As he approached the gallows on the morning of Friday, April 13, 1923, Gull Mohammed’s step was light. He nodded and smiled at the spectators he passed on his final stroll up the 13 steps that would launch the convicted murderer into Eternity.
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.
As Halloween approaches in a flurry of fiery leaves and gathering gloom, the cold air crackles in the shivery wake of Autumn and her restless spirits. The Season of the Ghost is upon us, and Central Valley podcast Ghosthropology, hosted by folklorist Matthew Armstrong and produced by his wife Kaylia Metcalfe, is here to tell you a ghost story.
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.
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.
As the weather warms and the spring arts season kicks into full bloom, Scarab Creative Arts in downtown Fresno welcomes the return of ArtHop after its yearlong hiatus, offering up a variety of art exhibitions, classes, and other events, in addition to the ArtHop’s first-Thursday receptions. Kings River Life reached out to Scarab’s founder Maggie Boyajian Courtis to get the scoop on what the one-of-a-kind creative space has in store for Fresno’s bustling arts community.
And there she was.
Almost exactly twenty-four hours after nine-year-old Esther Lee Lewis went missing on her walk to the school bus the morning of Tuesday, March 11, 1947, there she was. They found her beneath a weeping willow in a dry creek bed near the Kings River, blanketed in blackberry vines—dress torn, skull crushed.
Nostalgia is the musical mood of the moment here in the Central Valley, as the coronavirus pandemic stretches on into its second, devastating year. And bringing back that iconic pop-punk sound is Fresno band Mindless Society, including lead vocalist/guitarist Vic Cappelletty, bassist/vocalist Josh “Shua” Lara, and drummer Nico “Wizzle” Jacinto.
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.
