Discovering Griffith Park. Casey Schreiner

THE CURSE OF THE FELIZES

      One of the best-known and most-told ghost stories in Griffith Park is the so-called Curse of the Felizes. According to legend, Don Antonio Feliz—then the bachelor landowner of Rancho Los Feliz—succumbed to a smallpox outbreak in 1863. Before he died, he sent his young niece Petranilla away to prevent infection while his sister Soledad stayed on.

      When Petranilla was away, Don Antonio signed a deathbed will witnessed by his friend Antonio Coronel and an unnamed lawyer. Soledad got some furniture. Petranilla got a big fat nothing. And Coronel, by some strange stroke of luck, got all of Rancho Los Feliz.

      It’s understandable, then, that Petranilla was a bit peeved when she returned to find her home no longer in the hands of her family. This is when she apparently cursed anyone who owned the land that rightfully belonged to the Feliz family, at least according to notorious yarn spinner Horace Bell. Local historian and outdoor author John W. Robinson dug into this legend in the 1980s and essentially said Bell made the whole thing up.

      Misfortune did seem to be a regular occurrence at Rancho Los Feliz from then onward, though. Coronel quickly gave all the land to his lawyer, who was later shot and killed. Next up was Leon Baldwin, whose crops failed and cattle died, forcing him to sell to Griffith J. Griffith. Baldwin was later murdered by bandits in Mexico, and Griffith experienced his own series of unfortunate events, too. The ghosts of Don Antonio and Petranilla have both allegedly been seen at Bee Rock and at the old Feliz adobe but have reportedly calmed down now that the land is a public park.

      Unfortunately, Antonio didn’t have as much luck with the rancho as his mom did. A combination of a smallpox outbreak and some shenanigans from Yankee lawyers brought the land into American hands and eventually to the park’s namesake, Griffith J. Griffith.

       The Complicated Story of Griffith J. Griffith

      Born in 1850 in South Wales (where, apparently, it’s not uncommon for people to have the same first and last name) to a large, poor, Protestant family, Griffith Jenkins Griffith lived in the same stone house that had been in his family for generations. His parents divorced after he was born, but he ended up sharing this farmhouse with five half brothers and three half sisters.

      As a young boy Griffith lived with various relatives throughout this coaland iron-mining region of Wales until an uncle offered to take him to America. He moved to Pennsylvania at the age of sixteen and became the de facto adopted son of the Mowry family, who had lost their son in the Civil War.

      Griffith made a name for himself with his writing—first working for the Pennsylvania Brewers Association and later as a reporter for the Daily Alta California in the 1870s. Griffith talked up his experience living near the mines in Wales and became the region’s first mining correspondent. This job saw him traveling across the Southwest and into Mexico—and put him in touch with some of the richest and most powerful people, too.

      Griffith’s journalism transitioned into more lucrative mining boosterism and eventually into investment in mines, where he undoubtedly had a lot of access to insider information from his writing contacts. Griffith made enough money to purchase 4071 acres of Rancho Los Feliz in 1882.

      He made more money through lending and real estate—and started making enemies in Los Angeles with his somewhat ostentatious behavior. He adopted the title of Colonel (despite never actually achieving that rank in a military outfit) and was known to parade around downtown in long overcoats with an exquisite gold-headed cane, earning the ire of some of the city’s stuffiest shirts. At the same time, though, Griffith was active in philanthropy, both personal and civic—on a trip to Europe he paid for his father and eight siblings to come to America and put the youngest through school. He also paid for the Mowrys’ living expenses after they fell on tough times and built them an exquisite gravestone marker. And remember Doña Verdugo’s hard-fought water rights? Griffith sold them to the downstream city for well below market value, becoming a bona fide hero to the thirsty boomtown.

       GHOSTS OF GRIFFITH PARK

      The Curse of the Felizes isn’t the only ghost story told in Griffith Park. The ghost of Peg Entwistle is said to haunt the southern flank of Mount Lee. The struggling actress moved to a house on Beachwood Drive for a fresh start in Hollywood, but the film that was supposed to be her big break ended up bombing. On September 18, 1932, she climbed to the top of the H in the Hollywoodland Sign and jumped off, killing herself. Paranormal-minded hikers have claimed to see her falling from the H or wandering the nearby trails at night, and they often report the scent of her favorite gardenia perfume in the air.

      Actress Peg Entwistle in 1925 (Theatrical Portrait Photographs, TCS 28, Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University)

      Interestingly enough, the number of ghost stories and sightings in Griffith Park increased exponentially once the internet came around. Of these, Haunted Picnic Table 29 is perhaps the best known. In 2006, an L.A. Times article appeared online detailing a freakish accident that supposedly occurred north of Mount Chapel on Mount Hollywood Drive, where thirty years prior, a young couple was crushed by a falling tree while making love on a picnic table. Workers who tried to clear the tree fell ill, including a supervisor who suffered a heart attack. Although the article was a hoax (the URL for the still-online website reads “www.latirnes.com,” the column is written by “Norm Bates,” and photos are credited to “Michael Myers” and “Art Banksy”), that hasn’t stopped people from searching out the site (it has an official location on Google Maps) or reporting additional sightings.

      Other hauntings in the park include ghost tigers in the Old L.A. Zoo, disappearing people at the merry-go-round and Griffith Observatory, phantom trains at Travel Town, and something known as “the Griffith Park Creature.” As the years go on and more imaginative folks move to L.A. from all over the world, you can expect even more ghost stories to pop up, but I think the best way to see ghosts in the park is to enjoy some of the real-life Halloween seasonal attractions like Boney Island, the Haunted Hayride, and the Halloween Ghost Train.

      “Colonel” Griffith Jenkins Griffith, 1903 (University of Southern California Libraries, California Historical Society)

      Griffith wooed and wedded Mary Agnes Christina Mesmer (often known as Tina) in 1887, had one son named Van, and turned his attention to the future of Los Angeles. When he toured Europe, he noticed that all the major cities also had major parks. Even in the growing cities of the United States, parks were an important part of civic pride—but in his adopted Los Angeles, the park situation was pretty poor. So on December 16, 1896, Griffith and Tina presented 3015 acres of Rancho Los Feliz to the City of Los Angeles as a Christmas present explicitly for use as a public park, essentially giving the town a park four times the size of New York City’s Central Park overnight. An engraved copy of the deed is visible in the Griffith Park Visitor Center.

      The public’s love and admiration for Griffith was relatively short-lived—on September 3, 1903, the publicly teetotaling Griffith stumbled into the presidential suite of Santa Monica’s Hotel Arcadia, drunk. He accused his Catholic wife of trying to poison him on behalf of the pope and shot her in the face with a revolver.

      Miraculously, she survived and escaped by jumping out a window to the nearby owner’s suite. The fallout was immediate—Griffith was shunned from society and became entangled in one of L.A.’s earliest celebrity trials. His lawyers used a defense of “alcoholic insanity,” and he spent two years in San Quentin Prison and paid a fine of $5000. Understandably, Tina got a divorce.

      The City of Los Angeles didn’t want much to do with Griffith after this episode,