What Did We See?

by Lillian Csernica on October 9, 2023

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TCL Chinese Theater, formerly known as Grauman’s Chinese Theater, is one of the most well-known landmarks in Hollywood. Like so many of Hollywood’s famous locations, it is said to be haunted.

The ghost most often associated with TCL Chinese Theater is Victor Kilian, a vaudeville performer who made the transition into motion pictures during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

In 1979, actor Victor Kilian was murdered in his apartment which was located one block away from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. He apparently had struck up a conversation with a stranger and they went back to Kilian’s apartment where it had been burglarized. The killer has never been caught, but the ghost of Killian can be seen on the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater where he is allegedly trying to find his murderer.

Haunted Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood

One night my best friend Pat and I were in Hollywood. We decided to go see The Last Samurai at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. The box office is at street level, then you take an elevator down to the floor with the actual theaters.

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Pat was already standing at the ticket window, which meant she had her back to me as I hurried down the hallway toward her. To my left stood the bank of elevators. A man and a woman were walking away from the ticket booth, about to get into the elevator going down. I called, “Hold the car!” Pat heard me and glanced back over her right shoulder, then turned to her left to walk toward the elevator. The two of us reached the elevator at the same moment.

There was no one inside. Pat looked at me. I looked at her. I described the man. She nodded and described the woman. We had seen the same two people. There was nowhere at all those two people could have gone other than into that one elevator.

Pat and I took the elevator down. When the doors opened, after a total of maybe fifteen seconds, we didn’t see anyone in that lobby. The doors for the individual theaters were far enough from the elevator that we surely should have seen the man and the woman before they stepped through one of those doors.

Ever since then I find myself hesitating before I enter an elevator.

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The Weird And The Wonderful

by Lillian Csernica on October 8, 2023

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I love classic ghost stories. They combine my love of history with my fascination for the supernatural. These are my favorite stories by ten of the very best writers of weird fiction. Some names may be familiar to you. I hope you will take a chance and explore the names you don’t recognize. There are few better ways to celebrate the spooky season than curling up under a warm blanket with stories that will give you a definite chill.

The Sweeper by A.M. Burrage

The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Oh Whistle And I’ll Come To You, My Lad by M.R. James

The October Country by Ray Bradbury

The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford

Negotium Perambulans by E.F. Benson

The Voice In The Night by William Hope Hodgson

Madame Crowl’s Ghost by J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Old House In VauxHall Walk by Mrs. J.H. Riddell

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Too Scared To Move

by Lillian Csernica on October 2, 20023

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Some people believe the Winchester Mystery House is haunted. They believe in the curse said to be laid on the Winchester family by the First Nations people who were slaughtered in such staggering numbers by Winchester rifles. Sarah Winchester held seances in one noteworthy room of the house, partly to contact the spirits of her family who died too suddenly and too young. She’s also said to have made an effort to contact the spirits of the First Nations people who laid the curse on her family. Fear of this curse drove her to keep building more rooms, adding on to the house as a means of holding off the fulfillment of the curse: the moment she stopped building, she would die.

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This makes a great story, and it generates considerable income from the tours offered at the Winchester Mystery House. There are flashlight tours offered at night in the Halloween season, and you can even take a tour of the basement. I lived in San Jose for several years, just a few blocks away from the grand old building. For all of my interest in ghost stories and the occult, I never bothered to visit this famous landmark. Then came my 25th Wedding anniversary. When you’ve been married that long, you start running out of things to do. So my husband and I decided it was time to see if the stories were true. We would tour the Winchester Mystery House.

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The tricky part about going to a place that has a famous reputation for being haunted is the power of suggestion. If you’re already disposed to think you’re going to see ghosts or have some kind of paranormal experience, it’s entirely possible that you will interpret whatever you see and feel in terms that confirm that expectation. I know myself pretty well when it comes to looking for the supernatural. I have such an overactive imagination I’m perfectly capable of scaring myself silly. No, I do not believe the Winchester Mystery House is haunted. I believe Sarah Winchester led a life full of tragedy and sorrow. That state of intense and lingering emotion has permeated the house and grounds.

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One could also consider the Winchester Mystery House in the context of feng shui. To put it in simple terms, feng shui is the art of placement. How your house is oriented according to the compass and how your possessions are arranged inside can affect the flow of chi, or life energy. The Winchester Mystery House is a mind-boggling tangle of rooms and stairways and closets and bathrooms and fireplaces. There are two thousand doors in the House. Some of them open onto brick walls. At least one of them opens out into thin air. This is especially disturbing given that the door is on the second floor. Trapped energy, blocked energy, and energy that flows too quickly can all have an effect on the perceptions and experience of a person dwelling inside such a building or even just passing through.

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Then there’s the issue of what people who visit the Winchester Mystery House bring into the house with them. Thousands of people tour the Winchester Mystery House every year. A given percentage of them go there hoping to see something so they can take home a ghost story like their own personal souvenir. When you have that many people generating that much energy, that much concentrated desire, it might very well attract certain types of spiritual entities. In the late 19th Century, spiritualism was very popular. Its followers believed the dead can and do interact with the world of the living all the time. One room in the House is called the Seance Room. It’s a very strange room, with three entrances but only one exit. To leave the room, you have to pass through a doorway hung with double doors. That would seem easy enough, wouldn’t it? My wedding anniversary falls in early July. San Jose is quite warm at that time of year. The Seance Room does not have any kind of climate control or air conditioning. As soon as I walked into the room, I felt cold and slightly sick to my stomach. The tour guide’s comments on the history of the seance room took maybe five minutes, but those minutes seemed to drag on and on. I really wanted to get out of that room.

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And now, for the really weird moment. As much as I wanted to leave, I could not pass through the double doorway. I was stuck, as if the air itself had thickened around me. People passed by me, but I could not cross that threshold. My husband had already stepped through. He looked back at me, knowing me well enough to know I was having some sort of trouble. All I could do was hold out my hand to him so he could pull me through. That worked. Once I was out of the room, that creepy sense of coldness and the sick feeling went away. The welcome heat of the day warmed me up again.

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Is the Winchester Mystery House haunted? All I can say is I believe it may have become a focal point for a mixture of energies. If it wasn’t haunted to begin with thanks to the curse, the House has quite likely attracted several low grade spiritual entities. It all depends on your sensitivity and what you might or might not want to see. I have no intention of returning to the Winchester Mystery House. Whatever the truth is, I am content not to know.

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A-Haunting We Will Go!

by Lillian Csernica on October 1, 2023

It’s October! Let’s kick off the 30 Days of Scary Fun with a ghost story.

I once had the delightful experience of volunteering in my younger son John’s seventh grade Creative Writing Class. On Back to School Night I’d been chatting with John’s teacher and she discovered that I write for a living. John’s Reading 180 workbook, which included a unit on Edgar Allen Poe. With Halloween right around the corner, I thought a writing lesson about something spooky might be fun. And then the real inspiration struck. What could be more perfect for Halloween than a haunted house story? We’d start out by thinking up all the different kinds of places a haunted house might be. A grass hut on the beach in Tahiti, an igloo in Alaska, a hotel or a camping tent or the traditional shabby manor house with strange lights and weird noises. Then we’d explore the basic idea using the journalist’s five questions: Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How!

The Haunted House

I asked the students what makes a classic haunted house. I encouraged them to think beyond what they’d already seen on TV or read about in books. What other kinds of buildings could be haunted? What other places where people could live might have ghosts? One young lady suggested a haunted fort. That was a great idea and I said so. One of the quieter boys spoke up about a space station. Another wonderful idea. When the students caught on to my enthusiasm and encouragement, more and more of them started speaking up.

Who

Who would be the main character? Would it be a living person? A ghost? Maybe even the house itself? I talked about each of these options, doing my best to keep it simple so the students had clear choices. It’s best to keep the number of characters small when writing a short story. This led to another major step in fiction writing, giving the main character a name. I spent a few minutes on the importance of names, where to find them, and how to make them up in a way that makes sense and sounds right.

What

What’s haunting the house? Is it a traditional ghost? One boy had chosen a pyramid as his “house.” The clear choice there: a mummy. The students were quick to mention the classic monsters such as werewolves, vampires, and Frankenstein. Cara, the student teacher, asked about different types of ghosts. I collect ghost story anthologies from the turn of the century. I’ve read about the mournful ghost, the vengeful ghost, the banshee, the Black Coach and the poltergeist. We focused on the poltergeist, the “noisy ghost,” a favorite element in scary movies. Once I explained this ghost’s talent for throwing dishes and furniture around, I saw the face of one boy light up. He wanted that kind of ghost. He started scribbling on his notepaper with a speed I recognized. Inspiration had struck!

Where

“Where?” is multifaceted question. There’s the location of the haunted house itself. The students talked about clifftops and deserts and swamps and the main street of a big city. I explained how the different countries and cultures where the story was set in are also key elements. A haunted house in Japan would be very different from a haunted house in New York City. Again I saw that faraway look in the eyes of the boys and girls as the wheels of their imaginations kept turning.

Why

Of all the five W Questions, “Why?” is my favorite. I asked the students to think about why the ghost was haunting that particular place. The young lady who chose a haunted fort told me her ghost was a soldier who wanted to go on guarding the fort. I said that made sense to me. The soldier had been dedicated to his duty in life, and that dedication remained even after he died in the line of duty. I asked for more ideas about why a ghost would haunt a particular place. We came up with buried treasure, some business the ghost hadn’t finished before he or she died, and the frequent motivation of revenge.

When

The question of when requires some complex thinking. When does the ghost do its haunting? At sunset? Midnight? When could also be the time of year. There are summertime ghosts, but the most dramatic time of year is the long winter night. I told the students about some of the greatest ghost stories ever written by such enduring names as A.M. Burrage, M.R. James and E.F. Benson. On the subject of winter, I used Hugh Walpole‘s “Snow” as my example. A truly chilling story, in many senses.

How

Every good story starts with a problem the main character has to solve. If the main character is the ghost, the question becomes how is the ghost haunting the house and how is that going to solve the problem? The kids had some great ideas, from scary noises and faces at the window to seeing weird things in mirrors. One of the boys really got into his story. He must have filled in at least three notebook pages and showed no sign of slowing down.

The students had done well, paying attention and participating. Then came time to bring out the art supplies. Construction paper, fuzzy black spiders, Halloween pumpkin stickers, googly eyes, and a big bag of cotton balls. I challenged the kids to tell me how many ways they could use the cotton balls to create a picture of their haunted houses. John himself suggested clouds. Another boy said spiderwebs. Someone else said ghosts. I showed the kids how to stretch the cotton very thin and glue it along the ground level to make the kind of low-lying mist you might see in graveyards. Those kids went at it with such energy and pleasure, making their visions become real before their eyes. The pyramid was marvelous. The space station was terrific. And John’s hotel looked positively grand.