Monthly Archives: November 2011

Paranormal Paramount (Stage 19)

Nationality: American
Age: 47
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Performance Date: November 2nd 2011
Primary Language: English

For as long as I can remember my mothers best friend has always been fascinated by the supernatural. Whenever my she is at our house, and I see her, we have conversations about different supernatural topics. So it only made sense that I would approach her for ghost folklore. She told me that she heard an interesting one when she lived in LA about a haunting in Paramount Studios. The story goes as follows:

Hollywood is the home of many eerie tales. So many that there is a tour called the Haunted Hollywood tour. A famous stop is the cemetery, Hollywood Forever, which is located next to Paramount Studios. Security guards who work around the sound stages of Paramount Studios have claimed that sometimes those restless souls in Hollywood Forever come back to haunt the Studio. This happens so frequently that the security guards, more specifically those who work the night shift, have given the studio a new name. They call it Paranormal Paramount.

One of the most famous “hauntings” is the haunting on sound stage 19; the stage where Happy Days was shot. Most security guards refuse to work the night shift on sound stage 19. The stage is said to be haunted by Heather O’Rourke, the little girl from poltergeist. She joined the cast of Happy Days as Heather Pfister, and was featured in 12 episodes from 1982-1983. She died in a hospital in 1988 from mysterious causes, although it is believed that there was some sort of surgical complication. She was 12.

One evening a man was talking to a night shift security guard who worked stage 19 about the paranormal activities that go on at the studio. The security guard told the man that almost every night he hears running and laughing on the catwalk above the set, which is where Heather liked to play when she was on set on Happy Days. The security guard also told the man that sometimes they’d see the little girl playing on the stage. The man asked what they do when they see her. The security guard replied that they usually just tell her to leave and she runs off.

The man decided he wanted to test this out for himself. The guard let him into the stage at midnight and bid him good luck before shutting the sound stage door. The man walked around, and waited. He prepared himself to hear running on the catwalk or to see Heather playing, but nothing happened. Finally after 20 minutes or so he decided to provoke the spirit a little by telling her come out and play. Not a second after the words left his mouth did the man feel a hand brush across his lower back. He immediately ran off the stage in terror. Outside he told the security guard what happened and that he didn’t actually expect anything to happen. The security guard laughed and told the man that his expression looks just like the expression on of the editor for the show Wings (which was also shot on stage 19) had when he saw Heather in the background of one of the shots.

My mother’s friend, as I mentioned, is a firm believer in supernatural occurrences like this story. She said that things like visitations are not beyond being a possibility. I, on the other hand, am somewhat skeptical about ghosts in general. However this story is consistent with themes and motifs found in most ghost stories. For example, dying young, without marrying, without accomplishing, are all aspects of the theme of unfinished business. As well there were claims of malpractice in relation to her death, which is not a natural death. Unfinished business and unnatural death are two very strong motifs in ghost stories that prevent the dead from moving on.

Richie

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Performance Date: October 27th 2011
Primary Language: English

My best friend and I went to the same sleepover camp for eleven years. He recently reminded me of this story.

One year when we were very young, probably around nine or ten, our councilor decided that he would tell us a scary story. My friend and I sat on the floor in front of my councilors bed and he told us the story of Richie.

The camp was founded in 1964. A once calm and quite lake, where families could escape for a month or two from the city had now become the home of two-hundred, loud and rowdy kids. For the most part none of the families on the lake had a problem with this, and in fact sent their kids to the camp eventually. Other cottagers hated the camp and would try to vandalize it at night in order to scare the campers and staff off. One man in particular, named Bernard Richie Ludwig, did not like the idea of the camp. He did not like the free range that these kids had, and the interactions that the boys and girls had with each other, and made these views vocal on more than one occasion to the camp’s owners. The thing that really bothered Richie though was the camp’s activity on the lake.

See, Richie’s cottage sat on the lake right where the camps ski boats liked to drive their course. This meant that from ten in the morning till five at night boats were constantly speeding by his cottage, being loud and creating rough waters. This angered Ritchie; the constant traffic was ruining one of his previously favorite activates with his son, swimming.

One day, despite the constant boating, Richie and his son went swimming. The staff member driving the boat that day wasn’t paying attention to the water and only after he heard a blood-curdling scream did he realize he had hit Richie and his son. Richie’s son died on impact, Richie did not. Instead his leg got caught in the motor and was horribly mangled. Richie’s wife ran out of their cottage to see the boat driver carrying the bloodied Richie into the house, and her son’s dead body on the dock.

In the weeks to follow the staff member was let go and dealt with by the authorities. Richie refused medical attention, claiming he was so upset he would rather die. This deeply upset his wife and their other son. Slowly Richie’s leg began to gangrene, and he started going mad. He would stay up all night hollering at nothing and shouting curses at himself, the boat driver, god and the camp. Soon his entire leg was rotted with gangrene and Richie had become insane. His wife told him that she and the other son were leaving because they couldn’t watch him like this anymore. Then, for the first time in two months Richie stood up off the couch. He walked over to his wife, his gangrene leg immobile. He would take a step with his good foot and then drag his second one to catch up with the first. Slowly he made his way over to his wife. Thud, drag, thud, drag. He said to her quietly that he loves her and that she can’t leave. She took a step away from him but he grabbed onto her. She struggled, and hit him in the face. He held on tighter. Then she kicked him in his infected leg and he let go screaming in pain. She tried to get away, but he chased after her with a thud and a drag and pinned her to the ground. He strangled his wife, and then killed his other son. Richie then killed himself, but only after writing a note that read “I will not rest until I get even.”

For forty years after that, kids would recount events to each other where they woke up in the middle of the night to someone walking in the cabin with a thud and a drag. The thud and drag would stop next to their bed and they would smell something rotten, then it would vanish.

Finally many years later a fourteen-year-old girl by the name of Reagan Peters, came to camp for the first time. After a week she vanished and was never heard from again. Her cabin-mates claim they heard someone walking through their cabin with a thud and a drag. All that was left in her bed was a note that read “your daughter for my son.”

The guy who told me this story did not believe it was real and nor do I. It was used at our camp to deter young campers from interacting with the cottagers on the lake, as well to warn the kids to be careful around the water. This story has a lot of interesting motifs that are consistent with more traditional ghost stories, for example the theme of vengeance, and untimely death and a promise that must be fulfilled in order for the ghost to move on.

Ghosts of the Tortured

Choon Siong Tan, 20, Male

Student, Malaysian-Chinese

Los Angeles, CA

I approached Choon one evening and asked if he has heard of any interesting ghost story. Since both of us are Malaysians, I thought asking him for a local ghost story would be a great idea. So we talked about the ghost story after dinner that evening:

“So this story took place in my primary school, a school beside a mountain. It’s in my hometown, Kemaman. In Terengganu. It must begin with some history… the time when the Japanese occupied our country. So, the Japanese army and our own army had a huge war and they killed a lot of people, and they just threw them into the mountain. They dug a huge hole, and threw all the bodies into the hole. Basically, people believe that the souls of the dead people are restless and that they are seeking for revenge. And it’s like… after the war, people started to hear ghost stories that happened in the school. Some said they heard the Japanese army marching at night, they heard the sound, but they didn’t see them. School children always have camping activities nearby and that’s what they said… they heard people marching. And one famous story is about the ghost woman in the toilet. This happened to two girls… they were camping, too, with a group of students. One of them went out of the toilet first, and the other one was still in there… and when she wanted to go out, the door was locked, no, not locked… she couldn’t open the door. She thought her friend was pulling a prank on her. So she said to the friend, “Hey, stop playing”. But in the end, she saw two fingers under the door pulling the door from outside… so she tried very hard to open the door and after a while she managed to open it. She went out and scolded the friend for frightening her… but the friend said “I have always been out here, waiting for you”. The ghost was not seen, only the two fingers… but it was convincing enough, don’t you think? It all happened in the same school!”

I then asked Choon what exactly happened in the building during the Japanese occupation:

“They keep hostages… hold them captive. They kill people… but most of the time they use two ways. They rape and kill the girls… decent-looking girls. And for guys… they just behead them, or if they want to torture, they will pump water into the stomach… or force them to drink a lot of water, until the stomach is about to burst… and they will kick and press the stomach. So this is how they kill people. They can’t escape so they will end up dying. They only catch Chinese, most of them, because of the war between China and Japan. So when they see Chinese in Malaysia, they want to take revenge on them.”

I then asked Choon if he thinks this story is a scary one, and he responded by saying that it is not scary if a person listens to it, but it will be really scary if it happens to the person at the exact place.

This story makes a good ghost story because it constitutes the two sensory evidence as depicted in Elizabeth Tucker’s Haunted Halls, which are sight, sound. It also envelopes the theme of revenge, which leads to occurrences of hauntings in the school compound. The spirits lingered in that particular “zone” because it was the last place they had been before they were brutally murdered. A possible reason for their continuous dwellings is that they are waiting to take revenge on the murderers. Many versions of this very story were told over time, but all are congruent in terms of the kind of ghosts they see and hear (wailing females) or the eerie presence they feel when they are in the building. The appearance of the female ghost suggest that she had been mistreated (raped and killed) and did not manage to live a fulfilling life (died young and unmarried), and thus her soul lingers in the living world. Male ghost hauntings are rare probably because the men who were killed died a dignified death, as compared to women who were raped, tortured and then murdered.

The spirits of the dead are unable to rest due to improper burial. As told by Choon, the dead bodies were discarded into the hole in the mountain. No ritual ceremonies where carried out and no prayers were said to the dead. The Inuit tradition mentioned that if bodies were not properly wrapped and buried, the soul of the dead will not be able to rest and bad things will happen to the village. Although it is not known whether or not the brutal Japanese soldiers experience any unfortunate circumstance after, but improper burial can certainly explain the hauntings occurred in areas close to the mountain.

Patsy Teoh, 20, Female

Student, Malaysian-Chinese

Los Angeles, CA

Caspers of the Canyon

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Malibu, CA
Performance Date: 11/6/11
Primary Language: English

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There is this girl that I’ve been talking to that attends Pepperdine University.  I figured, what the hell, what better way to flirt with her than to ask her if she has any ghost stories she’d be willing to share (a.k.a. help me with my homework).  I was not expecting much, but upon my asking, she jumped all over it like I had just asked her to be my girlfriend (see: no way).  Her tale is as follows…

 

“Ummm…my speech teacher tells a story of ghosts that haunt the canyon (Malibu).   So he said that there was this guy who would like hide in the bushes on the side of the road.   He would run out to the side of the road at night when a car drove past, covered in blood.  He would try to like convince and trick people into helping him.  When people would pull over to help the guy, they would realize that he was covered in red paint instead of blood.  After he lured them out of their cars, he would bring them to like a secret hiding spot behind the bushes that he popped out from and rape the people that pulled over to help.  It didn’t matter to him if it was a woman, a guy, or even little kids-he would rape them all.  After he raped them, he would slit their throats and toss them over the side of the canyon and take their cars and drive away.  My speech teacher says that when you drive by the same turn at exactly midnight, you can feel the ghosts of all the people he killed trying to push and pull your car off the canyon to join them.”

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Lauren told me that they were having a roundtable discussion in her speech class regarding ghost stories and how to properly verbalize them.   Her professor gave this example and at the conclusion, proclaimed to believe the story is true as it was told to him by his adult son, who claimed to have seen and felt the ghosts’ presence himself.  Lauren was a little bit more wary of the ghost story as she does not necessarily believe whole-heartedly in the existence of ghosts.  Instead, she hypothesizes that the force supposedly exerted by the ghosts on the vehicles can easily be explained by wind which is constantly swirling and changing throughout the canyon.

Personally, I am not inclined to believe the ghost aspect of this story as Lauren and I share a similar theory of what was actually happening to these cars.  However, an interesting aspect of the story is the fact that the time which these events are said to occur are during a very liminal time, midnight.  This leads me to believe the tales could possibly be true, as I do believe the scheme the deranged man was pulling could have happened.  However, my initial inclination is that there are no ghosts that haunt the Canyon as I’m sure there would have been many news stories covering the disappearances of that amount of people, which there was not.

 

 

The Haunted Mansion

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 28
Occupation: Security Guard
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 11/9/11
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

One can only imagine the things that a building security guard sees after hours when all the residents have gone to bed. With this in mind, I decided to ask my friend who works at University Gateway if there were any ghost stories he had come across in his time working there. He informed me that while there weren’t any he had from Gateway, he also works at the Alexandria Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles which is considered a haunted hotel by many. He had this to say:

“I had heard stories about the building, about the daughter of the guy who built the building. Her name was Alexandria and she was on the seventh floor playing with her orange ball, when it fell down the elevator shaft. She went after it and fell in and died. On December 28th, I was driving into work, I pulled up and went down the car lift to the second floor basement to park my car. I drove in and parked, I started walking to the car lift when I heard a little girl laughing. I stopped and looked around, but ignored it. I continued walking to the elevator and got in and when I was half way up, an orange ball rolled in and bounced into the second floor parking. I freaked out because that whole month there were different things happening with the building: from people jumping out the seventh floor and killing themselves to us security finding dead bodies in the rooms. When I got to the security desk I told my supervisor about it. He laughed and I asked him to check the footage out. We rewound the footage and the orange ball came out of the stairs where there’s a heavy metal door you have to push to get out of the second floor garage. Then it started rolling slowly and stopped in front of the car lift waiting for me to come up. People were walking straight into the ball and no one would notice it. When I came up, it looked like the ball was rolled back and pushed into the car lift. When my supervisor saw the footage, he flipped out and clocked out right away. Residents in the building have pictures and stories too. I’ve witnessed more things during my time there. Every resident I have gotten close to has passed away there and I can still feel their presence there. If you want a tour, I can give you one and you may witness some out of the ordinary things in the building.”

Already knowing the illustrious ghostly history of the Alexandria Hotel, I was immediately intrigued by this story and acknowledged that the forthcoming story could very well be true. The security guard admittedly believes in ghosts so I had to scrutinize every detail of the story for some semblance of bias, yet could find none.
The fact that the guard’s claims were supported with video evidence is compelling enough for me to believe his tale although I have not seen the footage personally. I look forward to the opportunity to take him up on his offer and explore the haunted mansion for myself.