Local Mysteries

Here's an interesting topic. Are there any mysteries or unexplained happenings associated with your hometown?

I can think of one. Back in 1974, a local high school senior named Perry Corlew was involved in a fender-bender in front of our local Rialto theater. Perry had already had a minor scrape with the law, and was on probation, so he panicked and fled the scene of the accident without waiting for the police.

About 90 minutes later they found his car 15 miles south of town, parked on the freeway. The lights were on, the motor was running, and the driver's side door was open... but Perry was nowhere to be found.

That was 33 years ago, and he hasn't been heard from since.

However, back in 1992 his brother got a strange phone call. The person on the other end didn't identify himself, but instead started talking in a high-pitched cartoon voice... just like Perry and his brother used to do when they were little.

Then the caller hung up. If it was Perry, that was the last word from him.

Wow, that is strange.

I don't know of any mysteries like that around here.

Rhonda wrote:

WOW Rob......scary stuff there..............wonder if he has been hiding out all these years so he wouldn't get in trouble......but these days, they have what they call "Cold Cases"....it'll catch up with him.......

I can understand a scared 18-year-old panicking and taking off. But it's hard to imagine a man in his 20s (or 30s or 40s or 50s) thinking he'd still be in trouble over a minor thing that happened in 1974.

His family petitioned to get his story featured on "Unsolved Mysteries" back when it was on the air, but the producers passed on it. I guess there just wasn't enough to it to make it a compelling story.

I have no idea,don't think my city has any mysteriesstorys

Rob wrote:

However, back in 1992 his brother got a strange phone call. The person on the other end didn't identify himself, but instead started talking in a high-pitched cartoon voice... just like Perry and his brother used to do when they were little.

Wow... that's kind of creepy

Here is one that happened near me:

Unsolved Mystery - Missing backpacker found dead (2005)
Sequoia National Park

Searchers in Sequoia National Park discovered the body of a man on Saturday, Sept. 10, who had been the subject of an intensive three-day search. Phillip Arens was reported missing by his brother on Wednesday, Sept. 7, after the pair returned from a four-day backpacking trip.

Arens, 42, of Auburn, was last seen in the Crescent Meadow parking lot where his brother had left him with their packs while he hitched a ride to retrieve his car at a trailhead in Mineral King. When he returned five hours later, the packs were still there, but Arens was nowhere to be found.

Park search-and-rescue teams began looking for Arens in the vicinity of Crescent Meadow. The search was later concentrated around the Sugar Pine Trail after Arens’s sunglasses were found there.

A full-scale search involving more than 40 ground searchers, five dog teams, mounted patrol, and a helicopter traversed the steep terrain for the next several days. The body of Arens was discovered off the Sugar Pine Trail at the bottom of a steep embankment near Crescent Creek, less than a mile from the Crescent Meadow parking area.

The cause of Arens’s death is still under investigation but personnel at the scene reported that there was no apparent trauma to the body. As a result of a past boating accident, Arens had scars on his face, a missing left eye, and some residual medical problems due to the head trauma sustained.

It’s possible that this may have been a contributing factor in his death or, as nighttime temperatures were near freezing during that period, that he succumbed to hypothermia.

These are more Urban Legends than mysteries. Here around Pittsburgh there are two freaky stories that I know of.

One is Green Man's Tunel. They say before you enter it at night a big green face from a man that was killed there shows up. Inside if you stop and beep your horn your car will turn off.

Also there was this orphanage in a place called Colterville that burn down many, many years ago. If you stand where it once stood, you can hear the screaming of the children that were trapped in there. :unsure: I thought that was just terrible and very disturbing.

Beckie

How sad, Beckie, about the orphanage burning down.

We have a couple of those types of stories here, too. Probably every town does. One of the oldest homes here in town has one room that was sealed shut for over 100 years. A little girl died of one of the ultra-communicable diseases that struck terror in people's hearts. (I'm thinking it was the Bubonic plague . . . they had been travelling, and she came down with it when they got home) Anyway, right after she died, and was taken out of the house, the family doctor completely sealed off her bedroom. Even the keyhole was sealed with wax, to prevent any of the contaminated air from escaping. The little girl's Mother and sister dressed in mourning clothes for the rest of their lives. I remember the sister - VERY vaguely. She was over 100 when she died in the '70s, and I was maybe four when she passed away. The home was donated to the historical society, but that room was left sealed for many, many years. Only a few years ago was it opened again. And, of course, there are ghostly rumors about the house. But, I've never seen any ghostly activity, and I live just a short walk away.

Tons of them, for I live in a big city. Buenos Aires has more than 13 millions of habitants.

But here I go with an old story, who relates to the book I'm writing about Recoleta Cemetary. It's called "The Mystery of the Woman in White".

A high-lass boy from the 1920's was dancing in a night club and a beatiful, blonde, dressed in a white dress , girl approached to him. They danced together. They drank champagne, and then, they left the place together to speak a little until the walked. It was late in the night. It started to be a little cold, and the boy put his coat over the young girl's shoulders. When they approached the Recoleta Cemetary's border (It is placed in a quite aristocratic neighborhood) she began to run and to run and she dissapeared in the middle of the night. She seemed to have vanished in through the walls of it.

The boy ran after her but he couldn't reach her. The next day, he entered the Cemetary and he asked to a working man there if he had seen a girl hidding amont the gravesites. She had a man coat with her. The working man assured him that there wasn't any girl hidden in any place of the cemetary, but that he had found , indeed a blue coat over a gravesite and show it to him. It was a gravesite of a young girl. The young boy suffered a great shock after knowing it.

Since then, the nieghborhood assures that time to time, they sees a blonde white dressed young girl, walking alone in the border of the cemetary's walls, watching the streets. They always saws her AFTER the closing of the Cemetary at six O'clock of the afternoon. She shows between 7 and 9 O'clock. I've never seen her (I live only three blocks away from there), but a friend of mine, an Atheist did and tell me about it. She had never heard this story, nor believes in life after death, but when she saws this beatiful, ghostly girl walking over the borderline of the walls of a Cemetary, with white dress from an era that is not ours, run to my flat to ask with me if I knew about a girl who uses to appear this way. I knew the story and I told her. I was very dissapointed for I wanted to see the girl MYSELF.

But this story doesn't ends here. There is a lot of discussions about the identuty of "the Lady in White", however it seems to be a consensus about her being Rufina Cambacérès, a young beatiful , rich and aristocratic girl who had died May 31 1902, her Birthday day (I'm born just May 31...yuck ), when she was dressing to go to the Opera House to celebrate her 18 Birthday. She dead -apparently- of a hearth attack and she was buried quicly...apparently TOO quiclky, for she awakened INSIDE her coffin very much alive and struggled to go away without any succes. She threw her casket from over the shelf of it was placed in the familiar vault and died -now yes- from a heart-attack, since she must have knew she was buried alive. When a relative came to put flowers inside the gravesite, he found the casket on the floor, inversed and broken , and when the burier workers came to help discovered the poor girl with the face and the hands all covered with bruises and blood. It weas quite clair that she had struggled to go away. Her mother desperate, commanded to a great artist , her daugher sculpture. It shows a beatiful girl opening a door and watching sorrowfully behind her.

It is this girl that cemetary workers , buriers and neighbros assured to have seen .

I will try to find the pic of her gravesite. And tomorrow I could tell her mother's story!

Vanesa.

These stories are all fascinating!

Mother's story is sorta sad.

She was named Louise Bacichi and was a Croatian dancer in Paris. Not a "classical dancer", you know. One of those who had bad reputation. It was in the late 1870's when Edouard VII, then prince of Wales, would go to Paris to have flirts with nice can-can ballerinas as "La Goulue".

Among these young play boys, there was a very handsome Argentinian intellectual from the high-class: Eugenio Cambacérès. He was a writer, these kind of writers who liked to show his own class how scandalous life he had. All her books were criticism of society, and God and "hypocrisy" and such. Inestead of marrying a girl of his own class, he took a passion for Louise Bacichi and married her. When he returned to Buenos Aires, he came married to the Croatian dancer and with a little girl , whose name was Rufina. She was three years old and people would said she was born out of wedlock. Eugenio Cambacérès was rich, excentric and despised his own world. As "le tout Buenos Aires" turned its back to him, he went to live to his family's "estancia", near 9 de Julio, the "estancia el Quemado". There, little Rufina grew up reading books and far away all society. She was a dreamer, sweet little girl. The Buenos Aires high-society said she was a nice, intelligent girl and that it was a real pity she must live between a former prostitute and a crazy excentric man.

But when Rufina was still very young, Eugenio Cambacérès died. And his mother took lover after lover. One of them was the future Argentinian president Hipólito Hyrigoyen. Rufina was left alone among her dreams and her books...Until the moment she had a boy friend herself. He was a nice young boy from high-class too. She loved him, and apparently, he loves her. But it seems that the boy "visited" Rufina's mother secretly. In other words they were lovers. Of course, the girl wouldn't know it.

The day Rufina died, it was said that Louise Bacichi give her a liquid to sleep...and that it could have been this somniphere who make her fell as if she was dead. But as she was only soundly asleep, she later awake in her casket very much alive. Historians assures that her mother felt so guilty that she commanded the monument for her daughter's gravesite. As for the boy friend, when he knows about Rufina being buried alive, shot himself in the head inside the Café Tortoni, one of the most aristocratic of the city.

And Louise Bacichi? She never married Hyrigoyen, but she was her lover until the end, and she gave him a boy, Luis, to whom the president gave his last name. Louise, Luis , Rufina and Eugenio Cambacérès are now resting together in the family's gravesite. This monument, is the most photographied of Recoleta Cemetary, and people lef roses, cross and other little things among Rufina's hands. These things are later put inside the vault for the cemetary workers, for them not being robbed.

Sad story...Isn't it? And I know some more from this little Cemetary plenty of History.

Vanesa.

And here is Rufina and his gravesite:














And finally a cinema short documentary about her:



Vanesa.

The close-up pic of her gravesite is taken from www.cementeriorecoleta.com.ar

What a sad story Vanesa. I can't imagine being buried alive..........to die in that horrible way. I can just picture all the scratch marks on the inside of the coffin lid..........trying to get out.

Wow Vanesa... what a story

These are not really unsolved mysteries... but more like haunted places in california:

Torrance, CA - Torrance high school - In the C building at Torrance High there is a girls bathroom right before you enter the hall that is haunted by a girl from the age of 15-17. She got a pass to go to the restroom and when she went in she was raped and killed in the back of the bathroom where the second row of stalls were, beyond the sinks. It is now boarded up but you can still see a sliver of light through the boarded side, due to the window. If you look through you can see a spot of red that was said to be her blood. When you go in to the bathroom by yourself you tend to hear a girl cry and unexplained noises from the other side of the wall.

Visalia, CA - Cinema 1-2-3 - In the lobby there have been seen 3 different kids roaming around and following many of the visitors. When you shine your flashlight on them the light does not go through them. But yet they are still transparent. There have been unusual screaming and banging from inside the old theater. Many eyewitnesses have seen reenactments of an 11 yr old boy being thrown off the roof by a shadow like figure. There have been accounts of over 300 spirits inhabiting this theater. Some of the stories about this place date back into the 1800s.


Wattsonville, CA - Redman House - This house is located in the middle of a strawberry field right off of the freeway. It is fully boarded up, but there are very noticeable hot spots on the roof of the house that shine blue, as well as many orbs that surround the house. From what the people that own us say, many people were murdered in this house, and it is extremely haunted. Doors slam and open on their own, people hear things happen in that house from far away. Screams of a little boy are heard as well as adults yelling for help. Strange spot.

http://www.livingseaimages.com/photo/Images/CD110v/Larges/335L16

Here is one from my high school.

Redlands - Redlands High School - Theater - Believed to be haunted by many spirits. Particularly, it is haunted by a teenage presence who lost his girlfriend in a car accident. He was so distraught by her death that he would climb up into the theatre's air ducts and write poems about her. He died in an accident in the theatre coincidently and he now haunts the theatre at all hours. The poems were painted over in most places, but he still resides here. You DO feel a presence when you are in the wardrobe room upstairs.

Augh, Carol and Edwina! The hair of my head is raising in horror! What stories, girls! I've never heard about haunted places here, but it must be.

The only stories I know are inside the cemetary. (Maybe for I am working on them)

One of these was referred by a Spanish woman, a paranormal professor or something like that, who recorded some voices and sounds inside familiar gravesites in cemetaries all around the world. She came to Recoleta with her husband and they recorded a lot of these (I must search her website. She had a crash recently, and she must upload the sounds again, but as soon as I found them, I'll give the link). Most of them were hilarious : when she entered into some familiar vaults (some has their doors broken and you may enter - a thing that of course, I've never did - ) she recorded voices who said merrily to her: "Hello! Hello! hello! How are you? We are all right. We are in a god place , but we come to welcome you on here! " and so on. In these familiar gravesites it could be more than 100 coffins, if not more. So, imagine what a crwod of "Welcomes" she had! :haha: In other places, she heard people laughing and saying they were very happy. In an old, very old tomb, very little too, she heard a male voice presenting himself this way: "Hi; don't search for more people here. I am the only one..."

There was only a gravesite who makes her take her things and go away in a hurry: when she entered there, she heard a very creepy human shout, asking for help. This person has been "bad" in his life. But it was only one among all the gravesites she visited.

Of course, you can't heard these without the special machines that people who studies paranormal phenomenes had. But in recoleta you MAY feel you are NEVER alone. These tombstones are as little houses plenty of coffins (sometimes you may see them from the out, but they also have a sub-way place with more of them, out of the sight), and has not place to bury people into the ground (as it is normal in other cemetaries from Buenos Aires). It was opened by the first time in 1822, but some people is buried here even before , for the priest who had the Estate will bury their people there too.

Vanesa. :think:

I have heard of one wierd Unsolve Mysterie It happen at our neighbors they are 67 years old they are an old Coupel and they are kind like those wierd old Peopel you see on tv Like Frank & Marie on Evreybody loves Raymond Anyways they had gone with someone to visit someone and when they came home someone had been to the tiolet in there house and had't flush but the Lady said her husband had forgotten to flush before the went but the Husband said he had gone to the washroom but he had flush but evreybody knows nobody had been in there house just to go to the Washroom lol and not flush except he dos't know lol

There is the show called Ghost Hunters on Sci-Fi channel. Some of the stories make my spine shiver.

I watched some of these, Edwina, and you are right...They are just scary! I don't really care for Horror Movies, but real life cases are not comfortable to hear, and I'd rather like NOT to know them. Sometimes, I can't sleep after reading or hearing them.

There was another case of a person buried alive, but this time in the 1840's. She was Catalina Benavídez, also from our high-class. She had married Francisco de Alzaga, an aristocratic but bad man, who killed another guy and must run away from Buenos Aires to live in a little village from North-East Argentina, leaving her wife alone. Catalina began to drink and lost all her fortune, she caught syphillis and was all covered by scars. She must live in charity of one of her maids, who had make money. The poor one died in a charity hopital and was buried in the Alzaga's gravesite. But she was not dead...yet. She managed to go out of the coffin, and even went away the familiar vault, walking some steps in one of the great avenues of the Cemetary. But she was so injured that she died right there and cemetary workers found her dead , earky in the morning.

It was another case of a woman whose family name was Gomez (rather common) whose husband had put some drugs on her and made bury her. She also went out of the casket, but when she saw she was at the cemetary, in the middle of the night and all sourrounded by coffins, she died by a heart-attack, hughing the vaoul's door...Awful.

Vanesa.

:faint2: Vanesa!!!