Does Santa Cruz have more ghosts than other places? Since a U.S. ghost census has never been conducted, it’s difficult to say. Some experts think so, and it may be something in the air—humidity, to be exact. World-renowned psychic Sylvia Browne told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1997 that Santa Cruz has a “gaggle” of ghosts. “A ghost can come in on moisture easier,” she said. That would help explain these hot spots for paranormal activity around the Monterey Bay.
No Veggies Today
The most common sighting at the Brookdale Lodge, which recently closed its doors due to fire hazards, is that of 6-year-old Sarah Logan, who drowned in the iconic brook and motel’s namesake. Logan was most commonly seen in the aptly named “Brook Room”—a once-high-end dining area through which Clear Creek runs.
Logan, a well-known legend, is one of the hotel’s most prominent guests—somewhere up there with Marilyn Monroe, Al Capone and President Hoover. Throughout the hotel grounds, which hosted a Northern California paranormal conference in 2008, shouts have been heard of a girl saying things like “But I don’t like peas and carrots, and I won’t eat them!”
Hey, White Lady
Various witnesses have seen a ghostly figure resembling a woman in a wedding dress wandering around Ocean Street Extension just below Graham Hill Road. After that the details get a little hazy.
One would think the phenomenon is related to the Santa Cruz Memorial Cemetery nearby, but according to legend, a German immigrant in the neighborhood often beat his mail-order bride during their marriage together. One night, she decided to escape, but he cut off her head before she could. The mysterious figure might be the same one seen watching the cemetery or hanging out on Graham Hill Road.
Capitola Creepers
The Rispin Mansion in Capitola has three levels of bizarre. On the dilapidated building’s top story, people have reportedly seen a woman in a black dress gazing out the window. On the ground floor, a man with glasses sits by the fireplace. Paranormal experts say a barking dog in the basement could be a holdover from the days when the Capitola Police Department used it as a training facility for their canine unit.
Capitola City Council had ambitious plans to turn the house into a hotel, but the redevelopment money was difficult to come by, and a mysterious 2009 fire didn’t help. The fire came just days after the council’s announcement that Barry Swenson Builder would redevelop the property. No suspects were ever arrested.
Grumpiest Customer
The Hotel Del Monte in Monterey has all the classic signs of being haunted: lights turning on and off on their own, people getting tapped on the shoulder by unseen hands, even apparitions wandering the towers of the 130-year-old building, now the Naval Postgraduate School.
A kitchen employee cleaning the dining room reportedly once saw a disgruntled-looking ghost sitting at a table and staring at him. The employee ran out of the room, terrified. When staff gathered up the courage to confront the otherworldly dinner guest, one chair had been pushed back from a neatly arranged table as if it had gotten up and walked away.
The Real Bates Mansion?
Is Santa Cruz inspiring or what? Alfred Hitchcock thought so. There are a number of elements in his movies that Hitchcock pulled from Monterey Bay—like the Capitola dive-bombing bird event of 1961 that seems to have informed The Birds or the foggy curves of Highway 1 that would become the English coastline in Suspicion. Perhaps the most iconic example is Pyscho’s Bates Motel. Hitchcock, who kept a home near Scotts Valley, was rumored to have drawn its inspiration from the McCray Hotel on Beach Hill.
The Victorian mansion is now the Sunshine Villa Retirement Community, located on 3rd and Front streets. Residents and employees of the community have reportedly complained about windows opening and closing, footsteps going up and down the stairs and halls, voices sounding and soap dispensers self-dispensing. The authorities at Sunshine Villa deny that there are any visitors from the other side in the retirement community, and they don’t appreciate the ghost chatter, either. “Residents can get upset,” said one staff member. “This is their home.”
