Echoes in a Hollow Space

What do Howard Hughes and the Gabrielino-Tongva Indians of Southern California have in common? It happens they shared a plot of land on the Westside of Los Angeles, separated by eons of time and circumstance. And they may also have shared a plot or two in the Otherworld.

While doing research on ghost hunting for a novel, I came across a book called Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Los Angeles by Jeff Dwyer. It’s part of a series, each set in a different city, and basically gives a brief overview of ghost hunting techniques and equipment followed by a long list of “haunted” locations.

Imagine my peaked interested when Playa Vista was listed, a stretch of land just down the hill from where I live, and part of the rampant development of the Ballona wetlands which once peacefully coexisted with the undeveloped runway of Hughes Aircraft. Howard Hughes refused to develop this land—the last piece of prime, “under-utilized” property on the desirable Westside of Los Angeles. At his death, the moneymen were wetting themselves in anticipation of the plunder. Because Hughes’s will situation was in chaos at the time of his death, it took many years, many lawsuits, and countersuits to get things squared away. The abandoned Hughes site contained old office buildings and engineering buildings, massive aircraft hangers (including the one where the Spruce Goose was assembled), and a runway. Movie companies were the only ones using this property for a long time, the empty hangers becoming sound stages. Parts of Titanic were filmed there, among other blockbusters. Raleigh Studios still retains these hangers, but the rest of the property has been highly developed.

Hughes Aircraft/Raleigh Studios hangers.

Enough strange things happened in these buildings that paranormal investigators came to check it out. Reportedly, the abandoned office buildings were especially active. A memorable episode of the paranormal T.V. show, Dead Famous, comes to mind, in which the intrepid investigators had many spooky adventures at the old Hughes complex. (I’m ashamed that I remember this—and so many other stupid-spooky shows—but I am a ghost show addict. I can’t help myself.) An anthropologist who worked on site reported the ghost of a small 1950s era white boy seen by many of the folk on the property. This little ghost even followed her home upon occasion. They also repeatedly saw “something colored bright white moving along just at the corner of their vision… For reasons that she was never quite clear on, she and the other workers came to the conclusion that the white shape seen moving in the lab was another spirit, specifically the ghost of Howard Hughes. As far as she knows, people on the project continue to see it.”

Finally, the lawyers and the moneymen stopped arguing and settled things in the courts. It was decided by the victors that the Hughes property would become a new live-work-play development (mixed residential, business, and entertainment) called Playa Vista. This was a massively controversial project from the start, as many wanted to protect the wetlands and the openness of the area, but the LA Board of Supervisors caved, as they always do when massive amounts of development money are involved. The Playa Vista project was bulldozed through the approval pipeline and the bulldozing of the Hughes property began.

Imagine everyone’s chagrin when the excavations uncovered human remains: what was left of a massive Gabrielino-Tongva Indian village and cemetery that had occupied the site for centuries (some say thousands of years) before Hughes got ahold of it. The developers were required by law to call in archaeologists, and tried to pass it off as a few paltry bones that they flung into a storage shed, treating them with great disrespect. It turned out this was a major archaeological site and around 411 bodies were recovered. The problem, as far as the Gabrielino-Tongva were concerned, is that their tribe is not federally recognized. This means they are not legally entitled to “repatriation”—that stipulation in U.S. Federal Law which requires Native American graves and artifacts to be treated with respect and reburied with tribal ritual after being disturbed. You can read about the whole sordid story in detail here and a more condensed version here.

Eventually, and with many years of pressure from Indian activists, the Playa Vista people agreed to set aside a memorial place where the bones could be shuttled out of the way of the development, out of sight of the rich folk, and reinterred. If this city blog can be believed, this took place on December 11, 2008. (I leave it to you to decide whether this memorial is cheesy.)

The Tongva Memorial

Now, as many a paranormal investigator will tell you, disturbed Indian gravesites are just asking for trouble. Some will say this attitude is racist, “blaming” the Indians for every weird quirk that happens on a property they once occupied. There are others who don’t look upon this as blaming the Indians, but perhaps as a matter of the disturbed dead seeking redress for the genocide visited upon them by Europeans. I probably fall into this latter camp, although it’s possible I am an unwitting racist. I would not be the first middle-class white girl reluctant to confess to that particular sin.

Regardless, Mr. Dwyer (you remember him from way up top at the start of this post?) states that, “Disturbance of these graves may be linked to strange mists that have been seen in the area. Small blue clouds float a foot off the ground and rise to a height of about four or five feet. At times they are stationary but sometime (sic) they move, slowly, against the wind.” Those pesky orbs so beloved of paranormal investigators have also been sighted and “there are reports of electrical and mechanical problems” at the construction site. “It is anticipated that occupants of several new homes and offices in this development will experience paranormal activity…”

I will confess that having lived in this area all my life and passed through that particular stretch of highway more times than I can count, “tooley” fog (aka tule fog) has always been prevalent on that road between the Westchester bluffs and La Ballona Creek (no more than a quarter mile north). This is one of the only places I know of on the Westside of LA where this fog happens and I’ve seen it many times, usually late at night. Although I don’t remember it ever being blue or moving against the wind. Mostly, it just sits like the spirit of malcontent, thick as dread, hugging the ground while ten feet off the earth the air is clear. The Ballona wetlands have always been an eerie place. Back in the day there were no streetlights, and at night that part of Lincoln Boulevard tended to be as dark as the heart of a developer, with nothing but empty fields, scattered and abandoned buildings, and that ground-hugging fog in the right weather. Driving through there late at night by myself really gave me the shivers. Not hard at all to imagine uneasy spirits even before they dug up those graves.

The development has civilized it somewhat, lifted the highway ten or fifteen feet (which was a good thing as it flooded rather badly when we actually had rain), put in streetlights and masses of butt-ugly buildings. The land west of Lincoln Boulevard was set aside as protected wetlands and a bird sanctuary, but Playa Vista continues to screw with the land and undercut the natural habitat of the wetlands. They have to be continuous monitored by environmentalists and activists. Besides all that, they ruined a perfectly good scary place and I will never forgive them for it, but I have to say, strange fogs are not particularly convincing to me as evidence of spirit activity.

Restored Ballona wetlands with southern range of butt ugly buildings.

Eastern reach of butt ugly buildings on the Hughes property.

Orbs spotted with the naked eye? Maybe. (On digital cameras—no, I don’t think so. Too many rational explanations.) Electrical and mechanical problems? Maybe. Or maybe not. Things flying around a Playa Vista apartment and horrid noises in the night? Now that I’d like to see—if anything like that had been reported. Which, as far as I know, it has not. And maybe that’s all the Playa Vista stories are at this point: resentful people like me who didn’t like to see that rapacious development and would enjoy casting a ray of darkness upon it for spoiling our fun.

But, aesthetic principles aside, I would not be caught dead living in one of those butt ugly buildings. Just in case.

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

I've become the links queen lately. I belong to several feeds and recently they've been hitting the strange sauce rather heavily. I'm going to try to confine the link salad to one or two days a week because Lawd knows ya'll have got quite enough to read as it is. But some of this stuff was too delicious not to pass along in hopes it tickles somebody's imagination.

Like this eerie tale of bones found in a basement and ghost hunters who claim an apparition showed them where to look.

Or this scholar who has come up with a method of decoding the Voynich Manuscript which has puzzled folks for centuries. Alas, her methodology seems to work quite well and is disappointingly mundane. Where are the arcane mysteries of yesteryear, I asks ya?

My synopsis here couldn't possibly top the headline for this article: "Sorry I ate your great-great grandpa." I think some of the comments have it right, though. Westerners have quite a lot to apologize for themselves.

Another sad tale of ancient Indian burials being disturbed in a cavalier manner.

You could not pay me to move into this subdivision. Respect, people. It isn't that hard to figure out.

Under the category of Neato Kobeato! you can now visit Pompeii through Google Street View.

Death Rentals in Italy*



That must be the Villa di Assassini Recidivi, I guess.

Or perhaps the Villa di Cacciatori Fantasmi.

Perhaps I have watched/read too much about serial killers and ghost hunters.






*Dream Villas in Italy

You can view some atmospheric pictures of the notoriously haunted Waverly State Sanitarium here, plus a click through to an eery video, as well as read the commentary of someone who took the tour. Ghost Hunters will be doing their 6-hour live show from Waverly on Halloween night. I see a DVR recording in my future since that's way past my bedtime on a school night.

Apparently, the owners of Waverly want to turn it into a kind of haunted resort. Oh my. Herein lies my hypocrisy and contradictions. I think using the trapped and tormented spirits of the dead as entertainment like this is wrong—yet I eagerly gobble up all these ghost shows, and if I was anywhere near Waverly, I'd take the tour, or the one at Eastern State in Philadelphia, or any of the other infamously haunted places around the country.

I will further confess that the only reason I visited the Drum Barracks in Long Beach (actually adjacent Wilmington) is because they're supposed to have Civil War ghosts. My friend and I tried to surreptitiously get EVPs and took a lot of pictures, but we got nothing of scientific value. We did experience heavy atmosphere and creepy feelings: in other words, no evidence at all.

I guess I'm informally doing research for my novel, Venus in Transit, because I've been reading a number of books on ghost hunting and one of the MC's in that novel is a paranormal investigator. I hadn't planned on doing that, but the season has coincided with the time of year when I wonder what I'm going to work on next. VIT has the advantage of being two-thirds finished. I got close to 70k done on it before it went belly up. I went off on a tangent that didn't work, and I realized the ending was too nebulous, so it sort of died on the vine. I've had a few years to think about it and may have a new ending forming up. I also recently reread what I'd written, and everything but that tangent seems to hold up pretty well. (I can't say the same for the other older, unfinished novel I thought of working on, that which used to be called A Taste of Night before Vicky Petersson.)

And btw, those of you living in the Philadelphia area might be interested to know that Eastern State Penitentiary, abandoned and super-haunted prison, puts on a haunted house extravaganza this time of year with actors and special effects and loads of bloody-gory family fun.

I'd go in a minute if I was in the neighborhood. Even though that would be wrong.

Booga-booga, ya'll!

The Month and a Half From Heck is finally over:

☛ One of the busiest end of the fiscal years I've experienced in awhile
☛ Followed closely by the Meeting From Hell Heck preparation
☛ Painting and furniture moving and re-moving
☛ Another tribe of workmen disrupting the routine of the household (one more tribe to go and then we've exhausted our redecorating resources—and then some)
☛ Some numbskull deciding to push forward with the 2nd draft of her novel during all this, after only about a week off from the 1st draft

There are far worse things that could have happened to me during this time, so it gets a Heck designation rather than Hell, but it did leave me rather exhausted. After the meeting on Tuesday I collapsed in a heap. Oh, I still came into work Weds-Fri, but I wasn't exactly at my best, just dragging through. I gave up trying to write anything some time the week before, am still on vacation from writing (need to refill the well), and I gave myself permission to be a complete vegetable this weekend.

I was looking forward, with the perversity of a true ghost afficionado, to the six hour event Most Haunted Live which went off 9 p.m. Friday night from the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. I'd just had my new DVR box from my cable company installed on Tuesday (with a return visit on Friday since they didn't do it right on Tuesday) and I'd already successfully recorded three episodes of Ghost Hunters, one hour of the medium Lisa Williams, and had the WE Tv line up of supernatural programs on Saturday night to look forward to (Rescue Mediums is a hoot, followed by John Edward). Because it's the time of year it is, there were other ghostly things to be had on Discovery and whatever the hell channel runs Ghostly Encounters (Sundays). (October always brings enough ghostly programming to choke even a devotee like myself.)

So I figured I could at least make it through midnight on the Most Haunted live event (I usually make it at least that late on Fridays), then watch the rest at my leisure, plus have all those other trashy programs to watch when I felt like it. Dudes, I was sound asleep in my chair by about 10:15. I must have been out at least twenty minutes, because on reviewing the Most Haunted recording the next day there's a big chunk in there that I had absolutely no recall of. I decided not to try to make it to 12, went to bed and slept very soundly.

It had been a very long time since I'd completely vegged out on a Saturday—I literally can't remember the last time I did that. But I did last Saturday, and it felt wonderful. I spent hours with the cat on my lap watching ghostly programming until I started to wonder about my psyche and this fascination with seeing dead people. (I still wonder, frankly, and have no solidly convincing answer for myself.) I didn't even read during that time, just sat there gawp-mouthed.

Sunday was more productive, but then I felt more rested. And now L.A. is surrounded by flame, dozens of wildfires, and a thick coating of ash on my car when I went out this morning (and yes, that means we're also breathing that crud). Dead trees, dead houses, a dead church, dead animals, and at least one dead person. We're haunted every year at this time with flame, and heroic firemen make heroic stands to save people and homes. And still we learn nothing from it. And still we rebuild in the same places and push on with our lives.

It makes me wonder about our collective psyches. I have no answers for that, either, that aren't knee-jerk and simplistic.

So I'm thinking of giving up writing to become a Reiki Master. Either that or a ghost hunter.

I think you can see how the three are related, right?


Random quote of the day:

"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."

—Scott Adams

Hangin' out with belly problems watching the Ghost Hunters marathon on SciFi. Love that show. The plumbers are the only credible ghost hunters on TV. All the others are mostly only good for laughs.

Also thinking about werehorses.

Last night I finished Moon Called by Patricia Briggs because buymeaclue recommended and I'd been curious about it. Liked it alot. She gives a much more coherent review here then I could hope to do today and which I pretty much agree with. Go, read.

That is all.

I've been reading a book for the last couple of months: _Ghost_ by Katherine Ramsland. One reason it's taking me so long to get through it is because, well, it's not much of a book. Just interesting enough to pick it up now and again to read a few more sections, but not so compelling that I'm ripping right through it. It purports to be "nonfiction," relaying how Ms. Ramsland got drawn into the world of ghost-hunting and her explorations of that world. That sounds like an interesting premise, right? Unfortunately, she manages to repeat the same information over and over without ever heading anywhere in particular. It wanders, meanders, drifts, wearing out plenty of shoe leather but never arriving at a destination. And she's always declaiming about wanting to keep her scientific objectivity--but there isn't a hell of a lot of objectivity in evidence. She hypes up the drama promising thunderous revelations...which never quite come off as advertised. Many times, though, there are moments of unintentional humor; instances when Ms. Ramsland comes off as something of a dim bulb with a Ph.D. It mystifies me how some books get into print.

So what's the point of all this besides sour grapes? Well, I have a confession to make. (Isn't that what blogs are for?) Another reason it's taking me so long to read this book is because I'm highly suggestible when it comes to this ghost cr!p. I can't read this book past late afternoon, when dusk starts gathering, because my imagination starts to do a hoodoo dance with me. I expect whangdoodles to slither out of the closet; haints to materialize from out of the gloaming; bogles to go bump in the night with extreme attitude.

Which is not to say I believe in ghosts. Some days I most definitely do not. Like Mark Twain said, "I do not believe in ghosts, but I am afraid of them." I've had just enough creepy, unexplained things happen to me that I've got the notion something's going on, but I don't want to have that notion confirmed--no sirree. I've always been more comfortable with oracles that leave me room for doubt. I don't want absolute confirmation or confrontation. I don't want to *see* anything or hear anything that might rip aside that safe little curtain of rationality. I'm content with the afterimage of presence, the fading smell of manifestation. I reserve a part of my brain for doubt and rational explanations. I need to maintain the ability to retreat there, even if another big part of me gets caught up in the airy-fairyhood, even if another big part of me loves that frisson and seek out things which make my spine rattle with it. But only at a safe remove.

Having a good imagination can be a powerful tool for both good and evil. And I have a brain that is perfectly comfortable with holding irreconcilable ideas within the same skull. Who needs to have a devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other? I've got that pitched battle going on daily in my own twee brain (matinees Sat-Sun). This believer/skeptic thing is just one of my many dichotomies.

It comes down to this: if the universe is stranger than we can imagine, it must be very strange indeed. And if that's the case, anything is possible. And if _that's_ the case, I'd rather not have that confirmed--if it's all the same to you.