The problem with Los Angeles is, if something’s ten years old, it’s vintage. Twenty years old and it’s historic. Thirty years old and it’s just history. You walk around L.A. looking for its past and maybe if you’re lucky and have a good map you might catch a glimpse of the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s, tucked away deep in the Hollywood ghetto or out in a narrow canyon in the hills. You say you want something older than that? You got your missions, a little bit of Olvera Street, the part that ain’t buried under stalls of cheap tourist trinkets. But the rest of L.A.’s past–forget it.
Plastic and stucco, that’s what LA’s made of. Cheap crap that crumbles into dust after a few of the sizzling desert summers Los Angelenos suffer like a dirty secret, grimacing while they try to perpetuate the myth that L.A.’s a slice of paradise instead of a dusty, smoggy, congested corner of hell.
Tourists who spent their childhood suckled by the silver screen come here thinking they’ll catch some of the city’s glamour, take home a bit of its magic to brighten up their barren lives. You see ’em all the time standing on Hollywood and Vine looking like they been gut-shot. The reality of Hollywood’s dirt and peeling paint don’t exactly live up to the dream.
You drive through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, kids run up to your car to sell you maps to the stars’ homes. What they don’t tell you is most of the maps are out of date, or all you’ll see are gated driveways. So you burn out on that after a while and visit the prints at the Chinese Mann hoping for some glimpse of fame no matter how second-hand, and while you’re there the bus touts offer to show you the sights if you don’t mind sitting on hot vinyl and breathing diesel exhaust. So you buy a ticket, but there ain’t nothing to see, not really. You hear some stories, but when you look for a landmark, a material object to links past to present, there’s nothing.
The Brown Derby? A strip mall. D.W. Griffith’s Fine Arts Studio? A car wash. The Hollywood Hotel? A shopping center. Go up to Bunker Hill to take the shortest railway in the world, and you’ll discover the angels ain’t flying anymore.
Makes me sick.
I’m a ghosthunter, and L.A.’s the emptiest city in the world. Most of the old haunts have been torn down and paved over. And even when you can still find ‘em, after a few years the ghosts just kind of give up and let themselves blow away in the devil’s breath of the Santa Anas. Sure, you can take plenty of “haunted Hollywood” tours, but don’t expect to run into anything more supernatural than money vanishing from your wallet. L.A.’s got no past, and that means it’s got no ghosts.
It’s a hell of a thing, a city with no ghosts.
C’mon. I’ll take you on my own tour of the city.
We start here, under the dragon gateway. It’s new. So’s Chinatown. Only been here since the ’30s. L.A. razed the original Chinatown and built Union Station over it. Did you know the first time L.A. made national headlines, it was because of the Chinatown riot and massacre? The more things change . . . . That riot took place in 1871. Eight percent of L.A.’s non-Asian residents murdered ten percent of its Chinese residents. You’d think you’d get some ghosts from that, huh? Nope. They’re all buried under concrete and iron. The city oughta remember ’em, oughta give ’em a place to stay. Oughta show some respect. But it didn’t, and they’re gone. Maybe if you’ve got a fanciful turn of mind, you might stand on a platform in Union Station and think you hear victims’ screams in the shriek of brakes, but you’d just be fooling yourself.
Let’s drive on.
This is Bell, not so far from South Central. Looks like the rest of the big city, don’t it? You wouldn’t know it, but this is where Sleepy Lagoon used to be. That’s the reservoir where Jose Diaz was killed. In response to that death, the city rounded up over 600 Mexican-Americans. So what? Never heard about it? That’s what started the Zoot Suit Riots. Uh-huh, see, now it rings a bell. But Diaz’s ghost? Good luck. Ain’t around. You wouldn’t want to haunt this ugly stretch of pavement, either.
Over here’s the 3800 block of Norton Avenue. Nice little neighborhood. It’s where they found Betty Short’s mutilated body. The Black Dahlia. Yeah, you remember the name. But the place? Forgotten. The most famous murder in L.A.’s history–the hell with the O.J. case–never solved, subject of dozens of books and movies, but you’d never know it, standing here. If ever a place cried out for a ghost, it’s here. But if the Dahlia’s ghost ever haunted this block, it’s long since drifted away.
We’ll turn around now, head west.
Most people come to L.A. to see the celebrities, so it makes sense to hit Hollywood. You want to see a ghost, lots of people’ll tell you to go to the Hotel Roosevelt. The place has managed to hang around a while, despite L.A.’s self-destructive tendencies. Lots of ghost stories around the place. Good for business? You betcha. Real? Hell, no. People yap about seeing this celebrity ghost or that one, but let me tell you something–no celeb ever died here. It’s bullshit.
You can’t find a ghost in L.A. The city kills ’em off too fast.
Let’s drive a little.
This is where Cudahy’s mansion stood. He killed himself in the living room in ’22. His ghost hung around for a while, even after a priest exorcised it. Then the city razed the mansion in ’33. No sign of the ghost since.
I tell you, L.A.’s got no respect for the dead. It makes me sick.
Ah, here we are.
Tour’s end. Griffith Park. Nice place, if you don’t mind bubonic-carrying squirrels, West Nile-infected mosquitoes, and gun-waving muggers. Not to mention the usual pervs and freaks.
Nobody remembers that seven years after G.J. Griffith donated the land for the park, he tried to kill his wife. Shot her. Put a bullet through her forehead and blinded her. She lived. They stayed married. Strange stuff, huh? L.A.’s plenty strange. It just ain’t haunted.
Anyway, Griffith Park’s a good place to get yourself killed, but for all that, I ain’t never seen a ghost here. I keep hoping, though. Here we go, Mt. Lee. Let’s pull over by the sign and look at the lights. Great view, ain’t it?
You’d think you’d find a few ghosts under the Hollywood sign, wouldn’t you? It used to say Hollywoodland, but the last four letters got pulled down in ’49. Sign used to have a ghost, too. Couple of folks threw themselves off it, and at least one stuck around for a while, but I haven’t seen her in years. Maybe sticking around wasn’t worth it anymore, now that the city’s put the fence around the sign. No point in being a ghost if nobody can get close enough to see and remember.
Yeah, it’s pretty damn depressing, ghosthunting in L.A. Makes my heart ache, it really does. The city’s got so much potential. But if you want to see a good old-fashioned all-American ghost, you gotta head up to New England, or drive on down South. I hear there’s some good haunts in the Midwest, too, and most likely you’ll run into some spirits up in Alaska, what with all those miners’ camps and all. But out here in L.A., we pave over our ghosts just as fast as we make ’em.
That’s why I stopped here. Easy, now. The car doors are electronically locked; there’s no way out. C’mon, just listen a moment longer. I want you to understand.
About making ghosts; about making history.
I’m doing the best I can, as fast as I can.
Easy, now.