Ben 00:04-00:31

Brian, welcome back to Crime Capsule. Thank you for having me. Man, I tell you, we have been looking forward to this so much, and one of the absolute joys of having you on the show, of which there are many, many, many, is the fact of where you are coming to us live from. Tell us again about this magnificent vessel from which you appear.

Brian 00:32-01:20

Okay, so I am sitting in what is called the captain's in port cabin aboard the former USS, Iowa battleship I actually have this ship in one of my books haunted San Pedro Yeah, so I actually am a history nerd and I did not start to volunteer here due to the haunting activity, but the more I'm here, I have actually started to, this is gonna sound kind of odd, become friends with some of the spirits here. So that actually makes it a little bit, I wouldn't say more pleasant, because I mean, I love being here, but it's definitely a fun place to volunteer.

Ben 01:21-01:37

Yeah. You know, I got to say, for a man with 15 or 16 books under his belt, I lost count after 10. You know, for you to tell me that you didn't volunteer because of the company, that's going to be a hard sell, Brian. It's going to be a hard sell.

Brian 01:37-01:44

Yeah. Well, and that's what's keeping me here, believe me. That and a lot of really good people that work and volunteer here.

Ben 01:45-01:52

No, absolutely. Is the US Navy still doing that ration of rum, or has that gone by the wayside?

Brian 01:52-01:58

Actually, we are the only Navy in the world that is a dry Navy.

Ben 01:58-02:00

Well, there's still room for improvement.

Brian 02:00-02:14

There definitely is. The ration of rum actually comes from the British Navy. And I do know that American sailors sort of have adopted that, but we won't go into that because, yeah, officers don't need to know.

Ben 02:15-02:31

Of course, absolutely, and that's why there's a, that's why we have the split galley, don't we? All right, so let's talk about, you are not just on the magnificent USS Iowa at this very moment, but you are in a particularly unusual room aboard ship. Tell us about it.

Brian 02:33-03:25

So the captain's in port cabin, and you'll notice I keep saying in port, the captain would only be in this cabin when the ship was at anchor or tied up to a pier in a port. And it is the nicest cabin on the ship, except for the fact that the captain was never in here. However, what The history of this particular cabin, it is the only cabin on a battleship that has a bathtub. And the bathtub was installed for Franklin Delano Roosevelt for when he was transported from Norfolk, Virginia over to Mirzal-Kabir in North Africa for the Cairo and Tehran conferences.

Ben 03:26-03:39

That is arguably, with one possible exception, which I'll name in a moment, that is arguably the most historic bathtub I have ever heard about in my life.

Brian 03:39-03:48

Oh, absolutely. When I'm giving tours and I actually use this line, I tell people, yes, FDR's butt did touch this bathtub.

Ben 03:49-04:04

I like to think of it as it graced the bottom of the bathtub. But, you know, it's that one and it's the bathtub in which Taft was stuck that I think would vie for the two most historic bathtubs in American history.

Brian 04:04-04:07

Quite possibly, yes. I would have to agree with that.

Ben 04:08-04:22

Good times, man. Well, please give our late departed Commander-in-Chief our very highest regards and deepest thanks for his efforts.

Brian 04:22-04:44

I absolutely will. I have not had the honor of seeing FDR, but other volunteers aboard actually have. This was FDR's favorite ship. He always called it a happy ship and his happy ship. He apparently really likes it and he hangs out every once in a while.

Ben 04:44-05:39

She's a fine lady for sure, we know that. So, last time we talked, and you were in a different room aboard ships, this was two years ago, and we were talking about your book, Haunted Southern California. Now, that book was a real road trip. It was full of haunted mines and abandoned cemeteries and, you know, just crazy cases all over the uh… the region which was which is wonderful you jump in the car you'll let the book be your tour guide you know your your road map and you come up with these crazy spots your new book that we're gonna talk about today haunted heart of los angeles much more focused i mean we're talking just a radically condensed geography here but what led you to shift your gaze to such a uh… you know such a more focus in a similar say a more focused for approach uh… the publisher

Brian 05:41-06:17

So it sort of has a an interesting story. I was actually working on another book titled haunted Northern, California, which by the way, that is the one I'm working on now and I had always been told that you know what don't worry about ever doing a book on Los Angeles. It's a hard sell people in Los Angeles don't like to read blah blah blah blah blah and Well, yeah, and I was like, okay. All of a sudden I get contacted by marketing saying, hey, we need a book about Los Angeles. You interested? I was like, absolutely.

Ben 06:18-06:19

So let's go.

Brian 06:19-07:03

All right. Yeah. So that's actually what got me to start writing the book. Um, and from there, you know, I, I live so close that, um, I, I already knew a bunch of locations, but when I started to do research, I found all of these others that I'd never even would have thought, uh, would, would be haunted. One of which was, uh, Dodger stadium. I don't think Dodger Stadium would have ghosts, but then when you read about the history of Dodger Stadium and how it came to be, you start to go, oh yeah. So it makes more sense. It does. But yeah, no, I am really glad that I was able to do this book. You have no idea.

Ben 07:04-07:37

Man, it was cool. And one of the things I love about it, as someone with family all throughout Southern California, you know, and I hear about some of these places from time to time, you know, is the way in which you bring to light a lot of the hidden histories of these properties and these streets and, you know, different sites around the region, things that, you know, the kind of casual observer would never, ever pick up on. And yet, you know, here you are, you're kind of shining your flashlight into their dark corners and saying, hey look, there's something over there, we need to take a look at it.

Brian 07:37-08:40

Yeah, and believe it or not, that's one of the things that I enjoy most. I kind of joke about the fact that the only reason I'm a writer is it gives me an excuse to do research. Yep. So, when I… the actual writing of the book takes me very little time, but the research is what takes so long, I love to just dive into the locations. And one of the things I told myself a long time ago is that I was not going to do anything that made history unhappy. So I'm not going to put my own feelings into it. I'm not going to try and put politics or anything like that into the history, because the history itself is just amazing. And when you really dive deep into histories, it's amazing what you can come up with.

Ben 08:40-09:45

You know, I really felt that as I read through this particular volume, because the stories almost tell themselves, you know, and the personages, the individuals, the characters, the properties, I mean, they're all so incredibly rich. that, you know, you just kind of, you can sit back and let them do the talking and, you know, like, you're just, you're just kind of cruising, cruising along. I want to start off with kind of a, maybe a bit more of a macro question for you, Brian, because I think it's a really interesting one. You have, I mean, you've got a, you know, a baker's dozen of different sites and cases, you know, here in Haunted Heart of LA. But one of the threads running throughout your book is that there is kind of an ongoing debate over which property or which historic house or hotel and so forth is the most haunted. Now, I don't want to wade into that debate because I for sure am not equipped, but I'm interested in the fact that there is a debate over which is most haunted for such a massive city. Why do you think there is?

Brian 09:46-10:58

It has to do with the diversity of people. So we'll take the paranormal community kind of as a whole. You have people that go to one location and that may be one of the only locations they ever go to. So let's say it is the Cecil Hotel. They have gone to the Cecil Hotel 15, 20, 30 times, so they know what is going on there, yet they only go to the Pico House twice. So to them, because they don't have the experiences that they have at one location, they just assume that it doesn't have the same amount of activity as another location. So like with Dodger Stadium, a lot of people have no clue that there is haunting activity there. So to them, it would never even enter their head that that could be one of the most haunted locations in Los Angeles. I mean, I have my own views. Other people have their views, and none of them are wrong. It just all depends on their point of view.

Ben 10:59-12:21

You know, it's funny, the argument or the debate reminded me slightly of, you know, that old saw that if you ever were to collect all of the alleged fragments or relics of the true cross and combine them into an actual cross, that sucker would be as high as the Empire State. You know, everybody's got a piece, right? Which is kind of fun to think about. Well, I want to skirt over two cases real quick before we get to our main attraction today. And you just mentioned them, the Pico House and the Cecil Hotel. It's interesting because, Brian, part of your history, which I love, is not just a history of the property and the haunting, but it's actually a cultural history of Los Angeles at the time at which these structures were built, and who were the investors, and what was the mercantile landscape looking like at the time, and were these sort of prospectors made good, or were they sort of self-made businessmen? You know, the proprietor of the Pico House, of course, was this magnanimous, generous individual who just wanted to give everything away to everybody and it bankrupted him, you know? So like these kind of great stories of people, but also stories of the time. So I would just, I have one question about each of those before we get to our main attraction. Pico House, how much fun did you have writing about that? It must've been a blast, right?

Brian 12:22-13:38

It actually was especially since I have had the pleasure of going in and investigating the location and when I say location and it's the reason that I combined three different locations into one with the Pico house is Because all three of those locations are basically connected. They're all one building with the Pico house kind of being the anchor and Because of the fact that I really like history, and it's kind of sad because Pico is everywhere in the Los Angeles Basin, I didn't know enough about his history when I was investigating the locations to understand fully what I was investigating. That was where I had the most fun. As I was researching Pio Pico himself, I was thinking back to my investigation, going, oh, okay, so that makes sense on why certain things happen, why I had seen certain things. So that one just really, it was kind of more on a personal level. due to my own discoveries, shall we say.

Ben 13:38-14:12

I tell you, it is so nice when you read an account like yours, occasionally to encounter someone who is effectively a folk hero. We're not talking about like you know, someone we had on last week's episode where, you know, you got a matron who has an illicit affair and then hides her child in a basement, and it results in a murder-suicide, and the whole thing is awful, awful, awful start to finish. With Pio Pico, I mean, you got a guy who just everybody loves. He's just a genuinely good dude. Those are rare, man, you know? Nice to meet one every now and then in a paranormal book.

Brian 14:13-14:33

Yeah, exactly. And it was fun that I could bring him to our readers. Because a lot of people do not know who Pio Pico was, they just know, okay, Pico Boulevard, you know, or Pico Rivera. So it was nice to be able to bring him to the people.

Ben 14:34-15:22

Yeah, no, it was great. It was great. Love that chapter. Now, I'll say this, my love for that chapter was equally matched by my absolute abhorrence at everything I read about the Cecil Hotel. You know, this was one of the, you know, we talk about page turners and like, this was a page turner that like, had me on each paragraph just like, no, no, please stop, not more, no more, let it end. And no, Brian, you wouldn't do that. You gave us the whole horrible history of this. I mean, I think, I am now a believer. It's cursed. The place is cursed. I'm never setting foot anywhere near there. Holy crap. I mean, did you have to touch it with a barge pole just to be able to get in? Like, how did you do that?

Brian 15:23-16:37

Okay, so I had actually been going to the Cecil Hotel for about the last eight or nine years. Not staying there, mind you. There are not enough inoculations to ever get me to stay at the Cecil. But I had been going in and talking to people, and if you ever want to know anything about a hotel, talk to housekeeping. My God, they know everything. So I'd go in and I would talk to housekeeping, I would talk to maintenance people and things like that, specifically to find out about the ghost activity. And I couldn't find much, to be perfectly honest with you. However, I am not one of those people who believe in curses. I think curses are self-fulfilling. But I'm sort of with you on the Cecil Hotel. If there is a place that is cursed, that is the place. You found it. Yeah. I mean, my God, as I was researching it, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. And I'm like, I was kind of like you. It's like, all right. So, all right. Now I can get into the goods. Oh my God. Nope. No more goods. Wait, what?

Ben 16:40-16:49

There was never any good stuff. It was only misery and opprobrium and just despair all the way through.

Brian 16:49-17:09

Right, and it's just absolutely amazing how one location can have that much bad stuff go on over that long of a period. We're coming up on a hundred years And it still hasn't stopped.

Ben 17:09-18:27

Yeah. And that, for everybody out in podcast land, that's your reason to buy the book. Go and enjoy, you know, like, go check it out. So, okay, no, I wanted to highlight that one because, you know, you're a very fair researcher and, you know, you're very quick to say, I don't know what's going on here, but it defies explanation. When we look at a much more visible emblem of Los Angeles, right? When we turn our gaze not towards the downtown, but to the hills, we see another place where certain unexplained things are happening on the back of a kind of a foundation of neglect and disrepair. And so I'm not going to bury the lead here. We're talking about the famous, the utterly world-famous Hollywood sign, okay? And you have this great account of the deep history of the Hollywood sign, including the fact that it was a, it was formerly a Hollywood land sign and that there are some ghost letters which currently populate it, which may or may not be causing some problems for some folks. So take us back to the beginning of this iconic emblem and tell us what happened.

Brian 18:28-20:14

Okay, so to start, most people don't realize that the Hollywood sign is not in Hollywood, but in the actual city of Los Angeles. It sits within the boundaries of Griffith Park. Now, Hollywood is actually a suburb of Los Angeles, but it's not Los Angeles proper, where the Hollywood sign actually is. And it was originally, the sign said, Hollywood Land. And it was never meant to last more than about 18 months. It was an advertisement for a housing development that they were doing. As soon as all of the houses were sold, the Hollywood land sign would come down and it would never be seen again. However, over time, the residents of Hollywood started to say, hey, this is our sign. Don't you dare touch it. Well, the problem is, is nobody wanted to take care of it. So because it wasn't built to last, the weather took its toll on it. Pieces of it would fall down. And it just started to just become decrepit. So finally, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce sort of stepped in and said, I'll tell you what, we will take over it, and we will take care of the maintenance. However, you need to lose the L-A-N-D. So the Hollywood land sign became the Hollywood sign. And that is what people have come to recognize. And literally, it is now a symbol that people know around the world.

Ben 20:15-20:49

Yeah, so there's this interesting dimension to that, too, because its history of disrepair, you know, its neglect, its corrosion, started causing some problems, which kind of gave it a reputation. And then even after it was rebuilt, there was these sort of problems which plagued the area. And you write that when a lady named Peg Entwistle finally made her fateful journey up there, it was almost as though that moment was a continuation of everything that had been happening for decades.

Brian 20:49-22:09

So, you know, Peg Entwistle, that is really a sad story. She was actually a fantastic actress, and she had been cashed and had received a contract from a movie studio. But then the contract was rescinded and she didn't think she would ever be able to get another contract. So she climbs up to the top of one of the letters on the sign and throws herself off. And right after that, her aunt and uncle, who she was living with, received a letter from a studio. Well, they didn't receive it. It came to the house that she was living at. where she had gotten a new contract and a new movie deal. And so it's just like, oh my God. It was just really sad. And that sort of, to me, coincided with the curse of Griffith Park. A lot of people don't realize that Griffith Park is, again, one of the most cursed places in the United States and probably, well, other than the Cecil, the most cursed place in California.

Ben 22:09-22:12

Those are tall words, Brian. Those are tall words.

Brian 22:12-22:40

Yeah. I mean, if you look at the history of Griffith Park itself, the Hollywood sign just fits in perfectly. There have been people who have moved in under the sign who still are seen there. A couple of them fairly famous besides Peg Entwistle. The sign itself just fits into Griffith Park.

Ben 22:41-23:51

You know, it's interesting because Peg serves as, and you say this in so many words in the book, you know, Peg serves as almost like a metaphor. You know, she was an aspiring, promising, you know, young actress. She was chewed up and spit out by so many studios. You know, her talent was kind of used and abused. She had a long part, you know, in one feature film that you know, it was only discovered later that 12 minutes of her screen time, you know, were found on the cutting room floor. And she was only told about that, you know, after the fact. And it's sort of like, you know, her struggle to make a career of herself, like so many young folks, you know, out there in the industry, culminated in this moment of despair. And yet, there's kind of something interesting because, as you write, She, even though she did, you know, take her own life, she's still kind of around, and there's like a strange presence that people get there sometimes where they see someone very, you know, closely resembling her description. Tell us about Peg's afterlife in the sign.

Brian 23:51-25:08

So, a lot of people have seen Peg The ones that bother me aren't necessarily the visions, it's the sounds of her body hitting. Those are the ones that kind of got to me. But there are a lot of people, and a lot of it is actually out there, and people can read about it, especially in my book. People from other countries who are wandering around looking at the sign will actually spot her, and they're not sure it's her, but they assume due to her 1930s style dress and things like that. And she is usually preceded by the aroma of her perfume. Yeah, what a detail. Yeah, and it's told in so many different stories that it's kind of hard to dispute when you have people from around the world talking about the same smell. without ever having known about it.

Ben 25:08-25:42

Man, when I read that, I just sort of thought, no, no, that can't be the case. And then you kind of bring out example after example of that exact little detail. And I'm going to tell you, it got a little weirder. It got a little weirder as I was reading. That's a good thing. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I got a little tingle there. So, I mean, for those of us who've not actually been in close, close proximity to such a famous structure, how accessible is the area, the sign, you know, that sort of thing?

Brian 25:42-26:13

So, the area is accessible. However, getting down to the sign, is challenging, especially since they really don't want people walking down to the sign or up to the sign anymore. So it is now off limits, but you can get fairly close and there is a really good viewing area just below the sign that is fantastic for photographs.

So it's interesting that you say the area is now off limits. Of course, the Summer Olympics of 2028 are going to be held in Los Angeles, and the whole city is gearing up, you know, for that to happen in four years' time. Have you heard of uh… any ghostly uh… sort of preparation for millions of people to sending on l a whether it's on all the restreet or you know crazy things happening out of the hollywood sign or you know some sudden rash of bookings at the cecil hotel l a's back in the news well unfortunately the cecil hotel is now specifically a low-income housing so uh… no more hotel guests which mayor may not be a bad thing

Brian 28:40-29:36

As far as the ghostly activity, I haven't heard of anything. However, I would imagine that the area of Leimert Park, where the body of Elizabeth Short was found, the infamous Black Dahlia, During the last Olympics in 1984, the amount of reports, shall we say, coming from that area skyrocketed. So that's something that I have actually been wondering whether it's going to happen again. I do have some acquaintances who are police officers who deal with the LAPD, not necessarily that particular division of the LAPD, but I am definitely going to be kind of checking that out.

Ben 29:37-30:02

Well, it sounds like you and the team at Planet Paranormal are going to have your work cut out for you. Before we take a break for this week, and we'll come back next week with some more stories from Haunted Heart of Los Angeles, would you just tell us a little bit about the Planet Paranormal enterprise, and for our listeners who may not be familiar with your work outside of your titles as an author?

Brian 30:03-31:58

So Planet Paranormal actually started off as a radio hub for paranormal radio. Unfortunately, some of the more, shall we say, profitable radio hubs have sort of killed independent radio hubs. So we've dwindled to the point where We really don't have much going on with that anymore. However, what we did morph into is one of the more legitimate paranormal investigative teams on the West Coast. And we have actually had cases that have actually taken us as far away as Paraguay. So we do Enjoy that home cases are what we really Wanted to do to help people out. We never charge for any investigations ever Everything is on our dime and we want to make sure that people Get help whether it's paranormal or not Most of the cases we get are non-paranormal But we still try to help people if they have medical issues and things like that, finding them proper doctors. We had a former Marine who was getting help from the Marine Corps base, and they didn't realize just how far he had flipped, shall we say, until he had contacted us and needed help. And we actually contacted the Marine Corps base, and he got the help that he needed.

Ben 31:58-32:05

Oh, that's awesome. That is awesome. Well, if folks wanted to look up y'all's outfit, what's the best way for them to do so?

Brian 32:05-32:12

Just planetparanormal.com on any website, or I'm sorry, any server.

Ben 32:13-32:41

There you go, plantparanormal.com. Good deal. Well, Brian, we are going to come right back next week. And so I'm going to do this. I don't normally do this, but I'm going to say it right now for everybody out there who's listening. Next week, lizard people. That's it. Lizard people. We're going there. And I cannot wait. Tune back in. We will see you then. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. It's always a joy.

Brian 32:41-32:42

Thank you for having me. I love it.