore (pictured right).
Crossing the next overpass gives you a great perspective on exactly how much of the original Moore Hill (specifically the land that was Moore Hill Cemetery) was dug out to make room for the 101 freeway. Yes, in a tale straight from the movie Poltergeist, a cemetery was moved (said bodies are now located in Rosedale Cemetery in the West Adams neighborhood, by the way). Yes, there was a school (that crazy stainless steel building) that was built on a former cemetery and yes, that is a haunted building. Bodies from the original cemetery were found on this site from the original cemetery as recently as 2009.
Continuing down Spring, you’ll eventually make a right at the corner of Spring and Ord. This is the site where, not all that long ago really, LA was gripped by the possibility that huge quantities of buried treasure was hidden underground throughout LA. Who put this treasure here? A now extinct species of 6 foot tall reptiles, of course (this is a true and strange footnote in LA’s already strange enough history).
Now turning the corner and heading through Chinatown, you get a nice look at the ornate dragons that keep watch over the neighborhood before walking a couple more blocks to Olivera Street.
Getting here has only taken about 15-20 minutes out of the 90 minute lunch, so there’s even time to visit the free Old Plaza Fire House museum (pictured left, with City Hall in the background on the right edge of frame), which is really not much of a museum, but you do get to enter one of the original fire stations in LA and see some of the vintage fire fighting gear and impressive photos of the LAFD in action through the years.
To read more about this haunted history of the Pueblo de Los Angeles including Pico House, the Avila Adobe (also a free location to visit) and La Gondoloria Resuaturant, check out my article here.
I grabbed my lunch to go (it did live up to the hype) and walked back to and past the courthouse building to have lunch in LA’s Grand Park. It’s no Grant Park in Chicago or Central Park in New York, but the city has done a lot to create a gorgeous, large park right in the middle of this portion of the city. In addition to a nice aesthetic, there are exhibits worth viewing including quotes and pictures from survivors the Armenian Genocide (pictured below, right with City Hall looming in the center of the image and the criminal courts building on the left).
Day 1 ended with me actually getting assigned to a case. Though most cases are only 1-2 days, this one was estimated to take 6 days if I was selected to the jury. This was not a lock as I was one of about 50 people to make it to this stage.
Day 2
My second day of jury duty started around 11am or so and after just 60 minutes of jury duty, it was time for my 90 minute lunch. It’s amazing anything gets done, really.
Unfortunately, on this day it was raining, so I decided to see what fun I could have in the building. Unfortunately there is no top floor observation deck, but I did find a museum-caliber display covering both the 17th and 18th floor of the building. It’s amazing!
The displays are floor-to-ceiling and do cover every lady square inch of the walls on the two floors. The display is a timeline of crime in LA (technically, it’s about the district attorney’s office, since we are on the floor the D.A. is on).
The perspective is interesting, looking at the history of Los Angeles as it relates to crime, from the 1871 Chinese Massacre through the Griffith J. Griffith attempted murder case in 1903, the 1910 LA Times building bombing, Bugsy and Mickey’s Mafia control in the ’30s, the career-ruining Pantages trials the Manson Family trial, through the modern age of the LA Riots and the OJ trial. Among the more well-known stories are some tremendous events that today are largely forgotten.
Did you know that there were sea battles just a few miles beyond the Santa Monica Pier between authorities and floating casinos? It’s a saga that went on for years and somehow we haven’t seen a movie based on these events yet(?). Tony Stralla’s name appears on these walls a couple of times. Before he went on to create the Stardust Casino on the Vegas strip, he was a prohibition-era bootlegger and casino operator in the soutland.
This location also ties in beautifully with the afore-mentioned book, “A Bright and Guilty Place,” as pretty much every event covered in the book also appears on these walls, as well as personalities like Dave Clark (an LA City prosecutor who got his hands dirty and bloody more than once) and Burton Fitts.
LA’s DA office is about to move to another building, so this exhibit will not be here forever, so whether or not you have jury duty, this is a public building, so make sure you make time soon to go up and walk these halls.
Another must-do in this area is check out the observation deck on the LA City Hall building located just across the street from the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, named after the first female lawyer on the west coast.
Jury duty or not, this location offers some of the best views of downtown LA and is a must visit. Sadly, the view towards the Hollywood Sign and the Griffith Observatory is frequently obscured by smog and other larger buildings in the area block some other ideal sites, but it’s still well worth the visit. West Hollywood, the Brewery artists lofts and, much closer Broadway and the Walt Disney Concert Hall. This is specifically a way to handle jury duty here in downtown LA, but when it comes down to it, no matter where you are, you can find an interesting way to entertain yourself. Turn it into an opportunity. How often do you have 90 minutes to kill away from home? We’re always in a rush nowadays and you can use this time to your personal benefit. The fact that you’re also pridefully doing your duty as a US citizen…. also a nice perk.
Check out Connor in her first solo youtube video and lend one of our founders your support!
LA Hauntings tour guide takes us on a tour of one of her favorite haunted places in her home town of Washington DC – Lafayette Square! Learn some unique pieces of American history and the ghosts that still re-live them!!
Glendora’s Bennett House, built in 1905, was purchased by the Daughters of the American Revolution and they found out quickly (during their very first monthly tea party meeting) that they weren’t alone in the home. The visage of a phantom man crashed the party before vanishing. Occupants also talked about hearing sounds of objects moving, but not seeing anything out of the ordinary happening; this seems to be a common residual-type haunting.
It’s unclear if much activity has taken place in the house since that first encounter with the vanishing man in 1982. It’s not uncommon for paranormal activity to spike when a building undergoes a change (renovations, new inhabitants, etc.). Maybe once the new owners settled in, the spirits settled back down as well.
The site is intimate. You are given a brochure at the visitor’s center and told to enjoy. And with that, you are off! The prison was surprisingly well attended considering 1) it’s Yuma and 2) it was a typical day, with temperatures reaching well into the triple digits. That said, there was still plenty of opportunities to explore the grounds alone as most visitors spent their time indoors. The main yard looks out over a canal and to the site of another place that merits future investigations – the location of a revolt of the Yuma/Quechan tribe that resulted in the destruction of two missions and the death of every European male, including the mission’s leader, Padre Graces, in 1781.
The most iconic feature of the prison is the solitary confinement cell, aka “The Dark Cell.” Prisoners found themselves confined within a strap iron cage, in the middle of this this dark cell. The only light came from a small ventilation pipe directly overhead. It was not uncommon for a prisoner to find themselves in the dark cell multiple times. Just check out the rap sheet for attempted murderer AA Stewart, who was sentenced for 4 days for insulting an officer, then another 10 days for disobeying an officer and threatening him. One might think spending a full month in solitary after an escape attempt would break his will, but the rebel had spirit, escaping and disappearing into the desert two months later.
An interesting blurb in the “Cochise Review” (as re-reported by the “Phoenix Herald”) in 1900 even mentions how successful the prison was at helping criminals rehabilitate from “the morphine habit,” citing the positive change felt by famed female stagecoach robber Pearl Heart.
