by Sarah Peterson-Camacho
But from the moment William Chester Spence married Lulu Holden Klamroth Dodd in Oakland, California, on Wednesday, July 29, 1925, it was a match made for the hereafter. The widowed carpenter, 47, and the twice-divorced medium, 52, shared a passion for the paranormal, and by the time of their marriage, they had seen enough of life to know that the Other Side was never very far away.
by Sarah Peterson-Camacho
As the fiery leaves of autumn give way to winter’s fog and frost, the colder seasons mingle in swirls of scarlet through icy tendrils of bone-white mist. An otherworldly haze of tule fog descends upon the Central Valley like a collective ghost, enveloping the vineyards in its numbing embrace.
by Sarah Peterson-Camacho
Exactly one century ago, the Halloween patrol was ready to hit the streets. And with fifteen extra officers on duty that night, no crime would go unpunished.
by Sarah Peterson-Camacho
Forty-eight hours before he was murdered, Percy Williams was living large on the last night of September, 1890.
The favorite son of a former Attorney General of California, Williams was all of 26 years old, wealthy, married, with an infant already in the ground, since the previous February—but here he was at the Palace, Stockton’s premier bordello, cozying up to madam Dora Russell on El Dorado Street…only several blocks from the mansion where his young wife Bessie slept alone in their cold marital bed.
Cradling the rose quartz pendulum in the palm of my hand, I gingerly picked my way across the dusty, uneven terrain of Sanger’s Bethel Cemetery, my darting eyes peeled for gopher holes. It was a beautiful day for a séance in a deserted country graveyard: a breezy, cloudless summer afternoon, unseasonably cool for the middle of a Central California July. And yet my palm was sweaty, sticking to the pendulum, and I felt oddly self-conscious.
Forty-nine feet was all she had. From the moment he put two bullets in her boyfriend’s brain, Pauline Grass had only 49 steps left to take.
A balmy summer night out on the town in Alex’s new auto, cruising the countryside under a full, white-hot moon, slipping out to that secluded spot by Haig Tusoosian’s vineyards. Climbing into the backseat to christen upholstery so new it squeaked, and steaming up the glass in a heady potpourri of sweat, smeared lipstick, and Alex’s aftershave. Losing herself in his kiss…
That first night opened the door … to what, exactly, she wasn’t quite sure. But that was the night it all began—the rappings on the walls, the floorboards that creaked under invisible feet.
Blood was not on the menu the night of Thursday, April 5, 1962, as far as Kings County Deputy Jailer Raymond Van Dyke was concerned. But the spray of crimson erupting in the steely wake of a razor could never have been mistaken for ketchup.
Heavy footsteps shook the hot, dusty air, jolting us out of our downstairs vigil; all eyes shot up to the Bastille’s second-floor VIP section — what had once been the women and children’s ward of the former Kings County Jail.
There’s a new game in town—a game store, that is! Fresno’s Tower District is now home to GoBack Gaming, a throwback game shop big on 90s nostalgia and classic trading card games. Kings River Life caught up with owners Victor Gutierrez and Yvonne Stever to chat about Pokémon, the 90s heyday of trading cards, and the future of going back.
