From the category archives:

Cryptic L.A.

L.A.’s Forgotten Lizard People

Cryptic L.A.

The KCRW Shortcuts blog has a new post exploring the facts and fiction surrounding Los Angeles’ oft-ignored network of underground tunnels. The post includes links to several in-depth features on the topic by local news outlets.
Worthwhile as the item is, however, it unfortunately left out an entertainingly bizarre story about L.A.’s subterranean landscape: the mysterious [...]

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If You’ve Ever Wondered How an Urban Legend Gets Started…

Cryptic L.A.

Here at Dateline>City of Angels we love to dissect and examine historic ghostlore and other longstanding urban legends. However, it’s not very often that we get to see a real, living example of an oddball tale taking root. Yet here you have it, a Hollywood Hills mansion on its way to being known as “cursed.”
Perched [...]

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Caution: Never, Never Wake the Dead!

Cryptic L.A.

Not to beat a dead horse, but having unearthed numerous pioneer skeletons at the abandoned Placita churchyard, LA Plaza officials might want to think twice before messing with the spot any further. Construction crews assembling an amusement ride in Britain have apparently disturbed a similar old cemetery, resulting in menacing visits by a headless monk.
Here [...]

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Grave Controversy Continues at La Plaza

Cryptic L.A.

Novena candles glow gently in the courtyard of Los Angeles’ Old Plaza Church. They seem a fitting enough symbol, given news a little over a week ago that construction crews working on a new LA Plaza de Cultura y Arte recently unearthed numerous remains of our city’s founding families.
The ensuing chaos has become a slapstick [...]

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L.A. Coroner’s Little Shop of Horrors Now a Dying Business

Cryptic L.A.

Considering how death rates trend upward during the holiday season, this macabre December 25 New York Times article profiling the L.A. Coroner’s Skeletons in the Closet store is oddly timely. (Still, it probably would’ve been better timed before Christmas to help last-minute shoppers needing gift ideas for those hard-to-please people on their lists.)
Ever on the [...]

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Stowed Baby Mummies Spark Film-Noir-Like LAPD Investigation

Cryptic L.A.

Sometimes it’s best not to snoop through somebody else’s old, abandoned luggage. Still, you can just picture the scenario as it unfolded Tuesday afternoon…
Rummaging down in the basement of an aging Westlake Neighborhood apartment building, the rental manager and a friend find three rustic steamer trunks. The discovery naturally piques the female pair’s curiosity. Do [...]

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Time Warp: William Desmond Taylor’s Sensational Death Scene

Cryptic L.A.

Today it’s a Ross parking lot, but on the evening of Feb. 1, 1922, the tract at 404. S. Alvarado was a Mediterranean bungalow court — and the setting for Movieland’s first real-life murder mystery.
Sometime before midnight, two shots rang out, killing famed actor-turned-Paramount-director William Desmond Taylor from behind. Neighbors shrugged off the noise as [...]

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L.A.’s Ouija-Inspired Bradbury Building

Cryptic L.A.

“Take Bradbury Building. It will make you famous…” That was the message George Wyman supposedly received from his dead brother, courtesy a Ouija board.
A mere draftsman, Wyman had been approached by millionaire Lewis Bradbury, who desired a structural marvel bearing his name in the downtown Los Angeles area. Wyman fretted over the assignment, but the [...]

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Corpse Flower Creates Big Stink at Huntington

Cryptic L.A.

This past weekend, crowds lined up at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, wanting to catch a glimpse of a flower known both for its humongous size (6 to 10 feet tall!) and its stench. The plant producing this startling, malodorous bloom is known by botanists as Amorphophallus titanum and by laypeople as the [...]

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Ghosts and GHOULA at Olvera Street’s Casa La Golondrina Mexican Cafe

Cryptic L.A.

Readers with a thirst for spirits — both the distilled and paranormal kind — should consider some monthly barhopping with GHOULA, the Ghost Hunters of Urban Los Angeles.
Last night the group’s “Spirits With Spirits” gathering descended on Olvera Street’s famous La Golondrina Mexican Cafe for dinner, drinks and an impromptu tour of the not-so-public upstairs [...]

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Back From the Dead

Cryptic L.A.

The pumpkins are carved, the skeletons are hanging from the rafters, dusk has descended, and the witching hour is upon us.
Yes, it’s the Eve of All Hallows, and at long last the resurrection of this blog after its recent crash. Most of the infrastructure has been repaired, so, fittingly, I plan to recommence regular posts [...]

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Forest Lawn, the Ultimate Celebrity Neverland

Cryptic L.A.

This week it was announced that pop-singer Michael Jackson will be laid to rest at Forest Lawn, Glendale, on what would have been his 51st birthday, Aug. 29.
Dateline>City of Angels can’t think of a more appropriate choice of cemetery, given how for nearly a century Forest Lawn has served as a virtual Neverland for [...]

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Altadena’s Weirdly Mysterious “Gravity Hill”

Cryptic L.A.

Recently your humble blogger picked up a copy of the wondrously offbeat Weird California (left), a “travel guide to California’s local legends and best kept secrets.” Written by folklorist triumvirate Greg Bishop, Joe Oesterle and Mike Marinacci, the 2006 book devotes several pages to so-called “Gravity Hills” throughout the Golden State, including one in [...]

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Banking on a Dead Horse in Silver Lake

Cryptic L.A.

For all Citibank’s Silver Lake customers know, their branch safeguards a mythic lost treasure.
But it’s not in the bank’s vault — at least not the one where the loot is kept.
That’s because the treasure in question isn’t gold or currency, but rather Old Blue, faithful steed of cowboy movie legend Tom Mix. And according to [...]

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Photo Op: Two Views of Pasadena’s Wonderfully Creepy Bridge

Cryptic L.A.

As long as we’re still celebrating the Christmas season, remember the famous Bridge Scene in It’s a Wonderful Life? Had the film been set in Southern California, Jimmy Stewart certainly would’ve considered hurling himself from the spans of Pasadena’s Colorado Street Bridge instead of some snowy old trestle.
Built in 1913, the overpass towers 150 feet [...]

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Col. Griffith’s Brush With the Cursed Grim Reaper

Cryptic L.A.

One of L.A.’s favorite ghost stories is the Feliz Curse, a hex allegedly placed on Griffith Park by a young girl a century and a half ago. Each Halloween, the story inevitably pops up in some newspaper or blog.
I’ve written extensively on many aspects of the curse (for example, here and here), but a little-known [...]

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Field Trips: Five Family Friendly Halloween Haunts

Cryptic L.A.

My fascination with Angeleno ghostlore is no secret. For the past several years, I’ve spent every spare moment I can “collecting” spooky legends, researching their roots, interviewing witnesses, and joining professional ghost hunters in their explorations of our region’s most historic haunts.
Recently, fellow blogger Rebecca Lacko asked me to recommend some “family friendly” locales with [...]

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Rudy Valentino’s Cryptic DeLongpre Park Memorial

Cryptic L.A.

Hollywood is known for countless oddball pairings: Laurel and Hardy. Spanky and Alfalfa. Sonny and Cher.
But in my mind one of the oddest has to be Rudy Valentino and DeLongpre Park. There is no historical connection between the two. Yet here in the pocket park commemorating the famous floral artist Paul DeLongpre, you’ll find not [...]

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Urban Myth Busting: City Hall’s Phantom Aristocrat

Cryptic L.A.

As the Big Orange Landmarks blog recently reminded us, L.A.’s 1928 Parkinson-designed City Hall is an architectural icon worth exploring inside and out. But if you ever do find yourself touring its hallowed halls, be on the lookout for a restless spirit said to be making his own ghostly rounds of the place.
For years paranormal [...]

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Friday Flix: Beware the Wrath of Feliz

Cryptic L.A.

And now for this week’s choice for the most interesting, offbeat and/or entertaining web video sharing key themes with this blog…
Yesterday Dateline>City of Angels explored the forgotten history of Griffith Park’s Crystal Springs adobe, along with its possible link to the legendary Feliz Curse. I also took the opportunity to announce I’m writing a book [...]

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