Haunted Long Beach

DeForest (6255 DeForest Ave.) is one of the more popular parks in the city because of all it has to offer: playgrounds, tennis and basketball courts, hiking trails, a community center and, as the sun starts to set, the unmistakable feeling that you are being watched, if not by someone than something. And that’s just the beginning. Locals report sudden, unexplained gusts of wind that are either freezing or bear the tortured groans of those pleading for someone to “Help me! Help me!” At least one visitor says that an otherworldly character, described as landing somewhere between a ghost and a zombie, chased them through the park by running in a sideways, “crab-like” manner. There have been so many eyewitness reports of such detail, mostly in the evening, that the DeForest Park Neighborhood Association invited the Anubis Paranormal Research Organization to come out and investigate. The group found that “Deforest Park does appear to have paranormal activity attached to it,” and that these “paranormal encounters may come and go and may only manifest themselves to certain people who may be ‘sensitive’ to the area.”

Before the Queen Mary sailed into town, the Pike amusement park was perhaps Long Beach’s best-known feature. Opened in 1902, the last vestiges of the park were either trucked away or demolished by 1979, and in its place now stands The Pike Outlets (95 S. Pine Ave). If you happen to find yourself around Pine Avenue and Ocean Boulevard, you may want to take a spin on the Ferris Wheel out front while ruminating on the fact that you are in the vicinity of the single-creepiest event in the city’s history. In the mid-1970s, while filming an episode of “Six Million Dollar Man” in one of the Pike’s “haunted” attractions, a prop man moved a wax mannequin from a makeshift gallows and, as he did, the mannequin’s arm broke off revealing human bone and muscle tissue. The mannequin was the preserved corpse of Elmer McCurdy, a small-time, Old West thief who met his end when he was shot after robbing a train in 1911. His mummified body had been used to scare folks at sideshows, eventually landing at the Pike. McCurdy’s body was eventually sent to Oklahoma where it was buried. And though this may be the first time you’re hearing of this, it was such big news at the time that McCurdy was buried under two feet of concrete to ensure his body would not be stolen again.

One of the city’s first major cemeteries, Sunnyside (1095 E. Willow St.) is home to some of Long Beach’s earliest residents, including its first fire chief. Of course, just because someone has been laid to rest, doesn’t mean they’re restful, and more than a few restless spirits have been reported sighted on the property over the years, usually inhabiting strange figures or mysterious silhouettes. Most famously, and perhaps sadly, is the specter of Bessie Baxter. In 1918, Bessie, who was deaf, was excited about her upcoming marriage and traveled from Long Beach to Los Angeles via the Pacific Electric train to purchase her wedding dress. Returning to Long Beach, she stepped off the train but, because she was deaf, did not hear an oncoming car that struck and killed her. Four days later, on what would have been her wedding day, she was buried in the white dress she had purchased, her coffin carried by her bridesmaids. Since then, a woman wearing a white wedding dress has been reported wandering through the grounds many times. No one seems to think of her as frightening, just forlorn. If you’d like to check out Sunnyside with some guidance, the Historical Society of Long Beach puts on Halloween-time tours every year, with actors cast as the dearly departed, telling their tales.

As of yet, there are no reports of either of these spots being haunted, but scary? Oh, yeah. The 4th Horseman (121 W. 4th St.) is one of Long Beach’s best pizza joints, with scary film-titled pies including Pastrami Dearest – pastrami, sauerkraut and Thousand Islands – and Frailty, arguably the best vegan pizza in the city. That, a whole lot of terrific craft beers are wrapped up in an interior decorated with horrorcore comics and posters, dark lighting and creepy, old-timey movies playing on creepy, old-timey TVs. Perhaps scariest of all? The restroom where you’re watched by dead-eyed doll heads. Yeah. If that isn’t enough (or even if it is), you can head through a door at the back that leads into the Dark Art Emporium, an eclectic mix of fine art, oddities, human skulls and taxidermy. Everything from the surreal to the “So real it’s freaking me out,” Dark Art runs the gamut of scary to slapstick, with everything you can imagine, or fear, in between.

And…

We’d be remiss not to include one of Long Beach’s most iconic attractions – which is also its most haunted. In fact, the Queen Mary often ranks as one of the most haunted sites in the U.S. That’s not surprising given that during the ship’s nearly 90 years of service, it has been the scene of deaths both accidental and intended. Guests and staff alike have reported being confronted by spirits all over the ship, spirits such as a young girl named Mary who drowned in the first-class pool in 1949. It’s around the pool where many people have said they’ve encountered Mary, though she has been seen all over the ship. There have also been reports of the tortured cries of John Pedder, an 18-year-old worker crushed by a heavy engine room door in 1966. There’s a “Lady in White” who makes the rounds and the ghostly giggles of children playing in the ship’s nursery. Perhaps most infamously of all is Cabin 340, whose haunting is attributed to a double-murder committed on the ship. B340 had caused such terror that it was made off-limits to guests for 30 years. Now, you can not only stay overnight in the cabin, chances are you’ll have to wait in line. All of these incidents have inspired various seances and other paranormal events at the ship, most notably the very popular “Dark Harbor” event on the ship that incorporates much of the ship's ghostly history into this annual Halloween haunt.