Haunted Garden Grove: Grave Goings On at the Stanley Ranch Museum

Garden Grove, California is home to the Stanley Ranch Museum.

Which in turn is home to the relocated (as of 1980) original Walt Disney Studio Garage…among other things.

The Stanley-Ware House, well over a century old, is the centerpiece of the museum, and has the interesting distinction of having been moved five hundred feet from its original location and turned to face north in 1971.

Haunted Garden Grove: Grave Goings On at the Stanley Ranch Museum

Photo credit: flickr/mytravelphotos

Updated 2/10/2020 – Does this have anything to do with the terrifying and sometimes violent spirits which allegedly haunt the place?

No one knows for sure.

Some of the local legends surrounding the Stanley-Ware house do originate in the 1970s, but there may be stories of events happening before this.

What is known – or at least, what is purported by a large number of people who have been through the museum – is that it is very highly active in the paranormal realm.

Terrifying Ghosts of the Stanley Ranch Museum

The ghost of a corpse bride has been seen at the Stanley Ranch Museum in Garden Grove California...

Photo credit: deviantart/shakealicious

Indeed, visitors often not only see ghosts, but frequently are spoken to by them and – in certain terrifying cases – touched by them.

“I never saw or heard anything in there,” says one woman, “but my sister did.

She’s kind of got the sight, or that sixth sense, or whatever you call it.

“You know, like she goes to psychics and stuff.

Well, we visited the museum kind of on a lark a couple of years ago.

“Someone had told her that it was haunted, so we thought it would be fun to go up there and see.

“Like I said, I never saw anything crazy.

I was just looking around at all the usual exhibit stuff – there’s a lot of really interesting items on display, if you’re just there to look at the place from a historical perspective, you know – and she kind of went wandering off on her own throughout the house.

“Five or ten minutes later, though, she came back, and I’m telling you she was bone white.

“I asked her what was wrong, but she wouldn’t speak to me for the longest time.

“She said she wanted to go, and she wouldn’t even look back as we left.

When we got in the car, I said, ‘We just got here; what’s the matter?’

“‘Ghost,’ was all she could say for a really long time.

Slowly, I got out of her that she had walked into the kitchen area, and hadn’t been paying attention to where she was going.

“A hand reached out and grabbed her arm, and when she looked down, she realized that it was a person lying on the kitchen table.

“‘She was a corpse, but she was alive somehow,’ she kept saying.

Finally, I understood that she meant that this person – ghost, really – had been butchered and was served up on the table like a meal.

“My sister said that the woman tried to speak to her, but that her throat was completely clotted up with dirt and worms, and that all that came out was a gagging sound.

“We drove away, and my sister cried the whole way home.

As far as I know, that’s the last time she ever sought out anything psychic or paranormal at all.”

I ask how she’s been over the past year, and the woman before me gives me a sad look.

“I don’t know; she doesn’t talk to me anymore, either.”

Have you visited Stanley Ranch Museum in Garden Grove, CA?
What weird things have you experienced there?
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