The Jury Room was once a favorite hangout of Santa Cruz's most notorious serial killer.
One of the things worth knowing in any city is where to find its most famous freaky spots. This is not only useful icebreaking material on any date or office get-together—“Hey, did you know Santa Cruz’s most famous serial killer used to toss ‘em back here?”—it can also help you figure out which creepy place you want to avoid ending up alone at in the middle of the night. Or which you can’t wait to get to, depending on where you stand on these things. So here we go:
1. MISSION SANTA CRUZ: If any place in town is cursed, it’s the Mission. The original structure was built (and destroyed) in the San Lorenzo River’s flood plain. The second version, on Mission Hill, was finished in 1794, after being delayed a year by attacks from Quiroste Indians who were displaced for the move. Then, in 1812, Indians living at the mission murdered Father Andres Quintana, making him one of only two martyrs in the mission system. Forty-five years later, the mission burned down in the Fort Tejon Earthquake, and its replica was built and currently stands today. As if the area needed more bad juju, in 1885 the Holy Cross Church was erected right on top of the old mission’s cemetery, displacing hundreds of Spanish, Native American and pioneer graves. Bodies were still being discovered in 1986, when the site was renovated.
2. POGONIP: According to Ohlone Indian lore, an invading tribe swept through the Pogonip (which supposedly translates to “white death,” because of the fog), massacring anyone who stood in their way. Legend has it the area was so littered with bones, one could walk for miles without touching the ground. What’s more, the area, and surrounding Santa Cruz, is doubly cursed. According to legend, the first white settler in the area was actually shipwrecked and didn’t make many friends. When a local tribe decided to put him to death, a sympathetic member of the tribe warned the white man and was also condemned. The native’s final words were a curse on the land, which many members of the tribe are said to have believed was the reason for their way of life’s demise.
3. SUNSHINE VILLA: Jumping ahead to the 20th century, Santa Cruz’s most famous creepy connection to Hollywood is Sunshine Villa on Beach Hill, which used to be the Hotel McCray. It was supposedly the building on which Alfred Hitchcock based the Bates Mansion in Psycho. The movie’s house also looked a lot like the Bernheim House which was at Broadway and Ocean, and no one can agree on which house was for sure the inspiration, but the Sunshine Villa location has a lot more going for it in terms of crazy stories. Employees there are said to have reported inexplicable cold spots and ghostly voices, and the Hotel McCray was variously associated with hauntings, eerie lights and even Satanists. Incidentally, Hitchcock owned a ranch in Scotts Valley from 1940 to 1972 and used the area as a source of inspiration many times. Along with basing and filming movies like Vertigo and Shadow of a Doubt around the Bay Area, his film The Birds took its story from an actual incident. On August 18, 1961, residents of Santa Cruz (particularly in Pleasure Point and Capitola) were awakened at 3am by “a massive flight of sooty shearwaters” colliding with buildings (according to Sentinel reports). Officials determined that the particularly heavy fog that night reflected the city’s lights in a way that confused the animals.
4. THE JURY ROOM: Closed only 4 hours a day (that’s 2-6am for all you night owls), this popular dive on Ocean Street was the favorite watering hole of Edmund “Big Ed” Kemper in the early ‘70s. Known as the “Co-ed Killer,” Kemper went on a serial spree that totaled eight victims, almost all of them college-age females. He bookended his crimes by killing family members: his grandparents, when he only 15 years old, and his mother, who was his final victim. The latter was a was a well-known professor at UCSC, and Kemper is said to have used that connection to gain the trust of SCPD officers who frequented the Jury Room—by tricking them into disclosing any new leads in his case, he could stay a step ahead of the law.
5. BOCCI’S CELLAR: Also earning a mention in our list of music spots in this issue, this quaint restaurant was built on Encinal Street around 1885, and was originally home to Italian immigrants, the Urbani family. While the records of the exact date conflict, somewhere around 1925 the Urbanis opened their house as a restaurant and, despite Prohibition, received permits to make sacrificial wine for the area’s Catholic masses. The Urbanis raised the house and built the wine cellar below, where the restaurant currently resides. The current groundskeeper (who lives above the restaurant), reported strange noises at night, but always found nothing. One Sundaymorning, however, he was opening the building to start his daily routine, when he saw a woman sitting at a table in the corner. As current owner Kevin Crawford explains, “He put his hand on her shoulder and it went through her. Then, when she turned around, she had no face and disappeared.” A female bartender claimed to also have been injured by “a shot glass that flew off the bar” after hours.
