The Children's Hour

Not only 1920's gangsters and ladies of the night haunt the Holly Street Bar & Grill but among this motley crew children have been known to haunt the Holly Street Bar & Grill.

In the courtyard that leads into the "Insight Yoga Studio" the voices and giggles of children have been heard. On the grand stairway, people have reported seeing a little girl with red hair playing on the staircase.

And in the patio /courtyard where brunch is served on Sunday, people have reported seeing a little girl with red hair looking down on them from a window on the second floor.

Also, if you enjoy a drink at the bar, women have reported seeing a man dressed like an old time gangster lifting a glass and toasting them in the bar mirror. But when they turn around to see him he is not there!

Spooky don't you think?

I see dead people

Of all the great questions of life we ask :"What is the meaning of life?","Where do we go when we die?", "Is there sex when we die?" I can answer one. According to the ghosts that haunt the Holly Street Bar & Grill there is indeed sex when we go beyound.

The second floor of the once mortuary / Speak Easy was not only the crematorium but also where the working girls practiced their trade.

According to a janitor who worked at the once Marketing Firm on the second floor, he claims to have seen people having sex on an invisible table (he said table not a bed). He is recorded stating once he saw a very ugly woman riding on top of a dead looking man. Other members of the now closed firm claim seeing people looking very real but dressed in strange clothes disappear in thin air. Women scantely attired have been seen walking up and down the stairs. Voices have been heard as well as laughter. Sounds as if they ghosts are having a good time.

The Marketing Frim closed down due to reports of cold spots and no one wanting to work there late at night. But the restaurant is doing a booming business. I guess diners don't mean seeing dead people.

More tales from this crypt to come. (hallway and enterance to the courtyard that leads to the yoga studio Insight Yoga)

Tales from the crypt

Where else but America can a once mortuary be turned into a Bar & Grill, Yoga Studio and marketing firm? The Holly Street Bar & Grill is one of the finest restaurants in Pasadena. Brunch can be charming, sipping champagne in one of the courtyards and listening to a live music from classical harp or guitar. At night the place sparkles with white tea lights in the wisteria bushes and is enchanting. The food is excellent and if you don't want to pay for wine on their wine list your can bring your own bottle with no corking charge!

Next door in the same building is a the Insight Yoga studio, a beatiful studio with polished hard wood floors. This studio was once the chapel of the mortuary. It's odd to sit and chant sanskrit in front of a stained glass window with a white robe Jesus with arms opens stands in front of you. But the studio is lovely!

Plus, the place is haunted!

I won't tell all the stories in this post but I promise to post more tales from this crypt in future posts.

It's believed (but not exactly proven) that the mortuary acted as a front for a "Speak Easy" during the 1920 Prohibition Era. And they were selling more that illegal drink but female company as well. The restaurant area was once a carriage house and garage where gangsters hung out. People have stated seeing a huge black man dressed in overalls and a yellow shirt walking around, as well as a well dressed man in fancy gangster clothes of the era with his arm around two very scantily dressed women looking like working girls from the period. People have claimed while using the resturant's bathroom in the evening have be locked in.

Voices have been hear in the resturant and courtyard area in the very late evenings.

Talk about food for thought!

Keep coming back for more tales from this crypt!

Legends of the fall

Ghost of Pasadena City Hall

Legend has it that during it's construction a worker had fallen off a scaffolding and died. Now it is told that this poor unfortunate man haunts the halls of City Hall. People claim to hear his heavy booths as he climbs an invisible scffolding situated near the great fountain in the center plaza area. However, this poor dead worker is not alone, others have claimed hearing spirits that making booing & hissing sounds as they fly through the rotunda. The buidling is beautiful and charming and I've been there at night, still haven't seen a ghost. But if you ever worked for City Government you can understand why there would be restless spirits wanting to haunt the all halls that drove them wild with frustration!

The road not taken...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be a traveler, long stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth:

The took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Becuase it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
I took the one less traveled by,
And that thus made all the differences.

- Robert Frost

One of my yoga teachers brought up this poem and got the meaning all wrong. The road less traveled is the lament of a poet, an artist. One who doesn't follow the common path of marriage , children and middle class norms. It's not always a happy life but once we chose we can not go back. I thought I had plenty of time for a husband, children and a normal life, so I I dived for that bride's bouquet or search Mr. Right I was far too busy being my own Ms Right. Now, I told I have more chances being killed by a terrorist that finding the right life partner. Sigh. I took the road less traveled and it's a lonely road by the scenery is beautiful!

By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea

Yesterday took a long drive with mom up the 101 highway and enjoyed a great breasfast at Paradise Cove in Malibu, it's a small private beach past Pepperdine College. There' s a great resturant there, that not at all expensive, plus you can eat outside on the beach. It's a romantic place to take a date, if I was dating. Being a bit of a loner these days. Relationships have left such a bitter taste in my mouth that really could care less if I died a spinster! Rather enjoy being a free agent. After breakfast drove up to Camarillo to shop at the great outlet stores. Really a lovely day!

Who you gonna call? GHOST BUSTERS!

When people think of ghosts, what comes to mind is usually large dark houses, white phatoms appearing in the middle of the night. What people don't realize is the fact that ghosts can appear any time they chose or even in the outdoors, not just graveyards. One urban legend ghosts of Pasadena appear along the Arroyo Seco Canyon riverbed. Seen above. (The riverbed not the ghosts. Sigh!) Story goes during the year 1835 a group of male settlers had gone out beehunting (you read correctly bee hunting!). There had always been uneasy feeling between the settlers and the California native Americans known at the time as the Cahuillas Indians. The natives would steal their live stock even horses for food! On the day the settlers went bee hunters some of the Cahuillas tribesmen were seen dressed in full war gear. In the late afternoon when the settlers didn't return the families and friends organzied a search party. They found the poor men , all dead with arrows through their hearts and no other signs of robbery for all the men had their valuables on them. A few months later a father and son were fishing along the river bank when they saw two men riding on horseback and the men stopped and asked if they had any luck catching fish , when they answer they watched them ride away into thin air. Thirty years later two boys were fishing by the river bed when two men dressed like cowboys rode by asking if they wanted to join them for a bee hunt then a pack of indians appeared and shot the two men in front of the frighten boys but didn't harm the boys. The boys ran home in terror and told their parents what they had seen the parents and police went to the sight and found nothing. It is often reported that people have seen either the two men on horseback or the Cahuillas men dressed fully in a war headress. Looked and looked but didn't see them.