It’s almost funny, until it isn’t.
The idea that a portal to another world – or an Underworld – might exist in the bathroom of a Mexican fast food restaurant is the sort of stuff that jokes are made of.
One could almost write the “bean burrito gives patron existential experience” lines in one’s sleep.
Photo credit left: facebook/Deke Dickerson right: mediamilitia.com
Updated 2/10/2020 – But the concept has been far from laughable for people visiting the Arcadia Taco Lita.
Here, the food may be Heaven, but the men’s restroom – at least according to some – just might be Hell.
Some locals believe Taco Lita to be one of the more actively haunted places in Southern California.
The Ghost of Taco Lita
In the past year or two, frequenters of the restaurant have sometimes seen the Tall Man.
Eye-witnesses – the ones who have only seen him from behind, that is – describe him as a tall, elderly man in a yellow sweater.
“He walked strangely,” said one observer, who merely saw the man from the parking lot, but who received the scare of his life when the elderly man turned to look at him through the glass on his way to the bathroom.
“He grinned at my wife and me, and I’m pretty sure the skin on his face was peeling away and there were bugs and worms moving around in his mouth.”
The way the elderly man walks is the subject of some speculation.
He is always seen on his way to the bathroom, and those who have seen him from a closer vantage point state that if you look closely, you’ll see that it’s because his legs bend backwards.
Photo credit: mediamilitia.com
This in and of itself is terrifying enough – and this is all that most people see.
The old man walks the same path toward the bathroom, turns the light on and closes the door, and then simply vanishes.
Multiple witnesses have testified to walking into the restroom shortly after the old man entered, and finding it empty.
Well, maybe not quite.
“My husband won’t talk about it much,” says one woman, “and we never go there anymore.
But he’s talked about it plenty in his sleep.”
The husband in question states (in his sleep, at least) that when he followed the old man into the bathroom, he found that the man had gone.
“But his reflection hadn’t,” the woman says.
“And in the reflection, the only thing that made him recognizable was the yellow sweater.
Everything else…” she trails off.
After a moment, she continues.
“Everything else is the body of some other kind of creature from another world.”
When asked if he remembers anything else about the event in his sleep, she says, “Just that it was hot in that bathroom.
For a second or two, he said it was like being in a blast furnace.
And then it went out.”
Visitors to Taco Lita’s now-famous restroom often talk of feeling a presence of some sort when they enter, and most will not stay for long.
The shuffling old man, whom some believe to be a patron of another dimension, never stays for long – just long enough to be seen.
“In his sleep, my husband says he feels lucky,” the woman says.
“He believes that if the old man had turned around and seen him, he would have reached through the mirror and dragged him through to the other side.”