Dark City

21. HISTORY, LORE & HAUNTINGS: Whittier & Turnbull Canyon

• Leah & April • Season 1 • Episode 21

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Whittier, CA | Whittier, California is a charming city with an intriguing blend of Quaker roots and a haunting past.  Join us as Jacob Caputo, founder of Haunted Whittier Ghost Tours, uncovers the city's dark history through documented hauntings, disturbing true crimes, and the eerie legends of Turnbull Canyon. From its humble beginnings to its connection with the most sinister serial killer you have probably never heard of, Whittier's hidden history will surprise you.

This episode offers just a sample of Jacob's extensive collection of local stories. To experience more, book a tour at https://www.tickettailor.com/events/whittierghostsandlegendstour and follow him on instagram @hauntedwhittiertours.

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Speaker 1:

Hi friends, just popping on to give you a heads up. The following episode was recorded remotely so you might hear a little bit of interference when I talk. Noted, I won't use Bluetooth devices when recording in the future. I hope you enjoy the episode. Hello everyone, this is Leah.

Speaker 1:

Today we are covering one of my favorite places in the Los Angeles area Whittier, california. Charming as it may be, it has its fair share of dark stories. It was once home to the most sinister serial killer you've probably never heard of and has one of the eeriest canyons you could ever drive through. This is Dark City Season 1, los Angeles. Unfortunately, april could not join our recording today, but fortunately I won't be going solo. We have a special guest, jacob Caputo, who can tell the history and lore about this area better than I ever could. Jacob, we met earlier this spring when I started researching Whittier and I joined one of your popular tours, the Whittier Ghosts and Legends Walking Tour. So, jacob, before we dive into all of the stories, I'll hand it over to you so you can introduce yourself and how you got started giving the tours around Whittier.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm excited to be here. As you said, my name is Jacob and I've been operating Haunted Whittier Tours since 2020. And I've grown up in Whittier. I have very deep roots in the community. I'm almost fourth generation. My grandmother came here after World War II but she lived with her uncle who had been here since around the 1930s. So I grew up hearing stories, always thought they were interesting. Lots of folklore in Whittier, but lots of great history too. People enjoy ghost stories and I thought you know what Whittier needs a legitimate ghost tour. And it popped in my head during the pandemic and I produced it.

Speaker 1:

I'll ask you to go into the brief history of Whittier itself, its Quaker roots and how it got its name. But since we are in spooky season, I wanted to start off by asking you about the ghosts. So I remember talking to you previously for your tour for you to share tales of ghosts. You do a bit of vetting so you make sure the sources are legitimate. Or if you hear multiple stories that kind of sound the same, that gives you a sense that there is consistency there of all the stories that you've collected and also those that seem to have like an essence of maybe it's a residual haunting in a certain area in Whittier. Of all of those that you've heard, what would you say you think is the most haunted location in Whittier and what's the story behind that?

Speaker 2:

you know, I know you're going to think Turnbull Canyon because as far as pop culture, even outside of Whittier, you say the name Turnbull Canyon and everybody says, yeah, that's a place in Whittier. I'm not going to say that.

Speaker 1:

I actually didn't think you would. I have a guess, but let's see what you're going to actually say.

Speaker 2:

I'm actually going to say Founders Park, that is our old cemetery. The cemetery is not there any longer. The corpses still are. That is the place that I consistently get stories from, and what is interesting about it is they come from all sorts of people. It is not just spooky people that like to go walk around old cemeteries looking for hauntings. A lot of them come from people that didn't know its history, and that's what I appreciate.

Speaker 1:

So what exactly happened with Founders Park, where so not all the bodies got moved, which, by the way, happens a lot in general. We've got a few episodes on when that's happened in Denver, in LA and I'm sure, pretty much every city. You've got these cases. But what happened in Founders Memorial Park in particular?

Speaker 2:

It's kind of an interesting story because it's not what you think. The city wanting to develop land wasn't really anything to do with that. The undertakers who ran that cemetery were dead. That the undertakers who ran that cemetery were dead. And I have newspaper articles from the 1950s complaining about how dirty the cemetery was getting. It was overrun with weeds. Residents would go in there and clean it up out of respect for the dead. But I've even seen articles where people were dumping mattresses and all kinds of garbage in the cemetery. So I believe the city did look at it as a legitimate problem and a safety concern.

Speaker 2:

Took me a long time to actually find somebody who had family members interred there. When I finally did, I asked them. You know why. Why did you leave them there, especially when the city did offer to move the body and they said that's where they were buried, that's we didn't want to disturb their rest. Fair enough. What's interesting about Founders Park is what is there today and what it was at the time are much different, because they did start burying people there back in the 1800s and a lot of the land where those graves were marked like kind of with old wooden tombstones rotted away and some of that land was sold and then, like they did, put houses on it. Yeah, so there you know, there are people, and I've I've heard stories from a number of people that have dug up remains in their backyard by mistake. It's not even that uncommon.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's frightening, Even if there isn't a haunting or anything like that, just the idea.

Speaker 2:

you don't really know it's beneath your feet If you want a quick fun story. I don't know how fun it is, it's funny of it's funny, but it's. It's a little dark as well. But I had a woman who is um in her eighties on my tour who had a memory of her father. Uh, she was a descendant. Her parents were a lot on Jarros, the Mexican immigrants that came over to work the orange ranches in Whittier, and uh, so they had a nice little home, uh, not too far from the cemetery, and her father was putting in a new driveway and she saw him digging around in a hole and then he popped out of the hole and said, shouted Santa Maria, crossing himself, and ran into the house. She looked down in the hole and there was a broken open box and there was a skeleton inside of a child. So so that was, she lived near founders. So she, obviously this was a grave. That was. She lived near Founders. So she, obviously this was a grave that was not moved.

Speaker 1:

And I asked her.

Speaker 2:

I said, well, what happened? She said, well, she's like it was very little, but the authorities came over and it was taken care of, and I doubt the story even made it into the papers or anything like that. It was just something that happened.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's so sad too, especially when you have those cases. Yeah, and I think we also take for granted too just how frequently child deaths were, even before vaccinations or just before medical advances were in place.

Speaker 2:

And that's a lot of the early burials in Founders Park are children. Yeah, we had a diphtheria outbreak that break, there was tuberculosis and obviously later on the line we have the Spanish flu. So there was a lot of misery obviously in that era, with the losing of children.

Speaker 1:

What is the backstory on the land that is now Whittier and how did it get its name?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's a fun story and this kind of goes into some of my why. I think Whittier is kind of a cool town. Southern California in general. Is was a lot of farmland, and I'm sure you know that. Whittier is cool, though, because we've had people there a really long time. You know, we had, obviously, the Tongva Native Americans. They were living along the San Gabriel River for who knows how long of Americans.

Speaker 2:

They were living along the San Gabriel River for who knows how long, but when the Spaniards were here and there was a Spanish sergeant that came up from San Diego that was awarded huge tracts of land when I say huge, I mean most of this area, not just Whittier, but Anaheim, brea, fullerton, and he had a hacienda over by the river and when the settlers came here they were going to call the town Los Nietos after him, because that's what people had called it for a long time, because he was one of the original Spanish settlers.

Speaker 2:

But because they were Quakers they wanted to put their own stamp on it and they came up with the name Whittier after one of their own, john Greenleaf Whittier. The man was an abolitionist, he was a Quaker, obviously, but he had worked very, very hard, really very much believed that the African and the Caucasian were one in the same. He really wanted people to see one another as brothers and he wrote poems about this and used a lot of his money to fund abolition. And so I kind of think it's cool that our community is named after him, because he was a good guy. When he was told that they would be naming the town after him, he was very touched, but he was an elderly man by that point and he never did come to visit. He wrote us a very nice poem and you can read it in the Whittier Museum. It's hanging there. Most third graders in Whittier have to memorize it, but man unfortunately never got to see the town that was named after him.

Speaker 1:

That's a great story, especially since we cover so many dark stories. One other location I wanted to ask you about, or the history specifically. We just actually finished an episode sharing the history of institutional abuse in the troubled teen industry, and I remember talking to you about the Fred C Nell's Correctional Facility used to be in Whittier no longer longer While it was, unfortunately it did have a long history of abuse, but you told me it didn't start actually that way. It was actually pretty forward thinking. I would love it if you could tell the background and how things devolved over time.

Speaker 2:

It's an interesting story because obviously the facility actually saved the community in some ways. By the 1890s there had been a very bad kind of a financial crisis in the area due to real estate. I mean, I know people laugh at you know there was an issue of too much real estate in California and it was devalued. But it was a problem then and the city fathers petitioned the state to build that facility in Whittier, hoping that it would help the community, and they did. Initially, from everything I've read, early on in the 1890s there were problems of abuse even early on and that's why they brought in Fred C Nels, who the facility was named after later on, and he had this idea that these children, these boys, needed family figures and he built these beautiful English cottages and they had like a father and mother figure kind of watching over the boys. They had workshops where they could learn trades. It was very forward thinking and the idea of how to turn around these traumatized boys that had obviously all kinds of different things that had happened to them and these were the reasons they were in that facility and many of them did go on to live fairly successful lives.

Speaker 2:

Unfortunately, as will happen with oftentimes, especially with government facilities, when Fred C Nellis died, there were people that were brought in that tried to continue making what he'd done work. But when he wasn't there any longer, they just didn't have the vision and it quickly devolved into a mess and they got rid of a lot of that concept of the family concept to help these boys, and it just became a prison. It got overcrowded. There were guards that allegations of not just beating, but things much worse than that and you can use your imagination I don't know how graphic you want to get, but about as bad as it can be, there were. In fact, there were some murders as well. There's one and we talk about it on one of my tours. There's one allegation of murder. The boy was hanged but to this day it's unsolved whether he actually did it himself or one of the guards did it.

Speaker 1:

You might've covered this in the tour. You might not have, I can't remember, but I did see some research that said that facility is haunted.

Speaker 2:

It was very much haunted. For many, many years. I talked to people that worked there, even back in the sixties, that said, oh yeah, doors open and close by themselves, screaming from empties. There were parts of the prison that were dilapidated, that were like sealed off, and they would hear screaming, crying out of the chapel. That was the one that I seem to hear most frequently the sobbing out of one of the chapels, which, by the way, still stands. It's being used as a community center. I had a call from somebody I don't have any way of verifying it, but it's a good story. They worked on the set of Sons of Anarchy, which was filmed over there, or some of this Interesting yeah, so this was back when the prison was all closed. They were just using it as a film set. But you know, wandering around in the middle of the night while they were shooting, and heard crying coming out of one of the buildings, so vivid that they believe somebody was stuck inside.

Speaker 1:

It was all boarded up and it was empty and vacant, as can be. That is frightening. I, I, I would want to shut down the production. I'd say that's not my contract, yeah.

Speaker 2:

But when you think about what happened there, I mean it was a sad place.

Speaker 1:

I know I always wonder why certain places have energy that you could call maybe energy that stays, or why they're so haunted while others are not. But for that one that's understandable, that it seems like there's so many places like that where there's just a lot of trauma, like old hospitals or institutions like that where the spirit would have a hard time moving on and I'm sure you're familiar with the.

Speaker 2:

I mean, this is one of the. There was a movie about this. I'm sure you're familiar with the old the chicken coop murders, right that's right, yeah, right and you know, the little boy was incarcerated in Francine Ellis.

Speaker 1:

Can you just give a quick? So I know that story, but can you just give a quick rundown on that?

Speaker 2:

Basically the story is I guess you would call him a psychopath, but he rounded up children and hid them in a chicken coop and murdered them over time and he had a cousin I believe it was a cousin that helped him. I mean just horrible and the reason that I mean he was hanged when he was. Eventually he was caught and he was hanged for his crimes the little boy was not and he was incarcerated in Fred Sinales. Now, what's interesting about that was, whatever they did with him and Fred Sinales must've worked the judge was not overly harsh on him and felt that he really didn't have any say in it, because, I mean, this guy abused him so horribly. He would eventually return home to Canada, which was where he was from. He served honorably in World War II, went on to marry, had a family, never spoke about what had happened to him until much later in life. Very, very interesting story and obviously we have a connection with you to it.

Speaker 1:

I saw the movie Changeling with Angelina Jolie and it was loosely based off of one of the boys that was murdered in the chicken coop murder and at that time the police department, which we'll cover in another episode very corrupt, very corrupt. They brought home another kid to her because her kid had gone missing while she was working during the day and she would leave her child alone. They brought an entirely different kid home to her and said here's your son. And it was not her son and they gaslit her for it. But they just wanted to look like they had solved the case and it really was something much more horrible and sordid underneath all of it.

Speaker 2:

And my understanding is we still don't have closure on everything. There are missing boys from the area who they don't really know whether they're connected to it or not. My guess is that story is we're never going to have the complete picture. Yeah, actually, I mean, the guy was just an absolute psychopath.

Speaker 1:

Well, on the note of psychopath, while we're going really dark, let's talk about George Hassel.

Speaker 2:

Oh, the old George. Yeah, we like George.

Speaker 1:

This was a story you told on the tour, which I thought was crazy, because I know a lot about true crime cases and I know a lot especially in doing this season for Dark City, but I'd never heard of George Hassel. When you do, at least in the podcast world, you do some research on him. There's almost nothing on him, yet this is probably one of the most horrific cases I've ever heard, If his name is even George Hassel. But I'll let you share the rundown on that.

Speaker 2:

What's interesting about him is how he has basically disappeared. I never heard the story growing up. As far as I know, the Whittier Museum and the curator was unaware of the story. I mean, like I said, my family has been here for a long time. As far as I know, my grandmother was never aware of it. I think the community was so horrified by what had happened and what he did that everybody decided let's not talk about this, let's just let it go away. And it did. The only reason it was uncovered is because a woman in Texas was doing research on men who murdered their families and she uncovered some newspaper clippings in Texas of what he had done to his family there and found reference to Whittier.

Speaker 2:

And then that's the record started coming out, basically the long and short of it. We know that he was from Texas. We know he left Texas under kind of a cloud of suspicion that his brother was found dead on the family ranch. He told everybody that a mule had kicked him but the coroner wasn't sure, couldn't prove anything and he got out of Dodge. He left.

Speaker 2:

We know that he traversed the country. We believe he was in the army for a while and deserted. We know that he was on a ship for a while, working as a merchant marine. At some point he shows up in Whittier and marries a widow who had three small children, including an infant, and they lived together for a while. He worked as a roughneck up in the hills on the oil rigs the hills on the oil rigs and the long and short of it. The newspaper says that she wanted him to join the army when World War I broke out and he didn't.

Speaker 2:

He flew into a rage and murdered her and then the children and buried them Apparently. He spent days butchering the corpses and I mean, I don't know exactly how he did it, but I do know that when they dug up the remains in 1925, that what they found were fragments. So that tells me he probably used his law. Neighbors, though. He went to the closest neighbor and told them not to look for his wife because he'd taken her to the train station and she was going to be in San Francisco visiting a sister, I believe. And obviously that was not the case. But you know, good old innocent Whittier, you know we're a religious community and people probably just believed him, and then the house was vacant and nobody knew what had happened. The man go ahead.

Speaker 1:

Oh no, so did he just say that she took the kids with them too?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, kids are gone. They went with mom, yeah.

Speaker 1:

Well, and it's not like you have social media back then, when you can trace certain things, and why would you not believe that would be the case?

Speaker 2:

I think the innocence of the era was people took others at their word. And you know I'm sure my guess is when he didn't return in a reasonable amount of time, people probably did poke around the house and what happened to them? I'm sure it was eventually sold. You know he obviously could have enough job cleaning up, that nobody suspected. And you know he obviously could have enough job cleaning up that nobody suspected. And you know why would you? Why would you suspect that somebody had butchered their family? It's such an awful way.

Speaker 1:

I also always wonder too, or maybe you know this, but did he give people creepy vibes?

Speaker 2:

Those cases where people didn't suspect or never got to read that.

Speaker 1:

Those are the scary, really scary ones.

Speaker 2:

So I show his picture on my tour and I never say to read that those are the scary, really scary ones. So I show his picture on my tour and I never say a whole lot. I just say you want to meet George? Here he is. And people that look at his photo and this is probably because I've just told them this awful story but they tell me that he has shark eyes. I hear that again and again.

Speaker 1:

I remember seeing that picture, yeah eyes of a predator.

Speaker 2:

But this is what I will tell you that the history says. When he was incarcerated in Texas for killing his family there because he left California, obviously, and went back to Texas and killed again Apparently the newspaper article said he was very charming and while he was in jail women would visit him and converse with him. Children would as well. I guess people didn't have anything to do, so let's go visit the maniac in prison, but apparently he was very, very charming and women found him attractive. So I think he was that type that you know, the Ted Bundy type.

Speaker 1:

I saw the picture, though, and of course I'm tainted by the fact that I know the backstory, and the same would be said about what we covered. Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist, who was also crazy into the occult too, but like I can't look at them the same, but I do remember, with George Hassel in particular. He, he does look, he looks, he looks terrifying, even if you hadn't told me the story. There's something about the eyes. Maybe it was the way the light caught, or just Not just the eyes, though.

Speaker 2:

There's a smile that almost reminds me of the Joker. I mean, it's like there's something very dark behind that grin.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we'll post a picture on our social media so you can.

Speaker 2:

oh, yeah, everyone can see this um, but you know, um, it's interesting that he was able to charm so many people. And I, I killed another family in texas, in the family that he killed in texas, that he hunted down each child, slitting their throat with a, with a straight, straight razor, which you know. Obviously I don't want to get too graphic, but that would have been a um, you have, you have to be a pretty cold person to kill somebody that way. That's not an easy way to do it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's.

Speaker 2:

And I, you know I and I probably I don't know if I mentioned it on the tour that you were on. I don't always say this, but I had an LAPD detective that pulled me aside after the tour was over and he said that man's a lot worse than you, you've even told us. And I just said I can just tell you what are in the old newspaper articles. And he said no, he's like you, don't? You don't murder your family unless you've been practicing. And he believed that the guy had probably killed many, many more that we don't know about. And you know I mean I'm just throwing that out there, I have no proof of it, it's just, it's interesting. I was going to mention that. You know, for anybody that's listening to this, you know obviously George got what was coming to him in the end. You know I mentioned on the tour. You know he got the electric chair.

Speaker 1:

And I don't know how I feel about the death penalty, but I feel like if there was a case, you would use that I'm okay with this one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he does not belong on this earth. Let's talk about Turnbull Canyon. So we could probably do an entire episode just on Turnbull Canyon. Turnbull for those who aren't familiar with it has hiking trails that give you a panoramic view of the surrounding cities. You can see all the way to downtown on a clear day. Some don't like to hike it because of all of the backstories of the area. I haven't personally hiked it yet. I actually really want to.

Speaker 1:

It's just every time I've been it's a fun hike it's not shaded right, so I'm going to have to wait till the weather cools down. It looks great. I just always am by myself. When I've been in the area I would have not been paying attention if I and I think just generally I've always worn never hike by yourself, guys. It's just not a good idea. But I have driven Turnbull Canyon Road which goes through the canyon from Whittier to Hacienda Heights on the other sides. But once you get into the canyon and you drive along the switchbacks, it's like you get this really kind of eerie vibe because you get pretty deep into the hills where you can't see above them, you can't see the surrounding cities and it almost feels like you're in the middle of nowhere. But you're very much in the middle of a sprawling county, but you really feel like it's just you and I think it's isolated, as it's always been in isolated part of Whittier and LA County.

Speaker 2:

I think that contributes to the legends. But there are some things and there are people over the years that have tried to come out and say that you know, it's, it's really not. A lot of these stories and myths are just myths, but not all of them are. We know that an airplane crashed there back in the 1950s and killed and I've seen the photos. It was bad. I mean, it was really bad. But we can even go back further. One of the men actually two men that have owned the land were killed. Actually one self-inflicted, wayne Workman, killed himself. John Trumbull was beaten to death. I wasn't in the canyon, but I do think that there is. You know, there's been some murders back in there as well. Bad car accidents, some horrible car accidents in fact.

Speaker 1:

And I think all of this contributes to that spooky vibe that you get when you're either on the hiking trails or even driving the road. Can you share one of the? Because you told several different stories on the tour, but gosh, all of the ghost stories are pretty frightening, so I'll let you pick which one you think.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm going to tell you one, and I'm not going to tell you the name of the person because there are family members that are still around. But this is this is one where, and if you want to do your research on this murder, this is information that's very available, should you choose to find it. But I have, for many years, have been told that people have seen a man in late 1970s era clothing walking the road and he looks a little disheveled. And he looks a little disheveled and when they look in the rearview mirror when they pass him, he's gone, he's just vanished. And I never had a story to go with, like, who is this guy? I mean, you know, most people always talk about old ghosts, like Victorian era or whatever, but this is a modern ghost.

Speaker 2:

I had a guy on my tour who pulled me aside at the end and told me about his friend and basically this is the story. There was a group of Whittier high school friends. They went into Turnbull Canyon. They were doing drugs and an argument took place and they stabbed one of the boys. They all got together and stabbed him, but they didn't kill him and they left a couple hours later they were wondering to one another, maybe he's still alive crawled onto the road he was still very much alive. They found him and they finished the job.

Speaker 2:

And the person that told me this story was in fact he was one of this guy's friends. I mean, he wasn't the one that did it, he was just one of his high school buddies. And so suddenly it's like okay, I think now we have the origin of this individual that walks on the road and disappears. And I looked up the newspaper articles and it was definitely a story of the time and it was something well-known. But you know awfully tragic story and you know, if you do believe in the paranormal, it makes sense why he's still wandering all these years later.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, oh, that is an awful story, especially in those cases where it's like people who are so young and it's a group that commits something so horrific against someone that If we want to switch gears to something a little more lighthearted.

Speaker 2:

Have you ever heard of the Trimble Canyon Beast?

Speaker 1:

Did you share that one? I don't remember.

Speaker 2:

I never share it because.

Speaker 1:

No, this sounds familiar, but go ahead.

Speaker 2:

If you look around you might find it online, but there's people that believe that there is some sort of a large wolf-like beast that roams the hills and people have it's chased cars. Maybe it's a big coyote, I don't know, but it's the Sasquatch Possibly. But yeah, people have seen it over the. The closest I've ever got to interviewing somebody that saw it was that. I mean, I've just I've heard the story that you know track, it's always a friend of a friend of a friend you know how that is that saw it.

Speaker 2:

I actually found somebody that this is the closest I can come. They were hiking, actually at night, on one of the trails that is owned by the cemetery rose hills. So this wasn't a place they should have been and they um, they saw some, some red eyes in the bushes and they heard some growling and, uh, it seemed very large. Whatever it was was very large and they got out of the canyon very quick, but they said they could hear it following them so there could be a very. When people talk about the beast, I remind them that there are mountain lions back there with turnbull canyon.

Speaker 1:

Even with all like the true stories or you know haunting stories that you can't ever really validate, like you're, in enough times, it's probably true, there's also a few that are just not accurate. So one is the devil's gate. Devil's gate, yeah. So there's a lot of there's a lot of sources that say that they have their own myth. But you've done some research.

Speaker 2:

Tell us about that Well, devil's gate is. It's funny because my uncle talked about devil's gate, so it was a thing even back in like the sixties. And you know I asked him about it and the story that he told me and this is the one that was going around Lacerna high school back in probably the late sixties or seventies that there had been a mass, there'd been an asylum back there, a legitimate, insane asylum, and they were conducting, as oftentimes is the case, illegal experimentation. And so there were stories about people would see these ambulances going back into the canyon and they always had people in the back but yet nobody ever came out of the asylum. And sometime in the 1930s the inmates revolted and burned the place down but it was never completely burned down, it just part of it was and they killed the nursing staff and the doctors and whatnot and it sat there up on that hill for many, many years.

Speaker 2:

Is this, you know, testament of the horrible things that had happened there?

Speaker 2:

And sometime in the 50s or 60s you hear different things from different people that there was a group of, I don't know, urban explorers Maybe they were on a date with some girls and they decided to explore the old asylum and they worked their way into the what had been the electric shock therapy room and the equipment was still there all these years later. And one of the boys put it on to scare the girls and it snapped into life and he couldn't take it off and his eyeballs ruptured and he was killed in this horrible fashion. And the community were obviously very just disgusted by what had happened. So they destroyed the asylum but they left the gate. The gate is still there, but nothing was left but the foundation. And I will tell you, I absolutely believed the story growing up. We would drive by Devil's Gate and we would point to it and that was where it happened. So it's the wonderful urban myth and I love it. Unfortunately, there's no historical evidence that there was ever an asylum up there.

Speaker 1:

That's what they want you to think.

Speaker 2:

I know? Can you imagine they would never lie to us, right?

Speaker 1:

No, I'm totally kidding. I believe you.

Speaker 2:

And the thing is, if there had been such a structure up there, you would find some references to it. However, this is interesting because we have a local woman who was very, very involved in Whittier history. She's not an actual historian, but she's a collector. She really dives into a lot of these old Whittier stories. She found a reference that the family that owned Rose Hills at one point had what they would have called a sanitarium up in that area. It was a place, you know, that's what they call them back then.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

And it it was. I guess it was specifically for women, where women could get away.

Speaker 1:

That's a little different than what you described before.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely, but it would. It was a place where they would be able to relax.

Speaker 1:

Right why a lot of people came to Los Angeles too, to the weather and to recover, and yeah.

Speaker 2:

But they called it a sanitarium and in fact it did burn down. But a lot of buildings burned down in the era because they didn't have the safety precautions that we have today, and if you know where to look, you can find the remains of some of the foundation is still around up in the hills. Remains of some of the foundation is still around up in the hills, if you you know what trail to find. Um, I've seen pictures of them. Um, but I do wonder if, um, that has kind of that's, maybe that did come into pop culture a little bit and maybe contribute to the story. So I don't know for sure, but it could be that that's the origin yeah, there's, there's a lot of stories like that.

Speaker 1:

Like we tell that one on Griffith Park. I had told you about where there's supposed to be a haunted picnic table, but when you go and research the story it's based off of an entirely fake new site. Yeah, like they really wanted that to look like light times, but it's LA turns is like the actual site when you look at it, but yet you know it's cited over and over again.

Speaker 2:

You know, over the years I've had a lot of people ask me to talk about the asylum, and I'm always happy to do so. But I always open it up. I'm like, okay, we're getting into myth territory. Do you want to know the truth or do you just want to enjoy the story for what it is? Because it is, I even see it and I know this may sound funny, but I see it as an important part of the heritage of our area, even though there's nothing to it. But it is a story Many of us grew up with and right, and that's why we, some of us, would drive into the Canyon looking for the spirits of these slain, insane people that were sadly wandering the Canyon for eternity.

Speaker 1:

I don't know if you want to find them, if they were there. No, no, you do not you do not. There is a picture that has been circulated on social media in various different places of supposed devil worshippers. It's pretty disturbing. It's a bunch of people wearing black hoods and robes Probably not legitimate.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I don't believe it's a real picture. I have talked to police officers that were here back in that seventies and eighties and told me that yes, there were people that went up there to do satanic type worshiping and whatnot. I doubt they did anything awful awful other than you know. Just I don't know praying to the devil or whatever, but you know, as far as I mean, and that is part of the myth is that you know, children were murdered up there by Satanists and whatnot.

Speaker 2:

I have never found any evidence that there's any truth to any of that.

Speaker 1:

The last location I wanted to ask you about that has a lot of historical significance was well, it used to be the CW Leffingwell Ranch. It used to be an agricultural operation, obviously not in existence anymore. From what I understand, homes have been built over it when? Is it located or where was it?

Speaker 2:

Where is it?

Speaker 1:

today in Whittier.

Speaker 2:

It was very large. I mean it was a very large ranch. If you're familiar with any of your listeners know Whittier, they'll know the Whitwood Mall that was part of Charles Wesley's Leffingwell Ranch. Also the Whitwood Ranch Library, the apartments that are across the street from that. I mean we have a street called Leffingwell. Nobody knows who it's named after anymore, but it did exist. The ranch did exist there from the 1800s up to 1951, if you can believe it. That was when they finally there was a housing crisis in the area at the time and the ranches were being shut down and turned into communities and turned into communities and there was a lot of scandal associated with it.

Speaker 2:

They had Japanese and Mexicans that were both brought over to the ranch and the reason I bring up that it's important that there were two races, because they were segregated. The ranch actually built housing, and when I say housing, it probably wasn't the nicest thing. They were bunk houses for workers, but they built separate ones for Mexicans and separate ones for the Japanese. It was probably done just due to cultural and language differences. I think that was kind of a thing back then. But yes, they absolutely did bring those people over. The ranch mostly produced lemons and walnuts and that's what they were picking.

Speaker 1:

You had shared a story on the tour about a residual haunting that traces back to one of the Japanese immigrants, possibly at Leftingwell Ranch. It's one of the scariest ghost stories I've ever heard. But since we are low on time and I want you all to take the tour, I'm just going to use that to tease your tour, if you guys want to hear that it is.

Speaker 2:

it is a terrifying story.

Speaker 1:

Really yeah.

Speaker 2:

Which, by the way, obviously we won't go too much into it, but that was one of the ones that was shared with me by the Whittier Museum and I kind of held onto it for a little while because it was kind of a one-off but we talked about that. But I've heard some other people that have seen her um, including somebody who sold her.

Speaker 1:

So I'm never going near that area again. I do not like that yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so, uh, maybe it's a different spirit, I don't know, but uh, uh, yeah, so, um, it's, it's a great story and I and I will tell you why I like it without telling the story. I like it because it is a reminder that not only did Leffingwell Ranch exist, but those Japanese people did work on the ranch, and I grew up in this area. I never knew that and by telling this story, we do remember that and you can decide whether that's tragic history or not, but at least we're talking about it.

Speaker 1:

One thing I do want to ask you too is so our podcast is dedicated to all the dark and sordid tales, but obviously, you know, we're hoping to pique people's interest in just learning about all of the history, not just the bad stuff. But like for those who are interested in visiting Whittier, I mean, I'll have you plug your door too in a second here. But what are some of the good things? How it's evolved today, stuff that people should check out. What would you recommend?

Speaker 2:

Well, I hope people do come Uptown. Whittier is a wonderful old part of Southern California. We have Victorian homes, we have craftsman homes. It's a charming place to just drive around and look at some of the old homes. In the historical district Greenleaf itself. We have Nixon Plaza where the president of the United States used to work, and it's a beautiful building, very classic. We have a lot of 1920s architecture on Greenleaf that still survives all these years later and you know, come and check it out, have dinner. You know, go to some of the restaurants here. They're mostly family owned or, and you know, you help them out a lot if you go to those restaurants and those cafes. So please come and visit. Just kind of a funny story when I started this ghost tour, a friend of mine from Anaheim came out to go on it and when it was over he's like how have I lived in Southern California my entire life and never realized what a gem this community is? I've never been here and seen these things. So on the tour you get to see some of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, and I told you before I love going there because it's not too far from where I live and just working at one of the coffee shops or another restaurants there, I've done that quite a bit. Greenleaf is a really cute little street too Well with that. So for those I hope we'll take the tour and not live in your city or surrounding city and not know all of this great history. How can people find you? And if you could just briefly say you know, cause you have more than one tour.

Speaker 2:

So, um, you know, please find us on Instagram or on Facebook. If you just look at look up haunted Whittier tours, um, it'll come right up. All the ticket information If you'd like to come on a tour is there. We do two different tours. Right now we're doing one inside the Whittier Museum. That is a flashlight tour, which is very scary. It's an old building with some great history. Come and check it out. It's a lot of fun. We go through the flashlights and we always have weird stuff happen. Almost every tour I've done we've had weird things happen. The other tour is my historic district tour and we're doing those on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the month of October, and we still have a few tickets available, so hopefully some of your listeners can come and check it out. If they miss it, we'll be back in December.

Speaker 1:

And we'll link all that in the show notes as well, so you can easily find it and I highly recommend it. Thank you.