L.A. Security

There is never any telling what experiences lie behind old eyes. Not long ago I had an older woman and her daughter on my tour. She said that she'd worked security in Los Angles for many years, starting in the 1960s. In many of the buildings she worked alone, in isolated areas, at all hours. When she first started as a young woman she had an desk in the basement of an L.A. high rise. During her regular rounds there was one room that always blew cold air when she walked through. You would've thought it was the air conditioning, but when she turned that off she found the air was coming from the door frame itself. One night she felt a presence so strongly in the basement that she said "If there is something here close the door." A door in the basement slammed shut.

During another incidence she was walking through a hall with lots of other people around. She passed a man in a suit and narrow tie, just like every other business man in the 1960s. As they passed she smiled and said hello. Getting no response from him, she was perturbed, then she realized that the man didn't have an id on. As everyone was required to have an id and she was security, she turned around and attempted to follow him. She searched the building and could not find the man anywhere. Later she was chatting with one of the regulars and mentioned this strange encounter and the regular described the man before she could. Apparently this was a familiar sightings in the building.

In still another security assignment she found herself in a nursing facility adjacent to a hospital. The intention was that if any of the residents had a medical issue an ambulance would not have to be called, emergency personnel could simply walk over. It seemed like a great job. The first night when she arrived they sat her at the front desk and encouraged her to do whatever she wanted: watch TV, eat, talk on the phone, read a book. Generally employers did not want security to do these things. At first she thought it was just her good luck, then as the bustle of the day died down and she was surrounded by silence, she began to here noises: knocking at the door, footsteps coming down the stairs. She didn't want to complain because there were so few women working in security, she was afraid of being accused of being weak. After working there for sometime and dismissing the regular noises, one night she heard a knock down fight in the kitchen. Pans flying, things crashing, bodies hitting the floor. She ran to check it out and the kitchen was empty. When her supervisor asked her how she was doing at the job she just smiled and said everything was fine. He was impressed and told her that none of the men would work there. She was the only guard willing to do the job.

Years later she became a supervisor. At a big office building on Wilshire Blvd she could not keep a security guard. They had to work at night in the basement and she kept having to replace them. As a supervisor she had to do rounds, going from location to location checking on security guards. Generally guards were happy to be rid of her, but when she went to this building the guard invited her in and chatted insistently to get her to stay. At first she thought it was just a friendly gesture, but as weeks went by he began to tell her that he heard voices in the building. He started bringing a bible with him to work and reciting verses to drown out the voices. Eventually he was overwhelmed by it all and ran through the front doors, crashing through the glass and barrelling into traffic on the boulevard outside.

Getting Followed Home

Often we want hauntings to be clear to us, but more often they are hard to define. Recently a dad from the Gulf Coast took his daughter on my tour. For him it was a great opportunity to share a city that he had enjoyed long before she was born, but as it turned out it was also a chance to dazzle her with his own life experience.

One evening close to twenty years ago he and some friends took our ghost tour and hung out with a few tour guides afterward. On a lark one of the guides asked them to check out a walkway between a few buildings. He and his friends asked if they would see ghosts there. Should they take pictures? What should they touch? The guide didn't want to influence them, so he insisted on keeping silent until they returned. Well, these guys went into the walkway and felt around the brick, tried to pay attention for cold spots. They eventually gave up and returned insisting that nothing had really happened, but while in the walkway one of them began to feel pressure on his temples and soon it felt like his head was being crushed in a vise. Not being the type to make a fuss, and not really believing in anything paranormal, he said nothing. The guide said they were still investigating the haunting, but they thought that some people had died in a fire there. Suddenly the young man who felt the pressure in his head burst into tears.

Afterward the group returned to the west bank and everyone went to bed, except the young man with the headache. He stayed up and watched television, sitting on the couch in front of a window. As everyone else in the house began to drop off to sleep, he heard a scratching sound behind him. He figured it must be a tree branch outside hitting the window, forgetting that there were no trees in the yard. As the scratching continued the mail slot in the front of the house began to flap. Drawn to the flapping sound in the front of the house, he began to walk toward it and thought he heard his name whispered. Then he heard his name again. Hoping that his host was joking around with him, the young man barged into his room. When he saw his friend just waking up, bewildered, the young man, barely himself, once again began to bawl telling his friend what had happened.

The next morning he went home to Lafayette. As far as I know that was the end of his haunting, but the man who shared this story with me said that long after that night he experienced sleep paralysis in the house, seeing a dark figure standing by the bed beside him.

Wichita Falls Texas

Curiosity is not limited to the living. A few months back I had a woman from Wichita Falls Texas come on the tour. She had two interesting ghost stories to share. Years back she had bought her son a used game system. One day she was at home when a young man, wearing a baseball cap backwards, walked down the hall. A moment later her son walked past and she asked "who is your friend?" Perplexed, he replied "No one. Its just me and you in the house." The mysterious young man she took for being attached to the used game system. It seemed he was passing through. However there was another entity in her house, a helpful one.

She was a cancer survivor. Years before, she was ill and lying in bed thinking she would go to the hospital the next day. Right in her ear she heard a voice "Go to the hospital, now!" She jumped out of bed. When she arrived at the ER the staff immediately admitted her and told her that she would have been dead if she had waited any longer. Later on in her treatment she had a lot of equipment at home, including a tube connecting her to the equipment. At one point as she lie there hooked up, she felt a tug on the the tube and looked over. Something lifted the tube up and moved it about a bit, then set it back down.