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Everyone has their favorite murder. When we walked through downtown Los Angeles on a night chilled by fall, it was easy to remember Halloween lurked nearby. Especially as our tour guide, Neil, from LA Walking Tours, spoke about all the suicides, unsolved homicides, and slashings that seemed to revolve around specific locations within the 2-mile radius of the Haunted Tales Tour. As Neil stopped in front of buildings, hotels, and former cemeteries, we fanned out around him as he shared their gristly history. Here’s what we learned about seven haunted places in Los Angeles that now visit our nightmares.
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Pico House
The tour meets at Pico House, which, in the late 1800s, was the largest and most luxurious hotel in Los Angeles and Southern California. Today, it is an anachronistic hull that houses the spirits of that time.
Pico House is located near the historic center of the original city of Los Angeles, then called El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre El Río Porciúncula (The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels on the Porciúncula River). It’s across the street from the El Pueblo de Los Ángeles Historical Monument or the Los Angeles Plaza Historic District. LA’s iconic Olvera Street, the “birthplace of Los Angeles,” is a recreation of an old Mexican marketplace and originates from the plaza monument.
Pico House’s namesake, Pio de Jesus Pico, was the last Mexican governor of Alta California before its 1848 annexation by the United States. Once a citizen, Pico became a businessman and made his fortune in cattle farming.
He decided to leverage his fortune to build the biggest, most luxurious hotel in Los Angeles and Southern California. The hotel boasted 80 bedrooms, 21 parlors, and a French restaurant arranged around a central courtyard with a fountain and an exotic bird aviary. The hotel featured gas lights and running water, lavish for the time.
Unfortunately, his gambling and debauches lifestyle caused him to fall into hard times and lose the hotel to the banks. He lived in poverty into his 90s. After his death, the new tenants of Pico House reported seeing him wandering around the old hotel he loved so much. Maybe he thinks he still owns it.
424 N Main St, Los Angeles, CA 90012
The last house and the first cemetery @ Discover Los Angeles
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La Placita Church Cemetery – LA’s First Cemetery
Kitty-corner from Pico House is Los Angeles’s first cemetery, La Placita Church Cemetery. The cemetery filled with devout Catholics when their time came to move on. Unfortunately, the city had to move the remains of these Catholic interments to the Chinatown section of the city when more space was needed for the growing community of living people. They relocated most of the bodies.
A building rose around the old graveyard. But, again, they didn’t move all the bodies. Some they set aside and stored in bags. Finally, officials decided to rebury the bagged bodies inside the original cemetery. Visitors can see the small graveyard there today.
A marker in time. @ SVH77
That all sounds like the opposite of resting in peace and couldn’t have made the souls very happy. Maybe that’s why the cemetery is now frequented by unhappy spirits.
521 N. Main Street, Los Angeles, California
Biltmore Hotel – Black Dahlia
The thing that got me about the Black Dahlia is that she could easily have been any girl. Elizabeth Short, a 22-year-old girl in 1947, came to Hollywood to try to be a star. She went to a fancy bar at the Biltmore Hotel, the place to be seen at that time, and had a drink or two before witnesses reported last seeing her leaving with a man in his car.
The short version is her body was found dissected in half with her intestines neatly tucked beneath her buttocks. Her torso and head lay with her hands above her head and the murderer placed her legs spread open off to the side. They found her remains lying in a vacant lot in the neighborhood of Leimert Park, on the west side of South Norton Avenue, midway between Coliseum Street and West 39th Street. Gruesome and demented doesn’t begin to cover the images springing to mind as Neil told us the tale. Though her short life was full of bad decisions that involved married men and arrests, no one deserved this fate.
Mug shot of Elizabeth Short and fingerprint. @ FBI
Detectives thought it must have been a physician who committed this crime, given how precisely they executed her lacerations. The mystery deepened as newspapers received mail with cut-out and glued letters. These offered clues and promised an eventual surrender that never occurred. The public couldn’t get enough. Hollywood finally made her a star, even if she had to die to make it happen.
506 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90013
Hollywood Forever Cemetery
As beautiful as Hollywood appears on the outside, it has its share of nasty underbelly. One place where secrets get buried but may not stay that way is the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. The cemetery opened in 1899 as Hollywood Memorial Park. Because of its close proximity to Paramount Studios, families chose to bury their celebrity kin there. The land became a mess as deranged fans dug up celebrity skulls, and upkeep was nonexistent to the point where families paid to have their loved ones moved.
Under new management, the newly minted Hollywood Forever Cemetery is a permanent home to Rudolph Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and Judy Garland, and is one of the most haunted places in Los Angeles.
Valentino left a tsunami of heartbroken fans when he died at the early age of 31. On the anniversary of his death, a “Lady in Black” appears to lay flowers on his grave. Visitors report seeing him wandering forlornly by his crypt.
The ghostly form of Fairbanks, a leading man of adventure in early Hollywood days, is said to be spotted gazing at his reflection in the lake with sounds of laughter and music surrounding his crypt.
Young Garland also wasn’t ready to go. Visitors report seeing her spirit singing around her grave as her young figure wanders among the cemetery grounds.
Who walks there? Photo by Scott Rodgerson on Unsplash
Other hotspots of paranormal activity at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery are the Cathedral Mausoleum, the Masonic Lodge, and the Garden of Legends.
Hollywood Wax Museum
The wax museums of national fame are based on the creations of Madame Tussaud, the French daughter of a housekeeper who worked for a doctor who sculpted life-sized figures in wax. Tussaud learned and modified her craft to suit the needs of the revolutionaries who captured her after beheading King Louis XVI. They forced her to create replicas of his head to replace the one severed from his body. OK, gross.
The one in Hollywood is based on the original idea she applied after her release. Tussaud went on to create museums filled with the likenesses of monarchs. However, the one in Hollywood, started by “Spoony” Singh, sought to bring celebrities, the royalty of Hollywood, to the people.
Visitors today say certain sections of the museum, like the “Chamber of Horrors,” regularly manifest apparitions caught by video and photographs that can’t be explained.
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I’m ok, are you ok? Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash
Floating orbs, mysterious colors and shapes are often observed by nighttime visitors. One man from the popular gossip rag, the National Enquirer, spent the night and left in the morning saucer-eyed and traumatized.
Griffith Park
The land where Griffith Park now stands once belonged to a man named Don Antonio Feliz. As Feliz lay dying from smallpox, a local politician and attorney stole his land in a fake will drawn up by the conniving duo. Feliz’s niece cursed the land and the two swindlers. The attorney later died after being shot by an unidentified gunman and the land continued to experience calamities like fires, lightning strikes, and cattle disease that killed subsequent owners and their workers. Even after Griffith J Griffith donated the land to Los Angeles County, the park continued to experience tumultuous events. As a large public park, it became the site of a murderous dumping ground. Skulls and bodies regularly turned up, and their former occupants can be heard looking for justice.
The Old Zoo
As Hollywood filmmaking took off, animals who roared on the silver screen needed a home after the cameras stopped rolling. Directors would donate these out-of-work actors to a little zoo growing in Griffith Park. As the little zoo bloomed in popularity, with two million visitors coming to gawk at the cages, criticism grew for the small enclosures cramping the animals. A bigger zoo opened two miles away, and the old zoo became the scene for Hollywood films and family picnics.
Would you go in? @ PBSSoCal
At night, visitors report hearing the sounds of animals in distress. Maybe the ghosts of the previous tenants?
When You Go
Where To Stay Near The Ghost Trail
West Hollywood Hotel
Bring the teenagers along to Andaz West Hollywood to impress them with the highest rooftop pool in LA; stay for the full-service poolside food and beverage service. West Hollywood locals choose this spot for their own staycations, so you know it’s going to be great.
Downtown LA Hotels
The iconic Hotel Figueroa has an outdoor pool, bars, restaurants and cribs available for families. Plus it’s super affordable. The storied Biltmore Los Angeles has an indoor pool, ornate interior and four on-site restaurants. It’s also very inexpensive for LA. And now we know why.
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