(OK, Im good for a couple of years again :-0) A LAKE ARROWHEAD GHOST STORY A couple of comments up front, first to Tom… I always felt that Lake Arrowhead was a big part of growing up in Newport before it was the O.C. but obviously this story did not take place in NB. If I post this on my own page those in this group that have flattered me by asking, won’t see it. I am a fairly well behaved member of this site, so I am going to risk posting this here but I will attempt to weave some Newport Beach into the tale… Secondly, obviously in this story there are ways for someone to have set this up to some degree, but it was a closed environment (just like a horror movie) and the only other person present, other than me, that could have been engaged in such an endeavor (and who would have readily admitted to it with a laugh if he had been) to this day swears he had nothing to do with this story’s outcome… Lake Arrowhead was always a favorite destination for my Folks, going back to the 1940’s. They always rented cabins, starting in Crestline and then Arrowhead. Typically the cabins of friends or coworkers and some of my earliest memories are of our local mountains(Just like my earliest memories of Big Corona and Pirates Cove, another 1940s and 50s destination, before we moved to NB in 1964) . Finally in the late 1969 the Folks saved enough money to purchase a modest house (And modern compared to the relic that we lived in on the beach) in the new west shore area of the lake, the road to the left past Blue Jay had only been open for a few years at that point. Even though we lived at the beach, this mountain place was my Parent’s sanctuary, so much so, they still were renting the house in Newport, but they owned this one, they both worked very hard and deserved this solace. All of my Brothers were older and I had no choice but to go with the folks to the cabin every weekend. I tried to talk them into letting me stay with my Brothers, but they werent having any of that, they knew better. And I really loved my Folks and enjoyed being with them plus I had my own bedroom in the cabin, it was very cool. The house was on a slope so the first story from the back where the deck was felt like the second story, and the upstairs bedrooms like a third. A huge pine tree came right through the deck. I remember my Folks taking me to Agua Fria Hardware (Just outside of Blue Jay) and buying me a sled, how cool is that, a beach kid with a sled. And more than once I woke up on a Saturday morning to an all night snow and a wonderland, what a thrill. Even though I was forced by my evil parents to go from the beach house to the mountain cabin against my will ;-) I guess I actually did pretty well for the son of a school teacher and a secretary, my childhood was pretty amazing. Newport, especially West Newport (The Slums of West Newport) in those days was a lot less pretentious than it perhaps can be today, very middle class. Of course the entire town was that way too, things like gated communities and over the top properties were very rare, even the Duke’s property was modest by today’s standards. I had other friends with cabins in the mountains as well, which a little later in life proved to be cool because at times we were all up there at the same time. My best friends up the beach (5510 Seashore) two brothers; we grew up together, played music together. I would tragically lose them every summer as their folks would rent out their beach house by the week and move up to their cabin in Running Springs. I imagine that they did pretty well with that every year, it was just tough to lose my friends, and it was tough on them to have the oceanfront taken from them every summer, but they were compensated, they both had motorcycles (I remember one Christmas twin Suzuki 125s, pretty cool) and life was pretty good for them in the lazy mountains, they just didnt get in all of the body surfing that I did every summer . My other really close friend from school (I met him at Horace Ensign in the 7th grade) came from a family of substantially greater means than what I was accustomed to, his Dad owned a lot of apartments in L.A. and they had a beautiful home in Dover Shores on the cliff overlooking the back bay. We were really close friends (The first time I ever saw a microwave oven, wow… And one summer we worked for weeks building a replica of Pearl Harbor, building all of the little ship models, we made a Ford Island out of plywood. We set it all up in his Parents pool then blew it all up with M-80s and such, God we caught hell, we almost ruined their pool, all of that melted plastic in the filter… but that is a whole nother story) His family jointly owned a cabin in the old part of Arrowhead, jointly meaning Uncles and Aunts, it was a family property, a very old property, supposedly it was built when Arrowhead was a logging community, before the lake (reservoir) was even constructed, this is where this tale unfolds… My first visit to this cabin was an invite when we were in junior high at Ensign, we were thirteen or fourteen. I remember clearly, a nice large place, but very old, much of the décor was 1930-1940s. We were put into a bedroom that had a corner group for beds, and a corner table. As soon as we walked into this room my eyes zeroed in on this doll that was propped up under a lamp on the table, it gave me the chills. I have some clairvoyance in the family, my Grandmother was apparently somewhat gifted, I am a very vivid dreamer and experience a lot of déjà vu, I have always felt sensitive to things, even when I was a kid, and this doll was no exception. It looked like it was from the early part of the century; it wore a suede western dress and cowboy hat. The face was porcelain and was all cracked, but the smile and eyes are what got to me, the teeth looked real, it was way too creepy for me. I wasnt in that bedroom ten seconds before I noticed it and I told my friend that I wouldnt stay in the room with that thing and I grabbed it and stuffed it in a closet off of the living room. And I was not a kid with phobias at all; this thing just rang my bell for some reason. The rest of that stay was uneventful. Years later as we were growing up, my friend became quite rebellious and it escalated in High School. He would say things to his parents that would make this young catholic boy’s ears curl, I would never in my wildest dreams even think of showing a tiny fraction of the disrespect he showed to his parents, to mine… Not in a million years. But I knew he was a good guy (A terrific guy today) he was just going through some rough times. Anyway at the end of our junior year at Harbor, he had dropped out and was living in the family cabin in Arrowhead. Sometime that summer before our senior year I was at our cabin with my Mom and brother Tom and I asked them to drive me over to the other side of the lake so I could spend the night at my friends cabin. He had no car at the time (He had an old Super Bee, but it was not running) There was another guy there as well, he was a local that we knew and he was also dropped off to spend the night. In the afternoon, and since we had no car, we decided to walk to Lake Arrowhead Village and hit the penny arcade etc, it was a long hike of several miles and on the way back my friend took a bad stumble and sprained his ankle pretty badly. We had no choice but to keep walking, as the cabin was pretty remote and there was very little traffic, and it was getting dark. When we got back to the cabin, we got some ice on my friend’s ankle and then he began to elaborate about some of the strange goings on at this cabin. He was living there alone and he said at times it got downright creepy, and stuff was happening. He would wake up with a start in the middle of the night and all of the lights are on, he said an alarm clock flew off the shelf at him, silly stuff like that. I asked him whatever happened to that creepy doll from when we were younger, it gave me a chill. He said that he had not seen it since I stuffed it somewhere all those years ago, maybe a cousin took it. As we were talking, I was standing by the fireplace looking through the enormous stack of board games; there were a ton, everything from Chinese checkers to Monopoly and hidden in that stack, I found a Ouija board, something that I had never used before… “Well”, I proclaimed boldly, holding up the box, “maybe we can get to the bottom of this whole thing”… We were all grown up, almost men for crying out loud and this was of course totally silly, so we decided to push the double dog dare thing to the max… It was getting late, so the three of us, without transportation, in a closed setting, decided to wait till midnight, turn all of the lights off in the cabin, light a candle and take the Ouija board upstairs to the tiny attic bedroom and start to ask some questions, no fear there whatsoever. A very narrow staircase led to this tiny bedroom upstairs, there was a single bed and the room was separated from the actual attic by a wall with a large cupboard door to access the bare rafter attic. We put the board on the bed and started to ask questions, I was actually quite amazed at the movement of the piece, we all were amazed… It seemed to take off and wander a bit then proceeds directly to “Yes or No”, we were starting off with routine, general questions to test it out… Then we got to the meat of the matter, we asked “Is there a presence in this house”? Again the piece wandered then went firmly to yes, we all looked up at each other and kinda nervously chuckled… Then we asked, “Is it an evil presence”? Being the brave “Men” that we were… Again that piece went firmly to the yes. Ok we were beginning to crumble a bit, so I asked, just for grins, “Is the doll the center of the presence”?... The piece wandered all over the board with all of our fingers on it, literally dragging us around and then ended nowhere, a blank spot on the board… Hmmm, we thought… I asked again “Is the doll the center of the presence”? Same response, the piece dragged our fingers all over that board then stopped at a blank spot, again we looked up at each other, a bit more spooked this time. I was asking this question for a third time when we were abruptly startled by a very unusual noise that came from just the other side of that cupboard door to the attic. It was like a musical instrument, almost like an organ sting, but not like any organ that I have ever heard. It was dissonant, like several keys were pressed at the same time, but again like no sound I have ever heard and it was loud and it was just on the other side of that wall. The closest cabin was over a half mile away and any outdoor sounds, like dogs barking or whatever, especially at night have that heavy mountain echo… No such echo here, this was right next to us, and we freaked out, we literally threw the Ouija board into the corner and we were tripping over each other trying to get down those stairs, we ran around like crazy people turning every damned light on in the house, all three of us were scared to death… It was going on 1:00 AM and we were trying to calm down, we all decided to bunk in the same room, even though there were only two beds, the local friend put blankets on the floor between, there was no way he was going to be alone… we were so scared that we were all afraid to go out to use the bathroom, and my friend’s ankle was so bad at this point that he could barely walk. We stayed there in that bedroom with the lights on all night and like kids do, we eventually fell asleep, and I remember being woken up the next morning by a knock at the door. It was our other friend from Newport who had come over on his motor cycle. I got out of bed to let him in, walking across the living room to the kitchen door, temporarily forgetting in my grogginess about the previous night’s escapades. When I turn to walk back into the living room talking to my friend behind me, my gaze is suddenly pulled to the fireplace, and on the mantle, among all of the other stuff, right in the middle, is that damned creepy doll, propped up and staring at me with those creepy teeth and eyes… I froze in stare then I see in its lap is the Ouija piece from the attic bedroom… At that point, I pretty much lost it, I called the other two out of the bedroom and we stood there looking at this in disbelief..., I immediately accused my friend of setting this all up, and he immediately started defending himself, which as I said was out of character for him, he would have spilled the beans at some point to rub it in, that never happened, and hasnt for almost forty years now. The events that night were pretty random, not staged, I’m the one that found the board, and it escalated from there… My friend that had just arrived had no idea what was wrong, I went and grabbed my stuff out of the bedroom and asked him to please take me over to my parent’s cabin immediately, which he did, it could not have been fast enough… In my opinion that doll had finally given me my answer. I am not going to try and sell this story, draw your own conclusions, it obviously defies convention… And even though this story still gives me the creeps, it is very hard not to be skeptical, and as I said the two of us have questioned each other for years. Yes we did fall asleep, and that would have presented an opportunity to set that up, but he swears he had not seen that doll since years earlier, also there was no way that the previous night’s fear was faked, nor was that sound that we all heard, we were all scared. And he would have had to get out of bed and hobble up those attic stairs to retrieve that Ouija piece, I have no way to confirm that happened, just doesnt seem likely, and the third guy, who was the most freaked out of all, had absolutely no idea of that history, … I know, sounds like a good story, but I swear forty years later and I still get goose bumps when I think about this. HAPPY HALLOWEEN
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 20:06:46 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015