QUOTE
Ghosts. Serial killers. Giant man-eating grizzly bears. Bigfoot. Pterodactyl sightings
By John Boston
Signal Columnist
Ghosts. Serial killers. Giant man-eating grizzly bears. Bigfoot. Pterodactyl sightings - in the late 19th century. These are just part of the of the fables that make up the Santa Clarita Valley. Here now, the stories...
THE BIGFOOT -
Since the days of the Spanish missions, tales have been handed down about a giant, 10-foot-tall hairy hominid roaming California - and, our valley.
In the 1940s, Signal editor Fred Trueblood reported giant, human-like footprints in Pico Canyon and joked that the person who made them must have weighed a half-ton and was 9-feet tall.
But huge humanoid radar alarms really went off here in the early 1970s when dozens of Sasquatch sightings were reported.
One terrified couple said they saw the beast, close up, while they were making out in a desolate canyon. The creature apparently was bending over, peering in through the windshield.
That'll get you to therapy.
Jackson McBride reported a chilling tale to local sheriff's deputies. McBride, his son and the boy's friend reported seeing eerie lights on their Lost Canyon hog ranch. They also reported spotting a 9-foot-tall hairy humanoid standing in a pig pen. What made the deputies wince was that the creature was wearing a blue belt around its ample waist. Officers investigated the site, but found no footprints. They did bump into a man hauling trash from the farm and questioned him. The man quipped he hadn't spot anyone 9-feet-tall - hairy or not - lately. The trash hauler asked the lawmen that if they did bump into someone matching the description, to please send him back because he could sure use the help loading his truck.
Bob Curasi, a farmer out near Lost Canyon, even made a plaster cast of the prints.
SAN FRANCISCO CANYON GHOSTS -
Just about anyone who has lived up San Francisquito has a ghost story. Many residents lost their lives when the St. Francis Dam burst in 1928, sending a huge wall of water down the canyon. In 1986, former SCV historian Jerry Reynolds was videotaping at the old "Chinese" graveyard. (Why it's called "Chinese" is a semi-old mystery. There are no Chinese buried there.) His friend came out of the wash with a mysterious acid burn on his arm. When the pair got back to civilization, Jerry found his videotape was completely blank, even though frequent inspections during taping showed the video was good. Jerry went back for a second shoot. The camera caught on fire in an odd case of spontaneous combustion. Property owners of the unofficial cemetery weren't surprised. They mentioned that a half-ton watering trough had been mysteriously moved in the middle of the night - with no tracks. Another time, a solitary man was painting his barn. When he looked up, there was a wet palm print of a child. No children were in the area.
WARNING OF THE DAM DISASTER -
Harry Carey Sr. was one of the world's most famous actors and one of the few who made the transition from the silents to the talkies. He had a huge ranch in San Francisquito Canyon, which was mostly manned, and womaned, by an entire transplanted Navajo Indian village from the New Mexico/Arizona territory.
Carey told a haunting story. Before the bursting of the St. Francis Dam in 1928, which sent a 187-foot wall of water and billions of gallons down the canyon, Carey, in New York City at the time, received a phone call from the village medicine man. The mystic said he had had a terrible dream of impending and epic disaster and asked permission to temporarily move the entire village off the ranch and back to their home in the southwest. Carey said okay. Two days before the dam burst, the Navajos had all packed up and left.
VERY SCARY FRED -
Long about this time of year, all over the world, people will celebrate the work of Newhall resident Fred Hagemann. He is best known as inventing the rubber latex Halloween mask. He retired here in the early 1950s after selling all his patents and his factory in Connecticut. Prior to the mid-1940s, the trick or treat disguise of choice was the paper mask.
THE VERY THICK EGG -
One of the strangest items I've ever come across is a snippet in The Saturday Evening Post from 1925 about a strange rock, the size of an egg, yet, so heavy, several men couldn't lift it. The orb reportedly burned in a truck fire near present-day Sierra Highway.
THE GHOST OF HENRY MAYO NEWHALL?
Well. Not that we know of. But here's an interesting tale. After going from dead broke to becoming one of the state's wealthiest men, Newhall wrote the bride he had left two years earlier back east that he was coming home to get her and start their life and family. The same time, she wrote Henry saying she was headed for San Francisco to meet him. Unbeknownst of each other's travel plans, the pair sailed down the respective coasts of America, landed on opposite sides of Panama, traveled by buggy and accidentally bumped into one another on a street in Panama City.
THE NEWHALL RANCH HOUSE -
The Newhall Ranch House, at Heritage Junction in Newhall, is reportedly one of the most haunted structures in the SCV. "We have a reputation for having a few spooks in our houses," said Pat Saletore, executive director of the SCV Historical Society. Saletore said soon after the Newhall Ranch House was moved to Heritage Junction in 1990, people started to report seeing a woman in the upstairs of the building, but no one was there. Several years ago psychic Rena Elliot Chiu walked through the house and reported meeting the ghost of a 19th Century cowboy named Rory MacGregor. Chiu also reported she encountered the ghosts of "Martha" and an 8-year-old boy named "Timothy." However, no one has ever sighted the ghost of Henry Mayo Newhall.
CALLAHAN'S GHOST -
They say his ghost still haunts the confines of his old theater. In 1965, Robert E. Callahan held the grand opening of his Indian Village Theater way up Sierra Highway. Callahan originally started his eclectic set-up in Los Angeles in 1943, calling it "Mission Village." He bought some property 7 miles up from the Mint Canyon Junction and built the theater and oddball museum/tourist trap. Silent screen star Francis X. Bushman was the guest of honor at the opening. Later, Callahan would sell the property and it would be home to the Canyon Theater Guild.
PLUM CANYON'S GHOST WAR? -
In the 1930s, Johnson and Prickett made an interesting discovery on their Saugus ranches. The farmers unearthed small canon balls and ordnance from the big old .50 caliber Sharps rifles. The men thought perhaps a battle had taken place involving John Fremont's men in the mid-1850s. If that be true, perhaps it would lend some credence to the old ghost stories about people hearing shouts, cries, explosions and horses whinnying in Plum Canyon.
CALIFORNIA'S FIRST GOLD DISCOVERY? -
Every junior varsity historian will frantically wave his or her hand to point out that the first big California gold discovery was NOT up at Sutter's Mill in Northern California. They preen that it was at Placerita Canyon in 1842, when Francisco Lopez found those small nuggets on an onion. Both are incorrect.
Yes. Gold was first discovered here in the SCV, but earlier than 1842. Around 1821, there were sophisticated mining operations ongoing in San Francisquito Canyon.
And before that, there was the fabulously wealthy Lost Padre Mine in the hills north of Castaic. In the 1790s, it yielded millions. The Chumash and Tataviam who were mining it, however, refused to go back to work after it collapsed, sealing around 13 of them in an early grave. It was "rediscovered" in the 1870s and 1940s.
A BIG OUTER SPACE ROCK -
We've been oft pelted by celestial bodies and attacked by objects from outer space. But on May 24, 1934 Joe Rudell found a 13.5-pound meteorite in one of our canyons. The "rock" was about 4 by 6 inches, very dark and much heavier than any stone of the same size. It also was not affected by a variety of acids poured onto it.
JAMES DEAN -
Was the mercurial star whose career was a fireworks display: very bright and most short-lived. The icon made just three movies - and earned an Oscar and an Academy Award nomination that same year. In September of 1955, Dean would die in a fiery car crash in Central California, en route to a race Fresno in his Porsche. He had his last meal - milk and apple pie - at Tip's.
JOE KAPP -
The amiable and dynamic football superstar is a living answer to the trivia question: "Who is the only man to play in a Rose Bowl, Super Bowl and Gray Cup (the Canadian Super Bowl)?" He was also coach of the University of California, Berkeley - in that infamous "Band Bowl" in which the Golden Bears beat John Elway's Stanford squad on that last minute multi-lateral kick-off return. That knocked Elway out of a sure Rose Bowl appearance. Joe went to Hart and played basketball and football there.
AND DON'T CALL HIM "BUGSY" -
Legendary gangster Bugsy Siegel, father of Las Vegas, used to get away from the city noise at a house he secretly rented on Arcadia Street in Newhall.
SPEAKING OF KILLERS -
The valley's only known serial killer was Richard John Jensen. At his kidnapping, rape and attempted murder trial here in the little Newhall Courthouse in 1956, Jensen was called "a human wolf who preyed upon mankind since the age of 8." His speciality was picking up hitchhikers, overpowering them with a hammer, sodomizing them and leaving their bodies in desolate canyons.
FLYING DINOSAURS -
Pterodacyl sightings were reported here in the 1880s, around the Castaic and Rabbit (Elizabeth today) Lake. Many prominent citizens reportedly witnessed the huge creature with leather-like wings, giant eyes and skunk-like stink to it. It would dive into the lake and come out with fish. Or, fishermen...
NIXON SIGHTINGS -
After being the only president to resign, Richard Nixon was spotted sightseeing and walking here in the 1970s. Interestingly, his vice-president, Gerald Ford, was scheduled to speak at CalArts. He was a no-show, having to take the oath of office that same day.
WILLIAM S. HART -
Might have been the target of a crazed murderer in the 1930s. Hart reported chasing off, at gunpoint, some deranged man from his mansion. A couple hours later, the same lunatic ended up murdering, in cold blood, two Honby men.
PATTY HEARST -
Was seen around town by several witnesses while she was a captive of the Symbionese Liberation Army. The San Francisco heiress had reportedly holed up in a Placerita Canyon home with her captors during one of the country's biggest manhunts.
TEDDY ROOSEVELT -
The jovial president, ranked one of history's best, used to hunt up here with a close friend and GOPer, Rosey Melrose. The Rose-ster was famous for being a big political mucky-muck and one of the participants of the Crown Valley Feud. In 1900, it would be the last of the Old West's man-on-man duels. On the main street of Acton, Rosey plugged the Mayor, Gene Bloom, five times through the heart. After the trial, Rosey would nominate Teddy Roosevelt for president.
ROAD TO NOWHERE -
After World War II, the state (ours) okayed a project to build a 26-mile long, triple-tiered tunnel under the mountains linking Bakersfield with Castaic. The tunnel would accomodate trains on the bottom, big rigs in the middle and smaller trucks and cars on top. You're right. It was never built.
LIONS, BEARS, BUT NO TIGERS -
John Lang and John Powell were two of the leading citizens of the SCV area. While Lang was famous for his spa and hotel that today is a state historical monument, he also arguably killed the world's biggest grizzly bear, a creature which weighed in at 2,350 pounds. Powell was the judge here for 40 years. He bagged the state's biggest mountain lion - a record that still holds today. The beast was 11-feet long from nose to tip of tail.
TIBURCIO VASQUEZ -
They've named rock formations, parks and a high school after a murderer and bandit. Tiburcio Vasquez eluded the greatest manhunt in state history until he was shot, literally trying to hop into his pants, while fleeing a girlfriend's house. Before they hanged him, his last words were: "Pronto."
Copyright:The Signal
By John Boston
Signal Columnist
Ghosts. Serial killers. Giant man-eating grizzly bears. Bigfoot. Pterodactyl sightings - in the late 19th century. These are just part of the of the fables that make up the Santa Clarita Valley. Here now, the stories...
THE BIGFOOT -
Since the days of the Spanish missions, tales have been handed down about a giant, 10-foot-tall hairy hominid roaming California - and, our valley.
In the 1940s, Signal editor Fred Trueblood reported giant, human-like footprints in Pico Canyon and joked that the person who made them must have weighed a half-ton and was 9-feet tall.
But huge humanoid radar alarms really went off here in the early 1970s when dozens of Sasquatch sightings were reported.
One terrified couple said they saw the beast, close up, while they were making out in a desolate canyon. The creature apparently was bending over, peering in through the windshield.
That'll get you to therapy.
Jackson McBride reported a chilling tale to local sheriff's deputies. McBride, his son and the boy's friend reported seeing eerie lights on their Lost Canyon hog ranch. They also reported spotting a 9-foot-tall hairy humanoid standing in a pig pen. What made the deputies wince was that the creature was wearing a blue belt around its ample waist. Officers investigated the site, but found no footprints. They did bump into a man hauling trash from the farm and questioned him. The man quipped he hadn't spot anyone 9-feet-tall - hairy or not - lately. The trash hauler asked the lawmen that if they did bump into someone matching the description, to please send him back because he could sure use the help loading his truck.
Bob Curasi, a farmer out near Lost Canyon, even made a plaster cast of the prints.
SAN FRANCISCO CANYON GHOSTS -
Just about anyone who has lived up San Francisquito has a ghost story. Many residents lost their lives when the St. Francis Dam burst in 1928, sending a huge wall of water down the canyon. In 1986, former SCV historian Jerry Reynolds was videotaping at the old "Chinese" graveyard. (Why it's called "Chinese" is a semi-old mystery. There are no Chinese buried there.) His friend came out of the wash with a mysterious acid burn on his arm. When the pair got back to civilization, Jerry found his videotape was completely blank, even though frequent inspections during taping showed the video was good. Jerry went back for a second shoot. The camera caught on fire in an odd case of spontaneous combustion. Property owners of the unofficial cemetery weren't surprised. They mentioned that a half-ton watering trough had been mysteriously moved in the middle of the night - with no tracks. Another time, a solitary man was painting his barn. When he looked up, there was a wet palm print of a child. No children were in the area.
WARNING OF THE DAM DISASTER -
Harry Carey Sr. was one of the world's most famous actors and one of the few who made the transition from the silents to the talkies. He had a huge ranch in San Francisquito Canyon, which was mostly manned, and womaned, by an entire transplanted Navajo Indian village from the New Mexico/Arizona territory.
Carey told a haunting story. Before the bursting of the St. Francis Dam in 1928, which sent a 187-foot wall of water and billions of gallons down the canyon, Carey, in New York City at the time, received a phone call from the village medicine man. The mystic said he had had a terrible dream of impending and epic disaster and asked permission to temporarily move the entire village off the ranch and back to their home in the southwest. Carey said okay. Two days before the dam burst, the Navajos had all packed up and left.
VERY SCARY FRED -
Long about this time of year, all over the world, people will celebrate the work of Newhall resident Fred Hagemann. He is best known as inventing the rubber latex Halloween mask. He retired here in the early 1950s after selling all his patents and his factory in Connecticut. Prior to the mid-1940s, the trick or treat disguise of choice was the paper mask.
THE VERY THICK EGG -
One of the strangest items I've ever come across is a snippet in The Saturday Evening Post from 1925 about a strange rock, the size of an egg, yet, so heavy, several men couldn't lift it. The orb reportedly burned in a truck fire near present-day Sierra Highway.
THE GHOST OF HENRY MAYO NEWHALL?
Well. Not that we know of. But here's an interesting tale. After going from dead broke to becoming one of the state's wealthiest men, Newhall wrote the bride he had left two years earlier back east that he was coming home to get her and start their life and family. The same time, she wrote Henry saying she was headed for San Francisco to meet him. Unbeknownst of each other's travel plans, the pair sailed down the respective coasts of America, landed on opposite sides of Panama, traveled by buggy and accidentally bumped into one another on a street in Panama City.
THE NEWHALL RANCH HOUSE -
The Newhall Ranch House, at Heritage Junction in Newhall, is reportedly one of the most haunted structures in the SCV. "We have a reputation for having a few spooks in our houses," said Pat Saletore, executive director of the SCV Historical Society. Saletore said soon after the Newhall Ranch House was moved to Heritage Junction in 1990, people started to report seeing a woman in the upstairs of the building, but no one was there. Several years ago psychic Rena Elliot Chiu walked through the house and reported meeting the ghost of a 19th Century cowboy named Rory MacGregor. Chiu also reported she encountered the ghosts of "Martha" and an 8-year-old boy named "Timothy." However, no one has ever sighted the ghost of Henry Mayo Newhall.
CALLAHAN'S GHOST -
They say his ghost still haunts the confines of his old theater. In 1965, Robert E. Callahan held the grand opening of his Indian Village Theater way up Sierra Highway. Callahan originally started his eclectic set-up in Los Angeles in 1943, calling it "Mission Village." He bought some property 7 miles up from the Mint Canyon Junction and built the theater and oddball museum/tourist trap. Silent screen star Francis X. Bushman was the guest of honor at the opening. Later, Callahan would sell the property and it would be home to the Canyon Theater Guild.
PLUM CANYON'S GHOST WAR? -
In the 1930s, Johnson and Prickett made an interesting discovery on their Saugus ranches. The farmers unearthed small canon balls and ordnance from the big old .50 caliber Sharps rifles. The men thought perhaps a battle had taken place involving John Fremont's men in the mid-1850s. If that be true, perhaps it would lend some credence to the old ghost stories about people hearing shouts, cries, explosions and horses whinnying in Plum Canyon.
CALIFORNIA'S FIRST GOLD DISCOVERY? -
Every junior varsity historian will frantically wave his or her hand to point out that the first big California gold discovery was NOT up at Sutter's Mill in Northern California. They preen that it was at Placerita Canyon in 1842, when Francisco Lopez found those small nuggets on an onion. Both are incorrect.
Yes. Gold was first discovered here in the SCV, but earlier than 1842. Around 1821, there were sophisticated mining operations ongoing in San Francisquito Canyon.
And before that, there was the fabulously wealthy Lost Padre Mine in the hills north of Castaic. In the 1790s, it yielded millions. The Chumash and Tataviam who were mining it, however, refused to go back to work after it collapsed, sealing around 13 of them in an early grave. It was "rediscovered" in the 1870s and 1940s.
A BIG OUTER SPACE ROCK -
We've been oft pelted by celestial bodies and attacked by objects from outer space. But on May 24, 1934 Joe Rudell found a 13.5-pound meteorite in one of our canyons. The "rock" was about 4 by 6 inches, very dark and much heavier than any stone of the same size. It also was not affected by a variety of acids poured onto it.
JAMES DEAN -
Was the mercurial star whose career was a fireworks display: very bright and most short-lived. The icon made just three movies - and earned an Oscar and an Academy Award nomination that same year. In September of 1955, Dean would die in a fiery car crash in Central California, en route to a race Fresno in his Porsche. He had his last meal - milk and apple pie - at Tip's.
JOE KAPP -
The amiable and dynamic football superstar is a living answer to the trivia question: "Who is the only man to play in a Rose Bowl, Super Bowl and Gray Cup (the Canadian Super Bowl)?" He was also coach of the University of California, Berkeley - in that infamous "Band Bowl" in which the Golden Bears beat John Elway's Stanford squad on that last minute multi-lateral kick-off return. That knocked Elway out of a sure Rose Bowl appearance. Joe went to Hart and played basketball and football there.
AND DON'T CALL HIM "BUGSY" -
Legendary gangster Bugsy Siegel, father of Las Vegas, used to get away from the city noise at a house he secretly rented on Arcadia Street in Newhall.
SPEAKING OF KILLERS -
The valley's only known serial killer was Richard John Jensen. At his kidnapping, rape and attempted murder trial here in the little Newhall Courthouse in 1956, Jensen was called "a human wolf who preyed upon mankind since the age of 8." His speciality was picking up hitchhikers, overpowering them with a hammer, sodomizing them and leaving their bodies in desolate canyons.
FLYING DINOSAURS -
Pterodacyl sightings were reported here in the 1880s, around the Castaic and Rabbit (Elizabeth today) Lake. Many prominent citizens reportedly witnessed the huge creature with leather-like wings, giant eyes and skunk-like stink to it. It would dive into the lake and come out with fish. Or, fishermen...
NIXON SIGHTINGS -
After being the only president to resign, Richard Nixon was spotted sightseeing and walking here in the 1970s. Interestingly, his vice-president, Gerald Ford, was scheduled to speak at CalArts. He was a no-show, having to take the oath of office that same day.
WILLIAM S. HART -
Might have been the target of a crazed murderer in the 1930s. Hart reported chasing off, at gunpoint, some deranged man from his mansion. A couple hours later, the same lunatic ended up murdering, in cold blood, two Honby men.
PATTY HEARST -
Was seen around town by several witnesses while she was a captive of the Symbionese Liberation Army. The San Francisco heiress had reportedly holed up in a Placerita Canyon home with her captors during one of the country's biggest manhunts.
TEDDY ROOSEVELT -
The jovial president, ranked one of history's best, used to hunt up here with a close friend and GOPer, Rosey Melrose. The Rose-ster was famous for being a big political mucky-muck and one of the participants of the Crown Valley Feud. In 1900, it would be the last of the Old West's man-on-man duels. On the main street of Acton, Rosey plugged the Mayor, Gene Bloom, five times through the heart. After the trial, Rosey would nominate Teddy Roosevelt for president.
ROAD TO NOWHERE -
After World War II, the state (ours) okayed a project to build a 26-mile long, triple-tiered tunnel under the mountains linking Bakersfield with Castaic. The tunnel would accomodate trains on the bottom, big rigs in the middle and smaller trucks and cars on top. You're right. It was never built.
LIONS, BEARS, BUT NO TIGERS -
John Lang and John Powell were two of the leading citizens of the SCV area. While Lang was famous for his spa and hotel that today is a state historical monument, he also arguably killed the world's biggest grizzly bear, a creature which weighed in at 2,350 pounds. Powell was the judge here for 40 years. He bagged the state's biggest mountain lion - a record that still holds today. The beast was 11-feet long from nose to tip of tail.
TIBURCIO VASQUEZ -
They've named rock formations, parks and a high school after a murderer and bandit. Tiburcio Vasquez eluded the greatest manhunt in state history until he was shot, literally trying to hop into his pants, while fleeing a girlfriend's house. Before they hanged him, his last words were: "Pronto."
Copyright:The Signal