All Hallow's Eve

NOTE: The series "Tales of the Caribbean Sea" will resume next Friday.

That most mischievous of holidays alternately known as All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain, All Saints Day or Halloween, is upon us again, signaling the change in seasons from summer’s light to the coming chill of fall and winter.

Below, you will find a handful of ghostly tales experienced over the years by some of our island locals.

THE PEBBLY BEACH ROAD HITCHIKER

American folklore is filled with tales of other-worldly hitchhikers, generously given a ride by unwitting drivers, only for them to discover the terrifying true nature of their passenger at the end of the ride.

These stories tend to revolve around a helpful citizen giving a ride to a lone woman hitchhiker on a lonely country road at night. The passenger, invariably a forlorn, yet beautiful young woman, gives the driver her home address and asks to be taken there.

Upon reaching the destination, the driver discovers to his horror that the woman is no longer in the vehicle and is nowhere to be found. Determined to get to the bottom of this, he goes up to the house at the given address and knocks on the door. An elderly couple appears and upon hearing the driver’s account of what happened, both burst into tears.

“That was our daughter you gave a ride to,” says the man, choking back tears. She was killed in a car accident 10 years ago today at the very spot where you picked her up. Every year on this night, some good-hearted soul such as yourself shows up at our door and tells us this same story. It was our daughter, eternally trying to come home again.”

Well, our Catalina hitchhiker story might not be quite that dramatic, however it is nevertheless mysterious and even a little disturbing.

Pebbly Beach resident Yesi Jimenez was on her way home after wrapping up her late-night shift at the old C.C. Gallagher’s at Front Street and Clarissa one night. It was well after midnight and the town was dark and quiet. As she was driving her golf cart past the stairs at Lover’s Cove she noticed a young man walking alone and wondered if he might need a ride.

“He had blonde hair, like probably 23 years old, maybe 24,” she said. “He was wearing khaki shorts, flip flops and a Hawaiian shirt. A formal, dressy shirt.”

The young man indeed asked for a ride but added “I just need a ride to a party where my friends are,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

The young man climbed into the back seat of the golf cart and the two drove off into the night.

“You must have two daughters’,” said the stranger as they drove along. Yesi indeed had two twin daughters and was astonished that he somehow knew this, even though she’d never met him before in her life.

“You guys want to have another one,” continued the young man.

A little taken aback by this statement but still not feeling any fear, Yesi agreed. “We were thinking about it,” she told the stranger.

“It’s going to be a boy,” announced the stranger. He even went so far as to suggest a name. “Consider Michael as his name.”

“OK,” replied Yesi. “I’ll consider it.”

By this time, Yesi and her strange passenger were about halfway down Pebbly Beach Road, well before reaching the first darkened buildings of Pebbly Beach proper.  It was here, in the middle of nowhere, that the man announced, “You can drop me off here.”

Yesi pulled over to the side of the road and looked around. There were no other people, no cars or golf carts, not even any boats anchored near the shore. There certainly was no party going on.

This was where the Twilight Zone went into high gear.

“I thought you were meeting your friends at a party. Where are your friends?,” asked Yesi uneasily.

With that the stranger pointed down into the water and said “They’re down there.”

The young man then climbed out of the golf cart, thanked Yesi for the lift and bid her farewell.

Yesi drove away towards Pebbly Beach. “I didn’t even look back,” she said, not a little disturbed by the incident.

As you may have guessed, the epilog to this story is that within a couple of years, Yesi did indeed give birth to a baby boy, although she didn’t name him Michael.

Who, or perhaps what, was this young man? Could he have been the ghost of a drowned sailor (or, given his attire, surfer) from long ago or a spirit from some other unfortunate accident from the past? Or perhaps he was an angel. An angel would, after all, think Michael was a pretty cool name for a kid. Perhaps this angel was simply making a cameo appearance in Yesi’s life, bringing with him a bit of angelic prophecy.

THE HAUNTED CASINO WOMEN’S RESTROOM

Yes, you read that right. Of all the fabulous locations on Catalina Island that our ghosts could have picked as the preeminent venue for their hauntings, they had to pick the women’s restroom on the mezzanine level of the Casino.

If you’re at all familiar with our local paranormal folklore, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Tales of stall doors opening and slamming by themselves, disembodied voices screaming “GET OUT!” and the story of a strange “tourist” dressed in 1950s attire literally disappearing in the restroom have been told over the decades. In fact, a recent episode of the frightfully popular Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures featuring our own illustrious Chuck Liddell was largely filmed in that very room.

Lourdes Thoricht recalls a terrifying incident when she was a teenager and found herself alone in the women’s restroom.

“I was 16, I think, maybe a year older, and I went to use the restroom on the mezzanine,” she said. She chose the stall furthest to the left.

“I was just sitting there doing my business,” she said, when a strong gust of wind blew into the stall from under the stall door.

It was a cold wind, she said, that was really “more like an energy” than a traditional gust of wind. The blast was so strong that it knocked her back against the wall behind the toilet. As noted, no one else was in the restroom at the time and it should also be noted that the restroom is in the interior of the building and consequently has no windows or any other large vents through which a gust of wind might pass.

Needless to say, it was a long time before Lourdes returned to the restroom.

Another terrifying experience befell island local Lisa Castillo several years ago while in the same restroom. Lisa, who currently lives in Two Harbors (don’t get me started on Two Harbors ghost stories), was the guest of the then-residents of the apartment at the top of the building’s East Wing late one night when her friends informed her it was time to make their usual nightly rounds to make sure all the doors in the building were locked, lights were turned off, etc.

Lisa’s territory to cover within the building turned out to be, you guessed it, the women’s mezzanine restroom. Dutifully, she made her rounds through the room to make sure it was clear of stragglers and stowaways.

“When I was coming out of (the restroom), I felt a hand grab my wrist and squeeze it,” she said. It was a cold, somewhat clammy, hand that she could feel, but that was invisible.

Understandably startled, she hurriedly made her way back to the upstairs apartment to tell her friends about the disturbing incident.

By the time she got back up to her friend’s apartment a large red welt had developed on her wrist right where the ghostly hand had grabbed her.

A WARNING FROM BEYOND?

As long as we’re in the building, I thought I’d close with a little Casino story of my own, a story that appears in my book Mysterious Island Catalina (second edition).

For nearly 20 years, I was one of the projectionists in the Avalon Theatre, so I consequently spent quite a bit of time there. I was sitting alone in the projection room one night shortly before beginning the evening’s film presentation when the projection room phone rang. It was my co-worker Eric Schwartz working the box office down in the lobby.

“Why did you just call down here and ask if everyone was all right?” he said.

I was confused. I had done nothing of the sort.

“I didn’t just call down there,” I told Eric.

“Yes you did,” insisted Eric. “You just called down here and asked if everyone was okay. Why? What happened?”

“Eric,” I said, “I’ve just been sitting up here waiting to start the movie. I didn’t call anyone. Why would I call to ask if everyone was okay? Are you sure the call didn’t come from someone else in the building?” I asked.

He was insistent. “No, it was from you. It came from the projection room extension number.”

“Well, it wasn’t me,” I finally told him. “And there hasn’t been anyone else in here with me all night.”

He adamantly insisted the call had been from me and from the projection room extension. We ended the conversation on that note.

I went back to my duties and at the appointed time of 7:30 p.m. started the movie.

About 90 minutes later, I noticed that the office chair in which I was seated began to tremble. It was a strange, rapid jiggling motion, the cause of which I couldn’t fathom. It wasn’t me that was causing it and there was, as I’ve noted, no one else in the room that might be playing a trick on me. Soon enough, the vibration stopped.

Then the phone rang again. This time it was my fellow projectionist, Mark Tasca. He was at his home in Avalon with the night off.

“Did you feel that?!” he shouted into the other end of the phone. “That must have been a five or a six! Me and Gail almost ran out of the house!”

Mark was referring to what would become known as the La Habra earthquake of March 28, 2014, centered in northern Orange County. It was a 5.1 on the Richter scale, but it measured a “very strong” level VII on the Mercalli Scale and had been felt violently all the way out at Catalina.

I immediately thought of Eric’s phone call earlier in the evening. Were the two incidents related? Was there something, somehow out of whack with the cause-and-effect nature of the universe? Did the earthquake happen at an earlier time in a parallel universe, and the Jim Watson in that universe felt compelled to inquire about the well-being of his co-workers downstairs in the lobby? Did that call somehow get transferred in the Twilight Zone to our universe before the earthquake happened here?

All I know is that to this day Eric Schwartz does not believe me when I tell him that the Jim Watson in this universe never made that call downstairs.