Weird Fresno wants to hear your ghost stories!

So I want to share some ghost stories for Halloween, but not mine. It seems everyone has a ghost story or knows someone who has. And I want to hear them, but don't e-mail me. I want to hear the story in your own words and the emotions that came with your story.

So here's what I want to do. Whoever wants to share their story, call the Weird Fresno hotline at (559) 481-1057. From now until October 30 I will take any call and will compile all the stories together (I can download them as a .mp3 file) and upload it to YouTube and on Halloween post it and share it with everyone.

Can't wait to hear what you guys have to share.

Weird Fresno on the Dirty Dowdy podcast

About a year ago I was on a local internet broadcast called the Dirty Dowdy Podcast. The creator of the show, Chris Dowdy, called me at the beginning of the month and asked me if I would like to do a show before Halloween to promote Weird Fresno. Me, being the ever attention whore I am, readily agreed.

I was the first guest on the show and was able to talk about some local ghost stories and favorite horror movies. Best part for me though was bringing up all the crap they gave me for predicting the Giants would be in the World Series and how the Giants are now in it.

We also talked about doing a live broadcast from a haunted location in the Fresno area. Still working out the details, but when I find out more info I'll mention it via Twitter and here.

Direct link to the podcast can be found here.

I also have to mention the guests that were on after me. They were a local band named From the Fallen and they kicked some serious ass. Love their sound, nice guitar crunch just the way I like it. I know this isn't a music review site, but I had to mention them. I downloaded their album off iTunes and it was definitely worth it. You can find their site here.

How legends get started

Disclaimer: Please do not enter any of the locations mentioned in this article without permission from the owners. These places and those like them are considered private property and entering them without the owner's permission is trespassing. You will be arrested for this and will make it harder for serious investigators to do their job.

Is this old abandoned house haunted? Given it's

appearance it has to be right?

See this house? Would you believe me if I told you it's haunted? Why wouldn't you, look how creepy it is. And it's abandoned so it has to be haunted right? Wrong.

The house in the photo is th Craycroft house on Palm Avenue, just south of Herndon. It was built in 1927 by a Frank J. Craycroft who invented a brick that had great insulationg properties that were perfect for the summers and winters here and decided to build his home from this material. Unfortunately tragedy struck two years later when a disgruntled brick mason shot Craycroft who then died from his injuries several months later. This part is known to be true as the story was retold in Valley's Legends and Legacies Vol. III.

Given the story of the death and the appearance of the house (fenced off and in a state of decay) it's easy for an urban legend to take seed and grow. People passing by the house and not knowing the history of it might assume it's haunted. They then mention it to someone else and that person may say they heard it was haunted from someone else. These are how urban legends get started. Same with Kearney Mansion. People assume since it's an old historic building that it HAS to be haunted. And somehow a story like the one where anyone who sees the ghost of Mrs. Kearny dies gets started and is perpuated through the years. Hell even I've been guilty of believing this. When I was in high school I was told there was this cemetery out in the country in Madera that the church had been burned to the ground by satanist and they performed ceromies in the now abandoned cemetery. Of course I believed this as a friend of a friend who in turn had heard it from someone else. Of course none of this was true, but given the nature of the cemetery and the stories I was told it was easy to believe it was.

My point in all this is don't always believe what your told. But that doesn't mean the story still shouldn't be told. Urban legends are just part of our area's folklore. And that's what I've been doing with Weird Fresno lately, telling the folklore stories and urban legends of the area. I'm not trying to prove anything (I'm not that arrogant to think I can where others haven't). I used to love the story but got so caught up in being an investigator and in trying to prove ghosts exist that I forgot what orginally interested me in the paranormal. It was the stories.

So next time you hear a place is haunted or a monster was seen in those trees behind the park or that a UFO laned in a pasture and killed a few cows, don't automatically assume it's true. Just take the story with a grain of salt and look into the story to see if the claims can be verified. And of course pass it on to me so I can add it to the ever growing list of stories in Fresno.

Underground tunnels found in Fresno's Chinatown

Back in 2007 a team of archaeologists were exploring one of the boarded-up buildings in Fresno's Chinatown, an enclave long abandoned by the people who gave the area its name more than a century ago.

They were searching for any antique left by the former owners of what had been a restaurant and home. The team descended into the basement and did find a few artifacts. Then came something that was not expected. The group spotted a dark crawl space seemingly hidden by boards on the basement's eastern wall. Was this an entrance to the supposed tunnel system that had been rumored about for years?

Tunnels in Chinatown were rumored to have been so vast that patrons could travel from one end of the neighborhood to the other and never see daylight. One tunnel was rumored to have extended under the dividing railway tracks so that men from the White side of town could reach Chinatown speakeasies undetected.

Since the discovery of the tunnel entrance, the City of Fresno has been using ground penetrating radar to map out the extent of the underground network. Some local groups have started to lead tours, guiding visitors to the basement of a barbershop where mysterious doorways are sealed with concrete.

A more extensive article from the LA Times can be found here.