CALIFORNIA GHOSTS
CALIFORNIA GHOSTS
True Accounts of Hauntings in the Golden State
By Preston Dennett
Do you believe in ghosts? Have you ever seen one? This spine-tingling
volume presents 26 true firsthand cases of ghosts, hauntings and spirits
across the state of California. Each case is told in the witnesses’ own words
and is illustrated by award-winning artist, Christine Kesara Dennett. The
book contains 191 gripping pages.
Here are just a few of the incredible cases you will find in this book:
--a group of homes are built directly over a Native American Burial ground,
causing intense poltergeist activity.
--a mother and daughter are followed by a friendly ghosts that gives warm
hugs.
--four teen-age boys use themselves as bait to attract a hostile ghost called
the White Witch.
--a lady receives conclusive physical proof of life after death from the spirit
of her deceased ex-husband.
--a young woman goes to England and discovers that she has strong
mediumistic abilities.
--a table-lifting session that went too far.
--three sisters experiment with a Ouija board, causing dire consequences.
-- two roommates are viciously attacked by an angry poltergeist.
--a brother and sister are overwhelmed by a spirit which tries to possess
them.
--a young man and his best friend experience an incredible poltergeist
infestation.
--Charles Manson and how his crimes left a trail of horrifically haunted
houses.
--the incredible abilities of world-famous medium Brian Hurst.
And numerous other cases of normal people who suddenly find themselves
in bizarre paranormal situations. This book introduces the full range of
ghostly phenomena. Some of the stories are happy, some are scary, and
some are downright bone-chilling. But they are all absolutely true. Dennett
also reveals his own ghostly encounter which launched his investigations
into the paranormal. Learn also what to do if you have your own ghost.
CALIFORNIA GHOSTS
True Accounts of Hauntings in the Golden State
By Preston Dennett
Artwork by Kesara
Contents:
Acknowledgements….4
Note to the reader….4
1. Ghosts of the Indian Burial Ground….7
2. Woken Up By a Ghost….15
3. The Ghost Who Answered the Phone….19
4. The Ghost Who Came To Bed….23
5. Embraced By A Ghost….27
6. Only the Children….35
7. Footsteps on the Staircase….39
8. A Vision of Blood….43
9. A Mentally Handicapped Ghost….47
10. The White Witch….55
11. So You Don’t Believe in Ghosts?….61
12. A Child Ghost….69
13. Poltergeist!….73
14. A Brother’s Ghost….79
15. The Haunted Armoire….83
16. The Ghost Dog….87
17. The Coldness of Ghosts….91
18. A Hand Across Death….97
19. Adventures In Table Lifting….103
20. The Wizard of Reseda….113
21. The Legacy of the Charles Manson Murders….123
22. A Demon Named Bart….129
23. A House Possessed….135
24. When Poltergeists Knock….147
25. The Haunted Apartments….157
26. The Wildwood Poltergeist….175
Conclusions….191
Published by Schiffer Books, c2004.
THE LEGACY OF THE CHARLES MANSON MURDERS
Excerpted from the book:
CALIFORNIA GHOSTS
TRUE ACCOUNTS OF HAUNTINGS IN THE GOLDEN STATE
By Preston Dennett
It is well-known that tragic deaths can cause a home or place to become
haunted. What is not as well known is that an act of evil can also bring about
a haunting. Many people who have severely haunted homes later discover
that horrific acts have occurred there such as satanic sacrifices, black magic,
murders, suicides, acts of sexual perversion, devil worshipping or some
other awful event. These types of hauntings can be distinguished from others
by their particularly evil nature.
In the 1970s, the city of Los Angeles was gripped in terror by the
hideous crimes of Charles Manson. He and his gang went on a spree of
murders that shocked the nation. Manson was eventually apprehended by the
police. He was put on trial, found guilty of murder and imprisoned.
The evil nature of his crimes made a lasting impression on the public.
However, what is not as well known is that his crimes have left a trail of
haunted houses -- homes that were forever changed by the events that
occurred there.
Margaret Patterson (not her real name) has been a real-estate agent for
over twenty-five years. She had heard about the murders, but never really
paid much attention to them. But then, her job as a real-estate agent brought
her right to the door of one of the houses where the Manson gang had
committed a ghastly crime.
It all began when a lady came into the office looking for a home in the
Santa Monica mountains. As Margaret says, “I worked in real-estate and this
woman came into my office and she wanted to buy a house. I asked her how
much she could spend. I don’t know what it was, but it was like twelve
thousand dollars or fourteen thousand dollars. Most of the houses were
going for about twenty-five thousand then. That was probably like the early
seventies.
“I didn’t have anything and she went on and on about how she just
wanted a place that was habitable and she didn’t care all that much about it.
She wasn’t fussy, and she only wanted to be here in the canyon, and on and
on. She reminded me of a gypsy-type lady, overweight with a muumuu on, a
fortune-teller type, you know what I mean?
“So finally, she kept pushing, and there was this one house that we
had that was vacant. They were asking thirteen-five. It was very small. It
was a one bedroom, almost a tree-house type little affair, among the trees. I
had never been into it before, but it was on the market. We had a key in the
office.
“So I said, ‘There is this one place. It needs a whole lot of work and
so forth, but if you’re not fussy and all, I’ll show it to you.’
“So she got in the car and we drove up there. She was really excited.
She just said, ‘This is going to be perfect. Everything is great.’ We parked in
front; it was up on the side of a hill. You had to walk up a lot of wooden
steps to get to it, and you entered on the balcony. And she said, ‘Oh, it’s so
beautiful. There’s oak trees. This is just terrific.’ And so on and so forth.
"So we got there and I opened the door. We went in. We saw that it
was vacant. She just started wandering around. t wasn’t all that big. I just
sort of stood there. I hadn’t been in it before. And after about three minutes,
she began to sort of change. She said, ‘Something’s going on here.’ And she
didn't wait for me to answer. She said, ‘Gee, I’m feeling something. I feel
something. It feels heavy in here. What is it? I don’t know what it is.’ She
said, ‘I’m not feeling good about this.’ She said it was heavy. She kept going
on. She said, ‘Something’s happened here. Did something happen here?’
And she went on and on.
“So the thing that I knew ahead of time -- and I wasn’t going to tell
her; I didn’t know how to deal with it actually, but I decided I wouldn’t say
anything to her about this particular house. Because I never have to talk
about it because she might not like the house. And if she did like it, I would
have to tell her. But the bottom line was, this was the house that Charlie
Manson murdered somebody in. And she picked up the vibes on it. And I
didn’t tell her anything. I’m sure she didn’t set me up to do that kind of
thing. She picked up on some kind of energy that was happening there. I
couldn’t believe that she was picking this up.”
The lady kept on talking about something evil having happened there
so Margaret eventually told her the truth. Needless to say, the lady didn’t
buy the house.
Today there is a disclosure law requiring real-estate agents to reveal if
a murder has occurred in the house. Back then, however, there was no
disclosure law. Margaret was stunned that the lady was able to somehow
sense the fact that something bad had happened there.
She was glad that she was under no obligation to try and get the house
sold. Eventually the house was sold. The new owners remodeled and
expanded the home. Margaret does not know if the new residents have
experienced any activity.
That house, however, is not the only house to have become haunted
after a Manson murder had occurred. Another much larger house in the
Hollywood Hills was the location of another of the Manson killings. It was
in this house that Sharon Tate’s life was forever ended.
The house, which was a normal happy household before the incident,
soon started to change. Strange incidents began to occur. An evil presence
began to make itself known.
Sarah Webster is a pilot, flight instructor and gardener from Los
Angeles, California. By mere coincidence, Sarah happened to know
somebody who had a connection with the murders. As Sarah says, “A friend
of mine’s grandmother is very good friends with the man who actually
owned the house that the Tate -- La Bianca murders happened in. He was
going off to Europe for a few years or something like that, I don’t know
exactly how long. But when he was leaving, Sharon Tate begged him to let
her stay in his house while he was gone. And with a lot of misgivings, he let
her do it. And that’s where she got killed by the Manson crew, and a whole
bunch of other people got killed by the Manson crew.
“I went there with the granddaughter of the woman who knew this
guy. And we went there in the evening. We were going to have dinner there.
And we got there. It was a beautiful house built up in the Hollywood Hills, a
gorgeous view. And my friend was saying, ‘You really ought to see the rest
of the house.’ And I said, ‘Okay.’
It was getting dark and the owner of the house was cooking dinner,
and he said, ‘Go ahead, check it out.’ And we started wandering around and
we would try all of the light switches and nothing would work. One of us
would stand at the light switch and the other one would be at the lamp trying
it in different ways and we couldn’t get any of the lights to turn on at all
through the entire house. And the owner came in, and he would flip the
exact same switches that we had done, and it would work. It was really
blowing my mind particularly after about the third or fourth time he did it.
And then we went wandering into the back of the house.
“And in this back bedroom, actually in the bathroom in the back
bedroom -- that was the first place we could actually turn on the lights,
which was another weird thing. We’re like, ‘Wow, check it out,’ And it was
just crawling with flies. It was just filled with flies. It felt like something out
of a Hitchcock movie. There were thousand of them. They were everywhere.
It was like everywhere you looked. They were all over the mirrors, all over
the counters, all of the ceilings. It was really disgusting. We screamed and
ran. We screamed and ran.
“It just really spooked us after the whole light experience and
knowing about the murders having happened there. We beat a hasty retreat
out of there and pretty much left as soon as we could, feeling very spooked
by the whole thing.”
Both Sarah and her friend ran breathlessly down the stairs and
confronted the owner. They told him everything, about how the lights hadn’t
worked except in the bathroom which was all filled with flies. The owner
just shrugged and casually, “Yeah, I’ve been having problems with that
room.”
Sarah didn’t bother to ask him if he had experienced any other ghostly
activity. As she says, “I did not ask him about that. It was kind of a touchy
subject for him. He didn’t really like the fact that a murder had happened in
his house.”
Sarah and her friend ate dinner quickly and politely left as soon as
they could. Since then, they have never been back. The property was later
sold, and the new owners completely tore down the house and built a brand
new home.
Sarah reports that although the experience was somewhat frightening,
she was intrigued by the experience and wishes that other people could
know what it’s like to be in a haunted house. As she says, “Really it was a
stunning house, other than these small problems with the light switches and
the bugs. It was more disturbing than scary. I definitely felt like there was
some type of otherworldly presence of some kind or another. But I didn’t
feel personally threatened. I think it was kind of neat. I mean, we need to
have haunted houses.”
As can be seen, Charles Manson’s crimes definitely left a strong
impression on the homes in which they were perpetrated. Most of the
manifestations are somewhat common. For example, a sense of an evil
presence and lights going on and off by themselves are not unusual
manifestations. A very unusual manifestation is the flies which filled the
bathroom. This has appeared in only a few of the most severe cases of
hauntings, and yet, it is a detail that has been repeated.
Whatever the case, the phenomenon is real, and in the above cases,
seems to be the result not of the spirits of those people who were killed, but
by the violent and evil nature of the acts of murder. In both cases the
hauntings were stopped after the houses were either remodeled or torn down
and rebuilt. In both cases, the houses experienced no activity until the
murders occurred.
This case is interesting not only because of the notoriety the murders
received, but because they clearly illustrate the consequences of evil acts,
such as murder. An evil act can literally cause a house to become infested by
evil spirits. And because the Manson murders were particularly evil, they
left a haunted legacy that lasted for many years.
This case is one of 26 firsthand cases taken from the book, California
Ghosts: True Accounts of Hauntings in the Golden State by Preston Dennett.
The book is 192 pages and is fully illustrated by award-winning artist,
Kesara. It is available from Schiffer Books at 4880 Lower Valley Road,
Atglen PA 19310. phone: 610-593-1777. email: [email protected].
www.schifferbooks.com ($14.95 plus $3.95 s/h) Also available at
amazon.com & barnes&noble.com and other online bookstores.
