Haunted California Part 1. Haunted Pike Amusement Park & Bracken Fern Manor mob brothel!

Welcome to Pat Patterson's Best of California. This episode is all about the best of haunted California and we are in a special haunted spot. Why is this spot special, Liza? Well, this is where we filmed one of our first and most popular Best of California segments, the Corpse in the Theme Park ride about the dead outlaw Elmer McCurdy found at the old Long Beach Pike Amusement Park. And we're going to show you that segment later in the show. Watch for Liza in the segment. But we're going to have to come clean about where this ride is because we've had the Discovery Channel, all sorts of places ask us. So we want to go film at that theme park ride too. So where is this theme park ride, Liza? Well, dad, you're right in saying we're coming clean because we are actually in our laundry room at our house. This is where we store all the monsters for our annual Halloween spook house. So we'll start the Best of Haunted California right here in the laundry room. But we're also going to take you to the Haunted Queen Mary, a haunted queen and hotel up in San Francisco, a former mob brothel at Lake Arrowhead. And we're going to shop at one of our favorite places to get scary props and where all the celebrities go to get their costumes, which is Hollywood Toy and Costume. We love this place. So stick around for the Best of Haunted California. Let's go, Liza. I want to tell you a nightmare. I think she said, I want to tell you a nightmare. There are many places in the Golden State rumored to be haunted, but there are few places like the Pike where the dead actually resided, quietly watching guests. And if those dead could only have moved, they would have thrown a scare into the public more effective than any Halloween haunt ever conceived. This is one of those places. The Pike was at one time the fifth most popular amusement park in the United States. But by the 70s, it had fallen on hard times and was running out of space for film locations. It happened in 1976. A film crew was filming an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man and The Laugh in the Dark Scare Ride. These dummies and fake skeletons had been looking at guests for decades. The director of the episode didn't like the way one of these dummies was crafting his shot, so he asked the crew to take it down. When the crew went to take the dummy down, his arm broke off and a human bone was revealed in the arm. This was no dummy. This was a real cadaver killed by a .32 caliber bullet. But who was he and how did he get here? Believe it or not, a ticket from the L.A. Crime Museum was found in the cadaver's mouth. This allowed investigators to eventually identify the body as that of outlaw Elmer McCurdy of Oklahoma. Poor Elmer's body had traveled the country as a bizarre auger fact that crime doesn't pay. And like a sad Hollywood has been, he somehow ended up in The Laugh in the Dark Ride at the Pike. Elmer eventually got to stop being a sideshow amusement and was returned to Oklahoma where he got a proper Old West funeral and internment. So I'm here with John Cotter, owner of the Tudor House, which turns out had a mob history to it. The builders borrowed the money from the Los Angeles mob and Great Depression came along, they couldn't pay him back. So the mob did take it over and turned it into one of the three or four places in all of Southern California where you could gamble, you could drink, you could do other activities. And you were very remote, nobody's going to see you. There's an underground tunnel. The tunnel was used so they could come and go and not be seen. You could go from the Hotel Brothel underground under this building, so you could come and go and nobody saw you. So John, this is the hotel and remind me the name. Brackenfern Manor. And you said it was built based on... Well, this design element of this building, East Coast Connecticut Seaside Hotel Cottage. So we're walking down the hallway and I stop John and I say, it says Violet on here. What does that mean? So tell me why a woman's name is on the door. Well, I'm glad you asked. He's not glad I asked. When the mob was running it, this building was the brothel. And so you decided which room you're going to go to when you saw the brochures across the street. You picked a room and then you came here and you found it. So Violet has more of our, more of the ghost stories. Some of the prostitutes presence is still felt. You can smell Violet's perfume. Our associate producer, Leanna Romero, claims she saw Violet. Let's hear it from her. So I'm so excited. I've got Leanna Romero, our associate producer of the show. And after shooting the Brackenfern Manor up there at Lake Arrowhead, Leanna mentioned that she had stayed there and you had a haunted experience. Leanna, tell me what the hell happened up there. So yeah, we were staying there for two nights. And on the second night, we were up in the attic. We went there because of the ghost experience. We were amateur ghost hunters back then. And the room that we stayed at was known to be the most haunted room. So I'm laying in bed and all the lights are off. And there was a window directly in front of the bed. And lights were, there was like a streetlight that was coming in from the window. And I was looking at the curtains and it appeared the curtains were moving. And as I gained focus, what was actually moving was a big ball of vapor. And so as I gained focus and I noticed, you know, this thing walking in front of the curtain back and forth, it looked like it was just going to the bathroom and to the wall. And the gentleman that I was with at the time was really big into ghost hunting. And he decided to jump up and get his camera and to try to take a picture of this because we could both see it. And when he went to take the picture and the flash went off, we very clearly saw some type of reaction to the figure or, you know, the spirit. But it panicked and it seemed like it started, it ran to the right, it ran to the left into the bathroom. And out of the bathroom, it ran kind of straight ahead because the door was there. And as it was running from the bathroom to the door, we could actually hear the footsteps on the ground. Oh my gosh. They had to scare the bejesus out of you. What did you guys do? I just laid in bed. Like, you know, when something like that happens, you you're kind of dumbfounded. You're just, you can't really believe it happened. Of course, that's what you were there to see, right? Yeah, you are. But you don't expect to have like a visual experience like that, you know. Be careful what you wish for. Right, right.