There are some things in this world which simply should not be messed with.
Sometimes it’s apparent when something should not be touched.
It’s just a bad idea…
Photo credit left: findagrave/Donna Hancock right: Mark Hall
Beware The Dark Spirits Within Forest Lawn Cemetery
Updated 2/10/2020 – Picture yourself in the middle of the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Cypress, California.
Now imagine it’s the middle of the night.
Now imagine it’s the middle of the 1980’s.
Now imagine that your friend, with his acid-washed jeans and his sleeveless midriff-showing tee shirt and his coif filled with enough hairspray to single-handedly bring about severe climate change, has brought with him from home…a Ouija board.
Cue the bad synth music and the girls falling over in high heels whilst running from the evil something, right?
Legend has it that this is pretty much exactly what happened in Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery back in the days when Ronald Reagan was communicating his way toward a cherry parking spot in conservative Valhalla.
At first, it was just a bunch of teenagers horsing around and trying to summon up a ghost.
When the fog rolled in, and something began moving at them at great speed and parting said fog as it went, the fun dropped out of the situation in a hurry.
These days, visitors by day to Forest Lawn Cemetery will find it a calm, tranquil and peaceful resting place, with the usual cotillion of flowers and fresh earth and flags on Memorial Day.
But at night, the atmosphere gets downright strange, some say.
Beyond The Gravestones
Photo credit: Mark Hall
Parts of the cemetery are cold, even in the middle of the summer.
Sometimes things will appear to move among the gravestones.
A moaning sound can often be heard drifting across the tops of the tombstones.
And if you should happen to be there at night – which isn’t recommended in the first place – and a fog rolls in, any old fog at all, run.
“It came after us faster than a man running, as if it was driven by the wind,” says one of the teens – all grown up now and perhaps ironically practicing law in Irvine – who originally stirred up the ghostly presence in the cemetery.
“At first it just moaned at us, but the closer it got and the louder it got, the more it sounded like it was shrieking.
“I don’t know…by then we were shrieking and running and just trying to get the hell out of there, so maybe I don’t remember it as clearly as I think I do.
“But it still shakes me up, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.
“Those times are the worst.”
I ask her about the use of the Ouija board, and if she thinks that it would be safe for others to try to summon the same thing which she and her friends encountered.
“God, no!” she says vehemently, this woman who is now in her upper forties and is dressed in a business suit which probably costs more than the computer I’m writing this on.
“People should never touch one of those stupid things!
“And if they do, they should make sure they stay the hell away from that fucking cemetery!”