Are the grounds of the old Kerman High School haunted?

The grounds of the old Kerman High School. You can see rubble

in the background of what used to be the main building.

Image courtesy of Google Maps.

The site of the old Kerman High School, located on Clinton and Madera Ave, has been rumored to have been haunted for years. Strange lights have been seen floating between rooms even though the property has been fenced off for several decades.

The original Kerman High School was built in 1912 and served the Kerman area until a larger high school was needed and the current campus was built in 1967.

The property fell into disuse and was fenced off to keep trespassers out. Unfortunately this wasn't enough as on December 30, 1998 an arsonist set fire to the main building and it burned to the ground.

No one knows what these strange lights are, if there are spirit lights or something else. One has to wonder what would cause someone or something to haunt a school. Perhaps whatever it is feeds off the emotions from the students that walked the halls over the years. And it's possible that it still roams the debris of what used to be the old Kerman High School.

Interesting side note here. In 1995 several friends, having heard of the stories and wanting to check them out , went to the old school at night. As soon as they parked their car and got out several sheriff's cars pulled out and the officers drew guns on them thinking they were going to trespass. One has to wonder how many other people went to the school looking for ghosts.

Let me also preface this. Please don't try to go here at night and search for ghosts. There's a fence around the property for a reason. Don't be that ghost hunting group who likes to hop fences late at night just to get a thrill. If you really want to investigate this location, find out who owns it and try to get permission. Don't ruin it for those out there who are actually serious about this.

Lodge in downtown Lemoore said to be haunted

Oddfellows Lodge in downtown Lemoore which is rumored to be

haunted. Photo courtesy of Waymarking.com

In downtown Lemoore there is an historic two story building that is said to be haunted. On the bottom floor there is a barber shop, a pharmacy as well as several real estate offices. But on the second floor, where the local Oddfellows Lodge is located (a fraternal society with its roots in England) is where most of the paranormal activity has occurred.

Every Halloween the local drama club sets up a haunted house attraction in the Lodge. Apparently some of the former residents aren't pleased with this as they have made themselves known in several different way. Shadowy figures have been reported seen throughout the second floor and others have reported seeing figures wearing old fashioned clothing (possibly from the late Victorian era) wandering around at night. There are also temperature changes that manifesting as both cold and hot spots. Other witnesses have also reported being filled with a dreadful sensation after being in the building for some time and have the urge to leave as quickly as possible. Once someone heard a deep male voice telling them to "leave us to rest" and others have reported to see strange green and red lights on the roof late at night.

So what are the cause of all these strange occurrences? The building was constructed in 1904 and surely has seen its fair share of inhabitants. Could former members of the lodge still be lingering around where they once met, upset that someone else is in their space now that is doing something that isn't lodge related? Or any of the previous inhabitants, upset that the Halloween attraction is being put on? Or is it just part of the Halloween attraction itself? Stories made up of supposedly real ghosts to add a bit of flavor to the attraction to get more people to come? It's really hard to say. Though a visit may be in order come Halloween to see if the attraction is still open and the stories of the hauntings are indeed true.

Railroad crossing near Visalia rumored to be haunted

Haunted railroad crossing at Santa Fe Ave. & Ave. 271 in Visalia

Image courtesy of Google Street View

There are stories of a haunted railroad crossing in Tulare County, south of the city of Visalia. The railroad crossing is located where Avenue 271 turns into Santa Fe Avenue via two 90 degree turns. The tracks here don't receive much traffic anymore as the line seems to be abandoned now. Yet for whatever reason there seems to be several hauntings at this crossing.

It's said if you park your car on the tracks you can hear the sounds of a train passing by as well as the ghostly images of people walking towards your car. And when you try to start your car back up it seems to take longer for the engine to turn over, almost as if the battery is being drained by something else.

One some nights around 3:00 am a phantom train can be seen. The origin of this haunt is unclear but one can imagine that given the time of the sighting, a train may have derailed sometime early in the morning. It's also said a white figure can be seen walking the along the road next to the crossing late at night. Whether this figure is related to the ghost train is unknown.

It's unknown if any of these haunts are actually true. I did come across several witness accounts regarding the above stories, but whether they are fabricated or not is hard to say. But I wouldn't be surprised if there haven't been a few accidents at this crossing. The fact that there are two 90 degree turns within 250 feet of each other could lend credence to this. But it's hard to say. Haunted railroad crossings are some of my favorite stories and that there is yet another one in the Central Valley area I felt I had to share it.

Gilroy's haunted Mount Madonna County Park

Mount Madonna State Park where the ghost of the daughter of

one of Gilroy's founders is said to haunt.

About 12 miles west of the town of Gilroy is the Mount Madonna County Park. It's said that the ghost of Sarah Miller, the daughter of one of Gilroy's founders Henry Miller, haunts the land that used to be owned by her family.

On June 14, 1879 Sarah Miller was riding her horse on her family's ranch when it stepped in a squirrel hole and lost its footing. Sarah then fell off the horse and broke her neck and was instantly killed.

Stories have persisted for years of seeing a woman riding on horseback late at night by park rangers. Other reports from rangers include hearing a woman screaming, but when they went to investigate no one was found. Lights being seen in buildings even after they were turned off have also been reported. Another witness even reported seeing a woman dressed all in white walking down Pole Line road late one night.

If this is indeed the ghost of Sarah Miller, why does she haunt the land that was formerly her family's ranch? Perhaps she doesn't know she is dead and wanders around aimlessly not knowing of the sad truth. Or perhaps this is where she was happiest in life and continues to stay there even in death. Whatever the case may be, given the numerous sightings at Mount Madonna, something definitely is roaming the grounds late at night.

Large bird like creature seen in Fresno skies

Kwakwaka'wakw totem pole depicting

a Thunderbird perched on the top.

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Last week while attending the monthly Fresno Filmmakers Alliance mixer, a friend of mine approached me and asked me if I knew of any thunderbird sightings in the Fresno area as his wife and young son had recently spotted a large bird like creature with a wing span estimated to be over 12 feet in width.

For those who don't know what a thunderbird is term used in the cryptozoological world to describe large bird like creatures that are associated with the Thunderbird of Native American mythology. Most thunderbirds sightings are of the feathered type, although some sightings have reported the creatures to have lizard like features similar to a pterosaur.

Modern thunderbird sightings go back over 100 years with one of the first stories reportedly occurring in April 1890 in Arizona where two cowboys killed a giant birdlike creature with a huge wingspan. It was described as having smooth skin, featherless wings similar to that of a bat and a face that looked like an alligator. They are said to have taken the carcass back to town where they pinned it on the outside of barn with it's wings outstretched the entire length.

Sightings continued into the 20th Century when in the 1940's several sightings occurred in Illinois where witnesses at first thought they were seeing a plane flying overhead until they saw the "plane" flapping it's wings. A few weeks later in another part of the state a man and his son saw a large bird creature flying at a height estimated to be around 500 feet and the shadow it cast was the size of a small passenger airplane.

One of the more stranger occurrences, and one I wanted to share, happened on July 25, 1977 in Lawndale, Illinois. A group of boys were playing in their back yard when two large birds approached and chased the boys. Two escaped unharmed, but the third boy, 10 year old Marlon Lowe, did not. One of the birds clamped it's talons around his shoulders and lifted the now terrified boy about two feet off the ground and carried him some distance before Low was able to fight off the bird, getting it to release him.

Most viewed this as some sort of tall tale made up by the boys, but given the description of the birds one has to wonder. The description matched that of an Andean condor; a large back bird with a white ringed neck and a wingspan of 10 feet. There's a problem though, the condor's talons are said to not be strong enough to lift that of a heavy object (i.e. a 10 year old boy). So what then did the boys see?

So this leads me back to the Fresno sighting. What exactly did the two see? Was it just a normal bird (say a hawk or crane) mistaken for something else? Someone mentioned a Californian Condor, but that is highly unlikely as the habitat for this species is in Southern California. Could a large bird like creature, one that was the inspiration for the Native American Thunderbird myth, be in the Fresno area skies? If there have been more sightings, hopefully those witnesses will hear of this article and share their stories.

Paying your respects from a drive-thru funeral home

I came across a video yesterday while at lunch of something that's a bit different than what I normally see and post here on Weird Fresno. It was an interview of a woman who owned a funeral home in Compton and it had a unique feature of a drive-thru viewing window. One would be able to drive up to the spot where the body was being viewed and you could either stay in your car or step out and view the body and sign the register.

This isn't the only drive-thru funeral home in the country. There is one in Chicago and another in Louisiana. But the owner of Robert L. Adams Mortuary, Peggy Scott Adams, believes her's to be the only one in Southern California.

At first I thought this was a bit weird. But as I watched the video I began to warm up to the idea. There are some people who can't attend the funeral of the person and this gives them a chance to pay their last respects. Another interesting thing I found was that people who were walking by would sometimes go up to the viewing window and pay their respects, even if they didn't know the person.

Now I doubt this concept will catch on everywhere, but it is something unique and not morbid in the least. In a culture that seems to fear death, it's comforting to know that not everyone out there is afraid of it and wants to pay their respects to the dearly departed.

The LA Times did an article on the funeral home and it can be found here.

More strange lights filmed over Oakland.

Looks like there are strange lights flying over Oakland again. Almost a year ago I had reported of a strange object (or objects) being filmed over Oakland, CA with a night vision enabled camera. Well it seems the strange craft (or something similiar) is once again flying over Oakland and YouTube user KevinMC360 was able to get some video of it.



Looking at the video I can't really say what the three objects are. But I feel I can say what I believe them NOT to be. No way they are birds, as some have claimed them to be. Birds do not move that fast nor do they stay in that tight of formation. I read on another site of how someone claimed that you can see the birds flapping their wings on the enlarged portion of the video, well that isn't what you are seeing. Since the video was zoomed in digitally, you get some pixelation and that is what you are seeing here.

Also I doubt they are some form of civilian aircraft. That formation is once again a rather tight one, and three individual ones wouldn't move that fluidly throughtout the sky. Now could it be some sort of military craft? Perhaps. Remember for years the Air Force kept secret the F-117 and B-2 programs. Granted they weren't testing them over heavily populated areas but I digress. As for the possibily of it being extraterresterial, who the hell knows. I'm seeing three objects moving in the sky. They are flying and unidentified. That is the definition of a UFO, which is what we have here.

Manteca's haunted El Rey Theater

What was formerly the El Rey Theater is today the

Kelley Brothers Brewery.

Photo courtesy of Cinema Treasures

Now I know Manteca is a bit outside of what one would call the "Fresno area", but I found this story interesting as I love the idea of a haunted theater so I thought I would write a bit about this one. In the center of town on Yosemite Ave just a bit east of Main Street was the El Rey Theatre. Built in the 1930's in the classic Art Deco style, the El Rey Theater was a famous landmark for the small town of Manteca. Everything from movies to local plays were done here and during the Christmas season the owners would open the theater to children for free and show a variety of cartoons and Three Stooges films.

All that came to an end in 1977. Ironically the last movie to be shown there was the Steve McQueen classic, The Towering Inferno. Here is where the story differs. Some claim that the fire happened as the movie was playing. Most of the audience was able to exit to safety, but it's said that a few died along with several firemen that were trying to save the building. The other story is that the fire occurred when the theater was closed for the evening and there were no deaths due to the fire. From the research I did this seems to be the more popular belief, but I wanted to include both as they are part of the legend of the theater.

The El Rey Theatre laid abandoned for over twenty years before the Kelley brothers bought the building and remodeled it into a brewery and brickyard oven restaurant in 1997. It's not sure when it was determined the building was haunted but it's said that hot spots from the fire can be felt at times in the brewery and it's even rumored that sometimes the ghosts of the fire fighters and movie patrons have been seen wandering about lost, almost like they were trying to find a way out.

Given the conflicting stories of the night in question, if anyone actually died in the fire is hard to say. If no one did actually die in the fire, where do the accounts of wandering spirits and hot spots come from? The hot spots can be a type of haunting where a traumatic event left an impression on the place where it occurred and is replayed from time to time. So this could perhaps be what is occurring when people report feeling hot spots.

But what of the rumor of ghosts being seen? A story spun into a tall tale and turned into an urban legend thanks to the internet? Or perhaps there is some truth to the ghosts that are said to be seen wandering through the brewery and they were drawn to the place for some other reason. Or maybe it's just an overactive imagination of someone who had one too many beers. There may never really be a way to determine what is fact and what is mere legend.

The Kelley Brothers Brewery has their own site which lists the brewery's menu as well as location and events occurring throughout the year.