XIN LU VIDEO BUS TOUR: HAUNTED SITES

 

This page is designed as a supplement to the Xin Lu Video Bus Tours, it lists the location and short description of some of the haunted sites featured on the bus tour route. Some of these sites are also explored in the video series, in particular in Part 4: [os], as locales where the past and present interact in powerful ways. In Avery Gordon's book Ghostly Matters, she quotes Frederic Jameson in saying that "spectrality is... what makes the present waver".* In evoking these sites in my videos and on the video bus tours, I, like Gordon, am also interested in "finding the shape of what is not there".** These listings are subjective, eclectic, and selected out of personal interest and affiliation. They are by no means exhaustive, nor are they meant to be. Think of them as catalysts for further exploration, opportunities to speak to the dead and the past, or simply as curious road maps of our desires to look back in history. As the bus tour project develops, more locations and sites will be added. Comments and suggestions of additional sites are very much welcomed. Please send them via email to Ming-Yuen S. Ma.

*From Frederic Jamison, “Marx’s Purloined Letter” in New Left Review 209, Jan./Feb. 95, quoted in Avery Gordon, Ghostly Matters, Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1997.
**From Gordon's Ghostly Matters.

 

LOS ANGELES TOURS (May 3rd and 4th, 2008)

337 South Main Street, Los Angeles
The site was once the most famous theater in Los Angeles-the Belasco. It declined through the 1960s when it became a stripper theater. About 1965, there were reported sightings of a red-haired young woman clad in white negligee who wandered the back stage of the theater. Since the demolition of the theater, which is now a parking lot, the ghost has not been sighted.

Alexandria Hotel (5th and Spring St., Downtown, Los Angeles)
Apparition of a woman dressed in black. "Her dress was beautiful, with an almost bustled back, and the hat had a veil. She seemed to be a woman in her thirties or forties." Quoted from Nancy Malone, who recounted her experience of seeing the 'lady in black' in Hollywood Haunted.

Castillo del Lago (Hills above Beachwood Canyon and Lake Hollywood, Los Angeles)
This 20,000 sq. ft. mansion was built by gangster Bugsy Siegel in 1926, and reputed to have been a site for elite underground parties. Many present day occupants and visitors have felt a "negative force" when inside the house—photos taken inside all came out black, an apparition of a man in a fedora hat was sighted, lone occupants hear their names called out in the middle of the night by a man's voice.

The Comedy Store, formerly Ciro's (8433 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles)
Apparition of men in 1940s style clothing sighted, objects materialize and move by themselves, a"hulking, amorphous figure... almost 7 ft. tall" sighted in the basement by Blake Clark, comic and security guard.

Corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Vine Street
Supernatural occurrences reported during Bela Lugosi's funeral procession in 1959 at this corner. Sightings of Lon Chaney's ghost on a bus bench at the same corner, bench has since been removed.

Culver Studios (Culver City)
Reports of ghostly security guards patrolling the lot at night, and sightings of the ghost of a man climbing the stairs in the main administrative building to the executive screening room, formerly the private projection room of Thomas Ince - who built the studio in 1918. Apparition of a women sighted on the third floor, who leaves a cold spot or chilling wind in her wake.

Exposition Park Rose Garden (Downtown, Los Angeles)
A few minutes before sunset, partial apparitions of men and women dressed in 1920s and 30s clothing are frequently seen walking around the center fountain, while the transparent image girl dressed in white appears near roses on the west side.

Grauman's Chinese Theater (6925 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles)
The ghost of actor Victor Killian is said to search the sidewalk outside the theatre for the man who bludgeoned him to death in his nearby apartment in 1982. Employees of the theatre have also told of strange sounds and movement coming from behind the theatre's curtain, often after hours when no one else is there.

Holly Mont Drive (Hollywood near the base of Beachwood Canyon)
A secret passage, believed to have been built during the Prohition era, links several houses on this street. Inside the tunnel is a makeshift grave marked "Regina 1922". In two of the houses, objects were seen to move on their own and fly in the air across the room, apportations (objects materialize out of thin air), strange sounds (footsteps,sharp, explosive sounds), smell of perfume.

Hollywood Forever (aka Hollywood Memorial Park, Santa Monica Blvd. between Van Ness Ave. and Gower St.)
Strange lights and sounds have been reported in the vicinity of the Abbey of the Psalms, a mausoleum in Hollywood Park Memorial Cemetery. The mausoleum is said to be haunted by a glowing specter thought to be the late actor Clifton Webb of the original Mr. Belvedere series. Webb died in 1966. He is also said to haunt his old house in the Hollywood Hills.

Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (7000 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles)
Site of multiple hauntings. A guerilla-style ghost hunt took place in this hotel in my video [os] (2007), where we visited all the accessible locations between 11pm and 2am one night in 2006, with largely un-successful results. My collaborator Lisa Asagi spent the night in Room 928, where she had an experience later that night. Her experience was recounted at the end of [os].

Knickerbocker Hotel (1714 Ivar Ave., Los Angeles)
Now a senior citizen home, the bar of this famed Hollywood hang counts Rudolph Valentino and Harry Houdini among its beyond-the-grave inhabitants.

Bessie Love's house (Laurel Canyon off Lookout Mountain Drive)
Silent film star Bessie Love's former home was believed to be haunted by two men killed by Tiburcio Vasquez in the mid 1800s. Doors open and close by themselves, mysterious electrical problems, a low moaning sound is sometimes heard, cold spot in the living, where a ghost in a cowboy hat or sombrero was sighted.

Mt. St. Mary's College (12001 Chalon Road, Brentwood, CA)
Ghost nuns have been seen walking the halls of the dormitories on what is rumored to be both Indian burial grounds and the site of stolen stashes of gold from the 1800s.

Oban Hotel (6364 Yucca St., Los Angeles)
Spirits walk up and down the stairs. Ghost of a murdered man, Charles Love, haunts the basement.

Pacific Avenue and Windward Avenue (Venice, CA)
Abbot Kinney himself is still seen in blacktop and formal clothing walking the streets of the city he founded, especially along Windward and Pacific.

The Pacific/El Capitan Theater (6838 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles)
Haunted by the ghost of Sam Warner.

Pantages Theater (6233 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles)
Haunted by the ghost of Howard Hughes, and the voice of a female patron who died in the mezzanine during a show in 1932. Her voice is sometimes heard in the auditorium when it is empty, or picked up by a microphone during live performances and carried over the monitor.

Playa Vista, CA
Strange mists began appearing after local construction crews unearthed human remains of Native Americans. Newer housing developments have been plagues with electrical and other problems that some attribute to paranormal activity.

Raleigh Studios (5300 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles)
An electrician who fell to his death from the catwalk in 1932 now haunts Stage 5. Reports of power failures, movements of heavy equipment, and drastic drops in temperature.

Silent Movie Theater (611 North Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles)
The ghosts of the former owners are believed to haunt this theater. The first owner, John Hampton, is sighted in the upstairs lounge - the location of his former apartment. The second owner, Lawrence Austin, was shot and murdered in the theater's lobby, and is now "regularly seen in the lobby by many confused employees after hours" according to Charlie Lustman, the current owner.

Variety Arts Center (940 S. Figueroa St., Downtown, Los Angeles)
An Elizabethan actor is sometimes seen bowing to an unseen costar here, then disappearing into thin air.

 

* Many of the Los Angeles area sites are featured in Laurie Jacobson and Marc Wanamaker's book Hollywood Haunted, Santa Monica: Angel City Press, 1994. I also consulted the following web sources: Los Angeles Almanac, fabulous travel, Creepy LA, LA Tourist.com