As frost and fog envelop the Central Valley in the ghostly shroud of winter, thoughts drift inward to the warmth of family, home, and the holidays. But as the Christmas tree is lit and the New Year rung in with loved ones, the season’s longest, darkest nights recall a time when ghost stories and spooky soirees were the otherworldly order of the day.
As the nights lengthen and the falling leaves unleash the fiery hues of autumn, the world darkens as the veil between realms grows thin. The cold, damp air thickens to an icy mist, blanketing the Central Valley in otherworldly fog.
Blood saturated every surface: splattered across the walls, soaking through the bedsheets. Arterial spray darkening from ruby to rust, placing the precise time of the murder-suicide some twelve hours prior. The nude forms of a young man and woman faced one another on the bed, their expressions serene despite the gaping mess of their flayed throats. Hers had been cut just above the clavicle, his severed at the Adam’s apple. A bone-handled razor lay at his side, slick with clotted crimson.
The simultaneous, yet conflicting, demoralization and romanticism of the Native Peoples of the Americas throughout modern American history is a fascinating and sad phenomenon. They were often portrayed as savages, attacking the pioneers heading west to claim their virgin land under Manifest Destiny. Yet, many amateur genealogists lay claim to Native American inheritance.
Threading the digital byways of paranormal blogs and websites, ghostly urban legends spring up with surprising regularity. And for every alleged supernatural encounter, there is a Woman in White—or a Vanishing Hitchhiker. These legends linger and mingle in the comments of anonymous storytellers around a virtual campfire, blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction, life and death.
December 1941: as Pearl Harbor burned and the United States marched headlong into its second World War, the Sisters of the Holy Cross took up residence at 1050 S. Street in downtown Fresno, a grand Colonial Revival home crowned by a widow’s walk.
It always begins with a girl—usually nameless, always dead.
How she died doesn’t matter so much as the fact that she met a violent fate because she made a perceived mistake of some kind: her clothes were too tight, she went out alone at night, or caught a ride with the wrong stranger.
school district existed, and even before the town had a name, a schoolhouse was erected on the Thomas Law Reed ranch; it was known as the Smith Ferry School. In what some called a twist of bad luck (which others may have deemed arson), an attempt to move that schoolhouse into the burgeoning city of Reedley came to an abrupt halt when the school burned to the ground in February of 1890.
The Great Central Valley. The San Joaquin Valley. The Heart of California. The Big Valley.
It’s an amazing place to explore, and it’s even better to explore it with people you like. Two of my favorite traveling companions are Pat Hunter and Janice Stevens, although I’ve never shared a car with them. I travel in their books. With Hunter’s delicate watercolors and Stevens’ concise prose, they’ve helped me explore Fresno’s architectural gems, the twenty-one missions of California’s El Camino Real, the stomping grounds of William Saroyan’s past, and Highway 1’s stretch up the California coastline from Mexico to Oakland.
At 7:20 on a crisp, clear Saturday morning in January, just as the sun began to makes its presence known east of the Sierras, three pick-up trucks sat idling, keeping the occupants toasty warm in the parking lot of one of the oldest businesses in Reedley. At 7:23 the lights inside Reedley Lumber Co. popped on in sections, indicating to the outside world, namely the aforementioned men huddling in the warmth of their vehicles, that the day was officially beginning. At 7:26 the doors were unlocked, and like moths to a flame, the gentlemen who had been so patiently waiting, exited the comfort of their trucks and made a beeline for the entrance.
