A Laguna Beach Ghost Story

Residents of the Arch Beach Tavern report seeing ghosts and hearing mystery sounds. The paranormal activity is making people jumpy.

A rocking chair sits in a corner of the lobby of the Arch Beach Tavern, the scene of numerous ghost sightings in Laguna Beach.

It used to be a brothel, or so they say.

The old white building sits on the hill, like the hotel in "The Shining," cavernous and creaky, with long dark hallways and strange apartments. It is the Arch Beach Tavern, built in 1915 to house people from the movie industry.

It is an odd place where mystery abounds. There are blank doors with no handles and light switch panels with no switches. In the lobby, an empty rocking chair sits in the corner as if waiting to move with an unseen breeze.

Put it this way: On Halloween in Laguna Beach, Oak and Brooks streets get all the attention, but no one goes trick-or-treating at this house, perhaps because it's too scary.

"Nobody ever comes up to the building," said Briandy Walden, a 10-year resident. "The building itself can be kind of creepy. The carpet used to be red."

Walden tells stories about mysterious sightings on the third floor and the backyard garden and about the unexplained sounds.

"People have said they've heard and seen things, but I haven't," she said, fidgeting and glancing over her shoulder.

The Catalina Street building can make visitors jumpy.

In fact, according to postings on the Ghosts of America website, of all the ghost sightings in Laguna Beach, this building is the most storied.

"Two residents have reported seeing a little girl playing on the balcony at night behind the building on the third floor," someone named Ryan, who did not give a last name, wrote on the website. "Another 12-year resident reported hearing digging going on in the laundry room, but the floor is concrete, and the digging sounded like a shovel into gravel and dirt."

There have been several other mysterious reports, according to the website.

"I have lived at 2180 Catalina (bottom level) in Laguna Beach and have witnessed several different ghost sightings in the years that I've lived here," Nikki wrote. "Mostly seeing an older woman with white, short perm-style hair in my kitchen and standing over my bed.

"When I first moved in I woke up to what I thought was a nightmare but clearly was not; I saw a woman in old-style courtesan clothing. She had curly long dark hair and was wearing old-fashioned lingerie. She was scratching at me and telling me to 'get out.' I had actual marks on my arms, so this was very real! I remember she had long red-painted nails."

There are other locations in Laguna Beach where people claimed to have seen or heard strange things: the high school theater, Pyne Castle, Ti Amo Ristorante, the Royal Hawaiian and a beach cottage called the witch's house.

But the stories at the Arch Beach Tavern persist � not around the campfire but in the shower.

"I lived [there] for about six months back in 2002," wrote Amanda. "I had many paranormal experiences while living there. My apartment was on the second floor and on two occasions I could feel banging underneath my feet as I was showering. I also experienced a wine glass shatter on my coffee table as a friend and I were watching a movie.

"I would also hear activity in my bathroom. I would hear the shower curtain shuffle and move around quite often. Not to mention many nights of insomnia and being creeped out. My neighbor across the hall heard activity in her apartment every night. I would love to see a paranormal investigation done there."

Fishermen Find Ancient Skull in Lake - Georgetown, Texas

Anthropologists at Texas State University are studying the skull of a Native American man that fishermen found at the edge of the water on Lake Georgetown on Monday.

The skull could be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of years old, said Kate Spradley, an assistant professor of anthropology at the university who has examined it.

"It is likely prehistoric because of a number of features," she said.

The three molars remaining on the skull are "completely worn down due to a very gritty diet," she said. The diet would have consisted of unprocessed foods, she said.

The skull also has features that are very "male," she said, including a brow ridge and wide cheekbones, she said.

Spradley said she cannot determine how the man died but said that a side of the skull is missing.

"It looks like postmortem damage, but it's hard to tell if it was trauma associated with the death or it happened after death," she said. The man was probably middle-aged because some of the lines that form when the human skull grows together are obliterated, she said.

It's not unusual to find the remains of Native Americans in the area, she said. Lake Georgetown is near the famous Gault site, halfway between Georgetown and Fort Hood, said Steve Black, an anthropology professor at Texas State. Scientists have found thousands of artifacts at the Gault site, including spear points of the Clovis people, thought to be some of the earliest human inhabitants of the New World 13,000 years ago.

It is hard to determine what tribe the man might have belonged to, Spradley said. Historical records were not established until the arrival of the Spanish, who established missions near Rockdale in the mid-18th century, said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the state archaeologist for the Texas Historical Commission.

The fishermen found the man's skull Monday in a cove near Russell Park, on the north shore of the lake, about 1� miles from a swimming area, Terbush said. Lake levels in that area are lower because of the drought, he said.

Police were notified at 1 p.m. Monday. Investigators initially regarded the case as a suspicious death, and one of the possibilities they later considered � before one of the Texas State anthropologists examined the skull � was that it might be related to the 2002 disappearance of Rachel Cooke, Terbush said.

Cooke, 19, was last seen jogging near where her family lives, northwest of Georgetown about two miles from where the skull was found, Terbush said. Authorities dragged the lake when she disappeared, he said.

Spradley said she thinks the skull was originally embedded in the bank of the lake.

"For something in the water to be that well preserved makes me think it was buried," she said.

Mexico's Mysterious Zone of Silence

Deep in an arid desert region of Mexico lies a little known area that seemingly defies the physics of sound. Known as the Zone of Silence, locally as the Vertice de Trino, it is a place where radio waves barely permeate the air.

Located between the states of Chihuaua, Coahuila and Durango and only 400 miles from the U.S. Border, something in the area makes it almost impossible to receive radio, television, cell phones or any other sound related transmissions.

While the exact cause of this phenomenon has not been fully explained to date, there are many theories abounding that the area has been heavily influenced by past extra-terrestrial and other paranormal activities. Regardless of the cause, the Zone of Silence continues to be a fascinating study into the unknown.

The unique qualities of the region were first discovered when Mexican aviator Francisco Sarabia reported radio trouble while flying over the area in the 1930s. This phenomenon was then later confirmed in 1966 when an organic chemist could not contact fellow team workers on his hand-held radio while conducting a field study.

However, full awareness of the unique sound anomalies within the zone did not arise until July 11, 1970. On that date, a faulty U.S. Air Force rocket launched from the White Sands Missile Base in New Mexico went suddenly off course and crashed into the remote desert region.

Because the rocket was carrying two containers of radioactive elements, an Air Force recovery team was immediately dispatched to the area where it was once again confirmed that all types of radio signals failed to travel through the air. As a result, research headed by the Mexican government was established to study the unique plant, animal and mineral components of the area in an effort to determine the cause of the drop in signals.

The most commonly held position among scientists for the sudden disappearance of radio waves is the high amounts of mineral deposits in the region. Very high levels of both magnetite and uranium are present, which could create enough electromagnetic pulses to interfere with radio signals. In addition, the region has also received an unusually high level of meteorite activity over thousands of years. This has given rise to speculations that there may be some unusual magnetic properties in the soil arising from the breakdown of meteorite fragments.

The high level of meteorite activity has generated many theories that the region is a vortex where an extraordinary amount of earth energy is concentrated, leading it to be a hot spot for paranormal activities.

Numerous reports by local residents of UFO sightings and contact with extra-terrestrial beings have been documented on a regular basis since 1910. Some people have claimed to being witness to large disks landing on area hills, while many others describe a regular occurrence of mysterious lights and fireballs in the night skies.

Backing the theory of spaceships landing in the area are reports of contacts with alien beings. In all cases, these beings have been described as strange looking blond people wearing long raincoats and ball caps. When asked by a rancher where they came from, their response was from above.

How the Zone of Silence disrupts radio signals and seems to attract extra-terrestrial activity has yet to be fully explained. But there is little question that the area contains many phenomenons that continue to defy logical explanations.

Brown Mountain Lights remain unexplained

For years the area around Brown Mountain has been a hotspot for strange orbs and lights in the sky.

Located in North Carolina, the orange-like orbs have been a topic of much debate among scientists and visitors alike for decades. Numerous studies have been conducted in an effort to get to the bottom of the mystery however there has never been a conclusive explanation. Everything from ball lightning and swamp gas to alien spacecraft have been suggested at one point or another.

The Brown Mountain Lights, which can be seen from several vantage points along the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Brown Mountain Overlook on North Carolina Highway 181, have been explained as a series of orange-like orbs by those who claim to have seen them. 

 

Piri Reis map

The Piri Reis Map is a famous pre-modern world map created by 16th century Ottoman-Turkish admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. The map shows part of the western coasts of Europe and North Africa with reasonable accuracy, and the coast of Brazil is also easily recognizable. Various Atlantic islands including the Azores and Canary Islands are depicted, as is the mythical island of Antillia. The map is noteworthy for its depiction of a southern landmass that some controversially claim is evidence for early awareness of the existence of Antarctica. Some scholars claim this and other maps support a theory of global exploration by a pre-classical undiscovered civilization.

Angel Hair

Angel Hair is a rare phenomenon that has so far defied explanation. It is made up of silken threads that rain down on to the earth, but reach out to touch it and it will almost certainly vanish before your eyes. It is a world wide phenomenon with the most regular occurrences from North America, New Zealand, Australia, and western Europe. There is no known proof for what causes this substance, or even what it is made up of. Speculations are that it has come from Spiders or another type of silk-spinning insect, and even UFO’s as it has often been associated with UFO sightings. Because of its sensitive nature, it has been difficult to collect, and to analyse as it is subject to contamination from car exhaust fumes, and even human contact, which could skew the chemical results.

Ark Of The Covenant

The Ark is considered the greatest of all hidden treasures and its discovery would provide indisputable truth that the Old Testament is hard fact. Its recovery remains the goal of every modern archaeologist and adventurer. Its purpose was as a container for the ten commandments given on stone tablets by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. According to the book of Exodus, the Ark is made of shittim wood (similar to acacia) and gold-covered inside and out. It was topped by a mercy seat comprising two cherubs also made of gold. It was believed to have supernatural powers due to several events, including causing the death of a man, who attempted to steady the Ark as the oxen hauling it stumbled, bringing down the walls of Jericho in one battle, and showering misfortune on the Philistines after they captured it in another. There are several speculations around the final resting place of the Ark, and whilst it would take a shrewd operator to find it, it would need a brave or even foolhardy person to open it!