results,” advises Hanson. “If you know where to look, there are a handful of spots around the park where you can consistently get interactions on a K-II meter. You ask the ghost to flash the lights, and they will … almost on command. Others prefer to go for the EVPs, with some results being very interesting. Recently several of our members were doing recordings in the park and picked up the same message on both an incoming cell phone call from an unknown source and on a camcorder that was being used a few minutes later. Those in the group who are psychic or sensitive have sensed ghosts near our meetings, some of which are said to come right up to certain members to interact with them.”
Why does Hanson feel the park has so much paranormal activity? “The disrespect that was shown to those interred there is obviously a prime candidate in why this cemetery seems more active than most,” says Hanson. “I do have to wonder—how haunted was the cemetery when the markers were still in place? How many ghosts remained attached to their gravesite now that they’d been dishonored? Are there perhaps one or more portals at the park? I would guess that there is at least one portal there, as I’ve had different psychics tell me that they believe a portal is present, near one of the trees. I would be more likely to ask the question from a pseudoscientific rather than from a moral or psychic nature—is it possible that there is an underlying geographic feature, like a high quartz content in the bedrock, or a source of flowing water underneath the park that provides more natural energy and enables the spirits to manifest better than most places? In the end, I would guess that it is a mixture of factors, some of which we aren’t even aware of, that makes the park as active as it is.”
CHAPTER 6
Mount Hope Cemetery
SAN DIEGO
Mount Hope Cemetery’s reminder of what happened to Calvary Cemetery
THERE’S AN HISTORICAL JEWEL existing between two realms in San Diego—that of the living and that of the dead. Mount Hope Cemetery is 115 acres of rolling hills, green grass, and tall palms swaying in the gentle breeze. The City of San Diego does a beautiful job maintaining the 142-year-old property.
The city’s landmark is serious about schedule and security; I’ve even been locked in with my car—earlier than the posted closing signs—as have several members of my team. I’ve also heard of people getting locked into the mausoleum, and they would have stayed there all night had they not been able to use their cell phones.
The cemetery is filled with old surnames prominent in San Diego’s history—early settlers such as Charles Whaley and his family (see Whaley House chapter) and “The Beautiful Stranger,” Kate Morgan, whose mysterious death at the Hotel del Coronado was never questioned by her grandfather (see the Hotel del Coronado chapter). Instead, he discreetly wired funds to bury her. Noir writer and La Jolla resident Raymond Chandler calls this place his eternal home. Even suicides are welcome. It wasn’t always that way; for centuries they were strictly persona non grata on holy ground. As long as you have the funds, there’s a place for everyone here—as long as there are still plots available, that is.
Buried near Thomas Whaley is Alonzo E. Horton, another local household name (the Horton Plaza mall is named for him). He’s the person who first proposed to the settlement of San Diego that groundbreaking begin on a new public cemetery. Before then, and even after, small cemeteries were popping up all over the area—at least one hundred of them accounting for thousands of bodies, many with no records of death or birth. One of the only ways we even find out about these old cemeteries now is when someone is putting in a sprinkler system and hits a femur or skull with their shovel. Only a few dozen of the originals remain today. Horton made the proposal in 1869, and a year later the first interment took place. Mount Hope Cemetery was established outside the growing city for health reasons—bodies had a way of leaching into the water supply because embalming hadn’t quite yet caught on, coffins didn’t have the permanent seals they have today, and cement vaults were not required. The founders believed it would take a while for the population to grow around the large cemetery property.
The Beautiful Stranger’s gravesite. Note the focus anomaly: the engraving on the stone is blurry, as if there was something over it that caused it to be out of focus. The hole below the stone, however, is perfectly in focus.
The cemetery has grown to 169 acres, with no room left to expand. It sits side-by-side with Greenwood Cemetery, a private cemetery and mortuary (they share a fence line) founded in 1907. Mount Hope plots that originally sold for $5–$20—nothing to shake a stick at back then—now cost a minimum of $1,700 if you buy online with a 15 percent broker’s fee (not including all the other death accoutrements, which will easily heap on another $10,000).
Although Mount Hope is a lovely place, it’s not in the safest of neighborhoods. In February 2012, a man was stabbed near the cemetery and left for dead. He was transported to the hospital, where he died a half hour later. Recently, the neighborhood received funding to install solar floodlights on peoples’ homes to keep crime down. The area has beautiful Victorians of all sizes, and I expect that one day, in about forty years or so, the area will be gentrified like the rest of San Diego’s outlying neighborhoods.
It’s a beautiful setting, though, and one you wouldn’t expect to be disturbed by the silent commuter trolley that glides right through the center of the cemetery on rails. The jam-packed trolley is in curious juxtaposition to the marble angels.
In the 1970s, six hundred tombstones were removed from Calvary Pioneer Park, dumped in Mount Hope’s ravine, and bulldozed over (see Calvary Cemetery/Pioneer Park chapter). The headstones were left in piles for eighteen years until there was public outcry. Eighteen headstones were then cemented into the ground next to where the trolley passes by, at the foot of a steep cliff on the cemetery property.
My Ghosts Happen Meetup group held “family day” at Mount Hope, where members’ friends and families could get to know each other, go through and learn the history of the park—and the kids could all play with each other and run through the grass, trees, and tombstones like in the good ol’ days. In the 1800s, when the first large urban cemeteries were designed by gifted architects on the East Coast, the properties served as many major cities’ first public parks and housed the finest American art of the time, created by now-famous names. Many cemeteries, such as Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York, founded in 1838, opened their grand gates to the public on the weekends and charged an entry fee for those wishing to hear band music, eat picnic lunches, and stroll through the grounds. For many, it was a welcome break from the crowded cities filled with garbage and pollution from burning coal. Today, Green-Wood still holds events for the public, such as tours, author lectures, and concerts, and puts those funds toward rehabilitating the marble tombstones and statuary being destroyed by lichen, slime, and sooty mold—a problem in all old cemeteries.
My husband, Jeff, and I brought our youngest daughter to play with the other children in the group. It was a beautiful day for a stroll through the park. Roadside Paranormal case manager and investigator, Leo Aréchiga, brought his four children along.
“Our group was having a family outing at the historic Mount Hope Cemetery. Carmen, my beautiful wife, came along and the grown-ups were in the children’s section talking and looking at the older gravestones,” Leo recalls. “At some point, two of my kids had walked off to explore by themselves when I heard my ten-year-old daughter call out for me. I looked over and she insisted I come quickly. I walked toward them and they came
